Contests! I love contests. It’s because we love to give away stuff, like Santa Claus.

In this case, it’s stuff you really, really want: the latest archival quality hardcover from Haffner Press, Thunder in the Void, a massive collection of 16 Space Opera tales by Henry Kuttner. It’s scarcely been on sale two weeks, and it’s already almost sold out, so act fast.

Thunder in the Void gathers classic pulp fiction from Planet Stories, Weird Tales, Super Science Stories, and even rarer sources, including “War-Gods of the Void,” “Raider of the Spaceways,” “We Guard the Black Planet,” “Crypt-City of the Deathless Ones,” and the previously unpublished “The Interplanetary Limited.”  Most appear here in book form for the first time.

How do you win? Now pay attention, this is the fun part. You must submit the title of an imaginary Space Opera story. The most compelling pulp title — as selected by a crack team of judges including Howard Andrew Jones, C.S.E. Cooney, and John O’Neill — will receive a free copy of Thunder in the Void in the mail, complements of Haffner Press and Black Gate magazine.

One submission per person, please. Submissions must be received by May 31st, 2012. Winner will be contacted by e-mail, so use a real e-mail address maybe. All submissions must be sent to john@blackgate.com, with the subject line Thunder in the Void, or something obvious like that so I don’t randomly delete it.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Employees of New Epoch Press are ineligible to enter (including the judges — sorry, Howard and C.S.E.) Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Seriously, this book is heavy and we’re on a budget.

Thunder in the Void is 612 pages in high-quality hardcover format, with an introduction by Mike Resnick and a cover price of $40. Cover art is by Norman Saunders. It is available directly from Haffner Press.

The 2011 Challenge! Stealth Writing Competition from Rogue Blades Entertainment officially ends on October 1 — which means there’s only four weeks left to enter.

Last’s year’s contest, the Challenge! Discovery 2010, had ten winners, including Henrik Ramsager, Nicholas Ozment, Frederic S. Durbin, Gabe Dybing, and Keith J. Taylor. The winning entries from the 2010 contest will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment.

The 2011 Challenge! writing competitions tasks writers to submit an original work of short fiction using a piece of art and a one-word theme for inspiration. The theme this year is Stealth and this year’s art, by Storn Cool, is at right.

More details are at the Rogue Blades website:

Using the awesome cover art provided by Storn Cook and this year’s title Stealth, capture your muse over the next 15 days and embark upon grand adventure! … Get your heroic adventure in any genre to RBE between June 15th and September 15th, 2011, and see if you have what it takes to deliver a winning tale! Speculative fiction is NOT required for Challenge! themes, so readers could find Historical Swashbucklers, Sword & Sorcery/Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror and even Romance — ALL the flavors of HEROIC FICTION so long as they are mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure.

The top twelves stories, as determined by the judges, will be awarded a print copy of the anthology, and the top three will also be awarded a cash prize,  and written critiques from the judges.  Judges this year are artist Storn Cook, author and writing instructor Mary Rosenblum (Horizons & Water Rites), and me, Black Gate editor John O’Neill.

The contest entry fee is only $10, and a minimum number of participants is required. The official Challenge! submission guidelines are here, and the complete details of the Challenge! Stealth contest are here. Stories must be between 3,000 and 9,000 words.

What more do you need to know?  Start writing!! We expect great things from you on October 1.

Jason M Waltz, publisher of Rogue Blades Entertainment, is giving away a free copy of the limited edition of Rage of the Behemoth to one lucky winner this week.

Described as “Almost 150,000 words of monstrous mayhem recording the ferocious battles that rage between gargantuan creatures of myth and legend, and the warriors and wizards who wage war against, beside, and astride them,” Rage of the Behemoth gathers 21 splendid tales of pure adventure fantasy under one cover, including contributions from Bill Ward, Andrew Offutt & Richard K. Lyon, Lois Tilton, Mary Rosenblum, Sean T. M. Stiennon, Brian Ruckley, Bruce Durham, Jason Thummel, C.L. Werner, and many more.

