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Walking the Trail(er): Part Two

Walking the Trail(er): Part Two

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Marissa Merrill (“Annalise”)
Marissa Merrill (“Annalise”) and Harry Connolly

Let me summarize part one of this post briefly: Authors and/or publishers sometimes make book trailers, which are supposed to look like movie trailers but for, you know, books… and they’re usually awful, largely for lack of time and funds. Some of the best of the no-budgeters are funny which is fine if you’ve written a funny book.

Also, I’m not sure there’s any evidence at all that they actually sell the books they’re meant to promote. I’ve certainly never bought a book because of a trailer.

So why am I making one?

Let me backtrack: the trailer I mentioned in part one that almost sold me on a novel was something I watched over a year ago. (I’d link to it, but I can’t find it again.) It was a slow pan over a ship. It was obviously someplace cold, and the crew had just found something in the ice. There was a Lone Guy, his back to the camera, chipping away at a giant block of ice.

What was in it? The camera didn’t show us but I was intrigued. Was it Captain America? A Deep One? A Deep One dressed as Captain America? I had to know!

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Walking the Trail(er): Part One

Walking the Trail(er): Part One

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hc2Did you know that there are awards for book trailers? They’re called “The Moby Awards” and you can check the most recent winners (and losers) here. (There doesn’t appear to be any listings for the years before 2010, probably because there aren’t any.)

In case you haven’t heard of them, a book trailer is like a movie trailer — a short video that’s supposed to promote a book. Many of them look like movie trailers, and most are done on a budget (maybe I should say “without a budget”).

But do they work? Do they entice readers to buy books?

It’s an important question for me, because I’m making one.

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Subscribe to Black Gate? Get a PDF Version for just $2.95!

Subscribe to Black Gate? Get a PDF Version for just $2.95!

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black-gate-12Are you a current Black Gate magazine subscriber? If so, you’re eligible to purchase PDF copies of your favorite issues at $2 off regular price — just $2.95 per issue.

High-resolution PDF versions of Black Gate are regularly $4.95 each, and are now available in the same quantities as print subscriptions: 2 issues for $9.50, 4 for $17.95, or 6 for just $25.95.

However, subscribers to the print version can now buy PDFs for just $2.95 for single issues. Discounts are offered for subscriptions as well: $5.50 for 2 PDF issues, $9.95 for 4, and just $14.25 for 6!

Those who purchase a 4-issue print sub and a 4-issue PDF sub at the same time can now save even more, and receive the PDF subscription for just $7.95 — a $10 savings off regular price.

Issues currently available in PDF format are BG 11, BG 12, BG 13, and our big double issue, BG 14 — 384 pages, still priced at the regular cost of $4.95. Oppressed house elves are currently hard at work, painstakingly converting our earlier issues by hand, and PDF subscriptions to future issues are available as well.

You can get all the details on our subscription page. Act now, and help us afford that big Christmas office party!

Letters to Black Gate: Submission Windows, Port Iris, and Canadian Fiction

Letters to Black Gate: Submission Windows, Port Iris, and Canadian Fiction

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port-isisKerstan Szczepanski responds to our recent post on the latest issue of Port Iris magazine:

I don’t know much about Port Iris beyond what I’ve seen in issue #3. A little too alternative for my taste. Although Aidan Doyle’s Salary Ninja was pretty good (“When I was young, if a demon had a blue tooth, it meant something different.”); if that guy submits anything to you, read him right away. And the cover makes me think of Tex Avery, very cool.
I’ve been a long time subscriber to Black Gate since issue 3 or 4 or something, absolutely love the mag.

Richard Dillio asks:

I had never read your magazine until about a year ago. A friend from work brought in a copy and I burned through it in about two days (my job has a lot of down-time, heh). I am continually impressed by your organization — fantasy magazines seem to be dropping like flies lately, but you guys are hanging on. I’m glad there is a magazine out there still willing to print the sword-and-sorcery and adventure fantasy stories that are the real bedrock of the American fantasy tradition.
It seems like every time I check your guys’ webpage for when submissions are open, you aren’t accepting submissions. I realize the market is probably glutted with good adventure fantasy for you guys to choose from, but is there any reliable time when you guys are accepting submissions? Like, say, any specific time of year? If not, that’s cool too. Just curious.
Anyways, keep up the great work. I love the magazine!

