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Apex Magazine #39

Apex Magazine #39

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apexmag0812August’s Apex Magazine features  “Armless Maidens of the American West” by Genevieve Valentine (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater), “Murdered Sleep” by Kat Howard, “Waiting for Beauty” by Marie Brennan and “Undercity” by Nir Yaniv. Cover art by Ekaterina Zagustina. Nonfiction by Jim C. Hines 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.

The Top 30 Black Gate Posts in June

The Top 30 Black Gate Posts in June

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June was a terrific month for the Black Gate blog. Traffic has been steadily increasing for the past two years, and in June we reached a total of 2,300 blog posts. The top article for the month was “Selling Philip K Dick” from June 11, and the most popular link on the website was to the collected “New Treasures” columns.

The complete list of the Top 30 blog posts in June at Black Gate follows.
the-simulacra-philip-k-dick

  1. New Treasures
  2. Selling Philip K Dick
  3. Black-Gate-goes-to-the-summer-movies-Snow-White-and-the-Huntsman
  4. Vintage-Treasures-George-RR-Martin’s-Nightflyers
  5. The-best-of-modern-arabian-fantasy-Saladin-Ahmed
  6. Drinking-atlantis-no-chaser-Conan-the-Barbarian-2011
  7. Black-Gate-goes-to-the-summer-movies-Prometheus
  8. TSR’s-Amazing-science-fiction-anthologies
  9. The-best-of-modern-arabian-fantasy-CA-Suleiman
  10. Cerebus
  11. Art-of-the-genre-the-art-of-a-future-fallen
  12. Brave
  13. Fall-from-Earth-a-review
  14. Thank-you-Martin-H-Greenberg-and-Doug-Ellis
  15. New-Treasures-the-sword-sorcery-anthology

    16. …

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Interzone 241

Interzone 241

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482The July-August issue of Interzone features new stories by Sean McMullen (”Steamgothic”), Aliette de Bodard (”Ship’s Brother”), David Ira Cleary (”One Day in Time City”), Gareth L. Powell (“Railroad Angel”), and the 2011 James White Award-winning story “Invocation of the Lurker” by C.J. Paget; cover artwork by Ben Baldwin; an interview with Juliet E. Mckenna by Elaine Gallagher;  “Ansible Link” genre news and miscellanea by David Langford; “Mutant Popcorn” film reviews by Nick Lowe; “Laser Fodder” DVD/Blu-Ray reviews by Tony Lee; and book reviews by various contributors.

Interzone alternates monthly publication with sister dark horror-focused Black Static, published by the fine folks at TTA Press.

Here’s the opening of the lead novelette:

There is something special about things that change the world. I cannot say what it is, but I can feel it. I have stood before the Vostok capsule that carried the first man into space. Influence glowed from it, I knew where it was even with my eyes closed. In the Spurlock Museum I saw the strange, twisted, lumpy thing that was the first transistor. The significance that it radiated was like the heat from a fire. The Babbage Analytical Engine of 1871 had no such aura, yet the whole of Bletchley Park did. There was no doubt in my mind about which of them had really launched the age of computers.

The Wright Brothers’ Flyer had no feeling of significance for me. This made no sense. It was the first heavier than air machine to fly, it proved the principle, it changed the world, yet my strange intuition said otherwise. Then I saw the Aeronaute, and everything should have become clear to me.

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New Treasures: Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012

New Treasures: Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012

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the-years-best-science-fiction-fantasy-2012-2We’re deep into Best of the Year anthology season now. Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection arrived on July 3 (29th volume!), Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012 on June 19, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 17 on May 29, and Night Shade Books published Volume 6 of Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (which we covered here) on March 6.

Naturally, my favorite Best of the Year anthology takes the longest to arrive: Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012. This is fourth volume in this format; prior to 2009 Rich published separate Best of the Year volumes from science fiction and fantasy, from 2006 to 2008. So all told this is his tenth Best volume (eleventh, if you count Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy in 2008. Which we do.)

