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New Treasures: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

New Treasures: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

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The Shambling Guide to New York City-smallMur Lafferty is something of a renaissance woman. She was the host and co-editor of the horror podcast Pseudopod until July 2007; in 2010 she became the editor and host of the weekly SF podcast magazine Escape Pod. She’s also the host of I Should be Writing (when does she find time to actually write?), and a winner of the Podcast Peer Award and the Parsec Award.

Apparently, she must make time somehow. She’s the author of two previous novels (Playing for Keeps, and Nanovor: Hacked), and her third novel is out from Orbit Books. Zoe Norris is a travel writer forced to take a job with a shady publishing company in New York, only to discover she’s been tasked with writing a tour guide for the undead. Scott Sigler said of The Shambling Guide to New York City, “If Buffy grew up… moved to New York and got a real job, it would look a lot like this.” Sounds plenty intriguing to me.

Because of the disaster that was her last job, Zoe is searching for a fresh start as a travel book editor in the tourist-centric New York City. After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can’t take off her resume — human.

Not to be put off by anything — especially not her blood drinking boss or death goddess coworker — Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her job turns deadly when the careful balance between human and monsters starts to crumble — with Zoe right in the middle.

The Shambling Guide to New York City is the first novel in The Shambling Guides series; the second volume, Ghost Train to New Orleans, is due March 4, 2014.

The Shambling Guide to New York City was published by Orbit Books on May 28, 2013. It is 358 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The marvelous cover is by Jamie McKelvie (click for a full-size version).

Try Out Spellbound Magazine

Try Out Spellbound Magazine

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Spellbound Summer 2013-smallTwo weeks ago I reported on the great work editor Raechel Henderson was doing with Eggplant Literary Productions. The impetus was dropping by her booth at Windycon, where I saw the fabulous array of new fantasy novels and novellas she’d recently released, including new e-books from Lenora Rose, Laura J. Underwood, Lori Ann White, Patricia Russo, Martin Clark, and many others.

Eggplant is effectively a one-woman show, so I was tremendously impressed to see so many new titles. I know what it’s like to finance, edit, art direct, design, layout, produce, market and distribute one issue of a genre magazine every year… so just seeing the host of new releases Raechel had published in the last 12 months meant I needed to go have a bit of a lie down.

It’s not just her surprising accomplishments in the area of e-books, which are only a small part of Eggplant. On top of the book line, Raechel also produces the excellent Spellbound, a thriving new magazine that has published 19 issues since 1999.

Spellbound is a children’s fantasy e-zine  for kids 8-12 years of age, which makes it almost unique in the marketplace. It was originally launched in Fall 1999 and went on hiatus after 15 issues, after  the Spring 2003 issue. It was re-launched in Winter 2012 with greatly increased production values, including gorgeous color covers; so far Raechel has released four new issues like clockwork.

If you enjoy children literature — or have an inquisitive or imaginative child in your life — Spellbound makes a great value. Each issue contains original stories, poetry, art, and a Recommended Reading list, all centered around a special featured creature. The Fall 2013 issues showcased Creatures of the Deep, Dark Woods, with gorgeous cover art by Francesca Resta; the Summer 2013 issue focused on Dragons (click on the image at right for the full-sized cover art).

Individual issues of Spellbound are $5.00 (US) each; a four-issue, one year subscription is $20.00 (US). Order directly from the Eggplant website.

What’s next for Raechel and Eggplant Production? I’m not certain, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they produce next. Ignore them at your peril.

Vintage Treasures: The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

Vintage Treasures: The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

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The Coming of the Rats-smallA lot of post-apocalyptic novels and films appeared in the 50s and 60s. World War II was still a recent memory, and the threat of the H-Bomb was very real, even if most folks didn’t understand exactly what the “H” stood for. Publishers and filmmakers played on the very real terrors people faced every day. Fear of another war. Fear of atomic radiation.

And, going by the cover of George H. Smith’s The Coming of the Rats, the deep-seated fear that rats would attack our women and strip their clothes off.

