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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel

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jason-e-thummelA master swordsman finds himself caught in a web of deceit and intrigue in Jason E. Thummel’s fast-paced tale of action in a violent city.

Androi Karpelov watched with detached calm the youngster’s cool and confident demeanor slowly erode, and felt a certain amount of empathy. But not much.

“Do you yield, Sir, and admit that the insult which your patron directed at my liege was incorrect and entirely without merit?” It was a formulaic question which Androi had asked times beyond count.

“Sir?” his opponent wheezed, keeping up a respectable guard despite the obvious signs of fatigue. “I fear I cannot. It is to the death.”

“Ah, then… ” Androi paused. “I suppose your last lesson will be that it is foolish indeed to undertake such a contract when you will be matched against your superior. Shall we?”

The boy nodded in acknowledgement. He took one deep and lasting breath, glanced over his right shoulder to where a young woman watched, striving to quench her great heaving sobs with a small silk kerchief, gave her a short curt bow that almost broke Androi’s heart, and then came at him.

Androi allowed him some ground, parrying and dodging with a show of far more concentration than he felt. The swordsmanship was truly uninspired and his muse had abandoned him. It was all for the best, he supposed, for it gave the lad some time to make an impression on the young woman. Perhaps she would remember him, but most likely would find herself another to whom she would attach her dreams in short order. Such always seemed to be the way.

Jason E. Thummel’s fiction has appeared in Rage of the Behemoth, Flashing Swords magazine, and Magic and Mechanica. His first novel, The Spear of Destiny, was published in 2011 and his short story collection In Savage Lands appeared earlier this year.

“The Duelist” is a complete novelette of adventure fantasy offered at no cost. You can read the complete story here.

The Top 40 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 40 Black Gate Posts in August

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fifty-shades-of-greyAugust was a busy month here at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters. Theo Beale observed that 50 Shades of Grey, “according to its description it is little more than John Norman’s Gor brought back to Earth, minus the sword battles and the awesome tarn birds.” Brian Murphy reported on the debate surrounding breaking The Hobbit into three films, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones, live at the scene for the Dungeons & Dragons Next keynote at GenCon 2012, checked in with all the details.

I covered the controversy at Weird Tales magazine as the editorial team abruptly aborted plans to publish an excerpt of Victoria Foyt’s Saving the Pearls: Revealing Eden, and Scott Taylor brought us several more installments of his popular Art of the Genre column. Howard Andrew Jones explored the pleasures of the classic Jungle Stories pulp, and C.S.E. Cooney reviewed William Alexander’s novel Goblin Secrets. And that’s just a sample of the Top 10 articles.

Missed any of the news and updates when they were hot off the press? Not to worry — here’s your chance to catch up. What follows are the 40 most popular articles on the Black Gate blog in August. Don’t thank us, it’s our job.

  1. 50 shades of Paedo?
  2. Weird-Tales Pulls Novel Excerpt Following Fan Uproar
  3. Category: New Treasures
  4. Three Hobbit films for the LOTR fans =Trouble
  5. GenCon 2012: Dungeons & Dragons Next keynote Liveblog
  6. Vintage Treasures: The Barbarians Anthology Series
  7. Art of the Genre: The Art of Steampunk Couture
  8. Art of the Genre: When Music and Gaming mix
  9. Escape to the Jungle
  10. Goblin Secrets: A Review
  11. A Brick-and-Mortar bookstore score
  12. The thrill of the Unexpected: Why I Edit Clockwork Phoenix
  13. Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Total Recall 2012
  14. Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Bourne Legacy
  15. Solomon Kane Crosses the Atlantic to U.S. Movie Theaters in September
  16. Category: Comics

    17. …

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Black Gate to Publish Online Fiction Starting Sunday, September 30

Black Gate to Publish Online Fiction Starting Sunday, September 30

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black-gate-4-smallWe are very pleased to announce that Black Gate magazine, your home for the finest in adventure fantasy, will begin publishing original online fiction starting Sunday, September 30.

Holy crap, that’s tomorrow.

Wow. Uh, well, into the breach. Best way to do this is to jump right in, and figure it out as we go.

