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Month: February 2011

This Just In: Borders Files for Chapter 11

This Just In: Borders Files for Chapter 11

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borders-booksJohn O’Neill has already written about this, but I just got the actual corporate balderdash letter. . . .

I received the email today through the Borders Rewards Program (I live next door to one of the stores, so I have to belong) in which Mike Edwards, the CEO of the Ann Arbor-based, MI chain, discusses the, ahem, “plans” for the future. Those plans are centered on a major announcement made earlier today:

[Fluff, fluff, ongoing mission, enlightenment, blah, blah, blah, but . . .] because of the ongoing impact of the difficulties of the U.S. economy, coupled with the rapidly changing bookselling environment, we must restructure Borders and reposition our business for long-tern success. We determined that the best path for Borders to have the ability to achieve this reorganization is through the Chapter 11 process, which we commenced February 16.

Edwards continues to state that the stores will remain open for business, the Rewards program remains in effect, gift cards will be honored, eBook libraries are perfectly safe. But, still, bankruptcy and all.

A Bloomberg article that can explain this better than I can.

But I’m not afraid for Borders . . . Howard A. Jones’s Desert of Souls will pull up sales! (Except that I bought my copy through Amazon. Uhm, sorry Borders. I see what you mean about “changing bookselling environment.” But I did get it a day before the street date!)

Black Gate Interviews Howard Andrew Jones, Part One

Black Gate Interviews Howard Andrew Jones, Part One

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howard-pic2The great thing about interviewing Howard Andrew Jones is that it is impossible to run out of interesting things to talk about. That’s because Howard has been busy. Busy writing stories, busy preserving the legacy of an unsung founder of historical adventure, busy editing Black Gate Magazine. And, oh yeah, busy writing and selling novels — his first two, the Dabir and Asim origin story The Desert of Souls, and Plague of Shadows for Paizo’s new Pathfinder fiction line, are both due out this month!

In this first installment of a multi-part interview with Howard, he talks about his new Dabir and Asim novel and the relationship between historical and fantasy writing.

A Conversation with Howard Andrew Jones

Your Dabir and Asim stories are some of the most popular to be featured in Black Gate Magazine. For those readers perhaps still unfamiliar with them, what can one expect from a Dabir and Asim tale? More specifically, what is in store for readers that pick up Dabir’s and Asim’s first novel-length adventure, The Desert of Souls?

Mystery, adventure, swashbuckling swordplay, two brave friends standing against things man was not meant to know… to further sound like a radio announcer, there’s all this and more! I think my two favorite descriptions about their exploits come from John O’Neill and Kevin J. Anderson. O’Neill described their tales as “something like Sherlock Holmes crossed with the Arabian Nights, except Watson has a sword,” and Kevin J. Anderson wrote that the novel read “like a cross between Sindbad and Indiana Jones.” There’s a strong sense of the exotic, because I like to take readers to strange and colorful places, be it a haunted tower in the Baghdad night, or ancient ruins. I had a lot more room to spread out in the novel, so the readers are introduced to more figures from Dabir and Asim’s world, including the brilliant Sabirah, Dabir’s one true love, and the caliph himself.

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Borders Files for Bankruptcy

Borders Files for Bankruptcy

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borders-closing1Borders Group, owner of 659 bookstores across the United States, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

My lawyer buddies tell me this doesn’t actually mean they’ve filed ten previous chapters of bankruptcy, so apparently bankruptcy doesn’t proceed the way books do. Figures.

Borders said it will close about 200 of its most under-performing stores in the next several weeks. The list of stores that will close is here.

Today Borders is the country’s second-largest book retailer, just behind Barnes & Noble, with over 5,800 full-time and nearly14,000 part-time employees.

This follows the news that Barnes & Noble put itself up for sale last August, following a 45% slump in share price and a nearly 5% decline in year-over-year sales from store operations. It’s a tough time to be a brick-and-mortar book retailer.

Borders released a statement today saying:

It has become increasingly clear that in light of the environment of curtailed customer spending, our ongoing discussions with publishers and other vendor related parties, and the company’s lack of liquidity, Borders Group does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor.

Alice reminds me it’s probably time to get off my butt and redeem about a hundred bucks in assorted Borders gift cards we’ve accumulated over the years, before they’re rendered useless. The cards are scattered around the house, currently pulling duty as attractive bookmarks. She’s probably right, although I’ll doubtless lose my place in several books as a result.  I need to think about it.

