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Art Evolution 9: Jim Holloway

Art Evolution 9: Jim Holloway

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Art Evolution, the collection of role-playing artists spanning thirty years and genres creating a single character, begins here and continues with this week’s ninth representative.

cranston-snords-irregulars-254Okay, now I had a ‘Pathfinder Iconic Lyssa‘, and life was good, but the more I went over what I wanted from this project the more it became clear I couldn’t just do ten artists. There was no way ten artists justified the true landscape and epic scope of RPG art during the past thirty years.

I was at the tipping point, and it was then, in the depth of winter that I decided I’d include everyone who’d not only impacted my life, but the life of gamers all over the world.

If I somehow had the power to collect those already in the project, then asking was no longer an issue, and the sting of a rebuke wasn’t a deterrent against the joy I already felt at the process.

Taking a lead from Dragon Magazine reading, I starting rolling out every name I could think of. Instead of thinking about two representatives from each Era, I’d go for four, and I looked deeper into all the art I’d seen since my youth.

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“Hey Look, It’s Joe Haldeman!”: A First-Time Convention-Goer Looks at World Fantasy 2010

“Hey Look, It’s Joe Haldeman!”: A First-Time Convention-Goer Looks at World Fantasy 2010

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black-gate-booth
Howard A. Jones, John O'Neill, et Ego

I had never attended a major speculative fiction convention until this year. And the World Fantasy Convention is a huge one for a first-timer to go diving into. It’s an especially scary dive if you’re someone like me, who is only starting to emerge from the years of amateur writing into some level of the professional. I’ve won a major writing award, have some stories that will soon be published, and even have an agent and a novel making the rounds at publishing houses, but I felt like a Lilliputian among Brobdingnagians when I entered the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, OH on 29 October 2010 with the Thirty-Sixth World Fantasy Convention already in motion. There I was, lugging my heavy suitcases from the taxi from the airport, and already around me was a throng of people with their convention badges swinging from their necks and deep in the business of “convening.”

The main reason I had never gone to conventions before (aside from some swing dancing confabs — a different world entirely) was because I didn’t have any people to go with or meet there; most of my close Los Angeles friends are not involved in SF fandom to any degree. I didn’t want to go solo and feel lost in the huge ocean of a major convention. I know my personality — I’d likely leave the convention in a few hours in a sort of junior-high-school-dance-wallflower fear.

But this time, I had the best network and support team possible, the Black Gate folks. This was not only a chance to go to a huge convention, but a chance to meet the people who had formed an important part of life during the past four years, and who until then were known to me as emails and voices on the phone. I finally got to meet John O’Neill, Bill Ward, John Fultz, Jason M. Waltz, and the man responsible for getting me involved in all this in the first place, Howard Andrew Jones, but for whom . . . well, you know the rest. Without Howard’s encouragement, I don’t think I would have pushed myself to be a better writer the way I have over the last few years.

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You Know What’s Cool? Strange Horizons Is Cool

You Know What’s Cool? Strange Horizons Is Cool

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"After the Fall" by Malcolm McClinton
"After the Fall" by Malcolm McClinton

As an upstart n00bie writer in the fantasy field, I tend to be very fond of those editors who actively seek out and nurture upstart n00bie writers in the fantasy field.

I know, right? Shocker!

That’s one of the many reasons I adore Black Gate Magazine with radiant rip-tides of affection. The time and attention these editors bestow on their writers is mind-boggling. You think you’ve written something pretty okay, and then the editors get their scalpels and flensing knives and broadswords right into the meat of it, and your story suddenly becomes EPIC LIKE BEOWULF!

And that’s an experience I had recently with Strange Horizons‘ editor Karen Meisner.

Back in late July, Strange Horizons accepted my story “Household Spirits,” which went live online today.

In the interim between acceptance and publication, there was the Editing Process.

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Gabbing with a Girl of Spirit: Black Gate Interviews Ysabeau Wilce

Gabbing with a Girl of Spirit: Black Gate Interviews Ysabeau Wilce

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yspicA few years ago, I lived and worked in Edgewater, a northerly Chicago neighborhood  just blocks from fantasy writer Ysabeau Wilce’s house. She once confessed to having walked her dog past my bookstore on Broadway and Bryn Mawr. The unutterable excitement!

I didn’t know then that the anonymous, red-haired, dog-walking passerby was the very same woman who wrote “Metal More Attractive,” the story in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that made me write my first ever fan letter as an adult.

Not to mention, she’s also the author of Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog.The fact that I get to interview her today? Just tickles me!

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Short Fiction Roundup

Short Fiction Roundup

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apexmag11101The November issue of Apex Magazine has gone to press (can you still use those kind of terms for on-line publication), and edtor Catherynne M. Valente has presented the unusual theme of an Arab/Muslim issue.  A reader comment about Pamela K. Taylor’s “50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire” (because it doesn’t matter what part of the world you may be in these days, the undead sucking blood have somehow or another become cultural icons) describes the story as “[b]oth savagely funny and gut-wrenchingly moving.”

In other news, Word Fantasy Award winning editor Susan Marie Groppi is resigning her “in-chief” role at Strange Horizons. Reviews editor Niall Harrison is assuming the post, and is stepping down after five years from the helm as features editor of  Vector to take on the job.