The highlight of theses books for me is frequently the introduction, customarily the place where the editors rattle off statistics and lament the imminent death of the short fiction market (traditional since the late 1970s), or even publishing in general.  Rich seems to be growing more self-assured in his intros, and they can be quite entertaining. This from the latest volume:

There are also a few writers appearing here for the first time who have been doing exciting work for several years — I’m a bit late to the party, perhaps, with Lavie Tidhar, certainly, and with Nina Allan… Alan de Niro, Gavin Grant, Chris Lawson, Vylar Kaftan, and Marissa Lingen are all also writers I’ve had my eye on for a few years. (Speaking of the perils of gender identification, I recall that I publicly listed Lavie Tidhar as a woman and Vylar Kaftan as a man… at least my aggregate totals were correct!)

And I should probably also mention that some of the writers I’ve already anthologized twice are quite young, or at any rate quite new to publishing, such as C.S.E. Cooney, Genevieve Valentine, and Alexandra Duncan. The field remains in good hands.

This volume includes much of the most highly acclaimed SF and Fantasy short fiction from last year, including “The Last Sophia,” by BG website editor C.S.E. Cooney, Catherynne M. Valente’s “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland — For a Little While,” Kij Johnson’s “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” “Choose Your Own Adventure” by Kat Howard, and many more. There’s also a Recommended Reading list, which includes Rosamund’s superb tale from Black Gate 15, “Apotheosis.”

We covered last year’s volume here. The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012 is 575 pages. It is published by Prime Books for $19.99 (trade paperback) or $6.99 (Kindle). Highly recommended.

New Treasures: Jason E. Thummel’s In Savage Lands

New Treasures: Jason E. Thummel’s In Savage Lands

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in-savage-landsOne of the many great things about being involved with Black Gate is being exposed to so many terrific new writers. One of the best of the recent lot is Jason E. Thummel, whose short fiction is fast paced, consistently exciting, and packed with invention.

I’ve purchased three short stories from Jason for Black Gate magazine, but we by no means have a monopoly on his work. His story “Runner of the Hidden Ways” was one of the finest stories in the excellent anthology, Rage of the Behemoth (2009), and his fiction has also appeared in the acclaimed (and much-missed) Flashing Swords magazine and the anthology Magic and Mechanica (2009). His first novel, The Spear of Destiny, was published in 2011.

Now comes word that his first collection, In Savage Lands, is available. Here’s the official description:

A small band of rebellious slaves, fleeing an undead terror; an untested leader, willing to sacrifice everything to save his people; a man driven to become the thing he hates most in order to exact a terrible vengeance…

These are just a few of those you will meet within.

Against unfathomable odds, the might of monsters, the cunning of men, and the raw, overwhelming power of the elements themselves, each struggles to survive…

In Savage Lands is a collection of 13 short stories for lovers of Heroic Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, and action-driven Fantasy.

In Savage Lands is 160 pages (approximately 44,000 words). It is available for $8.95 in paperback, and in digital format for $2.99 from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Jason Waltz for the head’s up on this one!

Apex Magazine #38

Apex Magazine #38

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apex-38July’s Apex Magazine features  ”Coyote Gets His Own Back” by Sarah Monette, “The Silk Merchant” by Ken Liu, “Ironheart” by Alec Austin and “Wolf Trapping” by Kij Johnson  (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater). Bruce Holwerda provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Christopher J. Garcia and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free on-line 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.

Pulling Off (or Putting On?) the Blog Mask

Pulling Off (or Putting On?) the Blog Mask

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bloggingAs I watch the tumbleweeds blow through my official author web site, I sometimes wonder what I can do to increase traffic. Authors are told that regular blog entries generate interest and that we should keep up a regular stream of witty and attention-getting material to get people curious about our writing.

A lot of us can make all sorts of excuses about how we just can’t do that. Let’s face it: writers aren’t that social to begin with, or are busy enough with writing or the rest of our lives that it’s hard to find time to draft blog entries. And some of us aren’t that witty. On the other hand… longest journey, first step, to sell you must reach your market, tough get going, and so on.Which is why I’ve finally just made myself get to it with regularity. I’ve recently gotten comfortable with drafting material that matters to me in a timely manner. I can’t tell how much it matters to anyone else, but my thought is that if I build it, they will come.

Yet as the tumbleweeds roll stately forward, I naturally wonder if there’s something more I can do to draw in readers, which is why a recent post from editor, writer, and friend James Sutter’s recent post over at Ink Punks got me thinking.

