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Readercon 22: Meeting Mark Twain, Winning a Rhysling, and Sundry

Readercon 22: Meeting Mark Twain, Winning a Rhysling, and Sundry

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PART II.

(Part I can be found here.)

Readercon 22: Saturday

Now. Where was I, where was I?

Ah, yes. Readercon.

Me, Gwynne Garfinkle and My Sinister Puppet Hand
Me, Gwynne Garfinkle and My Sinister Puppet Hand

Think back. Stretch your minds back. It’s Saturday, July 16th. Where are you? Sipping ice tea on your veranda while the dog pants at your feet and the cicadas whine and the barbecue sizzles — and it’s a summery summertime stretch of summeriness — and you’ve even remembered to put on your sunblock? GOOD FOR YOU!

Me, I hardly saw the sun that weekend. I was in the Boston Merriot Burlington, where the air conditioning was fierce and the convention programming intense!

Julia Rios Makes Every Hotel Room a Castle!
Julia Rios Makes Every Hotel Room a Castle!

In the morning, Erik Amundsen and Patty Templeton and I stole away to Panera Bread, to consume an inexpensive breakfast of sandwiches and rubbery room-temperature soufflés. I was back to the hotel in time for my 11 o’ clock interview with Julia Rios.

Ha.

An interview!!!

That makes me sound VERY POSH AND IMPORTANT, doesn’t it? Only it wasn’t like that, really, because the interview was recorded as a podcast for Broad Universe (called “The Broad Pod“), and it was to involve me and Gwynne Garfinkle and Mary Robinette Kowal, and if you think that I’M the posh and important one in that group, then I don’t know which current affairs rack you’ve been hanging your hats on lately, misters and mistresses!

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Win a Limited Edition Copy of Rage of the Behemoth from Rogue Blades Entertainment

Win a Limited Edition Copy of Rage of the Behemoth from Rogue Blades Entertainment

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rotbJason M Waltz, publisher of Rogue Blades Entertainment, is giving away a free copy of the limited edition of Rage of the Behemoth to one lucky winner this week.

Described as “Almost 150,000 words of monstrous mayhem recording the ferocious battles that rage between gargantuan creatures of myth and legend, and the warriors and wizards who wage war against, beside, and astride them,” Rage of the Behemoth gathers 21 splendid tales of pure adventure fantasy under one cover, including contributions from Bill Ward, Andrew Offutt & Richard K. Lyon, Lois Tilton, Mary Rosenblum, Sean T. M. Stiennon, Brian Ruckley, Bruce Durham, Jason Thummel, C.L. Werner, and many more.

How do you win? Easy!

Just comment on any of the three posts this week at Rogue Blades Entertainment’s Home of Heroics , and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a copy. The Home of Heroics is the Grand Central Station for heroic fiction on the Web, and previous writers have included Martha Wells, E.E. Knight, David C. Smith, Charles Saunders, Bill Ward, and many others.

Comments must be made between Monday, July 25, and Friday July 29. Complete details on the contest are here.

Learn more about Rage of the Behemoth here.

You won’t find many contests this easy — or this much fun. Check out Home of Heroics today. You can thank us later.

Mark Lawrence on Prince of Thorns

Mark Lawrence on Prince of Thorns

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prince-of-thornsThat fantasy story you love, the one where the farm boy gets the sword and kills that monster so the bad overlord is cast down and the princess is freed… I didn’t write that one. Those stories, wrapped up in more sophisticated prose with a twist and turn and an OMG, are great. They’re the strength and the curse of the genre. I didn’t write one. I wrote an ugly awkward thing that has seriously made someone blog ‘I got that horrible feeling in my tummy and could not read any more.’ Prince of Thorns is an ungentle book.

In 2004 I got my first ever check for writing fiction, a princely $31 for ‘Song of the Mind-born,’ a story that Black Gate had turned down. Between 2003 and 2006 Black Gate turned down about five of my short stories. John O’Neill writes the best rejections of any magazine editor I’ve ever encountered, and believe me if we lived pre-email I would have enough rejections to reconstitute a sizeable tree.

