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Five Tactics to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse… And Why They Wouldn’t Work

Five Tactics to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse… And Why They Wouldn’t Work

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When the Heavens Fall cover-smallMy epic fantasy debut, When the Heavens Fall, came out in May this year, and it can best be summed up as “The Lord of the Rings meets World War Z.” It’s not a zombie apocalypse novel, but that’s going to come as scant consolation to the characters who find themselves having to wade through an army of undead.

In a recent interview I was asked if I had a plan to survive a zombie apocalypse. Unsurprisingly, it’s not something I spend too much time thinking about. With Christmas approaching, though, what better way to get into the festive spirit than contemplating the end of the world, and all the reasons why we wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving it?

Here, then, are five (futile) tactics for surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Run

If you live in a city, the first thing you’re going to want to do is leave. No matter what the cause of “zombieism” is, the infection is always transmissible, which means the friend standing beside you could soon be wondering how you taste with ketchup. There’s no such thing as safety in numbers when the numbers can so easily turn against you.

But how do you leave? By car? Only if your vehicle can fly over all the other cars clogging the streets. By train? If you think public transport is unreliable now, how do you imagine the apocalypse is going to improve punctuality?

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Piss Off Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Piss Off Sherlock Holmes

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Holmes_GrunerA few weeks ago, I speculated a bit on what might have really happened in “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” I had already offered you, good reader, a few alternatives to Watson’s recorded accounts, such as this one for “The Abbey Grange.” I believe that “The Illustrious Client” is one of Doyle’s better tales. Granada also made a fine version for their Jeremy Brett series. This week, I again veer from Watson’s (dare I say, ‘fawning’) view of matters.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I feel silly putting spoiler alerts before discussing stories that were often written a century or more before. But if you haven’t read the story yet, click here before continuing on. Okay, back? Pretty good story, eh? Now, let’s have an alternate take:

The vile Baron Gruner had illy used and cast aside many women, including Kitty Winter. She says to Holmes, “Let me see this man in the mud, and I’ve got all I worked for – in the mud with my foot on his cursed face. That’s my price. I’m with you tomorrow or any other day so long as you are on his track.”

Clearly, Winter is willing to help Holmes bring down Baron Gruner. She certainly seems dedicated to the task. When it is time to sneak into Gruner’s house and steal a book that will expose his vile ways, Holmes brings Winter with him. Presumably, this was so she could show him where it was. He tells Watson that he couldn’t know “what the little packet was that she carried so carefully under her cloak.”

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Mysterion Submissions

Mysterion Submissions

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MysterionCoverI’ve discussed Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith, the anthology my wife and I are editing and publishing, on Black Gate before (here and here). We’re nearing the end of our submissions period, so I thought I’d discuss some of what’s going on with us. There’s a week left until submissions close on December 25th, so there’s still time to submit if you’d like to.

I’ve been keeping track of submissions on a weekly basis. As of Wednesday, we’ve received 385 submissions since we opened on October 15th, of which we’ve responded to 315. Most of those were rejections, but we’re currently holding 39 stories that we’re interested in publishing.

We won’t select any stories to go into the anthology until we’ve read them all. Instead, when we read a story that we think would make a good addition to the anthology, we tell the author that we’re planning to hold their story. After we’ve finished, I expect we’ll have somewhere around 50 stories that we’re holding. From those we’ll select the the ones that will go into the anthology.

At this rate, it looks pretty certain that we’ll pass 400 submissions overall. It’s even possible that we’ll pass 500, if we get a surge in the last week equal to what we got in the first week, but I think we’ll probably end up somewhere between 425-450.

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The Ultimate Holiday Shopping Guide for the Conquerors in Your Life

The Ultimate Holiday Shopping Guide for the Conquerors in Your Life

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Holiday shopping is always tricky, especially for those ambitious, high-reaching and quick-to-draw-their-sword-and-slay-you-with-their-displeasure conquering types. We all have one or two in our lives!

A snake pit is that gift that keeps on giving. And taking.
A snake pit is that gift that keeps on giving. And taking.

