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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

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mX_1On October 1, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories will be released, with a major party in London taking place to commemorate the event. It is a MASSIVE, three-volume collection containing 2 Introductions, 3 Forewords, 2 Poems, 2 Essays and 63 brand new Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, it’s the biggest collection of new Holmes stories ever!

The stories are arranged chronologically, with Part I covering 1881-1889 (23 stories); Part II including 1890-1895 (19 stories) and Part III dealing with 1896-1929 (21 stories). The authors range from those with their first published Holmes stories to New York Times best sellers.

This collection was put together by editor David Marcum, who is my main Solar Pons buddy. He emailed me one January afternoon, telling me he had had a dream the night before. He wanted to put “together an original traditional-Canon Holmes anthology for MX.” David writes Holmes books for MX Publishing in England and he had emailed MX head Steve Emecz already that morning.

David is a Holmes purist and as he wrote to me, “there would be no weird Alternate Universe or present-day stuff, no Holmes-is-the-Ripper, nothing where Watson is at Holmes’ funeral or vice versa.” He wanted traditional stories as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would write them, narrated by Watson.

The part that I chuckle at now is that he said he planned on asking a small and select group of authors to participate. But there was no chance of that. More and more folks signed on and it grew from a single book to two to a trilogy.

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Back to Ancient Opar

Back to Ancient Opar

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king-oparexiles-khoEdgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan has proven an unstoppable force. While misguided movies, TV series, and musicals do their best to rob the ape man of his savage nature and integrity in the name of mass marketing and political correctness, Burroughs’ original Jungle Lord perseveres. Conventional wisdom may suggest time has passed him by, but it’s the vitality of the original that keeps readers coming back for more. Happily, talents like Joe R. Lansdale, Philip Jose Farmer, and most recently Will Murray have been willing to give fans further adventures of the real Tarzan.

Turn back the clock four decades and you’ll find Philip Jose Farmer’s seminal fictional biography, Tarzan Alive (1972) had much to answer for in terms of launching the Wold Newton movement in popular fiction as well as boosting Burroughs’ cachet. While the book may be relatively obscure today, the ripples it created are still felt on the beaches of pulp fiction. For his part, Farmer launched a series of officially sanctioned books recounting the history of ancient Opar. Longtime readers of Burroughs’ work will know that Opar was the first of the author’s lost cities (an outpost of forgotten Atlantis) that survived undiscovered in Tarzan’s African jungle.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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2011 Hugo Award-smallIf there was a predominate topic last month at Black Gate, it was unquestionably the Hugo Awards.

Black Gate was nominated for a Hugo Award for the first time this year — an honor we declined on April 19. The Awards were presented at the World Science Fiction Convention on August 22, and our coverage of the awards and its immediate aftermath, written by me and Jay Maynard, produced the top three BG articles in August. In fact, those three posts were read more than the next 30 articles on the list combined.

The most popular non-Hugo article this month was Elizabeth Cady’s look at Aristophanes’ The Birds, “Ancient Worlds: The First Fantasy World.” Next was our report on a controversial analysis of NPR’s Top 100 Books list, “New Statesmen on the “Shockingly Offensive” 100 Best Fantasy and SF Novels.”

Sixth was David B. Coe’s second essay on the 2015 Hugo Kerfuffle, “Enough, Part II,” followed by the 8th entry in our very popular Discovering Robert E. Howard series, “Jeffrey Shanks on The Worldbuilding of REH.” Coming in at number 8, and sticking with the Robert E. Howard theme, was Bob Byrne’s “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH.”

Number 9 last month was M. Harold Page on “Chivalry: Not Really About Opening Doors (and Still Quite a Useful Coping Strategy).” And rounding out the Top 10 was another in our Discovering Robert E. Howard series, Don Herron’s “Pigeons From Hell From Lovecraft.”

The complete list of Top Articles for August follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

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Modular: Kickstarting The Northlands Saga Complete (Frog God Games)

Modular: Kickstarting The Northlands Saga Complete (Frog God Games)

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Northlands CompleteThe Vikings are coming!