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John Joseph Adams Interviews John R. Fultz

John Joseph Adams Interviews John R. Fultz

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wayofthewizardJohn Joseph Adams, editor of The Way of the Wizard anthology, has interviewed contributor — and Black Gate blogger and author — John R. Fultz in conjunction with the book launch:

In the cannon of classic fantasy, there are many examples of terrific wizardry, such as Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, where Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face are the heroes’ patrons – mysterious inhuman wizards who watch over and protect Fafhrd and the Mouser, as well as giving them preposterous quests now and then. The tales of Clark Ashton Smith are rife with wizardry… Malygris of Susran, Namirrah of Zothique, and Evagh the Warlock, to name only a few. Nobody could build a rich, phantasmagoric world of dark wonders like Smith… Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone is one of my favorite wizards as well… Who knew a wizard could be such a bad-ass with a sword?

The Way of the Wizard was released on November 16th; the book’s website features seven “Free Reads,” including  John Joseph Adams’ introduction, stories from Adam-Troy Castro, Jeremiah Tolbert, David Barr Kirtley, and the complete  text of John R. Fultz’s “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria.”

John R. Fultz blogs here regularly; he’s also the author of “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine” (Black Gate 12), “Return of the Quill” (Black Gate 13), and the upcoming “The Vintages of Dream.”

The complete interview is here.

Last Chance to Win a Copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

Last Chance to Win a Copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

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kuttnerThree week ago we announced we were giving away three copies of the first volume of The Early Kuttner, titled Terror in the House, newly released from Haffner Press.

How do you win a copy? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Kuttner Contest,” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. And don’t forget to mention what story you’re reviewing!

That’s it.  Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

But time is running out — the contest closes on December 1. Because if these things are still piled on top of Alice’s sewing table after that, believe me, there will be hell to pay.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers are some of the most collectible books in the genre. Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, with a preface by Richard Matheson and introduction by Garyn G. Roberts, Ph.D. It is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst, and has a retail price of $40.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Terms and conditions subject to change as our lawyers sober up and get back to us. Eat your vegetables.

Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

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honey-monthI love being interviewed.  Especially on weeks when Jack Nicholson isn’t talking to the press.  I tell my wife, “I was interviewed more often than Jack Nicholson this week.”

Alice is rarely impressed. “I don’t like Jack Nicholson,” she tells me. But I keep it up, in the hopes that it will win me some lovin’.

I was interviewed by SF Signal for their regular Mind Meld column, along with people less famous than me, like Jeff VanderMeer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, Martha Wells, David B. Coe, Jaym Gates, Brenda Cooper, Mike Brotherton, A. Lee Martinez, and other international celebrities and rock stars like that.  The topic was Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans, and here’s what that VanderMeer guy said about some book about honey by Amal El-Mohtar:

The Honey Month – This beautifully illustrated volume of short fictions and poems takes as its inspiration the author’s tasting of 28 different kinds of honey, one per day. Each tasting leads to a different literary creation, but she begins each entry by describing the honey in terms that will be familiar to wine connoisseurs. To top it all off, Oliver Hunter’s finely rendered color illustrations make encountering such rich, heady prose even more delightful…. The book’s a slim 73 pages for a reason: like the honey described, any more and it would be too rich for most readers. As it stands, however, The Honey Month is the perfect length, and the perfect gift.

I tried to buy a copy of The Honey Month from Amal at Wiscon, but she wouldn’t sell it to me (I think because I was more famous than her). Now that she’s had a book blurbed by VanderMeer and done, like, the most popular interview in the history of Black Gate, I expect all that to change. And maybe a brother can buy a simple book, know what I’m sayin’?

You can read the complete SF Signal article here.