Take some stress out of the season’s fun blood baths with our handy holiday gift guide!

For the New Conqueror

It’s the holidays for everyone, and new conquerors needs to distress while growing their frightful reputations. Get them a small village of poorly armed insurgents to slay. The easy win will foster troop moral and people will fear their ire. A win-win for everyone involved! Remember: unnamed troops need some holiday cheer, too!

For the Conqueror That Has Everything

They already have a harem, a snake pit and a fire-breathing dragon. What to get them? A seasonal gift could take the simple form of fresh heads for their Field of Warning. Gathering fresh heads constantly can be quite demanding for troops, and they’ll thank you for that brief, thoughtful respite during this holiday season. Sometimes, when shopping for someone who tirelessly slaughters so many, it’s nice to give them a break in some nice pre-packaged, still fleshy heads. Don’t forget about the environment – source local, homegrown heads to spare on shipping and preservation costs! Future generations will thank you.

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The Halt And The Lame

The Halt And The Lame

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Heinlein WaldoOne of the details that made Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers so unusual at the time of its filming (1973) was a level of realism previously unseen in the historical adventure movie, (think Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood). Lester showed us illness, filth, and poverty in  ways we hadn’t really seen in a movie that wasn’t about illness, filth, or poverty.

Aside: Oddly enough, there’s more realism of this kind in comedy than in any other genre, as though it’s okay to present disease and disfigurement in a way that make us laugh. (Disclaimer: the psychological basis of laughter is not the focus of this post)

Blade Runner did a similar kind of thing for SF movies. Maybe it wasn’t the first time we’d been shown a dark future, but it certainly was the first time we’d been shown one that wasn’t clean.  We may argue that George Lucas did it first, in the original Star Wars movie, where Luke was driving what was obviously a used flying car. (And that’s my Star Wars reference for today.)

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Exploring Morocco’s Only Stone Circle

Exploring Morocco’s Only Stone Circle

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The Pointer at Mzoura. Photo courtesy Almudena Alonso-Herrero.

The Pointer at Mzoura. Photo courtesy Almudena Alonso-Herrero

Morocco is best known for its medieval medinas and Roman cities, but the region has some interesting prehistoric remains as well. Petroglyphs dating back tens of thousands of years can be found all over the country, and archaeologists are excavating early hunting sites and Neolithic villages to piece together Morocco’s prehistory.

One curious site stands out above all others — Mzoura, Morocco’s only stone circle. It looks strikingly like those of Western Europe, as if it had been transposed from Wiltshire or Brittany.

We visited on the same day we went to visit Asilah. The site makes a good side trip from that old pirate port. A private car is needed because the stone circle stands next to the little village of Sidi-el-Yamani, which is reached only infrequently by public transport over narrow and rough roads.

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How to Get From Worldbuilding (or Research) to Story

How to Get From Worldbuilding (or Research) to Story

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Golden Falcon
How do you get from the cool world you just built — or researched — to an actual story?… Let’s imagine a knight on a revenge quest.

Worldbuilding is a thing.

People build Fantasy worlds for fun.

They’ve pretty much always done it, either collectively — like the storytellers who built Greek mythology and or theologians who created the medieval vision of Hell — or individually, like the quirky medieval mapmakers and of course Tolkien, and every modern GM who spends more time creating their world than playing in it, and every wannabe Fantasy author who loses themselves in the act of creation.

For a fictional world to live, however, somebody has to tramp its surface.

We need a Homer to dump Odysseus  on the Island of the Cyclops, Dante to have Virgil lead him through the Circles of Hell, and “John Mandeville” — whoever he really was — to take us to the Land of Prester John. Meanwhile, Tolkien must stop building and start writing, the GM has to assemble their players, and the modern wannabe Fantasy author has to…

Ah. That’s the thing.

Once upon a time, you could just take your hero from A to B to C, picking up plot tokens or even just getting closer to the goal while having quirky adventures on the way. We now expect a little more from our authors.

How do you get from the cool world you just built — or researched — to an actual story?