Now, I’m not sure how our parents and grandparent dealt with these crippling fears, but from what I understand their coping mechanism involved a lot of cheap paperbacks, and multiple Saturday matinees (which seems like a stable strategy, when you think about it).

This is how that generation learned the facts about atomic radiation. And how the logical result would be mutants, and lots of ’em. Giant mutant ants. Mutant town-eating blobs. And horrible, women-chewing mutant rats.

Which brings us to The Coming of the Rats, and its hallowed place in the post-apocalyptic fiction canon.

Author George H. Smith (not to be confused with George O. Smith, author of Venus Equilateral and Troubled Star, or the George H. Smith who wrote Swamp Lust, Swamp Bred, and other swamp love classics) had a checkered career as a paperback writer in the 60s. His first publication was a short story in Startling Stories in 1953, and he sold a number of stories to SF magazines throughout the fifties before graduating to novels. He’s mostly remembered today for a line of soft-core erotica written under various pseudonyms.

His first attempt at more serious SF was The Coming of the Rats. But nobody told the cover artist, who cheerfully went the soft-core route, depicting a toga-party victim unsuccessfully fending off high-jumping rats.

Of course, the best covers intrigue readers and make them ask questions, and this cover made me ask questions. Chiefly, “Why are you wearing a dish towel?”

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New Treasures: Copperhead by Tina Connolly

New Treasures: Copperhead by Tina Connolly

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Copperhead-smallI first met Tina Connolly at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego in 2011. She was charming, witty, and very entertaining — precisely the kind of person you want to follow around to all the good parties. I tried this enthusiastically for a while, until someone from the con committee patiently explained to me that this was called “stalking” and was, like, illegal.

Fortunately, Tina Connolly is also a very talented writer. And reading her novels (I’ve discovered) is exactly like hanging out with the author at a great party. The same sparkling wit, the same penetrating intelligence. Except, unlike at parties, I can pause the conversation to look up words without looking stupid.

Tina’s first novel Ironskin was an historical fantasy set in an alternate version of early 1900s England, and was nominated for a Nebula Award last year. The sequel Copperhead has finally arrived, and it looks just as delightful as the first volume.

Helen Huntingdon is beautiful — so beautiful she has to wear an iron mask.

Six months ago her sister Jane uncovered a fey plot to take over the city. Too late for Helen, who opted for fey beauty in her face — and now has to cover her face with iron so she won’t be taken over, her personality erased by the bodiless fey.

Not that Helen would mind that some days. Stuck in a marriage with the wealthy and controlling Alistair, she lives at the edges of her life, secretly helping Jane remove the dangerous fey beauty from the wealthy society women who paid for it. But when the chancy procedure turns deadly, Jane goes missing — and is implicated in a murder.

Meanwhile, Alistair’s influential clique Copperhead — whose emblem is the poisonous copperhead hydra — is out to restore humans to their “rightful” place, even to the point of destroying the dwarvven who have always been allies.

Helen is determined to find her missing sister, as well as continue the good fight against the fey. But when that pits her against her own husband — and when she meets an enigmatic young revolutionary — she’s pushed to discover how far she’ll bend society’s rules to do what’s right. It may be more than her beauty at stake. It may be her honor… and her heart.

Copperhead was published by Tor Books on October 15th. It is 318 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover, and $11.99 for the digital edition.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

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Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs-smallThe top article on the Black Gate blog last month was our look at Mike Resnick and Robert Garcia’s new anthology Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (A few weeks later Robert Garcia wrote his first Saturday blog post for us, a fond look back at The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay. Do we bring the heavy hitters, or what?)

Second on the list was E.E. Knight’s open letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, a character on The Big Bang Theory, on her controversial theory that Indiana Jones had no impact on the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fight the good fight, Eric.

Third was Jon Sprunk’s look at his favorite fantasy films, followed by his article on the use of elves in fantasy lit. Way to hog the list, Jon. Rounding out the Top Five was James Maliszewski’s “Appendix T,” an attempt to craft a hypothetical Appendix N for the great Traveller RPG, listing roughly 20 works of classic science fiction that clearly influenced the game’s creators.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in October were:

  1. New Treasures: Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs
  2. An Open Letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, Ph.D
  3. My Favorite Fantasy Movies
  4. To Elf or not to Elf: Races in Fantasy Lit
  5. Appendix T
  6. Richard Kadrey Talks with Black Gate about Dead Set
  7. In Defense of Fantasy Heroes
  8. Campbell’s Reheated Mythopoetic Soup
  9. Remembering Dave
  10. How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?