How do you win? Easy!

Just comment on any of the three posts this week at Rogue Blades Entertainment’s Home of Heroics , and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a copy. The Home of Heroics is the Grand Central Station for heroic fiction on the Web, and previous writers have included Martha Wells, E.E. Knight, David C. Smith, Charles Saunders, Bill Ward, and many others.

Comments must be made between Monday, July 25, and Friday July 29. Complete details on the contest are here.

Learn more about Rage of the Behemoth here.

You won’t find many contests this easy — or this much fun. Check out Home of Heroics today. You can thank us later.

The 2011 Challenge! Stealth Writing Competition from Rogue Blades Entertainment is officially one month old — which means there’s only 60 days left to enter.

The Challenge! writing competitions ask writers to submit an original work of short fiction using a piece of art and a one-word theme for inspiration. This year’s art, by Storn Cool, is at right; this year’s theme – appropriately enough — is Stealth.

Here’s the official call to action from Rogue Blades:

Using the awesome cover art provided by Storn Cook and this year’s title Stealth, capture your muse over the next 15 days and embark upon grand adventure! … Get your heroic adventure in any genre to RBE between June 15th and September 15th, 2011, and see if you have what it takes to deliver a winning tale! Speculative fiction is NOT required for Challenge! themes, so readers could find Historical Swashbucklers, Sword & Sorcery/Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror and even Romance — ALL the flavors of HEROIC FICTION so long as they are mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure.

The top twelves stories, as determined by the judges, will be awarded a print copy of the anthology, and the top three will also be awarded a cash prize,  and written critiques from the judges.  Judges this year are artist Storn Cook, author and writing instructor Mary Rosenblum (Horizons & Water Rites), and Black Gate editor John O’Neill (Me. And I’m ready to be entertained, so sharpen those pencils kids).

Last’s year’s contest, the Challenge! Discovery 2010, had ten winners, including Henrik Ramsager, Nicholas Ozment, Frederic S. Durbin, Gabe Dybing, and Keith J. Taylor. The winning entries from the 2010 contest will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment.

The contest entry fee is only $10, and a minimum number of participants is required. The official Challenge! submission guidelines are here, and the complete details of the Challenge! Stealth contest are here. Stories must be between 3,000 and 9,000 words.

What more do you need to know?  Start writing!! I expect to see great things from you on September 15.

By the time you read this, you will already have seen the announcement of RosettaBooks’ The Galaxy Project, or so I assume.

Rosetta is preparing to release e-versions of many of the best stories published in Galaxy in its heyday, which is a terrific idea, but is taking it a step further by launching a contest to find a novella or novelette which will, in the words of RosettaBooks CEO Arthur Klebanoff, “carry forth its tradition of outstanding science fiction writing with a new generation of authors.”

So, I hear you ask, what? Whatever might he mean by “tradition?”

Worry not, I live to educate. No, stop edging towards the door and looking at your watch, I know better.

In 1950, two things happened in fairly close proximity: John W. Campbell published a controversial article in the May issue of Astounding, and the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction appeared on the newsstands in October. These two events were important in their own rights (for vastly different reasons), but there was a synchronicity – one might almost say a serendipity – at play that could be seen to have made a major change in the SF publishing scene at the time.

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While the festitivites of Howard Andrew Jones month continue with no slowdown here at Black Gate HQ (if you don’t count those two hours Sunday night when we had to turn off the lights and hide out from the Chicago PD), mail continues to pour in from readers with the sad refrain, “How can we get in on this terrific Howard Andrew Jones action?”

Now you can — courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books, who are sponsoring a giveaway of Howard’s breakthrough first novel The Desert of Souls, featuring Dabir & Asim, the brave adventurers who originally appeared in Black Gate 10 (in “Sight of Vengeance“), and in Black Gate 12 (”Whispers From the Stone“).

How do you enter?  Easy!

Just visit the contest website and fill out the simple entry form. All entries must be received by March 1, 2011 11:59 p.m. EST, and all entrants must have a valid email address.

