Black Gate

The January 2017 issue of Nightmare is now available, with original fiction from Cadwell Turnbull and Carrie Vaughn, and reprints by Lilliam Rivera and Ashok Banker. Here’s Kevin P Hallett’s thoughts from Tangent Online:

“Loneliness is in Your Blood” by Cadwell Turnbull

This short dark horror describes a female vampire who makes herself invisible while she hunts for human blood. The vampire thinks she is immortal, living among the American slaves. But after hundreds of years, she finds herself growing old. As she ages, she is compelled to suck a young couple dry of their blood, an act that induces her own pregnancy and the birth of a new girl vampire…

“Redcap” by Carrie Vaughn

This horror short introduces us to Violet, the youngest of three sisters charged with minding the sheep. Her elder sisters warn her each day of the dangers outside the home, and that they will all starve if any sheep are lost. One day, as she prepares to herd the sheep from the pasture, she finds a lamb missing. Violet is torn between her sister’s warnings about the dangers and their cautions about starving if any sheep are lost.

She decides to search for the lost sheep. Drawn to its bleating, she climbs the haunted hill where the demon, Redcap, traps her… The story had a nice pace to it and the plot was engaging, pulling the reader forward…

Read his complete review here. The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

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The January 2017 Apex is a Special Double Issue, with brand new short stories by Lia Swope Mitchell, Iori Kusano, James Beamon, and J.J. Litke, a novelette by Ursula Vernon, and reprints from Rich Larson and Mike Allen. Mike’s contribution, “The Quiltmaker,” the sequel to his Nebula nominee “The Button Bin,” is a massive 20,000 word novella which Mike calls “easily my most gruesome published work to date” (and as the guy who edited and published his The Black Fire Concerto, easily the most gruesome novel I’ve ever read, I can tell you that means something). Here’s editor Jason Sizemore with his summation of the January issue.

Ursula Vernon returns to our pages with the powerful “The Dark Birds.” This dark fantasy (and dare we say…horror) allegory is my favorite Vernon piece thus far. James Beamon explores time travel and racism in “Soliloquy in a Cheap Diner Off Route 66.” “The Invisible Box” is a fun and quick little story of revenge. “Next Station, Shibuya” by Iori Kusano continues the conversation our magazine has ongoing with Japanase-influenced horror and SF. In “Mag, the Habitat and We” Lia Swope Mitchell’s little protagonists protect and fight for their home. Our two reprints are from Mike Allen and Rich Larson. “The Quiltmaker” is a terrifying dark fantasy/horror novella that will leave a mark. “Masked” by Rich Larson will have you thinking of Black Mirrors, but hey, his story came out before the third season of the show, so we’re giving Rich all the credit for the idea!

Our nonfiction includes interviews with cover artist Aaron Nakahara and author James Beamon. Dr. Amy H. Sturgis contributes a scholarly piece titled “The Once and Future Chief: Tecumseh in (Science) Fiction.” Be sure to check out our August, 2017 issue as Dr. Sturgis will be our guest editor and will focus on First Nations and Indigenous authors of North America.

Poetry contributors this month include Barton Paul Levenson, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Tracy May Adair, and Amanda Pekar.

Here’s the complete TOC, with links to all the free content.

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This month the first issues of Analog and Asimov’s SF in their new bimonthly format arrived — with an extra 16 pages each — and I like the change already. We also welcome PC Gamer to our magazine checklist for the first time, courtesy of the irresistible Ultimate RPG Handbook special issue. But the big news for short fiction fans was the release of the massive annual compilation of Some of the Best From Tor.com, containing 25 recent stories from one of the most acclaimed digital magazines in the genre. I hope you managed to nab a free copy at Tor.com while they were available! If not, free copies are still available through Amazon.com and B&N.com for a limited time.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our early January 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 $35/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.

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Black Gate author Jeremiah Tolbert (“Groob’s Stupid Grubs”) has had a nice run of stories in Lightspeed recently, including “Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus” (August 2016) and the Dungeonspace tale “The Cavern of the Screaming Eye” (October 2016). Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews speaks very highly of his new story in the January issue, “The West Topeka Triangle.”

The story unfolds at a time that many would point to as the golden days of modern America. Reagan’s America. And for Jason, growing up at that time means mostly absent parents and a neighborhood and world that seems poised to swallow him up. He’s not exactly popular, and as part of his social isolation he is obsessed with a theory that his town has a triangle like the Bermuda Triangle that explains a string of disappearances. And I like how the story builds this world… It’s also a world that’s full of danger, not just because people are disappearing though that comes to dominate the story, the mystery of what’s happening. For Jason it’s a diversion, a way to escape a stifling home life that seems to defy any attempt to change it… It’s a weird but also haunting story that lingers for me, that remains like a weight on my chest.

Read Charles’ complete review of the January issue here.

This month’s Lightspeed offers original fantasy by Kat Howard and Jeremiah Tolbert, and fantasy reprints by Jeffrey Ford and Kima Jones. It also has original science fiction by Adam-Troy Castro and Molly Tanzer, along with SF reprints by James S.A. Corey and Mary Rosenblum. The non-fiction includes an editorial from John Joseph Adams, author spotlights, movie reviews by Carrie Vaughn, Book Reviews by Andrew Liptak, and an interview with Kij Johnson.

The exclusive content in the ebook version this month includes Judith Berman’s Nebula-nominated novella “Awakening,” which originally appeared in Black Gate 10. Along with the story by Jeremy Tolbert, and the reprint from BG author Jeffrey Ford (who wrote the brilliant “Exo-Skeleton Town“), it’s making me positively nostalgic.

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