Browsed by
Year: 2015

Mur Lafferty Wins 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award

Mur Lafferty Wins 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award

Comments 0 Comment

Ghost Train to New Orleans-smallMur Lafferty has been awarded the 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award, for her novel Ghost Train to New Orleans.

The Manly Wade Wellman Award is granted each year by the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation, for outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors. This year’s nominees also included The Sea Without a Shore by David Drake, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson, Reign of Ash by Gail Z. Martin, and Bad Wizard by James Maxey.

The winner is selected by the combined membership of four North Carolina science fiction and fantasy conventions (illogiCon, ConCarolinas, ConTemporal, and ConGregate). The award was presented on July 11 at ConGregate, in High Point, NC.

Mur Lafferty also won last year’s innaurgual award, for the first novel in the The Shambling Guides series, The Shambling Guide to New York.

Ghost Train to New Orleans (The Shambling Guides #2) was published by Orbit on March 4, 2014.

Read complete details at the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation website.

New Treasures: The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones

New Treasures: The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones

Comments 0 Comment

The String Diaries-smallTrue, I’m a little late to the party with The String Diaries. It was originally published in hardcover last July, and came out in trade paperback in January. But I just stumbled on a copy last week, and it seems too promising not to share with you. The New York Daily News called Stephen Lloyd Jones’s debut horror novel “terrifying, and deliciously so… A sophisticated horror story that induces elemental terror,” and from what I’ve read so far, that seems accurate.

A family is hunted by a centuries-old monster: a man with a relentless obsession who can take on any identity.

The String Diaries opens with Hannah frantically driving through the night — her daughter asleep in the back, her husband bleeding out in the seat beside her. In the trunk of the car rests a cache of diaries dating back 200 years, tied and retied with strings through generations. The diaries carry the rules for survival that have been handed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century. But how can Hannah escape an enemy with the ability to look and sound like the people she loves?

Stephen Lloyd Jones’s debut novel is a sweeping thriller that extends from the present day, to Oxford in the 1970s, to Hungary at the turn of the 19th century, all tracing back to a man from an ancient royal family with a consuming passion — a boy who can change his shape, insert himself into the intimate lives of his victims, and destroy them.

If Hannah fails to end the chase now, her daughter is next in line. Only Hannah can decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to finally put a centuries-old curse to rest.

The trade paperback edition includes an 11-page preview of the sequel, Written in the Blood, released in hardcover in May. I’m not familiar with Mulholland Books, but I certainly should be — I notice they also publish Joe R. Lansdale, Dan Simmons, Lauren Beukes, and many others. The String Diaries was published by Mulholland Books on January 6, 2015. It is 420 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover design is by Keith Hayes.

Clarkesworld 106 Now on Sale

Clarkesworld 106 Now on Sale

Comments 2 comments

Clarkesworld-106-smallIn his editorial this issue, Editor-in-Chief Neil Clarke recalls the birth of the magazine at Readercon:

Our ninth anniversary will occur in October, but the magazine was born at Readercon. At the Friday night Meet the Pros(e) party, Sean Wallace and I got into a long discussion about online magazines spurred on by SciFiction’s recent closure. [SciFiction was the Sci Fi channel’s online magazine and its demise was a huge blow to the perceived credibility of the medium.] That night, we spent hours trying to figure out why so many online magazines had failed and what it would take to make one succeed. Sleep-deprived and a bit too overconfident, we came up with a business model we thought would work. By the end of the weekend, it was a done deal: I was launching a magazine. Nine years later, that wild little experiment is turning into what I hope will become my career. Not bad for something I stumbled into with no prior experience.

Over the past nine years, Clarkesworld has become one of the most important magazines in the field, a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. In 2013 it received more Hugo nominations for short fiction than all the leading print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) combined, and last November the magazine was awarded a World Fantasy Award.

Issue #106 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Sam J. Miller, Kay Chronister, Natalia Theodoridou, Pan Haitian, Yoon Ha Lee, Keith Brooke, and Adam Roberts.

…

Read More Read More

Is That Your Sword, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Is That Your Sword, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Comments 26 comments

By the SwordI love sword-fights. By which I mean I love them in movies and on TV. Not so much in books. Mostly in books they take too long, and illustrate more how much research the writer has done and not so much the moving ahead of the story. And that’s how swords and sword fighting came to mind when I started thinking about what real life things do and don’t happen in fiction, or in movies or TV. If you’d like to see what I’ve already said about this, look here, and here.