     

    11. …

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New Treasures: The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley

New Treasures: The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley

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The Edinburgh Dead-smallThe first time I encountered Brian Ruckley, he impressed me greatly. It was with his long story “Beyond the Reach of His Gods,” in Jason Waltz’s groundbreaking anthology Rage of the Behemoth. Since then, he’s proved that wasn’t a fluke with The Godless World trilogy (Winterbirth, Bloodheir, and Fall of Thanes), a satisfying rich heroic fantasy of an apocalyptic war in a godless winter landscape.

But it was his dark fantasy set in the Scottish capital that really grabbed my attention. A gothic tale of devilry and detective work, it looks like it could be a breakout success for this heroic fantasy writer.

Edinburgh: 1828. In the starkly-lit operating theaters of the city, grisly experiments are being carried out on corpses in the name of medical science. But elsewhere, there are those experimenting with more sinister forces.

Amongst the crowded, sprawling tenements of the labyrinthine Old Town, a body is found, its neck torn to pieces. Charged with investigating the murder is Adam Quire, Officer of the newly-formed Edinburgh Police. The trail will lead him into the deepest reaches of the city’s criminal underclass, and to the highest echelons of the filthy rich.

Soon Quire will discover that a darkness is crawling through this city of enlightenment — and no one is safe from its corruption.

The Edinburgh Dead is a powerful fusion of gothic horror, history, and the fantastical.

The Edinburgh Dead was published by Orbit on August 17, 2011. It is 354 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

“This is the Real Thing for S&S Fans”: Charles R. Rutledge on “Vestments of Pestilence”

“This is the Real Thing for S&S Fans”: Charles R. Rutledge on “Vestments of Pestilence”

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river-thru-dark-277Novelist and columnist Charles R. Rutledge weighed in on John C. Hocking’s newest Archivist tale last month, saying:

Do you like sword and sorcery? The real stuff, I mean, where sorcery is something dark and dangerous and people get hurt when they fight with sharp edged weapons? Something that’s a little exotic and makes you think of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, but still is very much its own thing? Then boy have I got a story for you.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a short story by John C. Hocking… There are some mystery elements, some humor, a lot of action, and considerable sorcery, all told in a smooth first person voice that has echoes of hard boiled heroes like Marlowe and Spade, but not the overblown snark that seems to be so popular in current urban fantasy…

The feel of the story is nice and dark but the story telling itself is very modern. I was aware as I read that the pace and the suspense were slowly being ratcheted up until I was racing through the last couple of scenes to see how things turned out. There’s also some marvelous characterization in the tale, and trust me, in a story of this length, that’s a hard thing to do… This is the real thing for S&S fans.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is the second Archivist tale we’ve published, following “A River Through Darkness and Light,” in Black Gate 15, which SF Site called “a strong blend of the old sword and sorcery action and mood, but with modern attention to character development.”

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by David C. Smith, David Evan Harris, Janet Morris and Chris Morris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Vestments of Pestilence” was published here September 29. It is a complete 10,000-word novelette of sword & sorcery. Read the complete story here.

Read Charles’s complete review on his blog Singular Points. Art for “A River Through Darkness and Light” by Storn Cook.

The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in October

The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in October

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The Black Fire Concerto-smallOur exclusive excerpt from Mike Allen’s dark fantasy novel The Black Fire Concerto was our most popular work of fiction in October, its first month at the top of the charts. John R. Fultz called it “A post-apocalyptic melody played on strings of Terror and Sorcery,” and apparently word is getting around.

Joe Bonadonna’s “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” in the number 2 slot, has been steadily creeping up the charts since we posted it last December. It is without a doubt the most consistently popular work of fiction we have ever published.

