My first novel Drake has been described as a mix of Urban Fantasy and Noir, and I suppose it is, in a way. So what does that mean to me? Well I think we all have an idea of what Urban Fantasy is – the king of the genre is obviously The Dresden Files, with the magical detective in a big modern city helping the cops solve the unsolvable, inexplicable paranormal crimes. Drake’s not that. Don Drake isn’t a detective,…
Michelle Belanger is something of a celebrity with modern vampire subculture. She was featured on five seasons of A&E’s Paranormal State as an advocate for the “vampire community” (whatever that is), and she wrote several of its foundational texts, including The Black Veil, an ethical guide for vampires. If you’re a vampire nut, she’s your girl. Closer to our interests, she’s also the editor of several horror anthologies for Llewellyn Publications, including Vampires in Their Own Words: An Anthology of…
I’d hoped to put up the fourth of my series of posts on the fiction of C.S. Lewis last week; I didn’t, and this isn’t that post either. I ended up spending more time running around over the holidays than I’d expected, so while I’m hoping to get the Lewis post up next Sunday, for the moment I want to do something different. Having seen a number of discussions about Hugo voting emerge over the previous days, I’d like to…
In March of 1925, the great Lord Dunsany created the character of Joseph Jorkens for the short story “The Tale of the Abu Laheeb.” Dunsany would return to the character many, many times, writing over 150 Jorkens tales over the next 32 years. They were some of his most popular stories, published in widely-circulated magazines like The Strand, Atlantic Monthly, The Saturday Evening Post and Vanity Fair. The Jorkens tales are widely credited with creating the genre of the “Club Tale,” which…
Lots of great stuff in the December Lightspeed. First off, editor John Joseph Adams shares some big news in his editorial. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers of my Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (and the rest of the Best American series), have offered me the opportunity to edit a science fiction/fantasy (and horror) novel line for them — and naturally I agreed! The line will be called John Joseph Adams Books (their idea, not mine!), and will be a tightly-curated list…
Older relative: “Well I’m not buying him (nose wrinkle) Warhammer.” Fellow parent: “Oh God, Warhammer. We’re trying to steer him away from that!” Another parent: “But it’s sooo expensive.” It’s the run up to Christmas and people want to know what older and teenage boys want, and — just like with books — the boys, the geeky ones at least, want the wrong things. Except of course, I think these are right things and I want to yell: There’s this thing you can get that…
I received my DVD of Ian McKellan’s Mr. Holmes in the mail and anxiously popped it into the player, with the expectation that I would be writing about it for this week’s post. I fell asleep during the first try. Hey: I’m 48 years old and by the time my son is asleep and I settle down in front of the television, I’m near my own bedtime. It happens. It took two further sessions to complete the film. It was…
What’s up with the Big Fat Fantasy books? Books that crest a thousand pages, books that fell forests, books that travel in savage packs of series. We wait three years, five years, ten years for the next volume. Meanwhile, the scope of what the author must remind readers about between installments expands (a storytelling problem anatomized over here by Edward Carmien). We click over to the fan-run online encyclopedia to remind ourselves who the characters are, both because it’s been…
Mark Latham has had an interesting career. He’s the former editor of White Dwarf, Games Workshop’s flagship magazine, and the head of their ultra-successful Warhammer 40K line. He’s also a game designer is his own right, with several tabletop games to his credit. His debut novel, The Lazarus Gate, is the opening volume in a new Victorian supernatural series. Captain John Hardwick, a tough but troubled army veteran, is recruited by a mysterious club to combat a growing threat to the…
Kim Newman is the author of the classic vampire novel Anno Dracula and its many sequels (including The Bloody Red Baron, Johnny Alucard, and Dracula Cha Cha Cha). His newest novel is a YA tale set in a boarding school for girls with supernatural abilities in the 1920s, a tale of daring adventure after lights out… and a sinister and deadly conspiracy. A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school,…