“And It Goes On From There…” An Interview with Gene Wolfe

“And It Goes On From There…” An Interview with Gene Wolfe

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Gene Wolfe at Top Shelf Books
Gene Wolfe at Top Shelf Books

As I write this, it is Sunday afternoon, a quarter to five, and there is some serious gloaming and wuthering going on outside my window.

Gloaming and wuthering accurately describe the state of my stomach as well. I’ve just gotten home from a long lunch with Gene and Rosemary Wolfe at The Claim Jumper, where the appetizers are colossal, the entrees epic, and each dessert the size of a football field.

I have the touchdown in my fridge right now, all festooned in gobs of made-fresh-daily whipped cream. It’s the sort of dessert you’d wish on your worst enemy, in the interest of stopping her heart at a distance when she sees it waddling toward her.

A few weeks ago, I wheedled Gene into letting me interview him. He said sure, “Provided it is face-to-face and entirely hand-to-hand,” which made the whole thing sound like armed combat. I didn’t know then I’d be wrestling with an insurmountable mound of mashed potatoes and a heap of bellicose mushrooms, but things are always a bit surreal when you’re lunching with Wolfes.

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Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces Winners of Challenge! Discovery 2010 Contest

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces Winners of Challenge! Discovery 2010 Contest

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discoveryBack in May Rogue Blades Entertainment, publishers of  Rage of the Behemoth, Demons, Return of the Sword and other excellent fantasy anthologies, announced the first annual Challenge! writing contest. Open to fiction in a wide variety of genres (“Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy” and others), the Challenge! Discovery contest invited authors to submit works directly inspired by a single piece of art by V Shane, pictured at right.

The winners of the  Challenge! Discovery 2010 writinng contest are (in no particular order):

“A Fire in Shandria” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“In the Ruins of the Panther People” ~ Daniel R. Robichaud
“The Serpent’s Root” ~ David J. West
“Fire Eye Gem” ~ Richard Berrigan Jr.
2nd PLACE: “Cat’s in the Cradle” ~ Nicholas Ozment
“Some Place Cool and Dark” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“The Ash-Wood of Celestial Flame” ~ Gabe Dybing
“Witch with Bronze Teeth” ~ Keith J. Taylor
“Inner Nature” ~ John Kilian
1st PLACE: “Attabeira” ~ Henrik Ramsager

Honorable mentions go to Eric Magliozzi for “Songs of the Dead,” and Michael Navarro for “The Golden Maiden.”

The winning entries will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment around Christmas this year. More information on the contest results and the upcoming book is here.

Congratulations to all the winners!  I’m looking forward to reading the stories.

Fantasy, The Middle-East, and a Conversation with Saladin Ahmed

Fantasy, The Middle-East, and a Conversation with Saladin Ahmed

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blackgateamal1Hi! My name’s Amal! We’ve never met. Well, unless we have. But most likely we haven’t, because I’ve never blogged here before, even though Ms. Claire Rides-the-Lightning Cooney has mentioned me in my capacity as one of the Editors of Goblin Fruit in her ever-so-mighty three-part article extravaganza about mine humble ‘zine.

Anyway, towards summer’s end, Claire Too-Sexy-For-Trousers Cooney told me about a conversation our very own scurrilous blarneyful dear John O’Neill had with some friends, in which they were trying to think of Muslim SF writers, and coming up blank. Then someone thought of me! My vanity, it was flattered!

Except, I am not Muslim.

I am, however, a first-generation Lebanese-Canadian, and that may as well be the same thing.

Over the last nine years, I’ve had occasion to be startled, and then to cease to be startled, by the extent to which my Middle-Eastern-ness gets conflated with Muslim-ness as a matter of course, as well as the extent to which people feel entitled to learning my religion along with my name. This is not the space in which I want to think about why precisely that is – I have a blog too, after all – but it is the space which Ms. Awesomesauce Cooney offered me to talk about the ways in which we might see the Middle-East positively represented in fantasy, as well as showcase a writer of fantasy literature who does in fact happen to be Muslim.

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