New fiction will be published right here on our website every Sunday, starting tomorrow. Here’s what’s coming in the next two months:

  • “The Duelist,” by Jason Thummel
  • “The Quintessence of Absence,” by Sean McLachlan
  • “The Daughter’s Dowry,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
  • “A Phoenix in Darkness,” by Donald S. Crankshaw
  • Novel excerpt: Queen of Thorns, by Dave Gross
  • “Godmother Lizard,” by C.S.E. Cooney
  • “The Poison Well” by Judith Berman
  • Novel excerpt: Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  • Novel excerpt: The Black Fire Concerto, by Mike Allen

What can you expect from online fiction at Black Gate? We will be presenting original fiction from some of our most popular contributors, as well as exciting new authors and many of the best writers in the industry. All stories are presented completely free of charge.

We will be offering fiction at all lengths, including short stories, novellas, and novel excerpts. It’s just like reading an issue of Black Gate, except you can do it from the comfort of your couch. Or that uncomfortable chair in front of the computer, whatever.

Join us tomorrow as Jason Thummel brings us a riveting tale of a talented swordsman who finds himself caught up in a web of deceit and far-reaching ambition in a fast-paced tale of action in a violent city, “The Duelist.”

SF Signal Roundtable with Enge, Jones, and O’Neill

SF Signal Roundtable with Enge, Jones, and O’Neill

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sf-signal-iconWhile SF Signal’s Patrick Hester was at Worldcon a few weeks back, he went on a whirlwind series of adventures. Seriously, starting from his long drive from the western United States until his long return, I’m not sure he got in more than a few hours of sleep every night.

Along the way, he corralled John O’Neill, James Enge, and me, which was a little like herding cats, except that I was so tired I was pretty easy to get moving. James and I talked about our new and upcoming releases (so, plenty of info on Morlock and the writing thereof, as well as Dabir and Asim and the writing thereof). And John O’Neill talked about the past and future of Black Gate and what lies in store for writers and readers of my favorite magazine.

Patrick kept the interview moving along with thoughtful questions and insightful follow-up, and I think the result is pretty interesting — if you’re into Black Gate, sword-and-sorcery, or historical adventure, that is. I hope you’ll drop by and give it a listen!

The interview can be found by following this link.

Try the first Four Issues of Innsmouth Magazine for Just $3.99

Try the first Four Issues of Innsmouth Magazine for Just $3.99

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innsmouth-magazine-collected-1-4I haven’t done as much reading on my Kindle Fire as I thought I would. It’s not that I don’t like it — it’s more that I flat out haven’t done as much reading as I thought I would in the last 10 months.

But buying? That’s a different story. It reminds me of the months after we bought our first DVD player. Excited by our new purchase, we went a little crazy, buying all kinds of weird stuff. Two seasons of the marionette puppetry show Thunderbirds from 1966? Check. Every episode ever made of Space: 1999? Check. First season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? Still in the shrinkwrap. God help me.

It was the same with the Kindle. Give me a new toy, and I immediately want to dress it up. It wasn’t out of the box a month before I crammed forty books into it. I told myself I’d read them, but I didn’t. I think at heart I just loved seeing the little book icons show up on the menu page. It’s like having a library in your pocket.

I’m better now. Mostly I use my Kindle these days to read manuscripts, advance galleys from publishers, and online magazines like Locus. But there’s still the occasional digital title that grabs my attention and won’t let go until I hit the “Buy it Now” button.

The most recent is Innsmouth Magazine: Collected Issues 1-4, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. Stiles, the author of “Roundelay” in Black Gate 15, is an up-and-coming dark fantasy writer in her own right. Collecting the first four issues of the highly regarded digital Innsmouth Magazine, this omnibus edition is impressive indeed. Individual issues are priced at $1.99, so it’s also a bargain.

It demands to be read, too. So far, I’m quite enjoying it. Nick Mamatas’ cleverly-titled “And Then, And Then, And Then…,” which takes its title from a type of denigrated narrative technique, takes that same narrative technique and uses it to very chilling effect. Most of the tales are very short — David Conyers’s “The Swelling,” the intriguing but rather predictable tale of a woman who’s suffered a devastating loss at sea and then inexplicably finds herself on a cargo vessel bound for Carcosa, is the longest I’ve encountered so far, and it barely qualifies as a novelette.

