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Year: 2015

Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

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HeadshotSirensT.L. Zalecki was one of the first speculative fiction authors offered a publishing contract via the Kindle Scout program, and her debut novel, Rising Tide (SIRENS Book 1) was recently published by Kindle Press. Her second book in the series, Lost World, is now up on the Kindle Scout site, where readers can nominate it, and if it is published, receive a free copy. I’m devouring Rising Tide right now. It’s scientifically plausible mer-people in a near future dystopia with government conspiracy to boot!

Tanya was kind enough to sit down with me for a Skype interview to discuss her experience with the Kindle Scout program and share insights into how it works. As one of the first forty authors selected for a publishing contract, she set up her Rising Tide campaign while the site was still in beta. In this interview, we discuss the process of selection on Kindle Scout, the timeline for publication, and the types of rights that the publisher seeks. This program is something to consider if you want the freedom of indie publishing with some of the editing and marketing support of a big publisher.

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Future Treasures: Gestapo Mars by Victor Gischler

Future Treasures: Gestapo Mars by Victor Gischler

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Gestapo Mars-smallVictor Gischler is the author of Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth, one of the better Deadpool graphic novels out there. He’s also written the novels Gun Monkeys, Ink Mage, and Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, among many others.

His latest novel, Gestapo Mars, combines science fiction, Nazis, assassins, and disgusting gelatinous aliens in a fast-paced, rollicking adventure, on sale next week from Titan Books.

Carter Sloan is a trained assassin — the best there is, pulled out of cryogenic sleep whenever an assignment demands his skills. So when he’s kept in the deep freeze for 258 years, he’s seriously pissed off.

Yet his government needs him, to hunt down the enemy known as the Daughter of the Brass Dragon. The future of the galaxy-spanning Reich depends on it, so Sloan is off — screwing, swearing, and shooting his way across interstellar space.

It’s action, adventure, and disgusting gelatinous aliens as only Victor Gischler can create them.

Gestapo Mars will be published by Titan Books on September 22, 2015. It is 277 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version.

See all of our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.

RuneQuest: Korantia and Mythic Britain

RuneQuest: Korantia and Mythic Britain

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Shores of Korantia-smallIn 2013 I wandered over to Monster Island, one of the first journeys I’d ever made to a RuneQuest destination. I found it excellent. And recently, after I returned from GenCon2015, I  travelled once more into RuneQuest realms and learned that excellence is a standard practice in their products.

Shores of Korantia is a setting book for a bronze-age land rich in intrigue and adventure. It covers the regions of the empire in detail that’s thorough but not dry — not so much an encyclopedia entry, but a travel guide with adventure hooks, so that every page you turn sets your mind ablaze with ideas to spin adventures from. Like Monster Island before it, one doesn’t have to be at all familiar with RuneQuest in order to utilize the setting, or even a gamer to enjoy reading it. If you like reading about imaginary worlds, any of the RuneQuest Design Mechanism books I’ve read are a great time.

Korantia is a tottering empire propped up by a noble young ruler that you just can’t help but find yourself rooting for, which is pretty typical of what writer Jonathan Drake manages throughout the book — the people detailed are engaging, their situations interesting. In short, it’s chock full of the potential for story. There are fascinating places to go, engaging people to meet, and mysteries to unravel.

[Click on any of the images in this article for bigger versions.]

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

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The-Book-of-Lost-Tales-2-smallI was a voracious reader of fantasy in my teens and early twenties. Moorcock, Tolkien, Lieber, Kurtz, Feist, Eddings, Brooks, Donaldson, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell; I devoured series fantasy. And later I would delve into McKiernan, Cook, Howard, Jordan and others.

Now, in the past decade, I’ve made a couple of attempts to re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but given up each time (I can say the same thing about Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series). I like the stories and the events, but parts of them just read so sloooow. I’ve not run into that problem with Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, or Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books. But I’m still a huge Tolkien fan, even though I don’t sit down and read through him any more.

I’m in a rather small minority that prefers The Silmarillion to his two better-known works. And that’s because I’m completely sold on Tolkien as a world builder and storyteller. That’s why he’s still a favorite.

From the story of the Silmarils up to the start of the Third Age, Tolkien set the standard for world building and epic history. I enjoy the vast creations of Robert Jordan, Steven Erickson, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings and many more, but Tolkien was unsurpassed.