Reading an O’Neill rejection you know that the man has read your submission from top to bottom and put some thought into letting you know why he’s not going to pay you for it. He lets you walk away with dignity and hope.

This was the last O’Neill rejection I got:

It is with great pain that I am forced to reject you yet again. I really liked this story and read to the end, even though I was sure after the first few paragraphs that it wouldn’t be a fit for Black Gate. It was very nicely done, and hit me on an emotional level. It works at all levels, I think — except it’s not a fit for Black Gate. Please put some of your excellent talent to use on an adventure story with some unique world building, and ship it my way.

I took John’s advice and the next three submissions were all accepted. ‘Bulletproof,’ accepted in 2006, will appear in Black Gate 16, perhaps Spring 2012? And that’s another thing I love about Black Gate (apart from the fact you can actually buy it off the shelves of real shops) – the optimism, the way they put the season on each issue as if the year wasn’t enough to uniquely identify it!

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A Look behind Lod’s World, or How to Strike Gold

A Look behind Lod’s World, or How to Strike Gold

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Lod in "The Oracle of Gog," by Vaughn Heppner (from Black Gate 15). Art by Mark Evans.
Lod in "The Oracle of Gog," by Vaughn Heppner (from Black Gate 15). Art by Mark Evans.

Believable world creation lends greater enjoyment to fantasy and science fiction stories. One need merely consider some of the classics like The Lord of the Rings or Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian to see how vital this is. Dune also comes to mind or Asimov’s Foundation series. In fantasy, Tolkien is the accepted master at world creation, having invented alphabets and entire new languages for his books.

Edgar Rice Burroughs added another trick to this in the Pellucidar and John Carter of Mars novels. Usually in the introduction, Burroughs went to great length to tell us how he received the various manuscripts from the hero of the tale. In this way, he helped create the illusion of reality. It was a powerful practice and was copied by such different authors as Lin Carter and John Norman, both ERB imitators.

It seems that the more one can attach the fantasy world to the real world, the greater becomes the reader’s ability to suspend his disbelief. This temporary suspension of disbelief is considered critical in order for the reader to enjoy a fantasy story.

Howard’s Hyborian Age chronicle helped give the impression that the Conan stories and the earlier Kull tales had taken place in man’s distant past. This feel of reality gives the story greater depth. Instead of feeling as if the hero walks on a cardboard stage, we feel as if he moves through a genuine world and thereby we enjoy the tale more.

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The Man They Call Sean

The Man They Call Sean

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I’ve never had a nickname that stuck.  Well, that’s not completely true — I can think of at least one occasion when people have called me “Flinteye” and expected me to respond, but they were just reading off my baseball cap.  All in all, this is probably a good thing, since nicknames that stick tend to be less cool stuff like “Grinder” or “Shadowman” and more like “Chunk” or “Barfbag”.

A candid look at my gruesome features
A candid look at my gruesome features

So, as much as I’d like to introduce myself as Sean “Dark Smoke Puncher” Stiennon, just Sean will do nicely.  You might already have noticed my name attached to a review of Jasper Kent’s Twelve.

By day, I inhabit an apartment in sunny Madison, Wisconsin (as well as an office nearby) and produce the valuable carbon dioxide that keeps our planet green.  By night, I sleep.  I also read ridiculous books, play manly video games, practice ryuukyu kenpo karate, and otherwise live the high life.  I write fantasy and SF regularly, and if any cool people or gorgeous space princesses out there want to see some, send me a carrier pigeon!

My nerd profile is that of a dilettante.  I enjoy many things, from manga to games, but haven’t really ever plunged into one particular thing.  There are few authors I’ve read exhaustively, few franchises I’ve mined deep enough to go toe-to-toe with their true devotees.  That means my thoughts on any geeky subject tend to be a loose mix of ignorance, knowledge, and apathy.  I love Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, but have never seen Akira or Dragonball Z.  I got sick of Drizzt after three volumes, and only read four.

