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The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in December

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in December

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whoremaster of pald 4December was only our third month offering original online fiction, and once again I was very pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response from you, our readers. Our Black Gate Online Fiction line has quickly become one of the most popular sections of the blog.

The Top Twelve stories in December were:

  1. “The Trade,” by Mark Rigney
  2. “The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
  3. “An Excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  4. “The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
  5. “The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying,” by Alex Kreis
  6. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunaru,” by Joe Bonadonna
  7. “A Phoenix in Darkness,” by Donald S. Crankshaw
  8. “Godmother Llizard,” by C.S.E. Cooney
  9. “Awakening,” by Judith Berman
  10. “The Duelist,” by Jason Thummel
  11. “An Excerpt from Seven Kings, by John R. Fultz
  12. “The Tea-Maker’s Task,” by Aaron Bradford Starr

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by E.E. Knight, Gregory Bierly, Dave Gross, and others, is here. The most popular Black Gate fiction in November is here.

Art for “The Whoremaster of Pald” by Chris Pepper.

We’ve got plenty more fiction in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: When All Stories Were Fantasy Stories

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: When All Stories Were Fantasy Stories

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Kids under age six are not lying to you, not exactly. When they want something to be true, they genuinely cannot tell that it isn’t. When they fear something might be true, no amount of reassurance is enough, because whatever they project onto the world is indistinguishable from the world itself. My five-year-old really believes his classmate told him it was okay to cut her hair with craft scissors, and he is not trying to manipulate me when he says the monster will emerge from behind his dresser if I turn off his bedroom light. His imagination is as real to him as anything he can touch.

Of course, adults are not always able to distinguish between the world and their mental projections upon the world. We all slip sometimes, a few of us slip a lot, and a very few cultivate slippage deliberately. We like imagining that we could shuck this dreadful adult ability, or avoid developing it at all, as the protagonist of  Michel Gondry’s gorgeous film The Science of Sleep does. The thing is, for all of us, there was a long time in childhood when any boundary between reality and fantasy always seemed more like an arbitrary exercise of power on the part of the adults in our lives than like an externally real fact we had to cope with. Why must my son hold my hand when we cross a parking lot in the dark? He believes he is impervious to cars, and can say so using the word “impervious,” so clearly the hand-holding rule must just be Mommy’s power trip.

It doesn’t help that the real world is weird, and so complicated that grown-up attempts to explain it at a child’s level only pump up the weirdness.

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Join Howard Andrew Jones on Ask Me Anything on Reddit

Join Howard Andrew Jones on Ask Me Anything on Reddit

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Howard Andrew Jones and his attack chickenBlack Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones has put out the word that he’ll be on Reddit tomorrow:

Hope you’ll join me at Reddit Thursday for a live interview, part of their Ask Me Anything series. You can ask me anything you’re curious about regarding this whole fantasy writing gig, so I hope you’ll drop by, and help spread the word!

Howard joined /r/Fantasy for an Ask Me Anything event a year ago, shortly after the release of his first novel, The Desert of Souls, where he was asked “How do you handle portrayals of sexism and racism when writing historical fantasy?”, “What RPGs do you play?”, and “How do you feel about piracy of your books?”

Click here for the official link.

No word on whether or not the chicken will be there.

Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier On Sale This Week

Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier On Sale This Week

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Shadow Ops Fortress FrontierMyke Cole is a class act. Before he launched a career as an internationally celebrated novelist, he did the decent thing: he apprenticed at Black Gate first.

His story “Naktong Flow” appeared in BG 13, and Dave Truesdale at Tangent Online called it “Thoroughly professional… Think Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now and you’re on the right track.” We attempted to lure him back to our pages with insanely generous offers — his own dressing room, and fresh flowers delivered daily — and even sent the lovely Patty Templeton to interview him, but it was all to no avail. Life as a novelist offered him the one thing Black Gate couldn’t: real money. And respect. And fame. And accolades. And a ton of other stuff, but let’s not dwell on that.

In his essay “Selling Shadow Point,” Myke talks about what it took to submit and sell his first novel, saying “You have to have guts… you have to bite the bullet and take it out to market.” In his case it certainly paid off — his first novel was Shadow Ops: Control Point, which Peter V. Brett called “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men… military fantasy like you’ve never seen it before.” It was an immediate hit, and the reading public clamored for more. Now Cole has delivered and the second volume of Shadow Ops arrives in book stores this week.

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began to develop terrifying powers — summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Overnight the rules changed… but not for everyone.

