Editor’s Blog – Page 88

Coming in December: John R. Fultz’s Seven Sorcerers

Friday, March 15, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Orbit Books has released the cover of the third book in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper series, Seven Sorcerers, scheduled for release this winter. Here’s the back cover copy, leaked to us by Bothan spies:

Ancient Power. Immortal Blood. Eternal Foes.

The Almighty Zyung drives his massive armies across the world to invade the Land of the Five Cities. So begins the final struggle between freedom and tyranny.

The Southern Kings D’zan and Undutu lead a fleet of warships to meet Zyung’s aerial armada. Vireon the Slayer and Tyro the Sword King lead Men and Giants to defend the free world. So begins the great slaughter of the age.

lardu the Shaper and Sharadza Vodsdaughter must awaken the Old Breed to face Zyung’s legion of sorcerers. So begins a desperate quest beyond the material world into strange realms of magic and mystery.

Yet already it may be too late…

Seven Sorcerers is the sequel to Seven Princes and Seven Kings (which we covered here and here.)

If you can’t stand the excitement and want to read some John R. Fultz today — perfectly understandable — then we suggest you start with his fine sword & sorcery story “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” published right here back in January as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction line. Or try the complete first chapter of Seven Kings for free.

Seven Sorcerers is scheduled to be published by Orbit Books on December 3, 2013. Look for it in bookstores everywhere.

Alex Bledsoe on “How I Discovered Silver John”

Thursday, March 14, 2013 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Just last week, we announced the winners of our Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman contest, and published twenty of the best entries. Not too surprisingly, many focused on Wellman’s popular Silver John stories, tales of monsters and Appalachian magic.

Alex Bledsoe, author of The Hum and the Shiver and the forthcoming Wisp of a Thing, knows a thing or two about Appalachian magic himself. I was fortunate enough to hear Alex read from Wisp of a Thing at Capricon here in Chicago last month, and I’m looking forward to receiving my copy. So I was pleased (and a little surprised) to see Alex’s article at Tor.com last week, explaining how he only recently discovered Wellman’s Silver John tales — and came across his novels for the first time at Capricon, of all places:

When Tor released my first Tufa novel, The Hum and the Shiver, back in 2011, many people asked me if I’d been inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s tales of Silver John. Although I knew of them by reputation, I’d never actually read them until last year, when Planet Stories published Who Fears the Devil? The Complete Tales of Silver John.

The resemblance, as is so often the case in comparisons like this, strikes me as mostly cosmetic. Yes, Wellman’s stories are set in a vague Appalachia, and yes, they involve magic and inhuman creatures. But they’re far more Lovecraftian than Tufan, with their invocation of things from other realities bleeding into ours and poking out around the fringes to snag the unwary… I’m delighted that the stories are so different from my own stuff, because that means I can devour them with a clear conscience. These stories are cool.

Further, before Capricon in Chicago this year, I didn’t even know there were full length Silver John novels. Rich Warren of Starfarer’s Despatch, a used-book dealer, clued me in, and I picked up After Dark based on his recommendation. And lo and behold, it was a real, literal page-turner that kept me reading when I should’ve been doing other, more important things (like writing, or parenting).

Ah, Starfarer’s Despatch — that explains it. Rich Warren and Arin Komins have had a hand in more than a few discoveries of my own. They sold me that paperback edition of Vampires I talked about last month, not to mention the only copy of Tales of Time and Space I’ve ever seen. There’s a great photo of the two of them in action in Howard’s Worldcon wrap-up from last year, too (and their website is here). True booksellers have magic of their own.

New Treasures: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Sunday, March 10, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Spring Auction at Games Plus, which I’ve taken to calling the Paris Fashion Week of Games. It was a very successful outing — so successful that I knew I had some explaining to do to Alice, who balances the family finances.

While I was waiting to settle up with the cashier, my eyes fell on a curious artifact in the tiny books section at Games Plus: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts. Roberts was a Canadian pulp author whose tales of Sir Dinadan, whom Mallory called “the merriest knight,” appeared in the pulp magazine Blue Book in the 50s. Sir Dinadan was known as the most practical of the Knights of the Round Table, and Roberts’s stories differed from many of the Arthurian tales of the era in their warmth and wit.

Late in his career, Roberts wrote a final entry in the Dinadan saga, “Quest’s End,” which remained unpublished in his lifetime. Rumor had it he’d also begun collecting all the tales with an eye towards publishing a book, but the project remained unfinished when he died.

Now the peerless Mike Ashley, who’s edited countless anthologies — including 32 books in The Mammoth Book Of... series, and five other Arthurian Anthologies, such as The Pendragon Chronicles and Chronicles of the Holy Grail — has finished what Roberts began with The Merriest Knight, a beautiful collection of the complete tales of Sir Dinadan:

Under the guidance of editor Mike Ashley, The Merriest Knight gathers for the first time all of Roberts’ tales of Sir Dinadan — including the previously unpublished “Quest’s End” — and several other long lost Arthurian works by this master of the stylish adventure yarn and the historical romance. Within these pages, readers will find a collection of Arthurian tales that are sometimes poignant, often humorous, and always ingenious, as well as a Camelot made fresh by the wry and often scathing eye of Sir Dinadan, who never rushes into battle without first being certain of the need to fight at all.