Last month’s chart topper, Dave Gross’ Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos, came in third, an entirely respectable showing; and John C. Hocking’s new story “Vestments of Pestilence” broke into the Top Ten for the first time, coming in 4th. Rounding out the Top Five was E.E. Knight’s perennial favorite “The Terror in the Vale,” first published in January.

Also making the list were exciting stories by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, David Evan Harris, Martha Wells, Peadar Ó Guilín, David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna, David C. Smith, Howard Andrew Jones, Michael Shea, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Mark Rigney, Jamie McEwan, Aaron Bradford Starr, Alex Kreis, and Ryan Harvey.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. For the past year we’ve presented an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry every week, all completely free. Here are the Top Twenty most-read stories in October:

  1. An excerpt from The Black Fire Concerto, by Mike Allen
  2. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
  3. An excerpt from Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos, by Dave Gross
  4. “Vestments of Pestilence,” by John C. Hocking
  5. “The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
  6. “The Sacred Band” by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
  7. “The Gentle Sleeper” by David Evan Harris
  8. An excerpt from Pathfinder Tales: Queen of Thorns, by Dave Gross
  9. The Death of the Necromancer, a complete novel by Martha Wells
  10. “The Dowry,” by Peadar Ó Guilín

     

    11. …

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Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

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Pirates and Plunder box-smallBack in the early 80s, publishers were still exploring the boundless possibilities of role playing.

It occurred to more than one designer that sword & sorcery — the tiny genre Gygax and Arneson had chosen to build their fabulously successful Dungeons & Dragons upon — was a niche market at best, with very limited widespread appeal.

Yet if D&D had managed to come so far with source material of such limited public familiarity, what might a game with much broader appeal accomplish?

And so the early 80s was a time when we had an astounding array of new role playing games promoted by a host of hopeful publishers, in a wide range of genres — science fiction, action, spy thrillers, mystery, superhero, and many others. There were gangster games (Gangbusters), Arthurian games (Pendragon), games based on popular action films (Indiana Jones, James Bond), and westerns (Boot Hill). There were horror games (Chill, Beyond the Supernatural), post-apocalyptic survival games (Twilight 2000, Gamma World), games based on prime time soap operas (SPI’s infamous Dallas), and bestsellers like Richard Adams’ Watership Down (Bunnies & Burrows).

Virtually all of them failed. Turns out that D&D didn’t succeed in spite of the fact that it drew inspiration from the classic heroic fantasy listed in the famous Appendix N, but in fact because of it. Sword & sorcery offered the kind of larger-than-life heroes players wanted to play — and more importantly, no other genre came so readily pre-packaged with a catalog of terrific opponents, from orcs to vampires to dragons.

But while most of those games are long forgotten today, a handful are still fondly remembered. Pirates and Plunder, a role playing game set in the golden age of piracy, is one of the latter. At least, it’s fondly remembered by me.

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Last Chance to Win a Copy of Howard Andrew Jones’ Stalking the Beast

Last Chance to Win a Copy of Howard Andrew Jones’ Stalking the Beast

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Pathfinder Tales Stalking the Beast-smallTwo weeks ago, we announced a contest to win one of five copies of Stalking the Beast, compliments of Paizo Publishing.

In the weeks since the book’s release, Howard has been interviewed by Suvudu, released a sample chapter from the book, and posted the first two parts of his new story “Bells For the Dead,” featuring the gunslinging bounty hunter Lisette from Stalking the Beast, at Paizo.com.

Man. I need a full-time staff just to keep up with the guy.

How do you win one of those sweet giveaway copies? Easy — just tell us about your favorite sword & sorcery tale — novel or short story. Send us a one-paragraph review telling us what makes it so special, and be sure to include the author and (if it’s a short story) where you read it.

We’ll publish the best responses here on the blog and randomly draw five names from all qualifying entries. Those five winners will each receive a copy of Stalking the Beast, compliments of Paizo Publishing.

To enter our contest, just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Stalking the Beast,” and your one-paragraph entry, before December 1, 2013.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Terms and conditions subject to change as our lawyers sober up and get back to us. Not valid where prohibited by law, or outside the US and Canada.

Good luck!