BG Staff – Page 64

Rogue Blades Entertainment Reveals the Secrets of Writing Fantasy Heroes

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

The distinguished Mr. Jason M. Waltz, occasional Black Gate contributor and stalwart road-trip companion, is rumored to be fairly highly placed in the global publishing mega-consortium that is Rogue Blades Entertainment. So when he leaked word to us of an impending major release this week, we dropped everything to check it out.

RBE is no stranger to heroic fantasy. For the past few years they’ve been at the very forefront of the genre, with such groundbreaking anthologies as Return of the Sword, Rage of the Behemoth, Demons, and others. Writing Fantasy Heroes looks like their most ambitious release yet — a must-have book for readers and aspiring writers alike.

Fantasy heroes endure. They are embedded in our cultural fabric, dwarfing other literary figures and the mere men and women of history. Achilles and Odysseus, Gilgamesh and Beowulf. King Arthur and Robin Hood, Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes, Conan and Luke Skywalker. They dominate our legends, and tower over popular culture. The stories we tell each other begin and end with fantasy heroes, and the 21st Century is as thoroughly captivated with them as ever. From Batman to Gandalf, Harry Potter to Tyrion Lannister, the heroes of fantasy speak to — and for — whole generations. But what makes a fantasy hero? How do the best writers create them, and bring them to life on the page? In Writing Fantasy Heroes some of the most successful fantasy writers of our time-including Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson, Janet Morris, Cecelia Holland, Orson Scott Card, and Glen Cook-pull back the curtain to reveal the secrets of creating heroes that live and breathe, and steal readers’ hearts. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or simply a reader who loves great fantasy and strong characters, this book is for you.

Writing Fantasy Heroes is edited by Jason M. Waltz, with a forward by Steven Erikson. It was published by Rogue Blades Entertainment and is available from Amazon.com and other fine distributors for $14.99 in trade paperback. The terrific wrap-around cover is by Dleoblack (click on the image for a bigger version). As soon as we receive a copy in house, we’ll report back with full details.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Sealord’s Successor,” Part I, by Aaron Bradford Starr

Sunday, March 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Gallery Hunters Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh, last seen in “The Tea-Maker’s Task” (published here on December 30th) and “The Daughter’s Dowry” (October 14), find themselves drawn into a deadly conspiracy involving a powerful kingdom, ancient secrets… and a very peculiar painting.

The group gathered around it. There were few people present. Hallmaster Terring, whom Gloren, Yr Neh and I secretly knew to be an Eidnine Knight and possible successor, was present, as was Garder Jho and his houseboy, Peppin. In addition, there were ten courtiers of various rank.

Terring stood slightly behind the painting. He swept the drape aside.

Masterfully done, the painting showed little but a small patch of sun-washed beach. In the sand lay a cut stone of shocking red. The flat, dark expanse of beach was marred only by rows of runes drawn in the wet sand.

It was instantly mysterious, this image. Who had drawn these symbols? What did they mean? The stark image would have been interesting enough. But as we stared, the painting moved. A sheet of water swept over the sand… When it was done the jewel lay in a new place, and new runes again covered the image, cut into the sand.

Terring spoke from where he stood just beyond the painting. “Is this indeed the Succession Painting of the Etherbis?”

They all nodded, muttering agreement.

Of “The Daughter’s Dowry,” Tangent Online said, “A story such as this deserves a world of its own and more adventures from its hero,” and it called “The Tea-Maker’s Task” “an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek fantasy… I wanted more.” We’re more than happy to oblige with this third exciting installment of the adventures of Gallery Hunter Gloren and his cat companion, Yr Neh.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

“The Sealord’s Successor” is a complete 35,000-word novella of fantasy mystery presented in two parts, with original art by Aaron Bradford Starr. Part II will be presented next week; both parts are offered at no cost.

Read Part I here.

Damnation Books Releases Waters of Darkness by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna

Sunday, March 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

We’re very pleased to note the March 1 release date of a new novel by two Black Gate contributors, David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna, which they describe as “the best supernatural pirate dark fantasy… EVER.” We asked Dave about the book’s genesis, and here’s what he told us:

This story is based on a ms. I wrote in 1978 that was to be a sequel to The Witch of the Indies, my first published novel, based on Robert E. Howard’s Black Vulmea character… I wrote a 50,000-word first draft in the spring of 1978 (before Witch was published) that I filed away for decades. Despite my naive enthusiasm (at the age of 24!) that Zebra would certainly want a sequel, as we know, The Witch of the Indies sank fast and has pretty much been forgotten. But! Who doesn’t love a pirate story? Joe asked to see that old, yellowing (literally) draft and went to work on it. So we wound up collaborating — at a distance of 35 years, in a way — and have written what we both think is a terrific pulp-style pirate dark fantasy.

Joe took my rough draft, added at least 10,000 words to it, recrafted who knows how many thousands more, and brought in new characters, new developments… He went to town and really brought the thing to life.