Marvel’s The Monster of Frankenstein, Part Four

Marvel’s The Monster of Frankenstein, Part Four

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fm13The 20th Century adventures of Mary Shelley’s famous monster continued with a guest-star stint in Giant-Size Werewolf #2. Doug fm14Moench scripted and Don Perlin provided the artwork. Moench gets to make his familiar point about judging by appearances (as he did several times in his Frankenstein 1974 scripts for Monsters Unleashed) with an opening sequence in which a hippie and an African-American are discussing the injustice of unfounded prejudices when they encounter the Monster and immediately flee in terror at his appearance. The Monster subsequently overhears a conversation between two winos about eccentric millionaire Danton Vayla who has discovered the ability to transmigrate souls. Intrigued, the Monster sets off for Los Angeles (by freight train) in the hopes of gaining a new, normal body for himself.

The story then shifts gears to pick up a plot strand from Marvel’s monthly Werewolf by Night title where Lissa Russell has joined a Satanic cult, The Brotherhood of Baal in the hopes of finding a cure for her werewolf brother. Lissa quits the cult after learning that they practice human sacrifice. The Brotherhood abducts Lissa and scrawl Manson-style graffiti on the walls of her home. This sends Jack Russell in search of his sister. He soon discovers that Danton Vayla (who resembles Anton LaVey in name as well as appearance) is the leader of the Brotherhood of Baal and about to sacrifice Lissa as part of the same ritual that the Monster’s soul is to transmigrate into the body of a handsome young cult member. One lengthy Werewolf-Monster scuffle later and Vayla lies dead, the cult is ruined and Lissa is freed.

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A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

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jheregJhereg
By Steven Brust
Ace (224 pages, $2.50, April 1983)

I’ve played in a lot of tabletop RPGs, including a couple of homebrewed systems and homebrewed worlds. I’ve never encountered one that goes into the culture-changing potential of resurrection, though. It’s treated as an acceptable break from reality, a way to keep things fun, one that has little effect on the world besides providing a way for the campaign’s archnemesis to keep coming back.

Jhereg, by Steven Brust, the first book in his 12-volume Vlad Taltos series, takes the notion of reliable magical resurrection and creates a society around it.

Vlad Taltos is an Easterner and a gentleman, which isn’t a common combination. Easterners are an underclass compared to Dragaerans. The Dragaeran clan called House Jhereg allows anyone, even Easterners, to buy in — a distinct advantage, since it allows them access to the Dragaeran Empire’s sorcery. Unfortunately, the Jheregs may be the most egalitarian family in the Empire, but they also operate a lot like the mafia. Citizenship is not cheap.

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Goth Chick News: Pursuing the Jinn

Goth Chick News: Pursuing the Jinn

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image002No, I can’t just go to Vegas like a normal person.

I’m pretty sure that by now connecting the word “normal” with anything you read here is no longer something you attempt to do. However, just in case there were lingering doubts, I’m stating my position for the record.

That out of the way, I can now tell you that during the two weeks since last we met I have been gleefully trudging through the sands of the Sahara in search of tasty paranormal tidbits to smuggle back through customs for you.

And rest assured, Morocco yielded a doozy.

In mid-October I boarded a flight from Chicago, connected through Rome and landed in Casablanca (yes, the one from the movie) where I kicked off a ten-day tour of the major cities of Morocco.

In addition to some really nice ceramic tiles and possibly a carpet (a flying one if I was really lucky), my goal was to collect stories of the paranormal in a culture governed by its religion. I tempered my expectations with the thought that a country full of devout Muslims may have no room in their beliefs for such things, and that even asking about them could be offensive.

Wrong on both accounts.

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The Wizard Walks By…

The Wizard Walks By…

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wizard“Evil powers…disappear
Demons worry…when the Wizard is near
He turns tears…into joy
Everyone’s happy…when the Wizard walks by”
 — Black Sabbath

Make way for the Wizard!

WAY OF THE WIZARD is being released on November 16th, but editor John Joseph Adams (The Living Dead, Lightspeed) has launched a website for the book that features 7 stories ABSOLUTELY FREE.

One of these stories is my own mini-epic “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria.” You can read it and the rest right here.

The book features 32 stories of mages, sorcerers, wizards, and the like. Of these 18 are brand-new stories. Big-name authors include Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Peter Beagle, and Robert Silverberg, and many others. (Complete TOC available at the website.)

The strategy here is that reading a few of these seven free stories will influence readers to go out and buy the book… to whet their appetites for wizardry, so to speak. A wise move indeed.

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Fantasy Lite – Half the Calories of Regular Fantasy, but Twice the Fun

Fantasy Lite – Half the Calories of Regular Fantasy, but Twice the Fun

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studypoisonFive years ago, my first novel, Poison Study was published. It came out in hardback with a beautiful red and gold cover that was loosely based on Vermeer’s painting The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

The cover model was from Russia, which was perfect since my main character’s name was Yelena, which is a popular name in Russia.

Too bad she returned to her homeland before the cover shoot for Magic Study. But that’s another story. And no, I’m not dredging up those painful memories, thank you very much.

Since 2005, Poison Study has had two more covers, has been published around the world and has won multiple awards.

Who da thunk it! Not me. Let’s go all the way back to 1995 (and don’t you dare tell me that was before you were born or I’ll smack you upside the head).

studyhowto2Back in 1995, I’m reading Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy – because I had written a bunch of short stories that were all soundly rejected and I was thinking perhaps I needed a few pointers (no comments on still having my short stories rejected).

Card talked about characters and how writers should avoid making the King or Duke or Prince or their female counterparts their main protagonist. He mentioned that people around the seat of power had more freedom to get into trouble.

And Zing! I sparked on the idea of having a main character be the King’s poison taster.

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