I’m a fan of Frog God Games. Rising from the ashes of Third Edition D&D’s Necromancer Games, they make RPG products for Pathfinder, 5th Edition and Swords & Wizardry. Way back in 2014, I wrote here about The Lost Lands, the campaign world that would synthesize almost all of the Necromancer and FGG products — from classics like Rappan Athuk and Gary Gygax’s Necropolis to newer deadly adventures like The Slumbering Tsar saga.

I’ve happily backed several Lost Lands Kickstarters the past few years (including Sword of Air, Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms) and there’s been a ton of Pathfinder goodness for me (Don’t let the list price put you off — the PDFs are more affordable). The latest Lost Lands Kickstarter, which wraps up October 2 (and is 75% funded as I type this) is one I have anxiously been awaiting.

In 2010 and 2011, Frog God released the first four modules in Kenneth Spencer’s series set in the Northlands. The first two had a bit of an American Eskimo feel, then moved into pure Viking territory in the third and fourth. You can read my thoughts on the series here.

Then, the modules stopped coming. Greg Vaughan, Pathfinder Creative Director (and author of the previously mentioned Slumbering Tsar epic), told me that The Northlands was on hold and that it would become a separate campaign book for The Lost Lands. So, I waited… and waited…. and waited. Wait no more!

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Dear Prudentia: What is Best in Life?

Dear Prudentia: What is Best in Life?

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He offers you lamentations. I offer you orgies. And you vote for him. Really?
He offers you lamentations. I offer you orgies. And you vote for him. Really?

Dear Prudentia,

I know how it goes. When one asks a mighty barbarian warrior: “What is best in life?” The typical answer should be: “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.” The first two are fine, but I must admit that the third one perturbs me. I mean, I don’t actually like hearing women cry. It makes me feel all sad, and I tear up easily, which isn’t good for troop morale. Once, I hiccupped a sob, tried to pretend it was a sneeze, and bit on my own recently sharpened sword to hide my grief. It looked pretty badass so the men were impressed and gave me wide berth, but still, I can only cut half of my face off so many times before I’m too mutilated to be understood. Plus, my tetanus shot is out of date and that’s bound to turn out badly. Please help me to enjoy the lamentations of women, as ever good conqueror should.

Grinning Anonymously

Dear Grinning,

First off, you should never let your shots expire. You just never know what you’ll encounter on that battlefield. Some people’s arrows are filthy with cow dung, did you know that? You could get terribly ill that way, which would tear your attention away from conquering.

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Persian Fire: History like Harold Lamb Used to Do It

Persian Fire: History like Harold Lamb Used to Do It

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Persian_Fire
…doesn’t quite live up to the promise on the dust jacket, but does deliver something else almost as spectacular.

300 without the attack rhinos, Greece versus the known world, and — best of all — the Persian Wars from the Persian perspective. You can see how Persian Fire by Tom Holland ended up as another one of my Barter Books finds.

It’s a book that doesn’t quite live up to the promise on the dust jacket, but does deliver something else almost as spectacular. Yes, he launches us into the history of the Persian Empire and what came before it. However, a few chapters in and Athens and Sparta steal the story.

300 Without the Attack Rhinos
300 Without the Attack Rhinos

It’s not Holland’s fault.

Though he draws on archaeology to bring to life the palaces and people of Persia,  just like other historians, he has but one substantial contemporary source: Herodotus, the father of History. The end result is a retelling of — to those of us who have studied Ancient History — a very familiar tale.

However, this is a tale supremely well and wisely told, pretty much as Harold Lamb would have done it. (It’s also the kind of sweeping history that the History Manifesto calls for, but which academics rarely seem to deliver (because few of them could write their way out of a paper bag).)

