By Martha Wells This is a complete novel presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Martha Wells, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by Martha Wells. This is Chapter Eleven. Read Chapter Ten here. Chapter Eleven “It’s a lovely day not to be under a death sentence from a Sending,” Madeline said, as they came out into the morning light from the dark interior of the stables. They…
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Until the end of the summer, this will probably be my last post at Black Gate. I’m moving, and that’s a good thing. Strenuous but good. My teaching schedule is almost entirely emptied out now, and the loose ends my students and I are tying up are all about foundational stuff, grammar and vocabulary. Tomorrow the house I’ve lived in for thirteen years starts emptying out, too. Should it have been enough to stuff all my books into boxes, number…
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The Shadow isn’t a failure in the end, and didn’t deserve the fate it suffered at the box office.
Last October, I looked at the four books of Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet that had been published up to that point. I wrote about them in publication order, starting with Bellefleur, from 1980, a novel I thought truly brilliant. I had a slightly more ambiguous reaction to 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, which might have been a function of my being less familiar with the books that had inspired it. At any rate, I was considerably more impressed with 1984’s…
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By Martha Wells This is a complete novel presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Martha Wells, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by Martha Wells. This is Chapter Seven . Read Chapter Six here. Chapter Seven It was still dark when Nicholas had the hire cab let him off at the top of Coldcourt’s drive. He could see every window in the sprawling stone house was lit…
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Game of Cages By Harry Connolly Del Rey (352 pages, mass market first edition August 2010, $7.99) The opening line of Game of Cages, the chronologically third volume in the Twenty Palaces series, is: “It was three days before Christmas, and I was not in prison.” How’s that for a back story in a sentence? The truth, Ray Lily thinks, is that he should be in prison, given the actions he took during his battles with supernatural evil in Pacific-coast…
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The way I see it, there are two types of Dungeon Masters — two archetypes, if you will: The Storyteller and the Rules Stickler. Of course, most game masters are some mix of both, but I’d like to try to describe these two different styles or approaches to RPG refereeing. And I’d love to hear from folks who are DMs as well as from players who have gamed with one sort of DM or the other. In the comments section…
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I remember when I first saw Dhampir, the opening volume of Barb and & J.C. Hendee’s Noble Dead saga, back in 2003. A supernatural medieval fantasy packed with vampire hunters, assassins, ancient castles, and mysterious guilds? That went right on my to-be-read pile. It was still there when Thief of Lives arrived twelve months later. And the third volume, Sister of the Dead. There are now a dozen, and I’ve surrendered all hope. Those two write faster than I can read….
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Teaching and writing can feed one another. My students needed me to articulate how I work, so I had to examine my own processes. My writing processes didn’t serve all my students well, so I had to learn other writing processes, ones I might never have considered for myself otherwise, deeply enough to help my students try them. As a student, I could get away with not revising, until about three years into grad school. My students couldn’t get away…
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By Martha Wells This is a complete novel presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Martha Wells, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by Martha Wells. This is Chapter Three. Read Chapter Two here. Chapter Three Nicholas gave Madeline his arm as she stepped down from their coach. She smothered an unladylike yawn, glanced around the street, and winced. Nicholas couldn’t agree more. The Philosopher’s Cross was not…
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