Why is The Merriest Knight for sale in a games store? Ah, that’s an entirely different tale.

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The Paris Fashion Week of Games, Spring Edition

Friday, March 8, 2013 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

You know what happens tomorrow? Think hard.

That’s right! The Spring Auction at Games Plus here in Chicago — only the best auction in the entire country for dedicated game collectors of all stripes. I reported on the Fall Auction here, and confessed to a painful bout of auction fever at last year’s Spring Auction here.

I used to attend these as part of a constant quest for rare science fiction and fantasy collectibles — things like Judge’s Guilds epic Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Task Force Games’ colorful Swordquest, SSI’s wonderous Swords & Sorcery, and of course the most eagerly sought artifiact in Western Civilization, an intact copy of Barbarian Prince.

These days, my interests have changed. It’s not that I’m not constantly on the lookout for Barbarian Prince — who isn’t? — but I gradually realized that an obsession with older games was blinding me to the golden age of adventure gaming we’re living Right Now.

So my trip to Mount Prospect, Illinois tomorrow to take part in the auction will be with an open mind. And a lengthy list of recently-published games I’m seeking — including Cyclades by Asmodee, Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight, the second edition of Descent: Journeys in The Dark, Alien Frontiers from Clever Mojo Games, Mice and Mystics by Plaid Hat, Cosmic Patrol by Catalyst, and many others.

Wish me luck. I’ll report back here with all my treasures next week.

R.I.P. Lynn Willis, Game Designer Extraordinaire

Thursday, March 7, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

I was researching some recent OSR (Old School Renaissance) D&D releases at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope blog when I came across a shocking post: an obituary for legendary Chaosium game designer and editor Lynn Willis, dated January 18.

It’s tough to describe the sense of loss I feel. I never met Lynn, so I didn’t know him personally. But he was a prolific designer and editor, and his name graces many of my favorite games. Like the other great designers of the era — Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson, Greg Stafford, Greg Costikyan, Sandy Peterson, Marc Miller — the name Lynn Willis quickly came to be synonymous with a top-notch product. In a tiny industry, that was no small thing.

I was introduced to gaming in 1978 by Metagaming, which offered enticing SF and fantasy microgames like Ogre and Melee in the pages of Analog and Asimov’s SF Magazine, and it was there I first encountered his work, in games like Godsfire (1976), Olympica (1978) and Holy War (1979). He designed the sci-fi guerrilla war game Bloodtree Rebellion for GDW in 1979, but found his permanent home when Chaosium published his post-apocalyptic game of a sunken America Lords of the Middle Sea in 1978.

Lynn became employee #3 at Chaosium, and had a spectacular career. He was the co-creator of Call of Cthulhu, perhaps his single most enduring contribution, and eventually became the mastermind behind the entire CoC line. Even a partial list of the Chaosium titles he worked on will give you an understanding of his energy and ability: Dragon Pass, Raiders and Traders, Arkham Horror, Thieves’ World, Ringworld, RuneQuest, Borderlands, Pavis, Big Rubble, Questworld, Stormbringer Companion, Elric, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu by Gaslight, Dreamlands, Horror on the Orient Express, and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

On September 2008, Chaosium announced that Willis had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Chaosium President Charlie Krank, and company founder Greg Stafford, announced his death on January 18, 2013.

Lynn Willis left behind a formidable legacy — a body of work that literally changed the face of hobby gaming at arguably its most creative and formative time. For me, he was one of the backbones of the industry, a man whose contributions were so numerous and vital that you almost took him for granted

Almost. Rest in peace, Lynn. Though we never met, you lived your life in a way that immeasurably enriched mine. Thank you.

The Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman: The Winners of The Complete John Thunstone Contest

Sunday, March 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Three weeks ago, we announced a contest to win one of two copies of Manly Wade Wellman’s The Complete John Thunstone, compliments of Haffner Press.

To enter, contestants had to submit a one-sentence review of their favorite Manly Wade Wellman novel or short story. That’s it. Are we good to you, or what?

It quickly became the most popular contest in our history, with a steady stream of diverse entries covering the entire expanse of Wellman’s nearly 60-year career, from his first story in Thrilling Tales in 1927, to his final John the Balladeer story, “Where Did She Wander,” in 1986.

We’d like to present some of the best submissions here, and at the end we’ll announce the two winners, both of whom will receive a copy of The Complete John Thunstone, the latest archival quality hardcover release from Haffner Press.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we received the most votes for Wellman’s popular Silver John stories, also known as the John the Balladeer tales. We begin with Jeremy Harper, who highlights the very first Silver John story:

“O Ugly Bird!” A legend is born when a saintly hillbilly musician confronts a backwoods sorcerer and his goddamn Ugly Bird and smites them dead with his silver string guitar.

