Browsed by
Category: News

Black Gate Wins World Fantasy Award

Black Gate Wins World Fantasy Award

Comments 22 comments

world-fantasy-convention-2016-banner-small

I’ve just returned from the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, where I got the chance to meet up with several of our talented and far-flung contributors, including Bob Byrne, Patty Templeton, C.S.E. Cooney, Matthew Wuertz, Sarah Avery, Fred Durbin, Ellen Klages, Amal El-Mohtar, Derek Künsken, Brandon Crilly, Marie Bilodeau, David B. Coe, Jeffrey Ford, and many others.

But the highlight of the weekend — by a pretty wide margin — was receiving the World Fantasy Special Award in the Nonprofessional category. Here’s the text of the brief acceptance speech I hastily sketched out on my cell phone, just before the banquet ended.

Wow.

In 1996, I started SF Site, one of the first genre websites. It quickly grew to over 150,000 readers per month. By 1998, as the most innovative and forward-thinking publications in the genre were creating the first ground-breaking websites, we decided to do something REALLY forward-thinking: Launch a print magazine.

Black Gate lasted for 15 print issues, until 2011. In November 2008 our Managing Editor, Howard Andrew Jones, said we should revamp the magazine’s website. I was the voice of reason. “Seriously, who wants to read more than one article a month, Jones?”

…

Read More Read More

World Fantasy Convention 2016 Begins Tomorrow

World Fantasy Convention 2016 Begins Tomorrow

Comments 0 Comment

Tomorrow, the annual World Fantasy Convention begins in Columbus, Ohio.  It’s an exciting year of nominations, and I wish everyone well, especially those who have ties to Black Gate.

For me, WFC is a time to reconnect with friends and meet new people.  I enjoy going to readings – hearing the authors tell their tales in person.  And the panel discussions are usually thought-provoking and entertaining.  I’m also hoping to find more issues of Galaxy and Unknown in the Dealers Room… for the right price.

For those unable to attend, I’ll be tweeting live and posting to my blog daily:

world-fantasyconvention

I wasn’t able to attend the convention last year, so I’m really looking forward to attending again this year.  For me, the trip begins later today.  Columbus or Bust!

The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

Comments 2 comments

rawblood-catriona-ward-smallThe winners of the 2016 British Fantasy Awards have been announced by the British Fantasy Society. Tea and crumpets for everyone!

Since we forgot to report on the nominees three months ago, we’ll make up for it here by listing both the winners and the nominees in each category. Ready? Here we go.

Best Fantasy Novel — The Robert Holdstock Award

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Macmillan)

Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Harper Voyager)
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Macmillan)
Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
Guns of the Dawn, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
The Iron Ghost, Jen Williams (Headline)

Best Horror Novel — The August Derleth Award

Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Orbit)
The Silence, Tim Lebbon (Titan)
A Cold Silence, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher)
Lost Girl, Adam Nevill (Pan)
The Death House, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

…

Read More Read More

The 2016 Mythopoeic Award Winners

The 2016 Mythopoeic Award Winners

Comments 2 comments

Uprooted-Naomi-Novik-smallWith all my travels and such this month, I haven’t done a very good job keeping up with all the genre news. For example, I completely missed reporting on the 2016 Mythopoeic Awards, which were announced by the Mythopoeic Society at Mythcon 47 on August 7. Here they are!

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon (Dial)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, Grevel Lindop (Oxford University Press)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies

The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, Jamie Williamson (Palgrave Macmillan)

That’s quite a capstone for Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, which so far this year has also won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and is also a nominee for the World Fantasy Award. I was also pleased to see Jamie Williamson’s non-fiction book The Evolution of Modern Fantasy, one of the first books to seriously study Lin Carter’s Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, get some recognition as well.

Last year’s winner of the Mythopoeic Award was BG author Sarah Avery, whose Tales from Rugosa Coven won in the Adult Literartue category. Get all the details on this year’s nominees at Locus Online.

The 2016 Hugo Award Winners

The 2016 Hugo Award Winners

Comments 1 comment

The Fifth Season Jemisin-smallIt was a delight to be in the audience in Kansas City for the 2016 Hugo Awards. I was sitting next to Rich and MaryAnne Horton, and we thoroughly enjoyed both the pre-show and the presentations.

There’s a lengthy list of winners, so let’s get to it. The complete list follows.

