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Month: October 2018

Birthday Reviews: Jennifer Roberson’s “Mad Jack”

Birthday Reviews: Jennifer Roberson’s “Mad Jack”

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Lord of the Fantastic
Lord of the Fantastic

Jennifer Roberson was born on October 26, 1953.

She collaborated on The Golden Key with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott, which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1997.

Roberson wrote “Mad Jack” for inclusion in the memorial anthology Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny, edited by Martin H. Greenberg in 1989. She has also republished the story in her own collection, Guinevere’s Truth and Other Tales, released in 2008.

“Mad Jack” tells the story of a man who lost his infant son to random gun violence. Unable to cope with his loss, his life falls apart and he comes to the decision that he needs to go on some sort of epic quest to make things right and find a simpler time. His decision causes strife with his wife and his boss, but he eventually makes the journey to Scotland via bus and train to find something that has been missing from his life for a long time.

Roberson’s description of Jack and his attempts to come to terms with his son’s death is a focused look at one individual’s grieving process. Although there is reference to the way others view his needs, Jack never interacts with any of them within the confines of the story; his thoughts turn almost entirely internal. While he notes that his wife and boss both think he is mad, there are no overt signs of madness.

Roberson plays the story close to her chest. It is clear that Mad Jack is supposed to be recognizable, although who he is, or even the time period in which the story takes place, is not entirely clear until the end. Once they story reaches its conclusion, the question of whether Jack is mad, has reverted to childhood, or is having an actual experience is ambiguous, which is one of the strengths of fantasy as a genre.

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Goth Chick News Visits HellsGate

Goth Chick News Visits HellsGate

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HellsGate the House-small

HellsGate — the house

Most of us grew up with a local Jaycees or some other community organization putting together their annual ‘haunted house’ every October. With tickets in the neighborhood of $5 each, my friends and I would make the rounds, hitting several in a weekend as more of a social event than the adrenaline rush of real scares, which were hard to come by when your best friend’s parent or older sibling was behind the semi-cheesy mask and resale-shop costumes.

These days however, haunted attractions are decidedly more elaborate and sometimes permanent establishments. Instead of ‘haunted walks’ through the local forest preserve, or forays through mazes of black Glad bags and PVC, Halloween season thrill-seekers can expect to treat themselves to multi-thousand-dollar special effects and real actors in Hollywood-worthy costumes. Of course, tickets are closer to $50 than $5, but you get what you pay for.

And did we ever when over the weekend Black Gate photog Chris Z and I road tripped nearly two hours to visit HellsGate Haunted House, ranked #11 in the industry magazine HauntWorld’s annual list of the Scariest Haunted Houses in the Nation – and that is out of 5000 entries. Obviously, you don’t rank that high on the list without some impressive moves, and we were particularly interested to see an effect in use which we first saw on the show floor at the Haunted Association and Attractions Show last March. The owner of HellsGate, John LaFlamboy, purchased one of the biggest show effects, a $16K, ‘life size’ animatronic dragon, right off the show floor and we couldn’t wait to see how it turned out.

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Perfect Halloween Fare: The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken

Perfect Halloween Fare: The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken

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The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding-small The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding-back-small

Prosper Redding lives in small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. But when a stranger – dressed up like a Pilgrim and everything – shows up to the local Founders Day celebrations, nobody else even seems to see him. What’s worse, he steals some chestnuts from a vendor right before Prosper’s eyes, and then has the audacity to grin at him and wink.

When the clock strives five, though, Prosper has to find his sister Prue, leave the festival, and go home. Waiting for them is a surprise family reunion convened by his evil grandmother, comprised of relatives who dislike him. Prosper’s instincts tell him to run, but Prue takes his elbow and propels him into the house. Which is really more like a castle.

Things get worse when his absent father calls in a panic and tells him to grab his sister and run for their lives. Prosper tries to obey, but his uncles catch him. They pack him and Prue off to the dungeon, which is set up for an occult ritual.

All the relatives are there, and they’re all staring at Prosper. A small table draped with velvet – an altar, really – has been placed in the front of the room, and hundreds of flickering candles provide the only illumination. Prosper’s grandmother yanks the cloth off the table, revealing an ancient book. She asks Prue to start reading from it, but Prue just looks at her blankly. “But… It doesn’t say anything…”

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New Treasures: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

New Treasures: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

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An Easy Death-smallCharlaine Harris was the first really big interview we ever scored at Black Gate. This was thirteen years ago, before the breakout success of the True Blood HBO series based on her Sookie Stackhouse novels, but she was already hugely popular. Goth Chick met with her at a restaurant, before a big signing event here in the suburbs of Chicago, and came back totally charmed. We included the interview in Black Gate 8, the Summer 2005 issue, and it was a big hit with readers.

