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Year: 2015

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Martin Mundt

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Martin Mundt

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Martin Max-smallThis week’s Pro-Tip comes from Martin Mundt, who has a cult following among attendees of live readings series in Chicago, and fans of dark, twisted, humorous horror. His third short story collection, Synchronized Sleepwalking, has just come out.

To Outline or Not to Outline — What Works for You?

I don’t know if I approach the concept of outlining a story in the same way as anyone else. I start with an idea, and then I begin brainstorming about it, coming up with scenes, characters, dialogue and descriptions that seem appropriate. These can be anywhere from one sentence to one page long. Somewhere along the line of writing down these bits and pieces of the story – whether they’re bits and pieces I end up using or not – I end up figuring out the story and the characters. I normally end up with between 4 and 20 pages of notes, and I usually get the opening and closing scenes near the beginning of the process. The bulk, but not all, of the scenes, in the middle of the story, come later. Then I arrange the scenes in order, and fit them all together from beginning to end.

So, it’s not an outline actually, but it’s the way I’ve always written stories, and probably one of the reasons my stories sound a little off. For good or bad, I can’t say.

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When the End of the World is a Mercy Killing: Cthulhu Apocalypse

When the End of the World is a Mercy Killing: Cthulhu Apocalypse

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The Dead White World-small The Apocalypse Machine-small Slaves of the Mother-small

Pelgrane Press has produced some of my favorite RPGs and game adventures over the last few years, including The Dying Earth, 13th Age, and the brilliant Ashen Stars. Their latest release, Cthulhu Apocalypse, is a trio of linked adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, which suppose that that the world ended on November 2nd, 1936 and, now that the stars are right, horrific aliens — and darker things — have claimed the remains of the planet.

Cthulhu Apocalypse consists of three standalone products. The first, The Dead White World, contains five linked adventures in the aftermath of disaster that take Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America, and beyond the veils of reality as they struggle to survive. The Apocalypse Machine is a sandbox setting for the award-winning Gumshoe system, which gives Game Masters the tools to create their own global catastrophe, from the first strange rumblings to the final, cataclysmic event. And the third, Slaves of the Mother, contains three long adventures set years later, as the few survivors find their humanity cracking and moulting in the process of becoming something new.

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Finding One Girl in the Whole Solar System: Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance

Finding One Girl in the Whole Solar System: Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance

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Radiance Catherynne Valente-smallCat Valente changed the way I collect books.

Actually, there’s a bit of a story there. I first met Cat at the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2005. We had tiny side-by-side booths in the back corner of the vast Dealer’s Room. I was hawking the first few issues of my fledgling adventure fantasy magazine, and she was selling her first books, including her novel The Labyrinth, and her poetry collection Apocrypha. We hit it off immediately. At the end of the con I bought a copy of The Labyrinth, and she autographed it for me. “I’ve only signed a few of these,” she admitted. “And I never know what to write.”

Fast forward to 2006, at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas. Cat’s fourth novel, In the Night Garden, had just been released, and everyone was talking about it. It would eventually receive a World Fantasy Award nomination, and win the Tiptree Award. I bought a copy, and asked her to sign it. “I still don’t know what to write when I autograph books,” she confessed. “What should I say?”

“Well, if you’re leaving it up to me,” I said, “I think you should write, ‘To My One True Love, John.'” Cat laughed, scribbled something in the book, and I left happy.

Now, I bring a lot of books home when I go to conventions. I mean, a lot. Boxes filled with books. I sit in my big green chair and unpack them happily, humming to myself. Sometimes my wife Alice will come and watch disapprovingly, and comment how some of the money I used could also have come in handy feeding and clothing our children. Rarely, as she is going on in this manner, a book will catch her eye. Even more rarely, as happened in this instance, she will open a book. And it just so happened that this time she opened my brand new copy of In the Night Garden.

“Who is Catherynne M. Valente?” my darling wife asked, in a casual voice that ten years of marriage had taught me was absolutely not-at-all-casual.

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October Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

October Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

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Swords and Sorcery Magazine October 2015-smallIssue 45 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated October 2015, is now available.

In his editorial Frost & Fire, editor Curtis Ellett repeats his call for volunteers to help him select the contents of a Best of Swords and Sorcery Magazine anthology:

I have long been considering putting together an anthology of the best stories that have appeared in Swords & Sorcery. At this point it is likely to consist of stories from the first four years, which will end with issue 48 in January. One sticking point is that I don’t want to do the choosing. I’ve had the sole responsibility of choosing the stories that have appeared in Swords & Sorcery, I want someone else to judge them now. Three to five someones, in fact. One brave soul has contacted me to volunteer. If you would like to join him on this editorial board, please contact me at the above email address. The job will pay nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done and your name in the book.

If you’re interested, contact Curtis at editor@swordsandsorcerymagazine.com.

Each issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue contains stories by Rob Francis and Daniel Hand.

Here’s the complete table of contents, with story links.

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Shin Megami Tensei and a Different Take on JRPGs, Part 2: The Side Stories

Shin Megami Tensei and a Different Take on JRPGs, Part 2: The Side Stories

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Previously I talked about what made the main branch of the Shin Megami Tensei series so amazing when it comes to Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) design. While the series has been going strong for over two decades at this point, it doesn’t have anywhere near the same number of titles as Final Fantasy. The reason has to do with how the developers have expanded things with side stories.