Anyway, I like to think my broad-but-shallow nerd experiences give me a habit of making interesting connections.  So, when I watch the first few episodes of classic head-bursting anime Fist of the North Star, it brings Superman to mind.

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Readercon 22: In Which the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (well, some of them) Encounters Cannibal Towns, Dirty Limericks and Googly Eyeballs

Readercon 22: In Which the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (well, some of them) Encounters Cannibal Towns, Dirty Limericks and Googly Eyeballs

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Cannibal Country. (AKA Guilderland, New York)
Cannibal Country. (AKA Guilderland, New York)

The thought that preoccupies me is, “How the heck am I going to find enough pictures to go with this post?”

Unlike that one time when we crashed a Zeppelin into Madison, we did not document our epic journey across America with anything so practical as a camera. No!

Instead, we marked the miles in the bellowing of bawdy (need I say, alternate?) lyrics to “There’s a Hole in My Bucket, Dear Liza,” the scrawling of character notes, place names and plot devices for a story about a stolen moon, the counting of times the word “Beloit” was mentioned in the back seat (Brendan Detzner being an alum and S. Brackett Robertson, or “Brackett,” a current student), in Billy Joel sing-alongs and idle speculations about the nature of certain malevolently leaning shacks in Guilderland, New York.

The B-Train. (AKA, writer Brendan Detzner)
The B-Train. (AKA, writer Brendan Detzner)

“Meth shed?” Patty postulated.

“Cannibals?” I countered.

“CANNIBAL METH SHEDS!” we roared together, with, perhaps, more delighted gusto than was strictly necessary.

“So… Do the cannibals eat the meth heads?” Brendan asked. “Or are the cannibals themselves meth heads?”

The conversation went on. I will not trouble you with further details. By this time we had been driving approximately ten hours and still had nine to go.

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The Death of an Audi

The Death of an Audi

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audi_a4I usually reserve the Black Gate blog strictly for topics related to the genre.  I hope you can forgive a brief trespass on that tradition today, as I celebrate being alive.

This morning I was on IL-47, a single-lane country highway, heading south to Champaign, where I work as a software salesman. At approximately 10:32 a.m. I watched as a fully-loaded 18 wheeler in the northbound lane went into a lock-up to prevent a crash with a stopped car. The truck lost control and twisted across the center meridian until it fully occupied both his lane and mine, still coming very fast and leaving me without a lot of options.

I hit him doing slightly over 60 mph. I’d already gone off-road on the right shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to avoid a collision. The impact triggered four of my Audi’s airbags, including three I didn’t even know I had.  Seriously — there were airbags everywhere.

I took the hit on the driver side. It drove the chassis down into my left rear tire, immobilizing it and sending me into a 60-mph uncontrolled spin — past the truck and back onto the road, then deep into the shoulder on the right. Fortunately the road and the shoulder were both clear. I leveled about 120 feet of grass in a dead line.

I got out of the car without a scratch, for which I thank God, and German engineering.

I can’t say the same about my loyal car, which took a critical hit.  It took ten minutes with a chain and a tow truck just to get it back on the road, and I can’t say for sure if it will ever move under its own power again.

But today, I have absolutely no complaints. I’m just glad to be alive.  Alice and our three kids showed up in her van three hours later, and drove me home to St. Charles, where we went out to dinner and celebrated. I consider myself a very lucky man.

But tomorrow, I will miss my car.

Just Two Months Left to Enter the Challenge! Stealth Writing Competition

Just Two Months Left to Enter the Challenge! Stealth Writing Competition

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challengeThe 2011 Challenge! Stealth Writing Competition from Rogue Blades Entertainment is officially one month old — which means there’s only 60 days left to enter.

The Challenge! writing competitions ask writers to submit an original work of short fiction using a piece of art and a one-word theme for inspiration. This year’s art, by Storn Cool, is at right; this year’s theme — appropriately enough — is Stealth.