Harris has reached a point in her career where she can do whatever she wants. Fortunately for us, what she wants to do appears to be tell Weird Western tales. Her latest, An Easy Death, is set in a southwestern country known as Texoma, where magic is common and a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose takes a job to be a local guide for a pair of Russian wizards. But all is not what it appears to be, and dark forces are aligning against Lizbeth and her clients. It was published in hardcover earlier this month by Saga Press.

The beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, the inspiration for HBO’s True Blood, and the Midnight Crossroad trilogy adapted for NBC’s Midnight, Texas, has written a taut new thriller — the first in the Gunnie Rose series — centered on a young gunslinging mercenary, Lizbeth Rose.

Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life.

As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.

An Easy Death was published by Saga Press on October 2, 2018. It is 306 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Colin Anderson. Read the complete first chapter here.

Birthday Reviews: John Gregory Betancourt’s “The Weird of Massal Dey”

Birthday Reviews: John Gregory Betancourt’s “The Weird of Massal Dey”

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Cover by Marjette Schille
Cover by Marjette Schille

John Gregory Betancourt was born on October 25, 1963.

Betancourt has been nominated for three World Fantasy Awards, in 1993, 1995, and 2000, for his work at Wildside Press. The first two nominations were in the non-professional category and shared with Kim Betancourt, the final one was in the professional category. Betancourt has also worked as an assistant editor at Amazing Stories, and editor at Horror: The Newsmagazine of the Horror Field, Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and Adventure Tales.

“The Weird of Mazel Dey” was originally written for Susan Shwartz’s anthology Arabesques, but Betancourt missed the deadline and sold the story to Dennis Mallonee and Nick Smith at Fantasy Book, where the story ran in the September 1985 issue. When Betancourt elected to reprint the story in his collection of Zelloquan stories, Slab’s Tavern and Other Uncanny Places, he changed the names to match his series’ setting and published the story as “The Weird of Massal Dey.” The revision also removed the references to Islam that appeared in the original form.

Massal Dey is a thief who uses the occurrence of a great festival to steal a mirror which captures his attention. The mirror is of such beauty that Dey decides to keep it rather than try to fence it. Unfortunately, once he gets the mirror home and set up, he sees his own reflection and realizes that he is so ugly that he shouldn’t defile the mirror by viewing his image.

However, as the story progresses, Dey finds that he looks into the mirror in his dreams and finds himself in other worlds where he is not as ugly as he believes himself to be. Each time he looks in the mirror in his dreams the situation is different, from a world in which he is the object of infatuation by young beauties, to a world in which he and his long-time wife of that world live a comfortable, if unremarkable existence.

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The Gorgeous and the Grotesque: The Ceilings of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Gorgeous and the Grotesque: The Ceilings of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

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As I mentioned in my last post, I got to explore Florence for a few days, absorbing as much of the Italian Renaissance (and modern pizza) as I could.

So of course I went to the Uffizi Gallery, one of Italy’s most renowned museums. While I knew I would be seeing a treasure trove of Da Vincis and Caravaggios, I didn’t realize that portions of the building itself are a work of art.

Specifically, the ceilings of the upper Eastern Corridor. These are decorated with bright, lively frescoes painted by Alessandro Allori in 1580 and 1581. Each section is a different theme or subject such as military affairs or exploration, and taken together they act as a window into the thoughts and imagination of Florence in the late Renaissance.

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Gyro, Bazark, Ruffnik, and Oom-a-Gog

Gyro, Bazark, Ruffnik, and Oom-a-Gog

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Oom-a-Gog on TWA

Through the number of television sets in living rooms rose exponentially from 1948 to 1958, programming lagged behind. At first networks provided their affiliates only enough programs to fill what we now call prime time. The rest of the day was filled in piecemeal over time, early morning shows, late-night chat, afternoon soaps and game shows.

Local stations had little choice. They found ways to fill in non-network time. Budgets were ridiculously small, just sufficient to hire a personable young newcomer willing to work cheap with few other props than a desk and a chair and their ingenuity in filling hours of airtime without a script. Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs made their names with innovative and distinctive locals shows before the networks swooped them up. Thirty-year-old Betty White took over a show called Hollywood on Television in 1952. It broadcast five-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week for four years. (To fill up her copious free time she also starred in the local, later syndicated, sitcom Life with Elizabeth.)

Having no idea of what would work and hours to experiment with, local stations tried every type of show they could think of: cooking, gardening, public affairs, fashion. And then for the afterschool crowd, kiddie shows.