Nick Ozment expands on Jeremy’s comments this way:

Having enjoyed one of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John novels, I find it interesting how Wellman’s traveling troubadour provides an American folk counterpart to Yeats’s Irish bard Owen Red Hanrahan, rooting the mysticism and magic in American soil.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in January

Friday, March 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

We broke another traffic record in January. Don’t you people have better things to do? Seriously, we’re glad you’re here, but you’re starting to look a bit pale. Think about taking your laptop out to the patio maybe, get some sun.

January was a busy time for us. Emily Mah trumpeted an ultimately successful Kickstarter campaign for the Chizine horror anthology Fearful Symmetries, Scott Taylor talked about selling sex, we took a peek at the paperback release of Throne of the Crescent Moon, Emily Mah (again!) interviewed Ian Tregillis, and Ryan Harvey cracked the binding on Edgar Rice Burroughs The Mucker.

And that’s just the Top Five. What follows is the complete list of the Top 50 posts at the Black Gate blog in January. Enjoy — and remember to bundle up, if you’re enjoying them from the patio.

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in January

Thursday, February 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

bones-of-the-old-ones January marked the fourth straight month that we’ve been bringing you the best in adventure fantasy through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line. Every week we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free.

The response has been very gratifying, and Fiction has quickly become one of the most popular sections of the blog. Here are the Top Twelve most read stories in January, in case you missed them:

An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
“The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
“A Princess of Jadh,” by Gregory Bierly
“When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” by John R. Fultz
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
“The Gunnerman,” by Jason E. Thummel
“The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
An Excerpt from Seven Kings, by John R. Fultz
“The Tea-Maker’s Task,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
“The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
“The Daughter’s Dowry,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
“The Trade,” by Mark Rigney

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

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

New Treasures: Epic, Edited by John Joseph Adams

Thursday, February 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Black Gate‘s Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones said something in his Monday post on Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 15 that I wish I’d said. So I’m going to repeat it here word for word, and pretend I’m saying it now.

I always wished I could find a way to draw more attention to the Flashing Swords e-zine when I helmed it. Well, it’s gone now. But HFQ is alive and well, and doing good work. So I’m using the mighty bandwidth now possessed by Black Gate online to point you to the e-zine. I can personally vouch for the stories I’ve named above. If you’re a fan of sword-and-sorcery and heroic fiction, you owe it to yourself to check them out. Go there, celebrate the stories, and the writers, and the market, because markets are fragile things and should be cherished while we have them.

Hear hear! We’re always happy when we can point you to a neglected vintage paperback or forgotten silent film. But our greatest pride comes from finding and promoting exciting, vibrant creators doing great work now, who need and deserve your support.

Lately, I feel that way about John Joseph Adams, who’s edited some of the most celebrated anthologies of the past few years — including The Way of the Wizard, Wastelands, Federations, Lightspeed: Year One, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, and many others. But his most recent publication of keen interest to heroic fantasy fans is the monumental Epic, a massive collection of some of the finest epic fantasy from the last five decades. It’s a fabulous collection of many of your favorite writers — including Patrick Rothfuss, George R. R. Martin, Tad Williams, Robin Hobb, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Michael Moorcock — alongside exciting authors you should be reading, such as Aliette de Bodard, Mary Robinette Kowal, N. K. Jemisin, Paolo Bacigalupi, and many others.

The complete table of contents is here. Support John Joseph Adams and Tachyon Publications, and keep them publishing groundbreaking anthologies for the next 20 years.

Epic: Legends of Fantasy was published on October 5th by Tachyon Publications. It is 624 pages in trade paperback for $17.95 ($9.99 for the digital version). Complete details at the Tachyon website.

Final Ballot for the 2012 Bram Stoker Awards Announced

Tuesday, February 26, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

The Horror Writers Association has announced the Final Ballot for the 2012 Bram Stoker Awards. This is the 26th annual ballot; the HWA has been giving out Stoker Awards since 1987.

The award, a miniature haunted house designed by Harlan Ellison and sculptor Steven Kirk, is the coolest trophy in the genre. Just check it out at right. The little door even opens! If anybody has one of these and they want to unload it, I’m here to help. Seriously. I’m your guy.

Ten more are going to be awarded at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet in New Orleans on June 15. Let’s get to the nominees.

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL

Ethridge, Benjamin Kane – Bottled Abyss (Redrum Horror)

Everson, John – NightWhere (Samhain Publishing)

Kiernan, Caitlin R. – The Drowning Girl (Roc)

Little, Bentley – The Haunted (Signet)

McKinney, Joe – Inheritance (Evil Jester Press)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A FIRST NOVEL

Boccacino, Michael – Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling (William Morrow)

Coates, Deborah – Wide Open (Tor Books)

Day, Charles – The Legend of the Pumpkin Thief (Noble YA Publishers LLC)

Dudar, Peter – A Requiem for Dead Flies (Nightscape Press)

Gropp, Richard – Bad Glass (Ballantine/Del Rey)

Soares, L.L. – Life Rage (Nightscape Press)

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