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John Joseph Adams Interviews Jonathan L. Howard

John Joseph Adams Interviews Jonathan L. Howard

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cabalJonathan L. Howard, author of the Johannes Cabal novels (Johannes Cabal the Necromancer and Johannes Cabal the Detective), had the lead story in Black Gate 13, the popular tale “The Beautiful Corridor.” It followed the exploits of the master thief Kyth, as she took on a commission from the jovial lich Maten Shal to explore an impossibly deadly tomb (read an excerpt here.)

Now Jonathan’s story “The Ereshkigal Working,” also featuring Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, appears in the new anthology The Way of the Wizard. Editor John Joseph Adams has interviewed Jonathan  in conjunction with the book launch:

A necromancer’s lot is not a happy one… Horrible things befall him on a regular basis, although this story is the first time his experimental subjects have reanimated before he’s done anything necromantic to them at all. The story came from wondering how Cabal would handle a full-on zombie outbreak.

Adams: Most authors say all their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

That’s a very true statement. I myself halted a zombie apocalypse a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking at the time, “This would make a good story.”

The Way of the Wizard looks like a terrific book, with both classic tales of wizards from some of the best names in fantasy, and new fiction from a lot of hot new talent. The book’s website features seven “Free Reads” from Adam-Troy Castro, Jeremiah Tolbert, David Barr Kirtley, and John R. Fultz’s “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria.” We reported on John Joseph Adams’ interview with John Fultz last month.

Jonathan’s next story featuring Kyth, “The Shuttered Temple,” in which Kyth attempts to solve the mystery of a sealed and very deadly temple, appears in the upcoming Black Gate 15.

The complete interview with Jonathan L. Howard is here.

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

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bah-haBlack Gate‘s C.S.E. Cooney’s dark fantasy novella The Big Bah-Ha is finally available from Drollerie Press in a variety of electronic formats.

The Big Ba-Ha is a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, following a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest to rescue one of their own:

Beatrice, who only moments before was the eldest member and leader of the Barka gang, wakes up dead. She was almost, probably, 12. Either the slap rash got her, as it gets everyone over the age of 12, or the Flabberghast got tired of waiting for her to drop dead and took her skin for a door and her bones for his stew. Who can say? What she can say is that she didn’t get to wake up in heaven. Instead, she’s in the Big Bah-Ha, a place that’s supposed to be a comfort to children after they pass on. Only something’s very, very wrong here and, despite all her bravery and cunning, she’s not quite sure how to fix it or if she’ll survive the afterlife long enough to try.

Gene Wolfe said:

It is deep and wise and fabulous, and will leave you shuddering and strangely at peace. You could found a religion on it — or it may found a religion without you. Or found some new thing that humankind has not yet seen. Only God knows what would happen after the founding. As someone (you’ll find out who) says deep in the story, ‘We’re all clowns now.’”

The Big Ba-Ha is available for just $4.25. You can also read an excerpt or pre-order the print (both trade paperback and signed and lettered hardcover) versions here.

Check it out!  You’ll thank us later.

A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

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thewolfageThe Wolf Age, by James Enge
Pyr (465 pages, $17.00, Nov 2010)

Yes, here I am again, to talk about James Enge. Specifically, The Wolf Age.

You know, I wrote about Blood of Ambrose, and I wrote about This Crooked Way, but this time I’m really stymied. I’m sitting here on my bed, laptop on my knees, feeling unworthy of the task ahead, and I have to ask myself:

“Now, Self, are we prepared to write about the third Morlock Ambrosius novel in a calm, clear, concise manner? Are we willing to dispense with our usual capital letters and exclamation points (I used plenty of those in my personal blog about this book, oh, believe me), and give a proper synopsis, and cite examples of AWESOMENESS and, and, not disintegrate into helpless wails of, But Lev Grossman already said it better than I could! It’s right there in the BLURB!”

And then I said:

“Well, Me, it’s tricky work all right. But someone’s got to do it! …Someone other than Lev Grossman.”

(I didn’t know who Lev Grossman was when I read The Wolf Age, but I envied his blurb, and then randomly picked up and read most of The Magicians before I realized that this Lev Grossman and that Lev Grossman were the same Lev Grossman!!! The Magicians is chilly-cool: like a cocktail of vodka on diamonds, lit with foxfire. So, whatever, I guess it’s okay that a bestselling author of a really good novel said what I meant to say about James Enge before I had a chance to say it. This being:

“James Enge’s books are like a strange alloy of Raymond Chandler, Fritz Lieber, Larry Niven and some precious metal that is all Enge’s own. They’re thrilling, funny, and mysteriously moving. I see 10 things on every page I wish I’d written. I could read him forever and never get bored.”

