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New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

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Dead Boys Michael PenkasI first met Michael Penkas in 2010 at the Top Shelf Open Mic in Palatine, Illinois, a friendly local reading event hosted by C.S.E. Cooney.

The Top Shelf Open Mic has attracted some extraordinary talent over the years. Gene Wolfe read chapters of his upcoming novel The Land Across, Joe Bonnadonna shared early drafts of Waters of Darkness, David C. Smith read from his supernatural thriller Call of Shadows, and of course C.S.E. Cooney regularly entertained us with boundless energy, reading from The Big Ba-Ha, Jack o’ the Hills, and other acclaimed publications.

But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Michael Penkas has become the unexpected true star of our local reading group. His creepy and electrifying short stories have mesmerized us month after month.

Michael has an uncanny ability to pry open your heart with sparkling prose, humor, and warm and genuine characters… and then drive a cold spike through it with relentless and diabolical twists. All with some of the most compact and economical prose I have ever encountered.

Michael has published over a dozen stories since 2007. While he’s best known for his extremely effective horror and dark fantasy, he’s equally at home with mystery, science fiction, and gonzo humor — as his upcoming story for Black Gate illustrates. “The Worst Was Yet to Come,” a chilling retelling of Moses’s unexpected conversation with God immediately after the Ten Plagues of Egypt, will appear here this Sunday. It’s sure to win him many more fans, or possibly get him strung up — or both.

Michael has just released his first — and long awaited — collection, assembling four of his earliest published stories. It’s a delightful sampling of some of the best work of a fast-rising dark fantasy and horror author.

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Read “Martyr’s Gem,” a new Novella from C.S.E. Cooney, at GigaNotoSaurus

Read “Martyr’s Gem,” a new Novella from C.S.E. Cooney, at GigaNotoSaurus

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GigaNotoSaurus logoIt seems so long ago now that our first website editor, the ridiculously gifted C.S.E. Cooney, packed up her bags and headed East to Rhode Island. There she found a small but comfy aerie to do her writing, and began turning out ridiculously wonderful short stories.

We’ve published a few here. Her novella “Godmother Lizard,” which Tangent Online called “a delightful fantasy… [it] entranced me from the beginning,” appeared here in November, and we published the sequel “Life on the Sun” — which Tangent called “bold and powerful… this one captured a piece of my soul. Brilliant” — on February 10.

But even Black Gate isn’t big enough to contain C.S.E. Cooney’s talent, and on May 1st her 19,000-word novella “Martyr’s Gem” was published online at GigaNotoSaurus. Here’s a taste from the intro, just to let you know what you’re in for:

“They remember the days before the Nine Cities drowned and the Nine Islands with them. Before our people forsook us to live below the waters, and we were stranded here on the Last Isle. Before we changed our name to Glennemgarra, the Unchosen.” Sharrar sighed. “In those days, names were more than mere proxy for, Hey, you!”

“So, Hyrryai means, Hey, you, Gleamy?”

“You have no soul, Shursta.”

“Nugget, when your inner poet is ascendant, you have more than enough soul for both of us. If the whitecaps of your whimsy rise any higher, we’ll have a second Drowning at hand, make no mistake.”

GigaNotoSaurus is a webzine edited by Ann Leckie. It publishes one longish fantasy or science fiction story every month, including the recent Nebula nominees “All the Flavors” by Ken Liu and “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers” by Katherine Sparrow.

Settle in to your favorite reading place, turn off your phone, and read “Martyr’s Gem” here.

Before the Onslaught of the Barbarians: Tangent Online on “Niola’s Last Stand”

Before the Onslaught of the Barbarians: Tangent Online on “Niola’s Last Stand”

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Vera NazarianDave Truesdale at Tangent Online reviews Vera Nazarian’s adventure fantasy tale, published here on May 12:

Niola, a young woman, and her grandmother have packed their meager belongings and are ready to leave their city of Menathis, for the evil army of the Varoh is nearly at the gates, and the entire city is emptying itself before the onslaught of the barbarians. At the last minute, however, Niola’s lame Gran decides she must seek the decaying temple of the goddess Rohatat and pray one last time to the goddess.

While Niola believes this a foolish waste of time, she nevertheless honors her promise to wait for her grandmother, not moving beyond the doorway of their cramped dwelling on one of the city streets. During the cold, lonely wait, a series of gods — wispy wraiths — appear one after the other to her, each presenting her with, in turn, a sword, a shield, and a spear, exhorting her to defend the city at all costs.

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose (set in the same ancient world universe as “Niola’s Last Stand”) in 2002, followed by epic fantasy Lords of Rainbow in 2003. Her recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella, The Duke in His Castle, and Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret.

Read Dave’s complete review here. The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Niola’s Last Stand” is a complete 7,000-word adventure fantasy tale. It is offered at no cost. Read the complete story here.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Niola’s Last Stand” by Vera Nazarian

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Niola’s Last Stand” by Vera Nazarian

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Vera NazarianA young woman waits helplessly in the streets for her grandmother as her city falls around her.