So, in the spirit of what does and doesn’t happen in real life vs TV or movies – or even books – just what happens with people’s swords when they aren’t using them to kill someone? And what about other weapons? As I’ve suggested before, this type of thing is fairly easily handled in books. More easily than, say, why characters never (ie. hardly ever) go to the bathroom. In books, when they’re not using them, characters simply sheath their swords, or hang them from their harnesses, or hang them up by the belt on a hook. Or put them down on a table. As the reader, your eyes are directed elsewhere, and you rarely give it another thought.

Sure, sometimes a writer will have a character clean their sword, or other weapons. But there are reasons for this. One, it gives the characters something to do with their hands while dialogue is taking place. Two, how the cleaning gets done tells the reader something about the character’s personality.

…

Read More Read More

A Wild Ride Through a Cold Hell: A Review of J.P. Wilder’s Schade of Night

A Wild Ride Through a Cold Hell: A Review of J.P. Wilder’s Schade of Night

Comments 1 comment

Schade of Night-smallSchade of Night
J.P Wilder
iUniverse (350 pages, $20.95 in trade paperback, $3.99 in digital format, December 19, 2014)

Don’t let the lovely young lady and her smile gracing the cover of J.P. Wilder’s wonderful Schade of Night fool you: Schade Lee does little smiling in this dark, action-packed, modern-day fantasy that reads like a paramilitary thriller graced with supernatural overtones.

Schade has some issues, for sure. But she’s one tough, no-nonsense private detective, who can be as stubborn as a mule, as fearless and reckless as a teenager, and often lets her heart rule her head. She’s a disgraced, ex-FBI agent turned investigator who has been hired to find a young girl named Kylie Berson, who’s been kidnapped by one especially sick and twisted serial killer — a real dangerous foe who often leaves cryptic messages for Schade, usually carved into the flesh of his victims. Kylie may already be dead, but Schade refuses to believe that, to accept that, and has vowed not to lose another victim to this crazed maniac.

The story takes place in and around Flagstaff, Arizona, during a dark and cold season of snow and harsh weather. Schade she sets out to save Kylie, no matter what it takes, no matter what it costs. To complicate matters, Schade has been having dreams and visions… visions of places that are real, and she glimpses disturbing images of things that have or will happen in these places.

Add to that a feeling, a sense of some of mysterious power building inside her, her trusty SIG automatic that is some kind of “foci” that can suck the souls out of those she shoots and kills, and then absorb those souls into her own, and you have a young woman with more on her plate than she may be able to handle. She certainly has no idea why these things are happening to her, or how. But when she does find out, well… you can just imagine how she takes the news. Like I said, she’s stubborn.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Checking In at the Hotel Transylvania

Goth Chick News: Checking In at the Hotel Transylvania

Comments 0 Comment

Hotel Transylvania TV-smallIf only this place really existed, I would never again suffer a Black Gate company road trip, trapped in a zeppelin with a load of less-than-hygienic fan boys, but instead would be enjoying my suite in the goth girl’s equivalent of the Four Seasons.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, my all-time favorite animated film Hotel Transylvania will be coming to the small screen, courtesy of Canadian company Nelvana Enterprises.

Debuting in early 2017 (venue pending), the series will focus on Mavis, the daughter of Dracula, expanding on her teenage years and her friends at the world-famous monster five-star resort.

News of the TV adaptation comes ahead of the sequel Hotel Transylvania 2 hitting theaters this fall, on September 25.

And speaking of the sequel…

…

Read More Read More

The July Fantasy Magazine Rack

The July Fantasy Magazine Rack

Comments 0 Comment
Apex Magazine Issue 74-rack Asimov's Science Fiction August 2015-rack At-the-End-of-Babel-Michael-Livingston-rack Beneath-Ceaseles-Skies-176-rack
Fantasy-and-Science-Fiction-July-August-2015-rack Uncanny-Magazine-Issue-5-rack Grimdark Magazine 4-rack Faerie Magazine 31-rack

There’s a few new faces in the July magazine rack, including Faerie Magazine, a quarterly print magazine “that celebrates everything magical and extraordinary.” Since they don’t have regular issues, we also haven’t done justice to Tor.com, one of the best online magazines in the industry, but this month we highlighted Black Gate author Michael Livingston’s story “At the End of Babel,” which appeared there on July 1.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our late-June Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $7.50/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Complete Kane by Karl Edward Wagner

Future Treasures: The Complete Kane by Karl Edward Wagner

Comments 15 comments

The complete kane

Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane is one of the greatest sword & sorcery heroes of all time. Reading him today is fairly problematic, however — most of his appearances were in small press magazines like Midnight Sun, which are almost impossible to find. Warner Paperback Library published the complete stories of Kane in five volumes in paperback between 1973 and 1978, and these slender books are highly sought by collectors.