One of my first Dungeons and Dragons characters was an elf named Gil Galad, wielding his spear, Aeglos. Fingolfin, the Sons of Feanor, Hurin, Turin, Melkor, Ancalagon, and Glaurung: The Silmarillion is just chock full of heroes, villains, lands, kingdoms and events.

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September 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

September 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

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Lightspeed September 2015-smallSheesh. Sometimes it feels I spend most of my day writing about John Joseph Adams. How does one guy manage it all? In the past few weeks alone, I’ve covered his new Hugo Award, the latest issues of his magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare. his new book Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, and his (second) amazingly successful Kickstarter campaign.

And that’s only the stuff I have time to cover. That’s not even including his many other projects, like the upcoming Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, his just-released anthology Press Start to Play, and lord knows what else. Seriously. I survey everything this guy does, and then I need to have a bit of a lie down.

We’re very fortunate to have him, even if he is tough to keep up with. The field would be much poorer without John Joseph Adams. If you’re interested in sampling a little of his editorial genius, but don’t have the time or the money for one of his many fine anthologies, then check out his award-winning magazines: Lightspeed and Nightmare.

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Sean McMullen and Heather Lindsley, and fantasy reprints by Maurice Broaddus and Theodora Goss, and original SF by Caroline M. Yoachim and Megan Arkenberg, plus SF reprints by Daniel H. Wilson and Carrie Vaughn. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with Ken Liu, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus novella by Eliot Fintushel, and two novel excerpts.

Here’s the complete fiction contents of the September issue.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Paul Dale Anderson, Installment #2

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Paul Dale Anderson, Installment #2

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Paul Dale Anderson (photo by Tim Hatch)
Paul Dale Anderson (photo by Tim Hatch)

For our Pro Tip this week, we’ve got the second of what will be several installments from the prolific and generous Paul Dale Anderson, who answered all the questions on our list.

Chicagoans will have a chance to hear the Rockford native this Wednesday, when he’s the featured reader at the Gumbo Fiction Salon reading series. (Details on the event are at the end of the article.)

Paul has written across a variety of media and genres for more than twenty years and all across the spectrum of commercial fiction, including romance, westerns, science fiction, erotica, and especially horror. He’s written a huge amount of non-fiction for television, radio, newspapers, and academic journals, along with poetry and book reviews.

His latest novels are Darkness (2AM Publications, 2015), Abandoned (Eldritch Press, 2015), and Axes to Grind (Crossroad Press, 2015). He has new short stories coming out this fall at The Horror Zine magazine, Weirdbook 31, and Pulp Adventures 18.

To Outline or Not to Outline – What Works For You?

I outline only after the work is complete in manuscript. I let my characters tell their own story and each work writes itself. Then I write an outline, synopsis, elevator speech, and what I want to see as jacket copy. If I try to do that first, the story loses momentum. I put all of my creative energy into the story. Everything else is foo-foo.

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Foz Meadows Signs Two-Book Deal with Angry Robot

Foz Meadows Signs Two-Book Deal with Angry Robot

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Foz MeadowsBlack Gate blogger Foz Meadows has just signed a two-book deal with UK publisher Angry Robot, one of the most exciting and innovative genre publishers out there. Both books will be part of the same fantasy series. Here’s the release from Angry Robot:

An Accident of Stars, the first in the series, which is described by Foz as ‘a portal fantasy with the safeties off’, will be published in summer 2016, with a second novel to follow. You might know of Australian born, Aberdeen-based Foz through her Hugo-nominated blog, Shattersnipe, or from her many articles on The Huffington Post, Strange Horizons, Tor.com or the sadly now closed A Dribble of Ink. Foz has also written two previous books, Solace and Grief and The Key to Starveldt.

Foz Meadows: “After years of quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) obsessing over magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies, I’m delighted to announce that Angry Robot has decided to enable me in these endeavours. An Accident of Stars is the book I desperately wanted to read, but couldn’t possibly have written, at sixteen – and, as you may have guessed, it features (among a great many other things) magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies. I’m immensely excited to share it with you, and I look forward to collaborating in its production with our glorious Robot Overlords, who only asked in exchange a very small blood sacrifice and part ownership of my soul.”