There was almost no one left in the streets now. The last to leave were the city militia forces and army units. As the sunset gave way to night, darkness-cloaked foot soldiers marched past Niola.

One of the unit captains paused “Why are you still here?” he said. “Don’t wait too long, girl. We are the last division, and as we leave this city you will be all alone.” Niola nodded, and thanked him in a parched whisper.

Night came, and with it came silence.

And suddenly it hit her, the terror.

Niola was all alone. The monolithic city lay around her like a blanket of black wool; no light, no respite. The wind swept alone in the silence, slithering and reverberating against stone and thatch and mud clay brick and empty marble, whistling in the structures and making the tree leaves whisper and crinkle… If anyone else was left here it was only the most criminal-minded, the looters, the infirm, the mad…

The ghosts.

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose (set in the same ancient world universe as this story) in 2002, followed by epic fantasy Lords of Rainbow in 2003. Her novella, The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass, made the 2005 Locus Recommended Reading List. Her debut collection, Salt of the Air, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Her recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella, The Duke in His Castle, and Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Niola’s Last Stand” is a complete 7,000-word tale of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

The Unexpected Delights of Renner and Quist

The Unexpected Delights of Renner and Quist

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skatesSkate coverThis review wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m up in the Albian wastes in Alberta for my day job and the review that was scheduled to run this week fell through. John O’Neill came to my rescue with a short ebook just published by Samhain Publishing. The book is called The Skates and it is part of the series of Renner and Quist adventures written by Mark Rigney.

I’ll be honest up front in stating I had not heard of the publisher, author, or series before this time, although I’ve since realized Mr. Rigney is a fellow Black Gate blogger with several short stories to his credit already published by the online magazine. My main relief was that John allowed me to get a review done without missing a week and the ebook was short enough to read through in barely an hour.

Then I read the damn thing and my perception changed instantly.

I curse simply because I envy Rigney for his talents. This wasn’t a fun, enjoyable read so much as it was a story I instantly loved. I’m sure the folks at Samhain Publishing are nice people, but why hasn’t Rigney’s fiction been noticed by editors at major publishing houses? Yes, it is that good. I’m fairly familiar with the New Pulp world and Rigney can write circles around most of us as he seamlessly blurs the lines between genres and switches voice from one first person narrator to the other.

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Sean T. M. Stiennon Reviews Child of Fire

Sean T. M. Stiennon Reviews Child of Fire

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Child of FireChild of Fire
Harry Connolly
Del Rey (357 pages, mass market first edition September 2009, $7.99)

When we first meet Ray Lily, he’s in unpleasant circumstances. He’s less than 48 hours out of prison, driving a junker van through a Seattle rainstorm, and serving as chauffer to a boss who a.) is a powerful sorcerer, b.) wants to see him dead at the first possible opportunity, and c.) is paying him a wage of zero dollars per hour. Ten minutes after we meet him, he’s watched a boy die in front of his parents by exploding into sorcerous flame and melting into a swarm of silver worms. And then he’s watched the boy’s parents immediately forget they ever had a son, and drive away only vaguely confused.

It only goes downhill from there.

Child of Fire is a dark book. Sometimes shockingly, disturbingly dark, as is apparent right from the opening. That said, it’s also hugely entertaining, with noir-styled prose, a likeable narrator, and one of the most imaginative and horrifying monstrous adversaries I’ve ever encountered in fiction of any medium.

Our hero, Ray Lily, narrates the book in first person, and he bears comparison to hardboiled heroes like Philip Marlowe and Archie Goodwin, as well as the fantasy genre’s own Harry Dresden. He’s not quite as, well, heroic as Harry, though.  He’s a criminal, recently out of a prison sentence that came at the tail end of a car-jacking career in L.A. county, and he still has a tendency to sort everyone he meets into two categories: victim and dominant.

But mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of his childhood friend have pulled him into the shadowy world of the Twenty Palaces, a league of sorcerers formed to protect the secrets of magic from outsiders and to hunt down the supernatural entities known only as “predators.” These are hungry creatures from an extra-dimensional world called the Empty Spaces, who exist in a constant state of hunger. When summoned to our world, they can offer terrible power in return for a chance to sate that hunger on humans.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Devotion” by Robert Rhodes

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Devotion” by Robert Rhodes

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Robert Rhodes-smallA resourceful swordsman find himself very far from home indeed, caught up in a sorcerous trap with a surprising twist.

Piran’s blood ran cold, and his vision dimmed. But the numbness passed like a chilling wave, and he cut down through the witch’s cloak. She screamed and crumpled to the ground.

On the bloodstained leaves of the forest, she seemed pitiful. A sunken cheek bore a sinuous brand, marking her not as a spy but as the slave — escaped? — of a lich-lord in the cruel South. Something glistened beside her gnarled fingers — an arc of silvery liquid spilling from a milkglass phial.

Piran closed his eyes and gave thanks. He’d struck before she finished her devilry. But only just, for his muscles ached with a strange weariness.

“She’s dead,” he said over his shoulder to Amara and Ferris. He grinned and reached for the phial.

Until he realized he was alone.

