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Month: February 2015

The Middle Child of Editorial: An Interview with Jake Thomas, Associate Editor at Marvel Comics

The Middle Child of Editorial: An Interview with Jake Thomas, Associate Editor at Marvel Comics

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I’m having an e-conversation with Jake Thomas, an Associate Editor at Marvel Comics. punisherHe’s got a ton of editorial credits, as Assistant Editor on titles like Captain America, Avengers, Age of Ultron, and many others, as well as Editor on Iron Fist the Living Weapon, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, The Punisher and others.

Let’s cover some of the basics first. Jake, you started at Marvel as an Assistant Editor. Editors oversee production. What do Assistant Editors do for the production process?

Marvel editors are involved in a lot more than just production.

A main Editor helps develop projects, gives story and art notes, helps with the marketing of the books, all kinds of things. The nuts and bolts of production are by and large the purview of the Assistants. Assistant Editors keep files moving, track schedules, write recaps, do ad lineups, gather reference, run proofs through our various checks and balances, a bunch of the behind-the-scenes work that allows the machinery of comics to keep functioning.

They also act as another set of eyes; they can give script feedback to their editors, check the art as it comes in to make sure the storytelling is solid and everyone’s in the correct costume. Important stuff!

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New Treasures: The Dhulyn and Parno Novels: Volume One by Violette Malan

New Treasures: The Dhulyn and Parno Novels: Volume One by Violette Malan

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The Dhulyn and Parno NovelsWhen Amazon created a mobile Kindle app a few years ago, the very first book I bought and downloaded to my mobile phone was The Sleeping God, the first Dhulyn and Parno novel by Violette Malan, our Friday blogger here at Black Gate. It proved a marvelous diversion during slow moments while I was working the floor of the NACHA banking conference in 2013.

I’ve wanted to read the other books in the series ever since, and now DAW is making that easy with a pair of omnibus volumes collecting all four novels. The first, The Dhulyn and Parno Novels: Volume One, containing The Sleeping God and The Soldier King, was released last week.

Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane are members of the Mercenary Guild, veterans of numerous battles and missions, and masters of martial arts. But more than that, Dhulyn and Parno are Partners, a Mercenary bond that can only be broken by death. And though one’s past is supposed to be irrelevant to a Mercenary Brother, who they’d been might make the difference between success and failure in their missions.

As far as she knows, Dhulyn is the last of her tribe, the sole survivor of a terrible massacre when she was a young child. Sold into slavery and rescued by a pirate, Dhulyn has learned the hardest lessons life has to teach. What she has not learned is to master her Visions, glimpses of the future.

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Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

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Somewhere a Voice Eric Frank Russell-smallI cover a lot of different writers with these Vintage Treasures posts. Some are authors I’ve long cherished, and some are folks I’ve never read. Frequently they’re books I’ve been curious about for a long time, and sometimes they’re simply odd discoveries from recent collections I’ve acquired.

But I think the most rewarding are those where I take a look at writers I’ve long overlooked. That’s the case with Eric Frank Russell, whom I really knew for a single story, “Dear Devil,” which I read in Terry Carr’s great anthology Creatures From Beyond many years ago — a great story, true, but a single story nonetheless. So I’m discovering him for the first time now by reading collections of his pulp science fiction, such as Men, Martians, and Machines and Six Worlds Yonder, and they are delightful.

I went searching for more in my library and found Somewhere a Voice, a 1966 Ace paperback that has now been out of print for nearly five decades. A great pity, I think, since Russell’s stories still speak to a modern audience and I’m convinced he would easily find readers today.

In the meantime, I can do my part to fight against the cruel modern neglect of Eric Frank Russell by spending a few moments talking about him here, and that’s what I’m going to do. Plus, I’m going to throw in a few pulp magazine covers, because it’s Saturday morning and I have nothing better to do.

Let’s start with the text from the back of the book, because that saves me the effort of describing it myself.

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The Series Series: What, You Mean Sarah Beth Durst’s Conjured Is A Stand-Alone?

The Series Series: What, You Mean Sarah Beth Durst’s Conjured Is A Stand-Alone?

