Black Gate

Well, I’ve finally returned to the Black Gate rooftop headquarters here in St. Charles, Illinois, after a weary week of travel. We had the largest team gathering in the magazine’s history at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio last weekend — including several Contributing Editors, half a dozen bloggers, and over two dozen writers and contributors. I started the magazine ten years ago and have been attending conventions for decades, and there were several long-term staff members I met for the first time, including the distinguished Ryan Harvey and John R. Fultz.

All of us were invited to take part in a podcast on Sword & Sorcery organized by the charming Jaym Gates — stay tuned for the broadcast location and date.  Our Saturday night reading was a rollicking success, as nearly two dozen Black Gate authors read from work sold to the magazine over the past ten years, including James Enge, Frederic Durbin, E.E. Knight, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, L.E. Modesitt Jr, Darrell Schweitzer, Donald S. Crankshaw, Howard Andrew Jones, Martha Wells, Ryan Harvey, Robert J. Howe, John R. Fultz, Myke Cole, Renee Stern, Steven Silver, Michael Shea, S. Hutson Blount, Janet Stirling, F. Brett Cox, and Frederick Tor.

I also got the chance to meet with other contributors including Mike Resnick, Jeffrey Ford, David B. Coe, Ellen Klages (and her charming sister), and Charles Coleman Finlay.  It was a delight to finally meet artist Jim Pavelec in the Dealer’s room, as well as fellow editors Adrian Simmons (Heroic Fantasy Quarterly) and Mike Allen (Mythic Delirium), and make several new friends, including long-term reader Matthew Wuertz. I made the trip with Jason Waltz, publisher of Rogue Blades Entertainment, who shared our table and turned out to be a stalwart traveling companion.

Due to the sheer size of the convention there were also BG writers wandering the halls I somehow managed to miss completely, including Jeremiah Tolbert and Rick Bowes. Ah well, maybe next year. There’s a reason it’s called the World Fantasy Convention. No matter how much you try, life is too short to see it all.

Only a few years ago I looked on attending a convention as a useless expenditure, an indulgence I didn’t think I had time for — probably because the unfamiliarity of it made me uncomfortable.

Fortunately, my friend Eric Knight shook up my composure, insisting it would be good for me to go. So I went, and my first convention ever was The World Fantasy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, 2005, and I can still recall how nervous I was and how astonishing it was to be standing in the same room or even rubbing shoulders with writers I had respected and admired for long years. Luckily, Eric took me under his wing and showed me around. Before long we’d found our way to the dealer’s room — which didn’t seem too different from a cave of wonders — and I was soon talking for the first time with Black Gate‘s publisher and editor, John O’Neill.

A few months ago I wrote a brief primer about why conventions are worth attending, and rather than covering that again, I’ll point you there. If you’ve gone to other conventions you’ll be surprised by WFC. Only about 1,000 attendees are allowed, which promotes a greater intimacy than you’ll find at many other conventions. There are no costumes, and the many panels and readings and workshops are focused fairly specifically on writing and editing and working in the industry. Professional editors, publishers, writers, artists, and agents are everywhere, because this is the serious industry convention, although serious in this instance shouldn’t be confused with dull.

This year the 36th World Fantasy Convention is being held in Columbus, Ohio, from October 28-31, and Black Gate will be there in force. It’ll be pretty easy to find our booth in the dealer’s room, but one or more of us will be visiting panels, participating in panels, attending readings and signings, or wandering from one late night party to another, so if you want to meet us it should be pretty easy to accomplish. If you’re planning to be there we hope that you’ll drop by the booth, and that you’ll make sure to come to the Black Gate reading Saturday night, where you’ll be able to hear several dozen Black Gate authors reading from their own works.