Robert Rhodes has appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and other markets. He was the author of the “20 Heroes in 2010” series at FantasyLiterature.com, and his essay “Servants of the Secret Fire: Why Fantasy & Science Fiction Matter” won second-place in Pyr’s fifth anniversary contest. Most recently, his story “The Dead Travel Silently” won first-place in the forthcoming Stealth: Challenge anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. He is an attorney who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and prosecutes child and elder abuse cases.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Devotion” is a complete 5,000-word tale of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

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Waters of DarknessI think we’ve finally deciphered what it is that Black Gate readers truly want: great fantasy novels, with lots of action and an enchanting cast of characters.

And pirates.

That would certainly explain how the brief announcement of David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna’s first collaboration, Waters of Darkness, vaulted to the top of our traffic stats and stayed there for the entire month of March — edging out Emily Mah’s Ellen Datlow interview, Sean McLachlan’s examination of one of the greatest miniature battles of history, Violette Malan’s look at swearing in fantasy, and Matha Well’s thoughtful look at how her novel The Clouds Roads fits the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre.

There are plenty of surprises — and lots of great reading — in the Top 50 Black Gate posts in March. The complete list follows. Enjoy — and stay tuned for more posts about pirates. We know a good thing when we see one.

  1. Damnation Books releases Waters of Darkness by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna
  2. Ellen Datlow on Hating one of my Questions…
  3. The Battle of the Three Kings, 1578, in Miniature
  4. My Characters Don’t give a Damn
  5. How well does The Cloud Roads fit as Sword and Sorcery?
  6. Sorry, can you say that again?
  7. Adventure on Film: Why Hollywood gets it Wrong
  8. Weird of Oz considers Postbuffyism
  9. On the one year Anniversary of John Carter, Let’s Look Forward to a New Tarzan Movie
  10. The battle of Tondibi, 1591, in Miniature

     

    11. …

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Assault and Battery” by Jason E. Thummel

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Assault and Battery” by Jason E. Thummel

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Jason E. Thummel 2Gunnerman Clap, the hero of “The Gunnerman,” returns in a tale of a daring night assault on a cliffside fortress:

Up they climbed, gusted by winds determined to knock them from their perch on the rock. Clap kept his mermaid’s tooth talisman close as he kept reminding Shullum that he was a sailor true, that it wasn’t his fault he was on land, that he really wished to return to the sea, to the ship, and that any protection the Great God of the Deep could lend would be much appreciated.

Ahead they could make out the flickering flame of a storm lantern, dimly illuminating a doorway that looked little protected by the overhang of a small roof. The same could be said of the drenched rat of a guard, huddled up in oiled skins with hat brim pulled to cover his face. Illsby gestured to several marines.

“Soon I be sending the souls I promised you, Great Shullum.” Clap tucked his talisman under his shirt and put a calloused hand on the worn hilt of his cutlass.

The guard’s head jerked up as the marines leapt into the small sphere of light and one clobbered the senses from him. One marine quickly searched the downed man as the other waved them forward; Clap and the rest jogged behind Illsby to crowd under the scant cover of the overhang.

The marines unpacked their rifles and affixed bayonets. The long lengths of steel looked thin and fragile to Clap, and he was thankful for the seaman’s sword that he carried. The buckler would have been nice, but he’d lost that when the boat went down. “Not that I’m in any hurry to be reunited,” he whispered.

Jason’s first story for us was “The Duelist,” published as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction line on September 30th, 2012. His work has also appeared in Flashing Swords magazine, Rage of the Behemoth, Magic and Mechanica, and other venues. Some of his sword & sorcery and heroic fantasy is collected in In Savage Lands and The Harsh Suns, and the first two novels chronicling the supernatural adventures of occult detective Lance Chambers, The Spear of Destiny and Cult of Death, are now available.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Assault and Battery” is a complete 5,200-word sword & sorcery tale offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in March

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in March

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bones-of-the-old-onesNovel excerpts were the top draw last month, as Howard Andrew Jones held the top spot for a third month in a row with tantalizing slice of sword-and-sorcery goodness from The Bones of the Old Ones, followed closely by The Waters of Darkness, the new supernatural pirate novel from from David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna. And Vaughn Heppner’s novel Star Soldier was not much further down the list.

Still, short fiction proved plenty popular, with stories by Aaron Bradford Starr, Joe Bonadonna, David Evan Harris, Judith Berman, E.E. Knight, Gregory Bierly, John R. Fultz, Harry Connolly and Vaughn Heppner filling out the Top 12.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. Every week, we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free.

Here are the Top Twelve most read stories in March, for your enjoyment:

  1. An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  2. An excerpt from The Waters of Darkness, by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna
  3. “The Sealord’s Successor,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
  4. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
  5. “Seeker of Fortune,” by David Evan Harris
  6. “The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
  7. “The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
  8. “A Princess of Jadh,” by Gregory Bierly
  9. “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” by John R. Fultz
  10. “The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
  11. An excerpt from Star Soldier,” by Vaughn Heppner
  12. “The Pit Slave,” by Vaughn Heppner

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here. The most popular Black Gate fiction from February is here.

We’ve got plenty more fiction in the coming months, so stay tuned!