Shin Megami Tensei

Side Stories

The concept of a side story is something we see a lot from Japan: Where a story takes place within the same universe or features the same themes as the main narrative, but has something unique to distinguish it. Some other video game examples are the various titles in the Kingdom Hearts series, or direct sequels such as Final Fantasy X-2.

Due to some side stories remaining exclusive to Japan (at least at this time,) we’re going to focus on the ones that have been ported to the US. With that said, we have several side stories to talk about and I want to save the most popular for last.

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New Treasures: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

New Treasures: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

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The Traitor Baru Cormorant-smallIn her review for NPR, Black Gate blogger Amal El-Mohtar raves about Seth Dickinson’s debut fantasy novel from Tor, the tale of a young woman from a conquered people who tries to transform a vast empire from within:

To read The Traitor Baru Cormorant is to sink inexorably into a book that should not be anywhere near as absorbing as it is — to realize that the white-knuckled grip with which you hold it was provoked by several consecutive pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading. It seems impossible that the economics of a fantasy world should be so viscerally riveting, but they are, and it’s incredible: You think you’re on solid ground right up until you feel that ground closing around your throat.

Literally breathtaking… Baru Cormorant as a character is magnificent. I found it impossible not to root for her even amid horrors of her making, to grieve with her and for her at various points, to clench my fists in her defense and in desperate need for her to stay whole. There is so much to admire and so much to mourn throughout the building tragedy of this novel… A crucial, necessary book ― a book that looks unflinchingly into the self-replicating virus of empire, asks the hardest questions, and dares to answer them.

Read the complete review here. We first covered the book here.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant was published by Tor Books on September 15, 2015. It is 400 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Sam Weber. Read an excerpt at Tor.com.

Vintage Treasures: The Janus Syndrome by Steven E. McDonald

Vintage Treasures: The Janus Syndrome by Steven E. McDonald

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The Janus Syndrome-small The Janus Syndrome-back-small

Steven E. McDonald is a Jamaican author who published a couple of stories in Analog and Asimov’s in the late 70s and early 80s. His first novel, The Janus Syndrome, was published in 1981.

I’m sure there were other SF or fantasy novels featuring a black male protagonist on the cover by 1981, but I can’t remember any. (F. M. Busby published Zelde M’Tana, featuring a black heroine on the cover, in 1980, and John Brunner wrote the first of his Max Curfew spy novels, A Plague on Both Your Causes, way back in 1969, but they weren’t science fiction.) As far as I know The Janus Syndrome broke the color barrier, at least among mainstream paperback SF publishers. It’s the first time I remember seeing a black hero so prominently on a cover, anyway.

Unfortunately, it didn’t sell. The Janus Syndrome did not usher in a new era of color diversity on SF paperbacks, and that’s a pity. There were no more novels featuring “the outrageous hero” Kevven Tomari from Bantam Books, or anyone else.

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The Thin Veil: An All Hallows Eve to Remember

The Thin Veil: An All Hallows Eve to Remember

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Werewolves, witches, vampires, ghosts, goblins and demons are de rigueur for American Halloween celebrations. The creepier and scarier, the better. Homes are decorated with skeletons, spiders, eerie lights, webs and dark passages. Candles in carved pumpkins reflect grinning smiles and pointed teeth. Dracula, Frankenstein, zombies and orcs guard the doors. In the background wolves howl and the screams of the undead echo through the yard waiting for brave trick or treaters. Small children in their Pixar or super hero costumes approach warily, receive their treat and exit holding even tighter to mom or dad’s hand.

Ridgeway Grandfather Clock built in 1981 St. Michael’s Chime
Ridgeway Grandfather Clock built in 1981. St. Michael’s Chime

But not all the world shares our American Halloween traditions. There are cultures that celebrate All Hallows Eve as a night of magic believing at midnight the veil between the world of the living and that of the dead gets thinner.

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Future Treasures: Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Meeting Infinity-smallI’ve been very impressed with Jonathan Strahan’s Infinity anthology series. There have been four so far: Engineering Infinity (2010), Edge of Infinity (2012), Reach For Infinity, and now Meeting Infinity, due December 1st. Publisher Solaris has abandoned the mass market format, which makes me sad, but the new trade paperback is still reasonably priced, especially for the digital version.

The world we are living in is changing every day. We surf future shock every morning when we get out of bed. And with every passing day we are increasingly asked: how do we have to change to live in the future we are faced with?

Whether it’s climate change, inundated coastlines and drowned cities; the cramped confines of a tin can hurtling through space to the outer reaches of our Solar System; or the rush of being uploaded into some cyberspace, our minds and bodies are going to have to change and change a lot. Meeting Infinity will be one hundred thousand words of SF filled with action and adventure that attempts to answer the question: how much do we need to change to meet tomorrow and live in the future? The incredible authors contributing tho this collection are: Gregory Benford, James S.A. Corey, Aliette de Bodard, Kameron Hurley, Simon Ings, Madeline Ashby, John Barnes, Gwyneth Jones, Nancy Kress, Yoon Ha Lee, Ian McDonald, Ramez Naam, An Owomoyela, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Bruce Sterling and Sean Williams

The books of the “Infinity Project” trace an arc: from the present day into the far future, and now from the broad canvas of interstellar space to the most intimate space of all — ourselves.

Meeting Infinity will be published by Solaris on December 1, 2015. It is 272 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback, and $8.99 for the digital edition.