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Sarah Beth Durst Conjured-smallConjured defied nearly all my expectations. That’s part of what makes it awesome.

Alas, one of my expectations was that it would be the first volume in a series. It’s strong enough to have carried that work, and then some. Instead, the book turns its final twist with a near-audible click, and we must leave its characters for good.

I need to tell you about it anyway.

My copy of Conjured came to me in a big bag of freebies at the World Fantasy Convention. Most of the books in that bag were first volumes in series, given away to promote the later volumes. When I gave each book a one-page chance to catch my attention, this was the story that wouldn’t let me go.

Eve can’t put together a coherent memory of the crimes she witnessed, or much else about her past, but the FBI must find the killer she escaped from. She knows she’s the only victim who ever escaped. She knows he wants her back. Nothing else she remembers fits the life she’s living now in the Witness Protection Program.

She’s as big a mystery to herself as her former captor is to the FBI. Why, she wonders, does she know what pizza is, but not how to unbuckle a seat belt?

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Future Treasures: Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game

Future Treasures: Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game

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Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game-smallThe Temple of Elemental Evil, written by Gary Gygax and Frank Metzner and published by TSR in 1985, is considered one of the greatest RPG adventures ever created. When Dungeon magazine ranked them in 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game, The Temple of Elemental Evil was voted the 4th greatest D&D adventure of all time. In his 1991 history of role-playing games, Heroic Worlds, Lawrence Schick wrote “If you like huge classic dungeon crawls, this is probably the best of the lot.”

It has seen several incarnations since its original release, including a Fourth Edition re-release of the first chapter, The Village of Hommlet, and a popular computer game version, developed by Troika Games and published by Atari. It remains the only computer game ever released set in Greyhawk.

Now Wizards of the Coast is converting this grandaddy of all dungeons crawls into a board game, to be released in April of this year. Here’s the description from the WotC website:

In the Temple of Elemental Evil board game, you play as a heroic adventurer. With amazing abilities, spells and magic weapons, you must explore the dungeons beneath the Sword Coast where you will fight monsters, overcome hazards and find treasure. Are you ready for adventure?

The Temple of Elemental Evil board game features multiple scenarios, challenging quests and cooperative game play designed for 1-5 players. The contents can also be combined with other D&D Adventure System Cooperative play board games, including The Legend of Drizzt and Castle Ravenloft.

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Five Things Better Than Handing In Your Manuscript

Five Things Better Than Handing In Your Manuscript

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Nobel prizeThis is in the forefront of my brain this week because – you guessed it – I’ve just handed in a manuscript. Now even though this is only the current draft of the work-in-progress, it feels pretty good, so I started to wonder, is there anything better than this?

Here are some of my thoughts:

Winning the Nobel Prize. It’s true you get to call yourself a Nobel Laureate, but I’ve asked around, and apparently this isn’t as wonderful as you might think. To start with, you have to go to Stockholm in February. Nothing against Stockholm, but really, February. It sometimes gets given to people years, and even decades after the work it’s being awarded for was done – which means their thank-you speeches frequently have a heavy subtext of “what, that old thing?” The money’s nice, but again, it so often comes later than you’d like it. In fact, more than one Nobel Laureate has been overheard to murmur, “Great, something else to dust.”

Winning the Superbowl. This one I confess I just don’t get. I keep asking what’s in the bowl, and all I get are funny looks. I mean, there’s a big difference between a super bowl of popcorn, and a super bowl of sauerkraut. I’m just saying, I’d need more details to be able to tell whether winning one is better than handing in a manuscript.

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Goth Chick News: The Party Just Never Ends When AtmosFearFX Is In the House

Goth Chick News: The Party Just Never Ends When AtmosFearFX Is In the House

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AtmosFearFX Zombie Invasion-smallBack at the 2013 Haunted Attractions Show we met the very talented and creative folks at AtmosFearFX Digital Decorations. These are the people responsible for the digital loops of various horror scenes which can be projected on any surface with stupendously unnerving results.