From all eligible entries Thomas Dunne Books will hold a random drawing on March 2, 2011. Five winners will be chosen; each will receive a hardcover copy of The Desert of Souls. Winners will be notified by e-mail.

Are we good to you, or what? (The answer is “Yes.”)  Don’t thank us; it’s our job.

Good luck in the contest.  And keep celebrating Howard Andrew Jones month, party faithful.

Art Evolution turns twenty, and in so doing fades from this prestigious stage provided by Black Gate, but as the name contends, art is ever changing, and so I will never say never where the process and these articles are concerned. Still, if you’ve missed any of these wonderful works, the journey’s beginning can be found here.

After the addition of last week’s ‘Demented Lyssa’, I’ll take a step back to the place where the true power of this article first struck me.

In late 2009 I’d just signed Larry Elmore and Wayne Reynolds, my spirits flying high as I spent my nights searching the web for artwork that might also apply to art evolution. It was during this process that a distinct sorrow assailed me in regards to the passing of Keith Parkinson.

To me, Keith represented my youth, so many of his images galvanized in my mind along the way it was difficult to think of this article without him. For the first time I regarded this journey as a thing not involving me, but instead the artists, and the lives they’d touched along the way.

Having heard so much about Keith from his fellows, I couldn’t help but feel that it would be selfish not to include him in the article because he couldn’t do a rendition of Lyssa. Lyssa was secondary to the art, after all, and the mission statement I now followed pushed for a thing greater than my ego.

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Black Gate magazine is very pleased to announce the winners of our Kuttner Contest:

Pawel Martin
Alexander G. Tozzi
G. W. Thomas

All three winners receive a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One, compliments of publisher Haffner Press. Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, and is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst. Congratulations to the winners!

To enter the contest required a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. Winners were chosen at random from all eligible entries.

The wide range of entries gave us a fine appreciation for just how well Henry Kuttner is still remembered over 50 years after his death, and these concise reviews of readers’ favorite Kuttner tales should help those less familiar with him understand the enduring quality of his fiction. Some of the best entires we received are collected below.

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Three week ago we announced we were giving away three copies of the first volume of The Early Kuttner, titled Terror in the House, newly released from Haffner Press.

How do you win a copy? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Kuttner Contest,” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. And don’t forget to mention what story you’re reviewing!

That’s it.  Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

But time is running out — the contest closes on December 1. Because if these things are still piled on top of Alice’s sewing table after that, believe me, there will be hell to pay.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers are some of the most collectible books in the genre. Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, with a preface by Richard Matheson and introduction by Garyn G. Roberts, Ph.D. It is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst, and has a retail price of $40.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Terms and conditions subject to change as our lawyers sober up and get back to us. Eat your vegetables.

Back in May Rogue Blades Entertainment, publishers of  Rage of the Behemoth, Demons, Return of the Sword and other excellent fantasy anthologies, announced the first annual Challenge! writing contest. Open to fiction in a wide variety of genres (”Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy” and others), the Challenge! Discovery contest invited authors to submit works directly inspired by a single piece of art by V Shane, pictured at right.

The winners of the  Challenge! Discovery 2010 writinng contest are (in no particular order):

“A Fire in Shandria” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“In the Ruins of the Panther People” ~ Daniel R. Robichaud
“The Serpent’s Root” ~ David J. West
“Fire Eye Gem” ~ Richard Berrigan Jr.
2nd PLACE: “Cat’s in the Cradle” ~ Nicholas Ozment
“Some Place Cool and Dark” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“The Ash-Wood of Celestial Flame” ~ Gabe Dybing
“Witch with Bronze Teeth” ~ Keith J. Taylor
“Inner Nature” ~ John Kilian
1st PLACE: “Attabeira” ~ Henrik Ramsager

Honorable mentions go to Eric Magliozzi for “Songs of the Dead,” and Michael Navarro for “The Golden Maiden.”

The winning entries will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment around Christmas this year. More information on the contest results and the upcoming book is here.

Congratulations to all the winners!  I’m looking forward to reading the stories.