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Package Blue, the Second Novel by Todd McAulty, Now Available Free

Package Blue, the Second Novel by Todd McAulty, Now Available Free

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Artwork for Package Blue by Pixel Vault

In May of last year I was contacted by director Tim Miller (Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate). I’d been doing some work for Tim’s Blur Studios for a few months, writing story ideas for upcoming streaming projects, with a pool of talented authors that included John Scalzi, Tamsin Muir, and others. Tim had just been hired to help develop an ambitious property set in the Inhabitants Universe owned by the NFT company Pixel Vault, and he was looking for a writer to dive into the project.

Tim had first reached out to me after reading my first novel The Robots of Gotham, published under the name Todd McAulty in 2018, and we’d become friends over the years. I ended up doing a bunch of work on the Inhabitants project for Tim, and when he left the project in June, Pixel Vault put me on a weekly retainer, mostly to assist with creating background lore. When I was fired from my day job in November, Pixel Vault offered me an 8-month contract to write a series of linked stories set in their colorful Inhabitants Universe.

The first was Package Blue, written as a web-novel and published online in weekly installments. Illustrated by the talented team at Pixel Vault, Package Blue is the tale of a team transporting a mysterious cargo through a raging Iowa snowstorm that loses contact with the rest of their convoy, and discovers they’re being pursued by something inhuman. Each of its 12 Acts is meant to be read in 10-15 minutes. Total length is 42,000 words.

You can read the whole thing here. I’m already halfway done with the second book, which we hope to launch online in September. I hope you’ll give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Twelve Kingdoms: But For You, Four!

Twelve Kingdoms: But For You, Four!

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Mustapha and His Wise Dog (Avon, July 1985). Cover art by Richard Bober

You always remember your first time.

Indeed you do, even when it’s actually your second time, but we’ll get to that.

My first novel to see print was Mustapha and His Wise Dog, a fantasy set in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms. The series got its start when I should have been doing my homework. I blame my friend Shariann Lewitt (a.k.a. S.N. Lewitt). Picture it: Yale University, the 1970s. We were both a part of a group of friends who ate together in the dining room of the Hall of Graduate Studies. We might have come from different departments (Spanish, Linguistics, Computer Science, Philosophy, to name but a few) or even different schools (Shariann attended the Yale School of Drama) but we enjoyed each other’s company and became the self-dubbed Stream of Consciousness Table.

Don’t ask.

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Worldbuilding in Witch King

Worldbuilding in Witch King

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Witch King by Martha Wells (Tor.com, May 30, 2023). Cover art by Cynthia Sheppard

I think people tend to talk about worldbuilding as if it’s one static process that is the same every time you do it. But I think it actually varies a lot based on the preferences of the writer and their method of work. It’s different for each writer, and for me at least it’s different for every book.

In the Ile-Rien books, I wanted to show a secondary world fantasy setting, centered around the city Vienne, that realistically aged and changed over time. Not just in politics and government and fashion, but in physical layout, with the city changing to accommodate the development of trains, automobiles, and electric light. I also used a lot of historical sources to create the material culture of the world.

In Witch King I wanted to do something a little different. I’ve done secondary worlds with a wide range of different, distinctive cultures in the Books of the Raksura series, but in Witch King I wanted to show more about the interactions between cultures.

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Exclusive Preview: The World of Catalyst by Brandon Crilly

Exclusive Preview: The World of Catalyst by Brandon Crilly

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Catalyst by Brandon Crilly (Atthis Arts, October 11, 2022). Cover artist uncredited.

Hello, Black Gate folks! Normally I spend my time here raving about other people’s books, but this time I’m in the very weird position of talking about my own. Yikes. Catalyst is my debut fantasy novel, releasing in October from Atthis Arts, and John has graciously invited me to talk a bit about the world of the book.

Catalyst centers on three estranged friends: Mavrin, a street magician who doesn’t believe in real magic, other than what the Aspects provide; Eyasu, labeled a heretic by the Aspects’ followers but determined to prove a secret history everyone else rejects; and Deyeri, a retired soldier whose adopted city is threatened by forces tied to that history. They begin the story in different corners of Aelda, a world that split apart at its core a little over three centuries earlier, and would have been destroyed completely if not for the intervention of the Aspects: massive, cephalopod-like beings the people of Aelda believe to be their gods, who have been circling the planet ever since providing atmosphere and holding what remains of Aelda together.

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Making Weird Fiction Fun: Grilling Dorgo the Dowser!

Making Weird Fiction Fun: Grilling Dorgo the Dowser!

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We have an ongoing series at Black Gate on the topic of “Beauty in Weird Fiction.” Usually we corner an author and query them about their muses and ways to make ‘repulsive’ things ‘attractive to readers.’ Previous subjects have included Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Smith Spark, Carol Berg, Stephen Leigh, Jason Ray Carney, and John C Hocking. (See the full list at the end of this post).