At this year’s Goth Chick News Zombie Apocalypse Party, Black Gate photog Chris Z., who does double duty as the resident technology guru (necessary due to John O’s regular “blue screens of death”), used AtmosFearFX’s Zombie Invasion loop to create a Hollywood-worthy effect.

Covering a large window with rear projection cloth, he projected from the outside of the room. The result was life-sized zombies beating against the window leaving bloody hand prints before dragging themselves out of view.

The loop repeated with a timed frequency and with enough slight differences to be nothing short of perfect.

You know it’s a good effect when a guest asks where you hired the “people dressed as zombies hanging around out on the terrace and banging on the window.”

And just like a gift that keeps on giving, there’s no end of fun to be had once you make the nominal investment in a project (available on eBay) and the fabric which is available at most stores selling home theater equipment at around $10 a square foot.

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Writing: Why You Shouldn’t Tinker With the Beginning Until You’ve Written to the End

Writing: Why You Shouldn’t Tinker With the Beginning Until You’ve Written to the End

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Storyteller-Tools-New-Cover 255
Outliners like me, we write in layers.

The beginning of your novel is… Important. Vital. Critical.

It’s the bit that grabs the reader, and if the reader is your dream agent or an editor, then it can potentially grab you a career instead.

So, important, vital, critical. So much pressure to get it right. A nagging fear that it’s wrong.

And yet, you need to hone your beginning last. Here’s why…

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New Treasures: Righteous Fury, by Markus Heitz

New Treasures: Righteous Fury, by Markus Heitz

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Righteous Fury Markus Heitz-smallAmerican readers, I think, could use a little more exposure to European fantasy. So I’m pleased to see Jo Fletcher Books bringing German author Markus Heitz to this side of the pond.

His series The Dwarves was an international bestseller, and now he launches a brand new series with Righteous Fury, originally published in Germany in 2009.

In Dsôn Faïmon, realm of the cruel and surpassingly beautiful artist-warriors known as the älfar, the military is planning a campaign against the enemies of the empire. Caphalor and Sinthoras are separately looking to enlist a powerful demon to strengthen their army, but the two älfar have very different goals.

While Caphalor is determined to defend the borders of the empire, the ambitious Sinthoras is intent on invasion. In order to expand the borders of Dsôn Faïmon, he has set his sights on the kingdoms of dwarves, elves, and men — a decision that, should it come to pass, may have far-reaching consequences for him and for the älfar.

Righteous Fury, the first volume of The Legends of the Älfar, was published by Jo Fletcher Books on February 10, 2015. It is 402 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition. It was translated from the German by Shelagh Alabaster.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Star Trek Kickstarter Warps Ahead

Star Trek Kickstarter Warps Ahead

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When I first reported on the trek continues crewStar Trek Continues Kickstarter a few weeks ago it was newly born. This morning it’s just reached its first stretch goal, which means that not only will there be two more episodes, but the people who devote their time and energy to creating this will be building us an engineering set as well!

If this is your first time hearing about the series, follow the link above to find a wonderful take on Star Trek that may be the closest we’ll ever get to seeing new original episodes of the quality of the best of the original series.

Here’s what I said about the second episode, “Lolani,” on this very web site, although it holds true for all three of the episodes made thus far: “… it feels like a lost episode. It’s not just the sets and the effects, which are truly astonishing in their faithfulness, it’s the pacing, and the music cues, and the fadeouts, and the story beats, and the writing — and the actors. These people understand who the original characters were and inhabit them — and I swear that this script could stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest entries in the original run.”

trek scottyThe staff and crew aren’t getting paid for their work:iIt’s a labor of love done in their free time. Hours and hours and hours of their free time.

I hope you’ll join me in swinging by to donate money to their new Kickstarter, which you can find here. Now that they’ve hit their first stretch goal I’m hoping in the final four days of fund raising they can get enough capital to construct a planet set so they can beam down to visit strange new worlds!

If you’re skeptical about the sound of any of this, I invite you to visit the site and try out these three fine existing episodes for yourself. If you’re a fan of the original show, you’re likely to be astonished.

Live long, and prosper.