Black Gate

Our own C.S.E. Cooney has sent us some good news about her latest fiction extravagana:

The Big Bah-Ha is a novella by yours truly, coming out at Drollerie Press in October 2010!!! It is a post-apocalyptic katabasis story, complete with kiddie gangs, slingshot battles, strange clowns, Tall Ones, and one very dead (very brave) child protagonist.

No, I didn’t know what a “katabasis story” was either.  Thank God for Wikipedia, which tells me “Katabasis is a descent of some type. Katabasis may be a moving downhill, a sinking of winds, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld.” Oooh, now I get it.

The Big Ba-Ha is a macabre post-apocalyptic fairy tale, a rollicking fantasy of a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest. To rescue one of their own, they will ally with the monstrous and enigmatic Flabberghast — who arrived only after the world ended and eats the bones of the dead — and penetrate the mystery of Chuckle City, home to ravenous packs of balloon aminals, murderous Gacy boys, and the elusive Gray Harlequin. The Big Ba-Ha — it’s The Goonies meets The Road Warrior, perfectly suited for both ordinary children and gifted adults, and one of the most original fantasies I’ve read in a long time.

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James Enge tells us (rather gleefully) that “A slab of The Wolf Age is up at the Pyr samples site. Werewolves. Ghost-powered zeppelins. The usual stuff.”

The Wolf Age is the third novel of Morlock the Maker.  Morlock, the soft-spoken hunchback and recovering alcoholic who may also be the finest artificer the world has ever seen — not to mention a formidable swordsman — featured in Enge’s first published story, “Turn Up This Crooked Way,” in Black Gate 8, and has appeared six times (so far) in our pages, most recently in Black Gate 14.

Tired of dominating Black Gate‘s pages with an iron fist, Enge turned to more ambitious goals, producing the first two Morlock novels Blood of Ambrose (2009) and This Crooked Way (also 2009 — it makes other writers look bad, doesn’t it?), both published by Pyr.

Blood of Ambrose was recently nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the obvious next step in Enge’s ruthless plan for domination of Western civilization.

You can read the first two chapters of The Wolf Age at the Pyr website, and see for yourself how Enge’s evil scheme is taking shape.  It’s not to late to stop him.

Werewolves. Ghost-powered zeppelins. On second thought, it probably is too late.  Join the Black Gate staff in line to sign up as Enge’s evil henchmen, and get your black leather tunics and infrared goggles before they’re all gone.

The most interesting title waiting for me when I returned from our adventures at Dragon*Con was Harry Connolly’s Game of Cages, the latest in his Twenty Palaces series and the sequel to his first novel, Child of Fire.

We’ve been big fans of Harry since his first story appeared in Black Gate 2, and his “Soldiers of a Dying God” (BG 10) is one of the finest short pieces we’ve ever published. It’s been great to finally see him get some well-deserved recognition.  Child of Fire received some excellent notices, and Jim Butcher said it contained “Excellent reading… delicious tension and suspense.” Here’s the cover copy to Game of Cages:

As a wealthy few gather to bid on a predator capable of destroying all life on earth, the sorcerers of the Twenty Palace Society mobilize to stop them. Caught up in the scramble is Ray Lilly, the lowest of the low in the society — an ex-­car thief and the expendable assistant of a powerful sorcerer. Ray possesses exactly one spell to his name, along with a strong left hook. But when he arrives in the small town in the North Cascades where the bidding is to take place, the predator has escaped and the society’s most powerful enemies are desperate to recapture it.

We tracked down Harry at the exclusive club where he now writes, between eating oysters and sipping Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Before we were thrown out by the bankers at the next table, Harry did say a few words about his new novel, which Howard Jones managed to transcribe in the hidden notebook he always carries in his pocket:

Ray Lilly is an ex-con, an ex-car-thief, and current minion in the Twenty Palace Society, a secret organization that protects our world from deadly, magical “predators.” Ray may only be a driver — and a decoy — but he’s the only operative close enough to deal with an emergency situation: An auction has gone terribly wrong releasing a predator into a small town, and the bidders — murderous, wealthy bastards all — tear the town apart looking for it. Ray just has to hold out until his sorcerer bosses arrive, but it may already be too late.

Howard had a few choice words of his own about “wealthy bastards” as we dusted ourselves off, but at least we got an exclusive quote.  After his third novel, we’ll probably have to bribe his bodyguards just to get close to Harry. Don’t be one of the last ones to catch on. Check out Game of Cages today — the first three chapters are available online, and the book can be found at better bookstores near you.