Art of the Genre: Rise of the Runelords

Art of the Genre: Rise of the Runelords

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There’s something nice about being in L.A. Sure, it has a bad rap, but when the snow is thick in Chicago, and the wind is blowing off the lake, it didn’t take much for Ryan Harvey and I to jump at John O’Neill’s offer to spearhead a Los Angeles satellite office of BG. Ryan picked a great spot, a six story complex right off the Redondo Pier, the view of the Pacific and the strand of beach below a perfect change from the snow and riveted metal of the BG Tower, my old office view completely obstructed by the zeppelin docking gangway.

burnt-offerings-254Anyway, I digress, what I was saying is that it’s nice to be in sunny southern California, and when O’Neill sent a telegraph that I had to fly to Seattle for an interview I wasn’t all smiles, that is until I discovered the person and the subject matter of the interview. [Note: He probably did this to drum up business for Howard Andrew Jones’s first Pathfinder novel Plague of Shadows, but I’ll take it… oh, and READ the book, it is awesome!]

The place, the new Paizo HQ in Redmond Washington, just outside of Seattle. On an aside here, after playing Shadowrun till my eyes bled in college, I pretty much knew Seattle like I was born and raised there so Redmond for me was old hat. The person, Editor-in-Chief James Jacobs, and the subject Paizo’s first Pathfinder series, the 2007 classic, Rise of the Runelords.

After devoting the appropriate time to rubbing the assignment in Ryan’s face, I jumped a flight to Seattle and the rain and gloom of the northwest. While airborne, I contacted Wayne Reynolds who was featured in Burnt Offerings and the rest of the Rise of the Runelords series. I figured if I was going to do this, I better include some never before seen art, and as Wayne did the Iconics, why not see what he could come up with from his files. Note: Wayne did a Pathfinder Iconic for Black Gate that can be found here.

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Are Joe Abercrombie’s Novels “Poison to Both the Reader’s Mind and Culture?”

Are Joe Abercrombie’s Novels “Poison to Both the Reader’s Mind and Culture?”

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Leo Grin
Leo Grin

So I’ve been enjoying the fascinating debate on modern epic fantasy between Leo Grin and author Joe Abercrombie. It opened with Leo’s absorbing essay on what he sees as the profound flaws in modern fantasy in general:

I used to think I was a fan of the genre known today as fantasy, and specifically the subgenres of High Fantasy and Sword-and-Sorcery… But it was only recently, after decades of ever-increasing reading disappointment, that I grudgingly began to admit the truth: I don’t particularly care for fantasy per se. What I actually cherish is something far more rare: the elevated prose poetry, mythopoeic subcreation, and thematic richness that only the best fantasy achieves, and that echoes in important particulars the myths and fables of old. This realization eliminates, at a stroke, virtually everything written under the banner of fantasy today.

And in writers like Joe Abercrombie in particular:

Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.

Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie

Joe has responded to this description with typical humor:

That sounds … kind of interesting to me, actually, but I dimly percieve that Leo doesn’t like it.  Your mileage may vary, of course.  But why all the fury, Leo?  Relax.  Pour yourself a drink.  Admire your unrivalled collection of Frank Frazetta prints for a while.  Wrestle the old blood pressure down.  When an old building is demolished to make way for a new, I can see the cause of upset… But books don’t work that way.  If I choose to write my own take on fantasy, what gets destroyed?

As he has done in the past, Leo lays the blame for many of the ills of the modern era on liberals.

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Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Level UP Issue 1

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Level UP Issue 1

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gmg9101coverlargeGaming magazines can be a great asset to planning a roleplaying game, but I’ve often considered them to not be worth the cost. This one, reviewed by our very own Howard Andrew Jones, looks like it gives quite a bit of bang for the buck (or, in this case, 2 bucks). The publisher, Goodman Games, has a solid track record for producing quality game supplements.

Level UP Issue 1

Goodman Games (55 pp, $1.99 magazine, April 2009)
Review by Howard Andrew Jones

I like this magazine. Issue 1 comes in at 55 pages, the first offering of a new quarterly publication from Goodman Games devoted to Dungeons and Dragons. It means to fill some pretty big missing boots – you probably know the ones I mean if you’re an old fan of the game – and I think it’s off to a good start.

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The Desert of Souls Released Today

The Desert of Souls Released Today

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desert-of-souls2Howard Andrew Jones’ novel arrives in bookstores today.

Copies arrived here in the Black Gate offices last week, and it is a beautiful, beautiful book.  Here’s the jacket copy, just because I think it’s cool:

The glittering tradition of sword-and-sorcery sweeps into the sands of ancient Arabia with the heart-stopping speed of a whirling dervish in this thrilling debut novel from new talent Howard Andrew Jones.