Colonel Alan Bookbinder is an army bureaucrat whose worst war wound is a paper-cut. But after he develops magical powers, he is torn from everything he knows and thrown onto the front-lines. Drafted into the Supernatural Operations Corps in a new and dangerous world, Bookbinder finds himself in command of Forward Operating Base Frontier — cut off, surrounded by monsters, and on the brink of being overrun.

Now, he must find the will to lead the people of FOB Frontier out of hell, even if the one hope of salvation lies in teaming up with the man whose own magical powers put the base in such grave danger in the first place — Oscar Britton, public enemy number one…

Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier was published by Ace Books on January 29, 2013. It is 368 pages and priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

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analog-july-1961December was the most active month the BG blog has ever seen, breaking every traffic record in our history. It’s good to have you folks hanging out with us, instead of risking your neck skiing or snowboarding or something. Exercise kills, and it especially has it in for long-time readers with weak vision and poor motor skills.

If you’re just joining us, you missed some great stuff last month. Theo took on the entire SF & fantasy establishment, Rich Horton proved there’s still life in old SF magazines, and tantalizing glimpses of the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness triggered some animated speculation on just who that sinister guy blowin’ up Federation stuff is. I compiled a Black Gate Christmas Gift List, Ryan Harvey continued his enormously popular series on Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars books, and Howard Andrew Jones offered up a generous preview of his new novel The Bones of the Old Ones.

That’s just a sample — here’s the complete list of the Top 50 articles from last month.

  1. SFF Corruption Part I
  2. Analog July 1961: A Retro Review
  3. Star Trek Into Darkness Poster Fuels Gary Mitchell Speculation
  4. The Black Gate Christmas Gift List
  5. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars, Part 10: Llana of Gathol
  6. Black Gate Online Fiction: The Bones of the Old Ones
  7. A Throne of Bones
  8. Another Arbitrary Top 10 List: Fantasy Films
  9. New Treasures: Obsidian Blood by Aliette de Bodard
  10. Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

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Poetry in Action: The Return of the Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Poetry in Action: The Return of the Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Return of the Mucker FrazettaThis upfront: The Return of the Mucker is less effective a novel than last week’s topic, The Mucker. The strange genre-mashings of the first book give way to the more familiar settings of the American southwest and northern Mexico. The Return of the Mucker plays as an outright Western for most of its length, and offers nothing as lunatic as samurai cannibals. As a story, it doesn’t hold together as well as The Mucker, getting weighed down with too much plot “business” while the first book stripped away extraneous aspects the farther the story advanced until it came down to only the hero and heroine, Billy Byrne and Barbara Harding.

Yet The Return of the Mucker is still a strong work that glosses over its shaky plot elements with a breakneck action finale, fitting developments of Billy Byrne’s personality that merge together his extremes, and one of Burroughs’s most intriguing characters: a hobo-poet hero named Bridge.

Burroughs’s working title for The Mucker’s sequel was Out There Somewhere, the name of a poem that inspired the character of Bridge. (More about that later.) Burroughs submitted the novel to All Story in March 1916, soon after completing it. Editor Thomas Newell Metcalf purchased the story immediately, and the first of five installments appeared two months later under its more marketable title. The Return of the Mucker was published in hardcover in 1921 from A. C. McClurg as Part II of a volume simply called The Mucker.

When the story begins, Billy Byrne is no longer “the mucker.” ERB makes that clear as a cloudless blue sky in the second paragraph: “Billy Byrne was no longer the mucker.” Barbara Harding cured Byrne of his criminal life and coarse ways: everything that defines the now outdated slang term “mucker.” But Billy Byrne surrendered his love for Barbara so she could marry William Mallory at the conclusion of the first book, and he’s now a man without direction — or a complete personality. If he isn’t the mucker, and he’s not with the woman who changed him, what is he? …

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Tangent Online on Gregory Bierly’s “A Princess of Jadh”

Tangent Online on Gregory Bierly’s “A Princess of Jadh”

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gregory bierly cropCyd Athens at Tangent Online reviews Gregory Bierly’s swords & sorcery novelette, “A Princess of Jadh,” published here on Sunday, January 20:

So often in medieval tales, when a mother dies in childbirth, it is in the process of giving birth to an important, and sometimes only, son. In this dark fantasy, “A Princess of Jadh,” Gregory Bierly strays from that path by giving us a daughter of emperor Thaphsis Amryth X, the youngest of five. Naome is the first red-head born in the empire in a thousand years. In that, and many other ways, she is quite different from her sisters.