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Name the Dabir and Asim Series

Name the Dabir and Asim Series

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I’m launching a contest to win an advance reader copy (known as an ARC) of the next Dabir and Asim novel, The Bones of the Old Ones. Now Bones won’t actually be available until December 11 of 2012 through bookstores (or via Kindles and Nooks and what have you), but ARCs will start going out to reviewers within the next few months. And one of them could be headed your way.

Here’s the deal. The Dabir and Asim series needs a title. I haven’t yet come up with one that’s especially electrifying, so I’m throwing open the gates, and from now until July 22nd I’m accepting your suggestions for series titles. The series title will appear on the final version of the cover, probably in the place where this version of the cover reads “A Novel,” and on all following Dabir and Asim novels.

Here’s how to enter:

1. E-mail me (with no spaces in the actual e-mail address) at joneshoward AT insightbb.com.

2. Use Dabir and Asim Contest as the subject line.

3. Provide me with the series title you like best, and an e-mail where I can reach you.

4. You can list several ideas in a single entry, or just one. If you’ve already sent me one or more ideas and think of others later, just send me a new entry.

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Leigh Brackett: American Writer

Leigh Brackett: American Writer

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shannach
The 4th and final Leigh Brackett hardback from Haffner Press, a set collecting all her short fiction.

This 4th of July I thought I’d take a look at one of my very favorite writers, the late, great Leigh Brackett, queen of planetary adventure.

Only a few generations ago planetary adventure fiction had a few givens. First, it usually took place in our own solar system.  Second, our own solar system was stuffed with inhabitable planets. Everyone knew that Mercury baked on one side and froze on the other, but a narrow twilight band existed between the two extremes where life might thrive. Venus was hot and swampy, like prehistoric Earth had been, and Mars was a faded and dying world kept alive by the extensive canals that brought water down from the ice caps.

To enjoy Brackett, you have to get over the fact that none of this is real — which really shouldn’t be hard if you enjoy reading about vampires, telepaths, and dragons, but hey, there you go. Yeah, Mars doesn’t have a breathable atmosphere, or canals, or ancient races. If you don’t read her because you can’t get past that, you’re a fuddy duddy and probably don’t like ice cream.

A few of Brackett’s finest stories were set on Venus, but it was Mars that she made her own, with vivid, crackling prose.

Here. Try this, the opening of one of her best, “The Last Days of Shandakor.” You can find it in two of the three books featured as illustrations in this article, Shannach — the Last: Farwell to Mars, and Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories.

Anyway. On to Brackett.

He came alone into the wineshop, wrapped in a dark red cloak, with the cowl drawn over his head. He stood for a moment by the doorway and one of the slim dark predatory women who live in those places went to him, with a silvery chiming from the little bells that were almost all she wore.

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Confessions of a Guilty Reviewer

Confessions of a Guilty Reviewer

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Howard Andrew Jones with his Review Rooster.
Howard Andrew Jones with his Review Rooster.

I used to write occasional reviews for Tangent Online, and once I wrote one that I still regret. I’ve rarely found a slice-of-life story or flash fiction that I enjoyed, so I probably had no business evaluating a piece of short fiction that was both. Yet I read it, and I slammed it. Not because it was bad flash fiction, or because it was a bad slice-of-life story (I had no kind of qualifications for adequately judging either) but because I didn’t like flash fiction or slice-of-life stories. It was the epitome of ill-informed reviewing, where the writer is arrogant enough to know better than fans of an entire genre. Or two.

I didn’t understand my mistake for a while, and when I met the author of the story at a convention years later he was kind enough not to mention my idiocy, or, more likely, hadn’t remembered the name of the idiot who’d written the review.

You’d think that my epiphany about having written such a bad review would have arrived when I started to get my own fiction published more regularly, but it actually hit me faster, probably because it took a loooong time for my fiction to get published regularly.

I began to evaluate game products for Black Gate and it finally dawned on me that I had to consider both a work’s intended function and its intended audience. For instance, if I was looking at a role-playing product, I couldn’t evaluate a retro dungeon crawl by the same standards I looked at a modern story-based adventure with plot arcs.

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