Death Angel’s Shadow (June 1973) — Collection
Bloodstone (March 1975)
Dark Crusade (December 1976)
Darkness Weaves (January 1978)
Night Winds (August 1978) — Collection, World Fantasy Award nominee

Night Shade briefly returned the entire series to print in two volumes, Gods in Darkness (2002), collecting all three novels, and Midnight Sun (2003), which gathered all the short stories, but those sold out quickly and have been out of print for over a decade. Now Centipede Press is reprinting all five Warner volumes in hardcover editions, with new art, rare photos, and printed endpapers. All five are scheduled to be released on October 15.

…

Read More Read More

Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 1: Miss Hokusai and Ant-Man

Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 1: Miss Hokusai and Ant-Man

Comments 0 Comment

Fantasia FestivalThe Fantasia International Film Festival opened in Montreal on Tuesday night, and this year, like last year, I’ll be covering it for Black Gate. This will be the 19th edition of Fantasia, one of the world’s largest genre-oriented film festivals, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of movies. As I did last time, I’m planning to keep a diary-style record discussing the films I see and also recapping some of the special events around them — a lot of screenings are accompanied by presentations, or by discussions with the creators, and I’ll pass along my notes on those.

There are over 135 feature films being presented at Fantasia this year, and looking over the schedule it feels like I want to see almost all of them. The nature of scheduling makes that impossible, but I’ll be striving to look at as many as I can. I’ll be trying to catch films I miss in the festival’s screening room, where I’ll be able to watch them on a computer monitor. That’s a different experience than seeing a movie on the big screen with a crowd, but it’s better than nothing.

Two theatres at Concordia University’s downtown campus serve as the main venues for the festival this year, and on Tuesday I saw two films in the big Hall Theatre. Both movies were warmly received by the crowd, and both seemed to me to be great successes in very different ways. Both, as it happened, were adaptations from comics. The first was an anime called Miss Hokusai from Japanese director Keiichi Hara, an adaptation of Hinako Sugiura’s Sarusuberi, about the daughter of the famed 19th-century artist Hokusai and her relationship with her father. The second was Marvel’s Ant-Man, directed by Peyton Reed. I’ll have more to say about that further below (short version: it’s much better than I’d have imagined an Ant-Man movie could be, and instantly became one of my favourites of the Marvel movies). First, a look at Miss Hokusai, and Fantasia’s opening ceremonies.

…

Read More Read More

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

Comments 6 comments
Irene Gallo
Irene Gallo

Everyone loves an underdog, and last month the underdog was definitely Irene Gallo, the Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com.

Ms. Gallo had a rough month in June, as she endured a series of scathing attacks from Sad Puppies, writers, and others who took offense to a personal comment she made to a friend on her Facebook page. The industry rallied strongly to her defense, however, and the two articles we wrote covering the affair, “Internet Explodes Around Irene Gallo” and “Support For Irene Gallo Continues to Grow” were by far the most-read posts at the BG blog in June. Based on the high volume of e-mail we received, BG readers largely sympathized with Ms. Gallo.

It seems that those of you who weren’t caught up with the latest controversies were busy writing. Our third most popular article last month was M Harold Page’s “Some Writing Advice That’s Mostly Useless (And Why).” His first article in the series, “Help! I Want to Write a Novel But Don’t Have Any Ideas!!!” was also in the Top 10.

Fourth on the list was Emily Mah’s interview and Kickstarter announcement, “Call for Backers! Tales of the Lost Citadel Campaign on Kickstarter, in Conjunction with a Video Interview with C.A. Suleiman, in the DARK!” Rounding out the Top Five was the most recent installment in our series of omnibus collections of interest to fantasy fans, “The Omnibus Volumes of Steven Brust: The Adventures of Vlad Taltos.”

Also in the Top Ten was our report on the Best New Fantasy Releases in June, the first “Dear Prudentia” advice column by Marie Bilodeau, and two reviews by Fletcher Vredenburgh: Death Angel’s Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner, and Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters edited by Janet Morris.

The complete list of Top Articles for June follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

…

Read More Read More