Here’s the official call to action from Rogue Blades:

Using the awesome cover art provided by Storn Cook and this year’s title Stealth, capture your muse over the next 15 days and embark upon grand adventure! … Get your heroic adventure in any genre to RBE between June 15th and September 15th, 2011, and see if you have what it takes to deliver a winning tale! Speculative fiction is NOT required for Challenge! themes, so readers could find Historical Swashbucklers, Sword & Sorcery/Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror and even Romance — ALL the flavors of HEROIC FICTION so long as they are mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure.

The top twelves stories, as determined by the judges, will be awarded a print copy of the anthology, and the top three will also be awarded a cash prize,  and written critiques from the judges.  Judges this year are artist Storn Cook, author and writing instructor Mary Rosenblum (Horizons & Water Rites), and Black Gate editor John O’Neill (Me. And I’m ready to be entertained, so sharpen those pencils kids).

Last’s year’s contest, the Challenge! Discovery 2010, had ten winners, including Henrik Ramsager, Nicholas Ozment, Frederic S. Durbin, Gabe Dybing, and Keith J. Taylor. The winning entries from the 2010 contest will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment.

The contest entry fee is only $10, and a minimum number of participants is required. The official Challenge! submission guidelines are here, and the complete details of the Challenge! Stealth contest are here. Stories must be between 3,000 and 9,000 words.

What more do you need to know?  Start writing!! I expect to see great things from you on September 15.

Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

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conan-cityImagine Conan in Shadizar, meeting with a beautiful woman calling herself Fortuna who pays him to find Thuris, the man who kidnapped her younger sister. Conan accepts the woman’s coin but finds himself in the middle of double and triple crosses as Fortuna — known as Brigid the Bold in the underworld — seeks for the Falcon of Maltus along with her betrayed confederates, Jubliex Cairo, Wilmer the Younger, and Gutmar.

Think of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser hired by the powerful merchant Sternwood to scare ne’er-do-well Geiger away from the merchant’s daughter Carmen, only to be caught up in blackmail, murder, kidnapping, and family secrets.

Yes, those were the plots of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep using three of the iconic characters of sword & sorcery. That’s what I’d call Sword Noir, and that’s what I called the role-playing game I just published, subtitled A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery.

Sword Noir is a game now, but it started as something a little more than a conceit and little less than a genre. Basically, I attempted to give some kind of short-hand to the stories I wrote.

sword-noirAs usual, the kind of stories I was reading and writing bled into the kind of games I was playing, and this took me down a path I did not expect. I ended cobbling together a system that was purpose built to play “sword noir.” In order to do that, I had to define the term.

This is what I came up with: Characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast.

The characters are good at what they do, but they are specialists. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest.

Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

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C.S.E. Cooney’s The Sea King’s Second Bride wins the Rhysling Award

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Sea King’s Second Bride wins the Rhysling Award

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C.S.E. Cooney
C.S.E. Cooney

Woo-hoo!  Break out the bubbly!

Black Gate Website Editor C.S.E. Cooney has won the Rhysling Award, Long-Form category, for her poem “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” The Rhysling Awards are given each year by the Science Fiction Poetry Association to the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year.

The Rhyslings are named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth.” The categories are “Best Long Poem” (50 or more lines), and “Best Short Poem” (49 or fewer lines).

About her winning poem, Claire tells us:

It’s all due Nicole Kornher-Stace. And Amal El-Mohtar. And Jessica Wick. Who conspired to buy me that print of John Bauer’s Agneta and the Sea King. Which made me FINALLY buy that book of Swedish Folk Tales.

“The Sea King’s Second Bride” was originally published in Goblin Fruit, edited by Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica P. Wick . You can read the complete poem here.

The winners are announced at Readercon, held this year from 14-17 July at the Burlingon Marriott, outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The nominated works are traditionally compiled into an anthology called The Rhysling Anthology. This year, there were 37 nominees in the long poem category, and 56 in the short poem category. The complete list of nominees is here.

Congratulations to C.S.E!  In honor of her win, Black Gate would like to buy all our readers a bottle of bubbly1. Raise a toast with us in honor of our favorite poet — and now the world’s favorite, too.

1. Must be of legal drinking age. Must realize we’re joking. Offer not valid outside the continental U.S.A. Or anywhere that sells bubbly.