I’m excited to corner Joe Bonadonna this round. When his Dorgo character grilled/interviewed me in 2017, the questioning began with:

Who the Hell are You?

JB: Who in the Nine Circles of Hell do you think I am? Quasimodo? Doctor Frankenstein? You mean you don’t know who I am? Have you never heard of me? Why, I’m famous the world over! Joe Bonadonna, I am. (I could never settle on a pen name, so I stuck with the name I was given at birth.)

[Aside by SE: To clarify, he often writes about Quasimodo and Dr. Frankenstein for Janet E. Morris’s Heroes in Hell series (Perseid Press). Here’s Joe Bonadona’s official Bio.]

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The Pandemic Was Really Quite Good to Me

The Pandemic Was Really Quite Good to Me

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Tune in Tomorrow (Solaris, August 23, 2022), and the author

The pandemic was really quite good to me.

Don’t get into a snit – there are caveats: The horrible ongoing forever pandemic was terrible for everybody, including me. Millions had their lives wrecked, or died, and if the “quite good” experience I had could be swapped for a retcon in which “Covfefe” was as close as we ever got to saying “COVID,” I’d do it in a hot second.

Since that isn’t happening, let’s start again.

The pandemic was actually quite good for my debut novel, Tune in Tomorrow. See, back in 2020 I received an email from my agent saying that a publisher was interested in publishing the book, with a few alterations. Was I game?

As someone who struggled for decades to get a damn novel published, the answer was a quick, “Hell yes!”

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GenCon Writers Symposium (Aug 2022) : R. A. Salvatore Guest of Honor

GenCon Writers Symposium (Aug 2022) : R. A. Salvatore Guest of Honor

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GenCon Writer’s Symposium is back!

Aug4-7th, 2022; Indianapolis, IN

Gen Con just announced that legendary fantasy author R. A. Salvatore is the 2022 Author Guest of Honor!

Thirty-four years ago, he created the character of Drizzt Do’Urden, the dark elf who has withstood the test of time to stand today as an icon in the fantasy genre. With his work in the Forgotten Realms, the Crimson Shadow, the DemonWars Saga, and other series, Salvatore has sold more than thirty million books worldwide and has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list more than two dozen times. He considers writing to be his personal journey, but still, he’s quite pleased that so many are walking the road beside him!

He will be participating in several Writer’s Symposium events (click to browse and register via the GenCon portal) during the convention, including book signings and appearances.

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The Fantastic Novels of Harlan Ellison

The Fantastic Novels of Harlan Ellison

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Harlan Ellison speaking to the audience at the Los Angeles
Science Fantasy Society, May 1982. Photo by Pip R. Lagenta

Harlan Ellison published three novels early in his career, and spent the rest of his life trying to complete another1. Despite a large and successful body of work, and the willingness of publishers to pay large advances for a novel, he never succeeded.

Returning to the novel form was important for Ellison; he announced the titles of works in progress as “forthcoming” in the front matter of his short story collections, ghost titles that would appear in successive volumes, sometimes for years, then vanish to be replaced by new ones. In 2010, when he was 76 and announced he was dying, Ellison said that he was working on a new novel, The Man Who Looked for Sweetness;2 and in 2014, shortly before he suffered the stroke that ended his writing, he returned to an earlier project.3 Completing another novel was a dream he never relinquished.

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Exploring Modern Pulp: Royal Road and the Web Novel

Exploring Modern Pulp: Royal Road and the Web Novel

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Image courtesy Royal Road

“Web novels?” you say. “What are those?”

They’re exactly what you think they are; novels written and published on the internet, free to read. They’re more common than you think. What may surprise you about this community of writers and readers is not only the writers themselves, but the abundance of readers who support them financially.

I think many folks here have probably heard of places like Wattpad, the web publishing platform where writers post their novels — though over in that corner most of the content is YA and romance. I can’t say much about Wattpad because I’m not a reader or writer over there, though I know agents crawl around looking for new authors to publish in traditional media.

I’m here to talk about a different platform, and more specifically, the modern pulp writers who publish there. It’s called Royal Road, where writers publish fantasy novels.

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So I’m Writing a Novel: A Sword & Sorcery Podcast

So I’m Writing a Novel: A Sword & Sorcery Podcast

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There is a swell of community growing around Sword & Sorcery (S&S) fiction. At least on the amateur and semi-professional level, there are a wealth of markets to enjoy and submit to, including (a partial list in alphabetical order): DMR books, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Parallel Universe Publications, Pulp Hero Press,  Rogue Blades, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Weirdbook. and Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of S&S. As the ranks of authors, readers, and platforms grow, members are gathering across platforms such as Goodreads S&S group, the Whetstone S&S Tavern on Discord… and even podcasts.

This January, Black Gate highlighted the Rogues In the House S&S podcast. This round we highlight the So I’m Writing a Novel (SIWAN), a podcast chronicling author & freelance editor Oliver Brackenbury’s journey of writing an S&S novel, discussing craft and building community with a focus on the genre.

Writing a novel? Looking for a community?

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