Speaking of cocktails, Morlock gets really, really drunk in The Wolf Age. For a very long time. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Oops. Should I have said “Spoiler Warning”? Well, I’ll try not to give too many of them.

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Black Gate 14: Game Reviews

Black Gate 14: Game Reviews

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cryptofeverflameWe’re finally nearing the end of the Black Gate 14 online tour, just as issue 15 nears completion. Whew! Timing is everything.

Today we’re looking at the Gaming column, edited by Howard Andrew Jones. Like Reviews Editor Bill Ward, Howard pulled out all the stops to make sure it was the best we’d ever had for our blockbuster 14th issue.  The result was 20 pages of in-depth reviews of the most exciting gaming products of the year, including:

Alien Module 1: Aslan, Gareth Hanrahan (Mongoose Publishing)
Traveller: Tripwire, Simon Beal (Mongoose Publishing)
Traveller: FASA and Gamelords, CD ROM (Far Future Enterprises)
HeroScape Expansion Pack 1-4: Blackmoon’s Siege (Wizards of the Coast)
Legends of Steel: Savage Worlds, Jeff Mejia (Evil DM Games)
Level UP Issue 1, Magazine (Goodman Games)
Far Avalon, Martin Dougherty (Avenger/Comstar Games)
Shard RPG Basic Compendium, Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones (Shard Studios)
Hero’s Handbook: Tieflings, Edited by Ken Hart (Goodman Games)
Hero’s Handbook: Dragonborn, Edited by Aijalyn Kohler (Goodman Games)
Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist, and Song, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games)
Forgotten Heroes: Scythe and Shroud, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing)
Pathfinder Module: Crypt of the Everflame, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing)

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Black Gate 14: Review Features

Black Gate 14: Review Features

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deader-stillBlack Gate 14 was the biggest issue in our history, with 158,000 words of fiction. We knew the Review Features had to be just as impressive, and the job of ensuring that fell to Contributing Editor Bill Ward.

To that end, Bill assembled a team of over a dozen of our top writers and reviewers.  The final result: a massive 32 pages of reviews, covering thirty of the finest fantasy books to cross our path in the last nine months:

Swords From the West, Harold Lamb (Bison Books)
Swords from the East, Harold Lamb (Bison Books)
Blood of Ambrose, James Enge (Pyr)
This Crooked Way, James Enge (Pyr)
Summa Elvetica: The Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, Theodore Beale (Marcher Lord Press)
The Vampire Tarot, Robert M. Place (St. Martin’s Press)
Drood, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Treason’s Shore, Sherwood Smith (DAW)
Black Horses for the King, Anne McCaffrey (Magic Carpet)
Dark Road Rising, P.N. Elrod (Ace)
The Stepsister Scheme, Jim C. Hines (DAW)
Flesh and Fire, Laura Anne Gilman (Simon & Schuster)
Deader Still, Anton Strout (Ace)
Gamer Fantastic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Kerrie Hughes (DAW)
Intelligent Design, edited by Denise Little (DAW)

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She Likes Us…

She Likes Us…

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Lois Tilton has some nice words to say about content provider (or what used to be called a magazine) Blackgate in her year-end evaluation of sources for SF&F short fiction:

blackgate-issue-14-cover-150

Black Gate put out only a single issue this year but made up for it in the sheer mass of sword and sorcery and other adventure fantasy. The quality was high; I’m happy to see this zine has given up its excessive attachment to endless story series. My favorite was “The Word of Azrael” by Mathew David Surridge, possibly the ultimate sendup of sword and sorcery.

She also cited Interzone as her favorite SF magazine.  While I hardly begin to touch the depth of her coverage, I feel the same way.  I was also interested to see her comment that,

F&SF remains one of the most diverse publications in the field, with a mix ranging from mundane science fiction to horror. It provided more stories that ended up on this list than any other publication, but I wish there hadn’t also been so many silly stories of little merit…

That’s always been my impression and I wonder if Gordon van Gelder feels compelled for some reason to publish these “silly stories” as a kind of tribute to the pulp tradition of stories that were silly even by the standards of the era.  Of course, that’s part of the charm, I suppose.  Sort of like the whole “Crouching with Dragons” phenomenon in which you’re making a purposefully bad movie, but doing it really well.  On the other hand, seeing it one time is kind of amusing, but a regular diet makes you all the more desirous of something with higher nutrition.