David and Joe’s last collaboration for us was The Big Barbarian Theory, one of the most popular articles on the Black Gate blog last year. We featured David’s The Fall of the First World in December, and posted the complete text of Joe’s Dorgo the Dowser novella “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” last Sunday.

Waters of Darkness was published by Damnation Books on March 1, 2013. It is 60,000 words and currently available in Kindle format for $5.95. The wonderful cover is by Dawne Dominique. More details at the website.

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in January

Friday, March 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

We broke another traffic record in January. Don’t you people have better things to do? Seriously, we’re glad you’re here, but you’re starting to look a bit pale. Think about taking your laptop out to the patio maybe, get some sun.

January was a busy time for us. Emily Mah trumpeted an ultimately successful Kickstarter campaign for the Chizine horror anthology Fearful Symmetries, Scott Taylor talked about selling sex, we took a peek at the paperback release of Throne of the Crescent Moon, Emily Mah (again!) interviewed Ian Tregillis, and Ryan Harvey cracked the binding on Edgar Rice Burroughs The Mucker.

And that’s just the Top Five. What follows is the complete list of the Top 50 posts at the Black Gate blog in January. Enjoy — and remember to bundle up, if you’re enjoying them from the patio.

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in January

Thursday, February 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

bones-of-the-old-ones January marked the fourth straight month that we’ve been bringing you the best in adventure fantasy through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line. Every week we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free.

The response has been very gratifying, and Fiction has quickly become one of the most popular sections of the blog. Here are the Top Twelve most read stories in January, in case you missed them:

An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
“The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
“A Princess of Jadh,” by Gregory Bierly
“When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” by John R. Fultz
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
“The Gunnerman,” by Jason E. Thummel
“The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
An Excerpt from Seven Kings, by John R. Fultz
“The Tea-Maker’s Task,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
“The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
“The Daughter’s Dowry,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
“The Trade,” by Mark Rigney

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

Who is the Daughter of Fu Manchu?

Monday, February 25, 2013 Joe Bonadonna Comments 1 comment

The Destiny of Fu Manchu
By William Patrick Maynard
Black Coat Press (264 pages, $20.95 in trade paperback, April 2012)
A review by Joe Bonadonna

So who is the daughter of the infamous, the mysterious, the brilliant Fu Manchu? Is it the exquisite Koreani? The exotic Fah lo Suee? The lovely Helga Graumann? Who or what is the destiny of Fu Manchu? And who is “Khunum-Khufu,” and why is he in control of the Si-Fan?

The clues are there, the disguises are many, and the deception is all part of the fun in William Patrick Maynard’s sequel to his wonderful, The Terror of Fu Manchu.

I’ve become a fan of Maynard’s Fu Manchu. More importantly, I’m a fan of William Patrick Maynard. (His short story, “Tulsa Blackie’s Last Dive,” is one of the highlights of The Ruby Files, published by Airship27 Productions.) Now, in The Destiny of Fu Manchu, Bill picks up the story years after the events of his first novel, and this time he ups the ante in a tale that is far more complex and insidious than the good doctor’s previous adventure. I’ll do my best to give you a rundown without, hopefully, spoiling any of the fun.

The story opens with a prologue written by good old Petrie himself, the hero/narrator of the aforementioned The Terror of Fu Manchu. This time, however, Petrie has been abducted by Khunum-Khufu and a new faction of the Si-Fan, which plays back to the theft of the Seal of Solomon and the events related in the previous novel.

…

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna

Sunday, February 24, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

We first posted Joe Bonadonna’s sword and sorcery novelette “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” in December 2011, and it has proven to be one of our most popular online stories. We’re proud to re-present it here as part of the new Black Gate Online Fiction library.

Long before the legendary cities of Cush and Erusabad were destroyed by war, the graveyard was old. No one knew how old the graveyard truly was, for the carvings on its headstones and markers had been long worn away by the hands of time, wind, and weather. The cemetery crouched with its dead in a hidden vale in the dark heart of Khanya-Toth, land of shadows, black magic, and creatures of the night.

A tall, slim woman sat on the opposite side of the fire, close to the entrance to her bamboo hut. She wore a black robe, her face partially hidden within its hood.

“You’ve come a long way from Valdar to see me,” she said. Her name was Zomandra Chuvai, and she was a witch, one of the Kha Jitah. She lived alone in that ancient graveyard, with only ghosts and memories to keep her company.

“We’re the Blunker boys,” Ollo said. He was all skin and bone, with a sickly yellow pallor.

“I’m well aware of who you are,” Zomandra said. “Shall we talk business?”

“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” is part of Joe’s first published swords and sorcery collection, Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser. Read more about Mad Shadows in “Dorgo the Dowser and Me,” posted on the Black Gate website here.