My only complaint about Innsmouth Magazine: Collected Issues 1-4 is the complete lack of any editorial content — or indeed, a table of contents of any kind. The only way to find out what writers or stories are in each issue is to painstakingly page through it. I expect magazines to have a little more structure, maybe an editorial or house ad, reviews. Something. It’s more like an anthology, in fact. Its starkness in this regard is almost, dare I say it, Lovecraftian.

Innsmouth Magazine: Collected Issues 1-4 was published by Innsmouth Free Press on April 8, 2012. It is available exclusively in digital format for $3.99.

Apex Magazine #40

Apex Magazine #40

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apexmagissue40Apex Magazine turns 40 with its September issue, featuring  “During the Pause” by Adam-Troy Castro (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater), “Sexagesimal” by Katherine E. K. Duckett, “Sacrifice” by Jennifer Pelland, and “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall” by Elizabeth Bear (reprinted from The Del Ray Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, a review of which you can read here) . Cover art by Julia Dillon. Nonfiction by Peter M. Ball and editor Lynne M. Thomas.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free online from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon, Nook, and Weightless.

Twelve-issue (one year) subscriptions can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

Self Publishing 101

Self Publishing 101

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in-savage-landsWhen I first read about self-publishing, I certainly didn’t think it was for me. I was busy trying to break into the market, working on my skills, celebrating a few acceptances here and there, and collecting a ton of rejections. It was what I had been told to expect, so everything seemed to be moving along just fine. At that time, with my limited understanding of what it meant, self-publishing would have been an admission of defeat, and was being self-published even really being published?

But the idea took hold and germinated in the recesses of my mind. I continued to read up on it, perusing blogs such as J.A. Konrath’s and Dean Wesley Smith’s and lurking on forums like the Kindle Boards Writer’s Café — even as I kept submitting to markets. I didn’t have consistent access to the Internet at that time, so my opportunities to keep informed were limited and infrequent. But over time, one thing became clear: there were people actually making a go of it, getting read, and a few outliers were actually making a living.

Which led me to ask what it was that I wanted to accomplish with my writing in the first place. Make a ton of cash, pay off the mortgage and retire, you bet. But that wasn’t really the reason, because if it was, I wouldn’t be writing. There are far more profitable ways to spend that time. No, I write because I take pleasure in it; I like the idea that something I’ve done might entertain someone for a while; that a stranger might read it and enjoy it. Yes, it’s all ego! I want to be read.

Well, that and make a million dollars.

A quick glance on the old hard drive showed over a hundred stories just sitting there, doing nothing. Some had already been published, but the rights had reverted to me. Others had been accepted by publishers that had, for whatever reason, folded before putting the story in print. Still others had been rejected by their intended markets, but I liked them anyway. And lastly, there were those that sat there because they deserved to. They weren’t all that good. So I selected a tentative table of contents for a collection and started researching the nuts and bolts of publishing in earnest.

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Librarians to the Rescue: Worldsoul by Liz Williams

Librarians to the Rescue: Worldsoul by Liz Williams

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1540901072Worldsoul
Liz Williams
Prime (311 pp, $14.95 in paperback, August 2012)

Reviewed by David Soyka

The stereotypical image of your local librarian is that of a dowdy, matronly spinster who is constantly telling you to “shush” while your adolescent self is trying to do something vastly more interesting (usually involving a person with whom you are sexually attracted) than figure out the Dewey Decimal system. And, these days with whatever we need to find out only a Google away, who needs librarians anyway?

Well, it would seem the preservation of the underlying fabric of the universe does.

While it’s unlikely that Liz Williams will make librarians cool the way that William Gibson made noirish anti-heroes out of computer nerds, in Worldsoul, librarians brandish magical swords that speak. Not to hush people, but to help defend ancient texts against rogue storylines amongst book stacks that date to the fabled Library of Alexandria before it burned to the ground (at least on Earth).

The novel’s title is the name of an otherworldly realm quartered into distinct cultural, climatic and political realms (and probably having something to do with maintaining the “soul” of the mundane world as we in ordinary life understand it): a hot desert land of ancient Cairo; a cold Nordica where Loki the trickster is an imprisoned nutcase, albeit not totally powerless; the Court inhabited by beings called the “disir” who take human form but aren’t; and the Citadel, the land of the library. This city of Worldsoul somehow or another connects Earth with something called the Liminality, a multi-dimensional storehouse of storylines, the integrity of which no doubt has something to do with the preservation of life as we know it here in realityland.