At the age of twenty, Naome undergoes the ritual of being presented to her people’s gods – gods in whom she steadfastly does not believe. Though she has a vision during the ritual, and a sensation of being painted, afterward she believes that she has not been changed in any way. It takes little to persuade her otherwise. On her belly, an incomplete but corrupted rune of power now resides. And both the power that began the rune and the one that perverted it are interested in Naome…

“A Princess of Jadh” is a 13,000-word novelette offered at no cost. Read the complete story here, and Cyd’s review at Tangent Online here.

Greg Bierly is a climatologist, professor of geography and director of the honors program at Indiana State University. This is his first fiction sale.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

Red Sonja 8

Red Sonja 8

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Red Sonja 8 coverWhen we last left Red Sonja, she was about to be hung for killing some guy twenty issues ago. Last month, Oryx, a mammoth-riding bully, decided to turn her in to the victim’s family for a reward. Apparently, he opted for the dead option in dead or alive.

This issues begins with Sonja managing a few more insults and even a good kick before she’s cut free of the noose by Suumaro, Oryx’s brother and local outcast.

His motive? Why, he wants to make Red Sonja his wife, of course. Poor Suumaro.

So after a rooftop fight with a couple of thugs, Sonja and Suumaro (oh, both their names start with S – they could use the same monogrammed towels) are out of the fort and into the surrounding hills, where they find his military camp. It seems that Summaro wasn’t the only one cast out of the fort. He apparently sneaks back in every now and again to gather intelligence against the day when his army takes it back. And after watching Red Sonja fight, he invites her to join his army.

Thing is, Red Sonja’s been around the block a few times. She knows how this thing goes. And she’s met her share of guys claiming to be impressed by her prowess in battle, when in fact they’re just trying to get her out of her chain mail. She asks Suumaro point-blank if he’s got a wife and his answer is, “I’ve got several … but that is of little consequence to me at this moment.”

Red flag. Two red flags, actually. Red flag one? He’s got multiple wives. Sonja’s just escaped the noose for murdering one polygamist and this could be a terrible trend. Red flag two? His wives are of little consequence to him.

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New Treasures: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

New Treasures: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

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The-Last-PolicemanI enjoy genre mash-ups.  When done right, they highlight the strengths of both genres, and that’s a hard thing to pull off. Think horror-comedies like Ghostbusters or Zombieland, or science fiction mysteries like Asimov’s I, Robot stories. Or zombie westerns like the Bloodlands novels, or Dead Reckoning.

Not every mash-up succeeds, of course. (Did anyone see Seeking A Friend For the End of the World, Steve Carell’s romantic comedy cum apocalypse movie from 2012? No? That’s what I thought.)

But sometimes a mash-up is so brilliant I have to buy it immediately  That’s what happened with The Last Policeman, a police procedural set in Earth’s last days.

What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway?

Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.

The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job — but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week — except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace’s investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we’re confronted by hard questions way beyond “whodunit.” What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

Now there’s an original use for an apocalyptic setting. Give me a impending extinction-level event and a relentless investigator too stubborn to give up, and you have my attention. I bought this book after reading the first two paragraphs of the plot summary, and for a jaded book purchaser like me, that’s saying something.

Ben H. Winters is a New York Times best-selling author and an Edgar Award nominee. His last novel was Bedbugs. The Last Policeman was published by Quirk Books in trade paperback July 2012. It is 316 pages and priced at $14.95 ($14.95 for the digital edition).

Nathan Shumate Looks at Lousy Book Covers

Nathan Shumate Looks at Lousy Book Covers

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Goat SuckingIt’s a lot easier to publish a book than it used to be.

So easy in fact that people are doing it themselves. They’re doing away with traditional print and distribution, all the hassle of finding an agent, publishing contracts, and 20th Century promotional models entirely.

Unfortunately, in the process many of them are also getting rid of things they probably shouldn’t. Things like book design, and cover art. And marketing.

Or even proof-reading. I mean, who needs that, right?

Sadly, the result is that some good books are getting buried under terrible cover art, or painfully sub-standard art design. Nathan Shumate has made it his mission to showcase daily examples at his blog, Lousy Book Covers. Today’s poster child, Dixon Heurass’s Goat Suckin’, is sub-titled “Hotter Than It Sounds” (as Nathan dryly observes, “It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”)

Check out the many additional examples at Nathan’s blog to see just how many different ways there are to screw up cover art, or totally obscure passable art with poor title placement and font color.

We last discussed Nathan Shumate on the publication of his delightful experiment in communal self-publishing, Space Eldritch (which has a thoroughly excellent cover, incidentally).