Morlock Returns

Morlock Returns

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travellers-rest-coverIf you’ve been missing Morlock, you’re in luck, because he’s back.

James Enge’s iconic character has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention lately. If you missed out on the news, Enge’s first novel, Blood of Ambrose (starring Morlock) was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His third novel, The Wolf Age (starring Morlock) recently received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.

Now it turns out that The Wolf Age is Pyr’s one-hundredth title, an event certainly worth celebrating, and what better way to celebrate than with a new Morlock novelette?

I’ll let the official Pyr release from Jill Maxick take over from here:

In honor of this burgeoning Morlock fan base, and to commemorate The Wolf Age’s status as Pyr’s one-hundredth title, Pyr is issuing a free, exclusive, ePub novelette called “Travellers’ Rest.” Featuring a cover by artist Chuck Lukacs, “Travellers’ Rest” is an 8,500 word original novelette, written for Pyr, which takes place before the events of Blood of Ambrose. It is available on the Pyr website, as a free download in ePub format and will also be available via Kindle. (Two previously published Morlock short stories that take place many decades after the events of The Wolf Age — “A Book of Silences” and “Fire and Sleet” — are available on the Sample Chapters section of the Pyr website.)

For those of you without an e-reader, the HTML version is here.

What are you waiting for?

Black Gate Kuttner Contest: And the Winners Are…

Black Gate Kuttner Contest: And the Winners Are…

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kuttnerBlack Gate magazine is very pleased to announce the winners of our Kuttner Contest:

Pawel Martin
Alexander G. Tozzi
G. W. Thomas

All three winners receive a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One, compliments of publisher Haffner Press. Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, and is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst. Congratulations to the winners!

To enter the contest required a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. Winners were chosen at random from all eligible entries.

The wide range of entries gave us a fine appreciation for just how well Henry Kuttner is still remembered over 50 years after his death, and these concise reviews of readers’ favorite Kuttner tales should help those less familiar with him understand the enduring quality of his fiction. Some of the best entires we received are collected below.

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And now a word (or several) about Ideomancer

And now a word (or several) about Ideomancer

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Leah Bobet of <i>Ideomancer</i>
Leah Bobet of Ideomancer

At Readercon 2009, I wended my way through the lobby crush until at last I came upon a clump of ladies who were more or less my friends. A few strangers, true. A few people I had adored only cyberspacially, true. However, everyone was cheerful and in the mood to be introduced.

Introductions were made.

One of the strangers was a tall, smiling, black-haired (with a bright blue streak, like a sailor’s vocabulary) lady who may or may not have been wearing at the time (if she wasn’t then, she certainly was later) a wicked cool corset. Her name was Leah Bobet, and she was the Editor-in-Chief of Ideomancer Magazine.

Upon learning my name, she grinned and said, “Oh! I think you’re in my slush pile.”

If slush could blush, this one certainly did. I mean, what do you say to that?

Except, “Uh… Uh-oh. Ha-ha. Well. Ahhhh, NICE TO MEETCHA!”

Or some stammering equivalent thereof.

Since then, I did make it out of the slush and into an issue of Ideomancer, and have pursued my acquaintance with the Lady Bobet through the usual social networking sites (LiveJournal chief among them) and what other writing conventions we happened to attend together.

bg1It gives me great pleasure, now, to invite Leah here to talk to us about Ideomancer and its exciting current issue.

Ladies and Gentlemen of Black Gate, I give you… Leah Bobet.

Ideomancer‘s one of the longest-running speculative fiction zines on the Internet. It’s been publishing regularly since 1999, and has gone through four publishers, been based in three countries, and had several different publication schedules. What hasn’t changed is the aesthetic: complex, literary speculative fiction from authors you might not have heard of right now, but will soon.

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The Four-Window Method

The Four-Window Method

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lion-of-cairoDuring the course of the past few days I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with a goodly number of writers. It’s been good for my soul to talk shop with knowledgeable peers. But one question that invariably cropped up concerned my method of writing. How did I prepare my drafts? And as I explained it, curious looks would blossom over the visages of my brother-and-sister scribes.

Apparently, my method is just a little odd.

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