Our librarian heroine, Mercy Fane, is struggling to counteract strange beings that have escaped from primeval manuscripts and the boundaries of their original storylines. And which take on a female personality that seems to have an agenda to fix some longstanding wrong:

[Mercy] thought of the thing she had seen; the thing that, mentally, she had started calling “the female.” Part of a story from so long ago that any humanity had surely been leached from her, if indeed she had ever possessed any. Something forgotten, that raged, like so many forgotten things. Something that wanted to be known.

And something that, now, would be.

p. 35

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Worldcon Wrap-up

Worldcon Wrap-up

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black-gate-booth
The Black Gate booth. From left to right: John O’Neill, Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, and part of Donald Crankshaw’s head. Also, the back of Peadar Ó Guilín. Click for bigger version.

I was almost to Chicago last Thursday when I realized I’d gotten so wrapped up in the audio book of The Name of the Wind that I’d missed my turn. Fortunately, I found another way to Interstate 90 and the Hyatt Regency. And when I finally reached the dealer’s room, I was able to lodge a personal complaint with Patrick Rothfuss himself for writing so well that I got distracted.

It wasn’t long ago that I’d arrive at a convention and be surrounded by strangers or literary luminaries I was too nervous to approach. When I turn up these days, there are still a lot of strangers, but there are plenty of familiar faces as well. Before I’d even checked in, I bumped into Tom Doyle, and shortly after registering my complaint with Patrick Rothfuss, I was welcomed by Arin Komins and Rich Warren  to their used books booth, Starfarer’s Dispatch.

Rich showed me a rare Harold Lamb book, then, as I noticed it contained an insert about Lamb I had no knowledge of, he handed me a CD with scans of the material. That was incredibly kind of him. I then signed a complete set of the Harold Lamb books I’d edited and personalized Arin’s copy of The Desert of Souls, which she had liked so much that I gifted her with an ARC of The Bones of the Old Ones.

Purely by chance, I kept down the aisle to the left and came instantly to the Black Gate booth where John O’Neill, (now with beard) occupied a booth surrounded by old but well-cared for paperbacks and stacks of Black Gate magazines. The booth remained a gathering spot for friends, acquaintances, and staff members throughout the convention, which is why the talented Peadar Ó Guilín and Donald Crankshaw were manning the booth with O’Neill. I’d never had the chance to meet Peadar before, but his gentle humor put me immediately at ease. We chatted for a while and then James Enge wandered up with his brother Patrick. While the Mighty Enge was settling into the room we shared, I retrieved a box of The Desert of Souls hardbacks to sell at the Black Gate booth. (We sold ’em all before the end of the convention!)

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2012 Hugo Award Winners Announced

2012 Hugo Award Winners Announced

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Lynne and Michael Thomas show us the 2012 Hugo Award for SF Squeecast.
Lynne and Michael Thomas show off the 2012 Hugo Award for SF Squeecast.

If it’s seemed a little quiet here on the Black Gate blog for the past five days, it’s because many of our staff and bloggers — including John O’Neill, Howard Andrew Jones, Rich Horton, Andrew Zimmerman Jones, Joe Bonadonna, and David C. Smith — have been at Chicon 7, the World Science Fiction Convention here in Chicago, over the Labor Day weekend.

It was a 5-day party and convention, culminating in the Hugo Awards ceremony Sunday night. We’ll have more complete con reports right here in the next few days, but for now here’s the big news: The 2012 Hugo Award winners. Congratulations to all!

BEST NOVEL

  • Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)

BEST NOVELLA

  • ‘‘The Man Who Bridged the Mist,’’ Kij Johnson (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2011)

BEST NOVELETTE

  • ‘‘Six Months, Three Days,’’ Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com, June 2011)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • ‘‘The Paper Menagerie,’’ Ken Liu (F&SF, March-April 2011)

BEST RELATED WORK

  • The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition, John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls & Graham Sleight, eds. (Gollancz)

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