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A Deal You Can Refuse, But Shouldn’t

A Deal You Can Refuse, But Shouldn’t

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Black Gate HQ in downtown Chicago
Black Gate‘s Manhattan offices

There were seven hundred and seven stairs leading to John O’Neill’s desk within the Black Gate publishing complex, twelve more than last time, and I was exhausted when I reached the top. There, I waited, watching with trepidation as he finished reading a sheaf of papers, each heavily marked with the red pencil in his white-knuckled fist. His youth of back-alley boxing had left his hands suited to little more than holding an editor’s pencil, and this he wielded furiously, gold rings glinting in the dim light. From behind his massive chair the bodyguard, Tolstoy, glowered silently. Finally, the publishing magnate looked up at me and scowled.

“Starr,” he muttered, running a finger down a printed agenda on his desk. “Something about a blog post.”

“Yes, sir,” I stammered, holding out the two flimsy pages in my hand. Sweat had made the paper soft and slightly rumpled, and he considered them with distaste before taking them. His eyes flicked down the length of the copy before he tossed them down on his desk.

“Rubbish,” he declared.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are of the same length, but I have to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

So opens Shirley Jackson’s final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Published three years before her death, this introduction to the book’s narrator, better known as Merricat, seems to promise readers they are in for the story of a quirky young woman. It is indeed beguiling but bears only the slightest hint of what’s to come in this short novel. It is a book built of dark and deep shadows, pierced at times by shimmering passages, before becoming darker and more claustrophobic.

Merricat lives with her sister and their crippled and addle-minded Uncle Julian in the great mansion that the Blackwoods have always lived in. Six years ago something terrible happened for which all the townsfolk hate, and perhaps even fear, the Blackwoods. One evening, arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl and the sisters’ parents, younger brother, and aunt died. Their uncle took less sugar and survived, though irreparably broken. Constance, who cooked, who never took sugar — and who cleaned the sugar bowl before the police arrived — was accused and tried. No motive could be found and she was acquitted, but she has never since left the property. Only Merricat braves the village — twice a week — to buy food, take out books from the library, and suffer the staring and unpleasant treatment of the villagers.

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Adventures In Commitment: To Watch Beyond the Pilot?

Adventures In Commitment: To Watch Beyond the Pilot?

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Sleepy OneWe live in a Golden Age of television. Quality work springs up every season, clamoring for our attention. Thing of it is, the hours available in any given day have not kept pace. Days on planet earth continue to mete out a mere twenty-four hours total, and I (for one) need to be sleeping for at least seven of those.

For what, then, will I give my precious time?

With books, I have a rule. If a series remains unfinished, I refuse to delve. I call this “The Robert Jordan Rule,” and at present, I am busily applying it to George R.R. Martin. However, I’m feckless, and inconstant besides. I have not applied said rule to Patrick Rothfuss, and I beg you not to apply it to my own burgeoning series of Renner & Quist adventures, the latest of which, Bonesy, arrived September First.

The Robert Jordan Rule proves equally impossible to apply to television. Hardly any series is made with an end point in mind. Most simply peter out when audiences wane, budgets get slashed, or the makers finally admit they have no idea how to wrap things up (and possibly never did). What, then, to do? Does any criteria exist for what show next to watch?

To begin, we must invoke Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Take Me To the Pilot!

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Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

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HeadshotSirensT.L. Zalecki was one of the first speculative fiction authors offered a publishing contract via the Kindle Scout program, and her debut novel, Rising Tide (SIRENS Book 1) was recently published by Kindle Press. Her second book in the series, Lost World, is now up on the Kindle Scout site, where readers can nominate it, and if it is published, receive a free copy. I’m devouring Rising Tide right now. It’s scientifically plausible mer-people in a near future dystopia with government conspiracy to boot!

Tanya was kind enough to sit down with me for a Skype interview to discuss her experience with the Kindle Scout program and share insights into how it works. As one of the first forty authors selected for a publishing contract, she set up her Rising Tide campaign while the site was still in beta. In this interview, we discuss the process of selection on Kindle Scout, the timeline for publication, and the types of rights that the publisher seeks. This program is something to consider if you want the freedom of indie publishing with some of the editing and marketing support of a big publisher.

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