Best Novel

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US)

Best Novella

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Best Novelette

“Folding Beijing”, Hao Jingfang (Uncanny 1-2/15)

Best Short Story

“Cat Pictures Please”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, 1/15)

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Receives an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin

Black Gate Receives an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin

Comments 19 comments

George RR Martin John O'Neill Alfie Award-small

George RR Martin and John O’Neill

Yesterday, while I was walking through the crowded halls of Worldcon in the Kansas City Convention Center, I was given an invitation to the Hugo Losers party, courtesy of the party’s distinguished host, George RR Martin. I was quite flattered, as Black Gate was not even up for a Hugo (we declined the nomination, as we did last year, to make room for another nominee on the ballot), but didn’t think much more about it.

The Hugo Losers party is the hottest ticket of the convention, as I soon discovered. George personally hands out the Alfie Awards to those Hugo losers whom he feels (quite rightly, I think) were unjustly robbed of an award by slate shenanigans. And this year he spared no expense to do it in style, renting out the Midland Theater, hiring a band, and plying hundreds of guests with fabulous food and drink. The Awards themselves are gorgeous, constructed of vintage hood ornaments, in honor of the design inspiration for the first Hugo Awards.

George funds and hosts the awards, but the Alfie’s are in truth a fan award… the winners are determined by the results of the Hugo voting. But after the first few were awarded, George announced that the Alfie committee had the right to give out special awards. And as the sole member of the committee, he’d decided to give a special award this year to recognize one publication “for integrity” in declining a Hugo nomination two years in a row. Without further ado, George announced the award was to be given to Black Gate, and I was called to the stage to accept it.

…

Read More Read More

Forbes on the World’s Highest-Paid Authors in 2016

Forbes on the World’s Highest-Paid Authors in 2016

Comments 13 comments

Along Came a Spider James Patterson-smallForbes magazine is out with its annual round-up of top-paid authors. There aren’t a lot of surprises — but they also estimate the earnings for each writer on the list, and there are some eye-popping numbers. Here’s the top names on the list, as compiled by Natalie Robehmed:

  1. James Patterson – $95 million
  2. Jeff Kinney – $19.5 million
  3. JK Rowling – $19 million
  4. John Grisham – $18 million
  5. Stephen King – $15 million
  6. Danielle Steel – $15 million
  7. Nora Roberts – $15 million
  8. EL James – $14 million
  9. Veronica Roth – $10 million
  10. John Green – $10 million
  11. Paula Hawkins – $10 million
  12. George RR Martin – $9.5 million
  13. Rick Riordan – $9.5 million
  14. Dan Brown – $9.5 million

Robehmed also notes which authors dropped off the list this year… and who may be on their way out:

Newly off the list are Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn, The Hunger Games‘ Suzanne Collins and mystery novelist Janet Evanovich, who all saw sales of their catalogs take a dive.

Even George R. R. Martin may be on his way out: HBO has confirmed its Game of Thrones series will conclude after next season. Martin has already spent a half-decade writing the hotly anticipated sixth installment of A Song of Ice and Fire and without a new book, his earnings may falter next year.

See the complete article here.

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

Comments 0 Comment

Plane Shift: InnistradOver at Dragon+, Wizards of the Coast has published James Wyatt’s Plane Shift: Innistrad, a free pdf that introduces Dungeons & Dragons to Magic: The Gathering’s world of Gothic horror:

The starting point for this document was The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Innistrad. Consider that book to be a useful resource in creating your Innistrad campaign, but not strictly necessary. An abundance of lore about Innistrad can be found on the Magic web-site. This document is designed to help you turn the book’s adventure hooks and story seeds into a resource for your campaign with a minimum of changes to the fifth edition D&D rules.

It’s hard to determine where the snake’s head begins and its tail ends here: Innistrad was MtG’s version of D&D’s Ravenloft, which itself has gone through umpteen editions, the most recent being WotC’s Curse of Strahd hardback; and Plane Shift: Innistrad contains suggestions for moving the action of Curse of Strahd from Barovia to Innistrad.

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

Comments 11 comments

World Fantasy AwardThe 2016 World Fantasy Awards Ballot, compiled by the voting attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, has just been released. And I’m very pleased to note that several contributors to Black Gate feature prominently, including:

Long Fiction — “Farewell Blues,” Bud Webster (BG blogger and poetry editor)
Short Fiction — “Pockets,” Amal El-Mohtar (BG blogger)
Collection — Bone Swans, C.S.E. Cooney (BG website editor)
Special Award, Nonprofessional — John O’Neill, for Black Gate

This is a tremendous honor for Black Gate, and for me personally. The awards will be presented at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, on October 30th. I hope to see you there.

The winners in every category are selected by a panel of judges. Here’s the complete list of nominees, with links to our previous coverage:

…

Read More Read More