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November Short Story Roundup

November Short Story Roundup

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oie_14247554qbnAW5It’s been a lot of fun getting deep into epic high fantasy over the past few months, and I hope you’ve been enjoying it as well, but it’s good to remember what got me started writing at Black Gate in the first place: swords & sorcery. So without further ado, here’s the November short story roundup.

Curtis Ellett’s Swords and Sorcery Magazine Issue 46 hit the virtual stands with its usual pair of stories, one by Brynn McNab and another by Black Gate‘s own Nicholas Ozment. As John O’Neill wrote last week, Ellet is planning on putting together an anthology of the best of his magazine’s first four years. Coupled with Heroic Fantasy Quarterly‘s “best of” anthology, it’s a good time for short fiction readers.

McNab’s story, “The Gargoyle and the Nun,” is a somewhat formless story of Merek and Arabella, a soldier transformed by a witch into a gargoyle and the woman he loves. The story, in which true love conquers all, feels very much like a fairytale and has some good moments. It suffers in the end, though, from being only three short scenes featuring characters without much character.

“Last Stand at Wellworm’s Pass” is a perfect dose of old school storytelling from Ozment. “Tamalin, one of the most feared and powerful mages in all of Rilsthorn” is on the run from a pack of assassins on the dark streets of Ment City. Cornered, he is rescued by a cloaked man named Kor. His deliverer offers to help the wizard escape through the maze of tunnels that run beneath the city and on to ultimate freedom by way of a place called Wellworm’s Pass. It’s a quick-paced story that, while it doesn’t offer anything startlingly new, is delivered with all the brio and skill needed to create a successful S&S tale. Any S&S story that can stuff in werewolves, demons, and djinns is alright by me.

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In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Six

In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Six

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In The Wake of Sister Blue Mark Rigney-medium

Linked below, you’ll find the sixth installment of a brand-new serialized novel, In the Wake Of Sister Blue. In this latest batch of adventures and misadventures, Karai meets Vashear, we tour the Sindarin market (where disaster awaits), and Maer bargains for the lives of Doss and Cullen with –– well, I’d better keep that a secret until you get there, eh? Chapter Seven will follow in two weeks’ time, by hook or by crook.

A number of you will already be familiar with my Tales Of Gemen (“The Trade,” “The Find,” and “The Keystone“), and if you enjoyed those titles, I think you’ll also find much to like in this latest venture.

Bear in mind that this is a true serial. I haven’t written to the end; I couldn’t publish all at once even if I wished to do so. I do have the overall arc of the piece ever more firmly in mind, but as to how exactly I’ll write navigate the roads from here to there? I predict it’ll be one complication at a time –– minimum. I do promise this: I’ll dole out the breadcrumbs of story just as fast as I can tear them from the fictive loaf, and when we reach the end, we’ll get there simultaneously. Welcome to adventure, In the Wake Of Sister Blue.

Tell your friends. Sharing and linking are the highest of compliments. Off we go –– and if you’re just discovering this portal, may I suggest you begin at the beginning?

Read the first installment of In the Wake Of Sister Blue here.

Read the sixth and latest installment of In the Wake Of Sister Blue here.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “Rudolph’s Performance Review”

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “Rudolph’s Performance Review”

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Rudolph_withSantaLast year around this time, I posted a short, short story I wrote, “Watson’s Christmas Trick,” which was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s own “How Watson Learned the Trick.” If you missed that, click on over for a little Holmesian holiday fun. Or click on this post from last year, which looks at a few Holmes pastiches for the season, including one of my all time favorite anthologies, Holmes for the Holidays.

Though I don’t use it too often when I write fiction (maybe I should start writing my own character, instead of Sherlock Holmes, Solar Pons and Nero Wolfe…), I think that my ‘voice’ involves a solid dose of humor. And on that note, I give you “Rudolph’s Performance Review” You’d think the reindeer with the shiny red nose would have knocked his annual review out of the park after that foggy Christmas Eve, eh? Well, that Santa is one tough reviewer. Read on, and I wish you a safe, happy and blessed Merry Christmas.

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