“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” is a complete 15,000-word novelette of weird fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

“Reminiscent of the Old Sword & Sorcery Classics”: Tangent Online on “The Find” by Mark Rigney

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Louis West at Tangent Online reviews “The Find,” Part II of The Tales of Gemen, published here on Sunday, February 17th:

In Mark Rigney’s “The Find” we meet the young Gemen and learn his terrible secret: at age ten, Gemen followed his sister through an arcane portal and lost everything – sister, family, seven years of life and his entire world line. For decades he has crisscrossed this world, recovering the scattered portal stones to rebuild the gateway and return home…

Gemen… acquires Velori, sharp-tongued warrior priestess of Dominion, from the Courtyard of Trials where she deigns to kill her four attackers because her hidden weavers (giant spider friends) counseled “mercy.” The massive, bear-like Dorvic joins the pair by happenstance, an encounter that leads to a fight for their lives against several dozen Corvaen soldiers…

An enjoyable, often boisterous tale, reminiscent of the old sword & sorcery classics. I can’t wait to see what fate awaits Gemen. A must read.

“The Find” is the sequel to “The Trade,” Part I of The Tales of Gemen the Antiques Dealer, which Tangent Online called a “Marvelous tale. Can’t wait for the next part.”

Read Louis West’s review at Tangent Online, and read “The Find,” a 14,000-word novelette of weird fantasy, completely free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by C.S.E. Cooney, Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Gregory Bierly, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

Echoes of the Goddess: Schweitzer’s Newest Classic

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 John R. Fultz Comments 4 comments

Imagine a golden treasure chest filled to overflowing with rare and sparkling jewels. Now imagine the literary equivalent of that bounty: The jewels are visions of a fantastic world filled with dark magic, dead gods, and exotic cultures.

The latest book from Darrell Schweitzer is a treasury of obscure tales woven into a single, epic tapestry of high fantasy. Echoes of the Goddess collects eleven stories set in the same weird world as Schweitzer’s second novel The Shattered Goddess (1982). However, Echoes is not a sequel to Shattered. Instead it serves as a prequel, and a fine introduction to both the world of Goddess and the superb fantasies of Darrell Schweitzer.

Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder From the End of Time was released by Wildside Press in February 2013, but it was literally decades in the making. All of these stories were written between the years 1979 and 1985. Wildside describes the book: “This is an Earth of the far future, when the planet has declined into chaos, and darkness looms at the end of human history. Here you’ll meet… a wizard’s shadow attempting to become a man; two sorcerers grotesquely transformed by their fratricidal hatred; a musician who becomes the lord of death; a boy-priest consumed by divine visions; and a witch who loves a god, and many others. Here’s strangeness, wonder, and terror in the tradition of Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique or Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth.”

Nobody works in the “story cycle” tradition quite as well as Schweitzer does. While most of today’s writers focus on cranking out novels, he prefers the short story form and is one of the widely acknowledged masters of the form. Some of his previous story cycles have been collected as the books We Are All Legends and The Book of Sekenre. Yet the stories in Echoes of the Goddess represent the author in the formative stages of his career, when his imagination was raw and unbounded. This was years before he would go on to win a World Fantasy Award for co-editing Weird Tales with the late George Scithers, and well in advance of his “To Become a Sorcerer” novella being nominated for that same prestigious award.

…

New Treasures: Low Town by Daniel Polansky

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

One of our most popular articles in 2012 was Matthew David Surridge’s brilliant “The Enjoyment of Fantasy: Open Letters to Adam Gopnik, Mur Lafferty, and John C. Wright,” the latter part of which he spends taking Wright to task for some of his criticisms of Low Town. Matthew’s points are many and varied and I’m not going to summarize them here. I will admit, however, that after reading his article, my first reaction was, “What the heck is Low Town? It sounds kinda cool.”

A little investigation revealed that Low Town is Daniel Polansky’s debut novel. Here’s the description:

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops… and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town.

In the forgotten back alleys of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, sits Low Town. Here the Warden — forgotten war hero and independent drug dealer — protects his turf. However, the Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his discovery of a murdered child down a dead-end street… setting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House — the secret police — he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn’t get investigated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psychotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.

I’m intrigued. And while both Matthew and Wright seem to argue that Polansky doesn’t necessarily understand fantasy, it seems to me he’s grasped the basics just fine: he’s already written a sequel, Tomorrow the Killing, published in October 2012. Our man Myke Cole posted the following mini-review on Goodreads:

Polansky does it again. As with Mark Lawrence with King of Thorns, he shows progression as a storyteller with an even more twisted plot, more compelling and sympathetic character voice and more engaging setting.

Anybody who plugs Mark Lawrence in a one-sentence review has my immediate confidence. I purchased a copy of Low Town last month, and hope to check it out soon.

Low Town was published by Anchor Books in August, 2012. It is 341 pages in trade paperback, priced at $15 ($11.99 for the digital edition).

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