In 8th century Baghdad, a stranger pleads with the vizier to safeguard the bejeweled tablet he carries, but he is murdered before he can explain. Charged with solving the puzzle, the scholar Dabir soon realizes that the tablet may unlock secrets hidden within the lost city of Ubar, the Atlantis of the sands. When the tablet is stolen from his care, Dabir and Captain Asim are sent after it, and into a life and death chase through the ancient Middle East.

Stopping the thieves — a cunning Greek spy and a fire wizard of the Magi — requires a desperate journey into the desert, but first Dabir and Asim must find the lost ruins of Ubar and contend with a mythic, sorcerous being that has traded wisdom for the souls of men since the dawn of time. But against all these hazards there is one more that may be too great even for Dabir to overcome…

And here’s one of the blurbs, from author Dave Drake:

An Arabian Nights adventure as written by Robert E Howard. It is exciting, inventive, and most of all fun.

The Desert of Souls is available in hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books.

Back to the Ninth Legion . . . Yep, Still Lost: The Eagle

Back to the Ninth Legion . . . Yep, Still Lost: The Eagle

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the_eagle_posterThe Eagle (2011)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald. Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Rahim.

Less than a year after Centurion was released theatrically on a small number screens, along comes another historical adventure film telling the tale of the vanished Ninth Legion. Except The Eagle got released on many screens. In a just and fair movie world, the situation would be the opposite. But anybody who has every griped about the Academy Awards knows that we live in no such world. (And by the way . . . no Best Score nomination for Daft Punk’s work on TRON Legacy?)

The Eagle is the opposite of Neil Marshall’s incredibly energetic, almost gonzo Centurion. Marshall’s film uses a great cast to flesh out its characters and themes of survival and duty while keeping an insane and glorious momentum. At every turn, Centurion does its damndest to keep audience’s adrenaline high. The Eagle, given greater dramatic space for characters between battle scenes, sketches out complete blanks for protagonists, contains no sense of the Roman frontier, and features poorly shot and edited battle scenes that emit out not single nanowatt of excitement. (Oh, I’ll be generous. Not a single microwatt of excitement.) No wonder Focus Features unceremoniously dumped this film out in early February, during Valentine’s Day weekend, up against a kid’s CGI animated movie and romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler. The Eagle is totally disposable.

And given the subject matter, it’s a shame. I hate to see any movie mess up the wonders that the Roman Empire can deliver in terms of action and spectacle. It takes a tremendous amount of work to make me dislike a film about the empire, but dammit if director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play) and his cast and crew put in overtime to produce a boring film.

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Black Gate at Suvudu

Black Gate at Suvudu

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bg-14-coverBlack Gate is featured this week as part of Suvudu’s Magazine Mania series.

Suvudu is a division of Random House, and promotes a rich variety of science fiction, fantasy, comics, graphic novels, and gaming titles from Del Rey, Spectra, Pantheon Books, and Random House Children’s Books, all part of Random House.

They also do a fine job covering film news, independent bloggers, and books and comics of interest from many other publishers. Suvudu has previously highlighted Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Electric Velocipede, and the extremely cool Kobold Quarterly in their Magazine Mania column, helping bring print magazines to the attention of new SF & fantasy readers. The articles are written by Matt Staggs.

We’re proud to be featured this week. Here’s part of Matt’s commentary:

While the web offers a lot of wonderful stuff for sci-fi, fantasy and horror fans, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of print magazines on your local bookstore shelves that deserve your attention. Some of them have been steadily supplying news and features to fandom for decades, while others are new publications bravely stepping into the breach. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring a few of these magazines for your consideration. Today’s magazine is Black Gate. Launched in 2000, Black Gate specializes in tales of swords, sorcery and high adventure.

The complete post is here, including a brief interview with me in which I yak on for a bit on why you should try Black Gate. I’d quote a bit of it here, but quoting an article that quotes yourself is a bit weird.  Even for me.

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.13 “Unforgiven”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.13 “Unforgiven”

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Dean (left) and Sam (right) Winchester
Dean (left) and Sam (right) Winchester (from a previous episode)

Every episode starts off with a monster attack … but this week, the monster is Sam! A year earlier, in Bristol, Rhode Island, Sam worked a case with his grandfather Samuel. He shot someone or something, which made Samuel look a bit uncomfortable.

As they were leaving town, though, they got pulled over by a deputy … who soulless-Sam beat senseless when he tried to arrest them, because Sam was suspiciously covered in blood.

“You think there may be calmer ways we could have done all of that?” Samuel asked.

“Do we care?” Sam replied, reminding us all why soulless-Sam was not a fun guy to hang out with.

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