Congratulations Foz!

You can read the complete release at the Angry Robot website, or check out Foz’s most recent blog post at Black Gate, “The Fascination of Dragons.”

The Perfect Prescription for Perdition: Doctors in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

The Perfect Prescription for Perdition: Doctors in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

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Doctors in Hell-smallDoctors in Hell
Heroes in Hell, Volume 18
Edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
Perseid Press (336 pages, $19.98 in trade paperback, $7.92 digital, June 23, 2015)
Cover: Pandemonium, John Martin (1789-1854), circa 1841, oil on canvas, from private collection. Cover design by Sonja Aghabekian

Be careful to preserve your health. It is a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything.
— St. Vincent De Paul

By now, many of you no doubt know of my association with Janet Morris and Perseid Press. Maybe you’ve read the reviews of her novels that I wrote for Black Gate, including my reviews of Lawyers in Hell, Rogues in Hell, and Dreamers in Hell. In 2014 Janet and I collaborated on an article for Black Gate, in which we discussed Poets in Hell, how I came to be involved with Hell, and how she put that volume together.

Now, for 2015, Perseid Press offers you Doctors in Hell, the 18th volume in the popular and long-running Heroes in Hell saga, created by Janet Morris back in 1986 .This year I’m going to do something similar to what Janet and I did last year: presenting a brief synopsis of each story/chapter, with the diabolical assistance of my twelve fellow Hellions — the damnedest writers in perdition, to paraphrase the text on the book’s front cover. That makes 13 of us… a nice number, don’t you think?

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New Treasures: The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road by Abbie Bernstein

New Treasures: The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road by Abbie Bernstein

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The Art of Mad Max Fury Road cover

Mad Max: Fury Road was a highlight of the summer for me. It was easily one of the best movies of the year, and the long-awaited return to one of the great cinematic settings of my youth, the post-apocalyptic hell of The Road Warrior. It turned both of my teenage sons into Mad Max fans. No small feat, since in general they don’t show much patience with films from the 80s.

Titan Books released a gorgeous art book to accompany the release of the film, The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, and it’s jam-packed with behind-the-scenes photos, concept art, production stills, interviews with the cast and crew, and an insightful foreword by director George Miller. I received a copy last month, and finally had a chance to sit down with it this week. The timing is actually pretty good, as the Blu-ray was released on September 1, and we re-watched the film at home last Friday.

Below are a dozen photos and art samples from the book.

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Blowing the Doors Off the Barn: Expanding the Iron Fist Mythos

Blowing the Doors Off the Barn: Expanding the Iron Fist Mythos

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Immortal Iron Fist-smallMarvel’s Iron Fist has not traditionally been one of those characters that attracted me. I first encountered him in a second-hand Power-Man and Iron Fist I got in my first year of collecting comics in 1981.

I didn’t get the odd-couple humor, nor the 1970s movie aesthetic that drove the creation of these heroes. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to dig a character who wore slippers. In my defense, I didn’t cotton to Karnak of the Inhumans either. So maybe it’s was the karate chops.

Power_Man_and_Iron_Fist_Vol_1_77As a teen, I was briefly and underwhelmingly exposed to the black and white magazine-sized martial arts books Marvel published in the 1970s. The only positive sound I ever made when Iron Fist showed up on my radar was when he was drawn by John Byrne and when he briefly crossed paths with the X-Men.

That all changed for me in a 2006-2009 run of The Immortal Iron Fist written by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Duane Swierczynski, and pencilled by Travis Foreman and David Aja. Why?

Before 2006, a few things were clear about Danny Rand, the Iron Fist. He was trained in the mystical city of K’un L’un after the deaths of his parents. He is one of a long line of successive possessors of the Chi force that he got from the Dragon of K’un L’un. His arch-enemy is the Steel Serpent, a bit of a bad apple from K’un L’un. It’s a tight superhero set-up, and to my taste, a bit tepid.

But in “The Last Iron Fist Story” (issues #1-6 of the Immortal Iron Fist), Brubaker and Fraction reveal that Danny is not the only living Iron Fist. His predecessor is still alive and kicking (sorry…); he’s been hiding in an opium haze for decades.

When the enemies of K’un L’un find him, he has to leave opium, in anticipation of something called the Tournament of the Seven Capital Cities.

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