Black Gate

I mostly blame this blog on Harry Connolly, who had once suggested to John that a Black Gate blog would be of interest. John and I discussed a blog as I was first coming on board the magazine, and I decided to put one together once I’d made deeper inroads into the slush. Here it is, for better or worse.

I set it up as “bg_editor” so that either John or myself could post, but John has his hands quite full with sundry Black Gate duties, so I’ve finally just realized I’m stuck with this thing and decided to fill out the profile or user info or whatever it’s called with my interests and my bio. In an odd way, it feels like I’ve finally acknowledged that yes, I do have a blog. Mostly it’s about Black Gate, but I’ve let other stuff that’s of interest to me creep in. I’d get bored if all I did was report on slush status and what not.

Coming soon — a sneak peek at the contents of issue 12.

Howard

A friend e-mailed today wondering why I’ve been laying so low on live journal. I’d been contemplating an entry on that very subject for days. That sound you don’t hear is me working, or trying to work, on way too many things.

Black Gate 12 is being readied for the printer, but not by me — layout remains John’s job. Here I’m trying to round up the final reviews and hurriedly finish reading up some last minute additions for our book reviews section. The gaming articles have been in and completed and edited for weeks now thanks to a big push right after Christmas. I’m also making some editorial suggestions to the long-delayed Todd McCaulty reprise. We still get fan letters for Todd’s earlier stories from people wanting more, and they’re finally going to get it.

In other news I’ve been grading papers for the day job, trying to find the time to teach my children piano, or just be a good dad and husband, struggling to fit in time to get to the karate studio to work out, and, because I’m also a writer, wrestling in time for fiction. Some weeks I just run from fire to fire. The things getting the shortest shrift are karate and piano teaching, although I’m doing better with the latter. I actually had a dream last night that I was all dressed up in my karate gear for sparring and couldn’t find the room where the karate class was being held. I manage to attend a few times a month, but it’s been a long time since I’ve learned enough to advance, and the goal of second degree black belt isn’t getting any closer.

Writing has been progressing steadily but not well. I reached chapter 4, or about 16,000 words, of my mist novel sequel and I’ve been trying to tackle it for most of the month. I’d write a thousand words, scrap them, then write again, and scrap those. Sometimes I’d make it as far as two thousand words into the chapter before tossing those and starting over. The odd thing is that my rough outline never changed much — even now, today, when I finally got through the chapter and got the thing roughly presentable, the events within match the outline. I’m trying to figure out what I’ve learned from this rough draft experience, and I think it may be that when I’m too scattered it’s hard to focus and be in touch with what I’m writing. And that’s bad news, because I’m likely to continue to be scattered for, well, a really long time.

Anyway, that’s what’s happening here. I hope soon to talk about what you’ll actually see in Black Gate 12, and I’d intended to discuss rejections — both the giving of them and the receiving of them, because I’ve been on both ends of the equation lately, but I’ll save those for another post, which I’ll try to get loaded sooner rather than later.

Best,
Howard

I want to thank everyone who wrote in to comment on the question about whether or not they were interested in seeing a PDF version of Black Gate as well as a print version. John and I are now talking seriously about making an issue available as a free PDF so that people could see what the magazine looks like, possibly even the upcoming issue 12.

Has anyone out there heard of another magazine trying this, or been involved with that kind of effort? If so, we’d like to hear about it.

Howard

Black Gate Update

I have almost all of the book reviews in now for issue 12, and almost all of the game reviews as well. The cover is excellent, one of my favorites. I need to get John to post it. Need it be said, then, that issue 12 should soon be ready? If it weren’t for the required delay between layout and printer, I think we’d have a version ready by the end of this month. John’s been working at it for a while now.

Which brings up an interesting point — is anyone out there interested in a PDF version of Black Gate (in addition to the printed version, of course)?

Writing Thoughts

In the past I would stick with the writing of a scene as I’d planned it, doggedly persisting even if it felt like it wasn’t going well. I suppose I used to do this because, well, NOT writing is easier than writing, as any writer can tell you, and this writer at least has to be constantly on guard about making excuses to NOT write.. I realized the other day, though, after I was about 1000 words into a new chapter, that the scene was boring me. I polished it up and re-read it and walked away, thinking I was being lazy for not writing on… But I’m glad I walked off. I realized that I needed to ditch the scene and write one that was interesting to write — after all, if I’m not enjoying writing the scene, how much fun will it be to read?

So my tip to myself for the day was to learn to trust my instincts. If there’sa reason I don’t feel like writing the scene, maybe the answer isn’t laziness, but that the scene isn’t working. The odd thing about this tip, though, is that I couldn’t have told this to young Howard and have had any affect on him. It’s all fine and well to trust your instincts, but my epiphany this time was that I should learn when I’ve developed the instincts to trust.

Howard