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Myke Cole and The Queen of Crows

Myke Cole and The Queen of Crows

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The Armored Saint-small The Queen of Crows-small

The Sacred Throne novels by Myke Cole (Tor Books)

I first met Myke Cole at a World Fantasy Convention some years back, but I feel as though I’ve known him a little longer because John O’Neill published him in Black Gate, and Myke’s fiction is direct and compelling and intense, rather like Myke himself.

The second novel in his new series has just debuted, and I thought it high time to sit down with him to talk about the book and his writing.

HAJ: Suppose you bump into me on an elevator with a copy of your book, and I ask what the book’s about. What do you tell me?

Myke: It’s about the weight of expectations, and the struggle to do what’s right in spite of them.

I’m interested in your brief description and want to know more, so what else do you say about it?

The weight of expectations are falling on a young woman in a suit of badass power armor, so she’s got a fighting chance 🙂

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Modular: Sagas of Midgard Invades… Well, Midgard

Modular: Sagas of Midgard Invades… Well, Midgard

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SoMcoverIt’s been awhile, and not because there’s been any shortage of Norse-themed role playing games! In this time, we’ve had the 5e derivative Dragon Heresy, a d6 system called Vikingr, older campaign settings such as Hellfrost and systems such as Trudvang Chronicles, and many others. Our topic on this Odin’s Day, however, is the latest of these: Sagas of Midgard.

Honestly, I had kind of retired from investment in Viking-age rpgs. My home game hasn’t involved the Norse-specific setting for more than a year, my pocketbook doesn’t drip nine golden rings as Odin’s Draupnir does, and there isn’t much utility in owning much more, since I doubt I’d be able to wrest my gamers from my tabletop version of Fourth Age Middle-earth anytime soon. But the Sagas of Midgard Kickstarter advertised savage, fast-paced gameplay and rules for Raiding—an essential component of the northern milieu and one that I had not ever seen treated to my satisfaction. So I backed a PDF copy, mostly out of curiosity.

When I received it, I realized I was encountering something much more than a few interesting mechanics. This looks like a really good game! You’ll notice that I don’t precisely say that it is simply because I haven’t had a chance to run it yet. Character abilities originate from five separate Domains, and each Domain is governed by a Norse deity. At character creation (and during advancement) players spend points within these domains for specific powers and abilities. These are fueled by a currency called Favor, which characters can obtain through a variety of methods, many of them mechanical. The core mechanic is what the designers call the “Rollover System.” Every task and adversary has a “Rollover Score,” usually between 1 and 100, that a PC has to beat (with a roll of d100) to obtain the effect she wants. There are modifiers, of course, resulting from other game mechanics, and a core feature is that the GM never rolls the dice, something shared by a few other systems and (though denying the GM the pleasure of rolling dice) allows her to focus on storytelling and character interaction.

My main criticism, though, is that the rules explanations can be hard to follow (while recognizing reasons for the authors’ organizational choices). I contacted the authors about this, and they told me that they already had been drafting a “cheat sheet” that should be helpful even to new gamers. And, in the midst of my enthusiasm for their game, I succeeded in getting the creators, Nick Porter and Dominic De Duonni, to agree to an interview.

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Birthday Reviews: Jack Skillingstead’s “Thank You, Mr. Whiskers”

Birthday Reviews: Jack Skillingstead’s “Thank You, Mr. Whiskers”

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Cover by Jim Burns
Cover by Jim Burns

Jack Skillingstead was born on October 24, 1955.

Skillingstead was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2004 for his story “Dead Worlds” and in 2014 his novel Life on the Preservation was a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award. He has collaborated with Burt Coourtier. Skillingstead has been married to author Nancy Kress since 2011.

“Thank You, Mr. Whiskers” was originally published in the August 2007 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Sheila Williams. It has since been reprinted in Skillingstead’s collection Are You There and Other Stories, published by Golden Gryphon in 2009 and subsequently reprinted by Fairwood Press.

Hadley Yeager is something of an anomaly in science fiction stories, an older woman. Living alone after the death of her husband, Franklin, Hadley no longer has a firm grasp on reality. Her memory is fading, she is unsure of where she is or what is going on around her, and fear of the outside world is making her suspicious of the young boy who seems to be intent on checking up on her and making sure she is okay.

One day, she notices a new mailbox, where she doesn’t remember seeing one before. Accidentally taking the mail from that box, she discovers a note that applies directly to her. From that point on the extra mailbox helps guide her and rejuvenate her. In addition to reminding her where she hid grocery money, the messages in the mailbox begin offering her other advice and help, removing the suspicious boy, allowing her to reverse her aging, and living a youthful life of excess. Eventually, Hadley begins to wonder about the mailbox’s origins and motives.

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