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New Treasures: Elements by Suzanne Church

New Treasures: Elements by Suzanne Church

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Suzanne Church Elements-smallTeam Black Gate has been friends with Suzanne Church for a long time. It’s not just that she’s friendly and full of energy — she always seems to show up with a helping hand just when you need it most. She’s pulled us out of more than one fire, usually when something has gone terribly wrong at a convention and we’re standing around looking lost. Purely in terms of karmic balance, we owe her big time.

So I was delighted to see her first collection Elements arrive. Not just because I’m a fan of her delightful short stories, but because I figured we’d finally have a chance to balance the scales a bit, you know, help spread the word. As it turns out, of course, Suzanne needs no such help, as figures with far greater reach than Black Gate have already jumped ahead of the line to sing her praises. Bestselling author Kelly Armstrong calls the book  “An engrossing collection of tales, sometimes dark, always thought-provoking and original,” just as an example. Someday we’ll be able to repay Suzanne for all her kindness. But today, we’re just going to curl up with her collection and enjoy it.

Can humanity survive an ice age? Will the storm man steal Wanda’s baby? When will Bob and Sebbee escape the relentless march of the Lost Circle? What is the cause of the taint in Faya’s courted ice? If you can’t escape hell, can you at least afford a trip on a teleporting couch?

Church infuses emotion into every tale. Whether quirky or horrific, the prose deftly snatches the reader onto a whirlwind expedition of laughter and sorrow.

Elements collects science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories published in such places as Clarkesworld, Cicada, On Spec, Chilling Tales, Tesseracts, and Urban Green Man. It was published April 30, 2014 by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. It is 248 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition. The creepy cover is by Neil Jackson. Amazon.com currently has the trade paperback edition discounted to just $2.73, an 82% savings. But move fast to make sure you get a copy. Check it out here.

The Series Series: The Godless by Ben Peek

The Series Series: The Godless by Ben Peek

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The Godless Ben Peek-smallA fresh, fascinating story hides in this book. The gods are dead — their bodies litter the earth — but their powers leak into the lives of mortal men and women. And sometimes, tragically, children. Deific power is messy. One sprouts extra limbs, trails plagues in one’s wake, or combusts and takes out whole buildings. It’s a curse, isn’t it, to bear such power?

Ayae, a young apprentice cartographer, took refuge in a city built on a dead god’s bones when her homeland fell. Now an army of fanatics marches on her new home and those fanatics seem to want to wake the dead gods. What will Ayae do now that she’s cursed with the local god’s power over fire? She could be a doomsday weapon or a loose cannon that destroys the people she cares about. Her best hope for help in mastering her powers is a man so old he remembers the world as it was before the gods died, fifteen thousand years ago. He’s been wise. He’s been mad. He has done terrible things with the power that curses him. Ayae wants to trust Zaifyr, but he doesn’t always trust himself. The dead — human and divine — talk to him, and the dead have their own agenda.

Alas, the story is hiding, not in the sense of requiring a brisk readerly workout to piece the clues together, but rather in the sense of having been copyedited so poorly that it’s hard at times to figure out what the author is trying to make many of the sentences say.

I’ve written reviews before of books with lots of promise that could have used one last pass of polishing. This is not that.

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Firefly Friday: Going Behind the Scenes

Firefly Friday: Going Behind the Scenes

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Firefly the Official Companion-smallThe cornerstone of the fans’ love affair with Firefly is the 13 television episodes, culminating in the film Serenity. But if you’re a fan of the show, you’ve probably watched all of the episodes numerous times – maybe even with the audio commentary from Whedon, the stars, and other show creators. For real fans, though, this may not be quite enough. Is there any way to dive into the individual episodes more deeply?

Titan Books helped out the fans by publishing a series of stunning, glossy fan-gasmic volumes that include not only images of the props and various production stills, but also full scripts of the episodes of the series. Across these three books – ultimately collected into a single volume – there’s a glimpse into nearly every aspect of the production process on the series, why it was ultimately cancelled, what the various actors felt about their characters, and even some new stories.

And so very many shiny, shiny pictures.

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You Know My Methods, Or, How Do You Write?

You Know My Methods, Or, How Do You Write?

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Huff FutureGet a bunch of writers together and , once you can get them to stop talking about the Oxford comma, you’ll find they talk about the three basics of writing, Where? When? and How much? (Where “how much” refers to word count, not bank account) As you soon figure out, there are no right answers to these questions, there’s only what works for you – except for those occasions in which nothing works, but let’s not go there. At least not today.

For fulltime authors, “Where?” is one of the easiest questions, because the answer so often is “in my home office.” Whether that home office is a dedicated room, the kitchen table, or a TV tray in the living room, “home” is the operative concept. Mystery writer Vicki Delany, for example, doesn’t write in her nice office with the big monitor and the wood stove. She writes standing up, having found that the pass through from her kitchen to her dining room is the perfect height.

Many who aren’t fulltime writers also write at home, but others, like my good friend and fellow Black Gate contributor Derek Kunsken (check out his series on selling short fiction) have other methods. Derek gets up hours before he needs to be at work (I won’t say where) and takes his usual table at a coffee shop near his not-at-home office. He likes this particular table because it’s perfectly situated for one of the available outlets… and other reasons that aren’t picky at all.

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Goth Chick News: Path of Needles by Alison Littlewood

Goth Chick News: Path of Needles by Alison Littlewood

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45851_Path_of_Needles_PBO.inddLet’s go ahead and admit it – fairy tales are creepy.

I’m not talking about the rosy-cheeked Disney versions that ultimately end in royal weddings. I’m referring to the Brothers Grimm versions which were gathered from fireside tales dating back to Middle Ages, where the children sometimes get eaten and happily-ever-afters are a rare thing indeed.

Back in August, I had the pleasure of reviewing a revisiting of the Grimms’ work with Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome from Quercus Publishing. In it, modern writers were invited to take up the “voice” of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to pen new tales mimicking their style, which were then mixed with a selection of the original works. The result was a must-have edition for fairy tale lovers and fans of the macabre in equal measure.

So where is all this leading?

Straight to Quercus’s latest US publication, Path of Needles.

This is the third novel by British author Alison Littlewood, and her second since I introduced you to her with her first book, A Cold Season. All indications are that Littlewood has outgrown some of her “freshman-itis” and transformed into a definitive female voice in the horror genre.

Yay for us girls!

And where does the fairy tale stuff come in? Read on…

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New Treasures: World War Cthulhu, edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass

New Treasures: World War Cthulhu, edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass

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World War Cthulhu-smallApril Moon Books released Brian M. Sammons’s terrific anthology The Dark Rites of Cthulhu back in May, so when I heard word of his newest, World War Cthulhu, edited with Glynn Owen Barrass, I was very intrigued. World War Cthulhu is a huge and ambitious anthology of original Cthulhu Mythos fiction from some of the hottest talents in the field, including Stephen Mark Rainey, Robert M. Price, Neil Baker, C.J. Henderson, Edward Morris, Darrell Schweitzer, Tim Curran, Jeffrey Thomas, and Josh Reynolds. It was funded by a cloud-funding campaign that successfully concluded back in April; the book has now been delivered in multiple formats — including a deluxe format that includes a color plate accompanying each story. Check out some of the fabulous artwork at the Dark Regions Press website.

The world is at war against things that slink and gibber in the darkness, and titans that stride from world to world, sewing madness and death. War has existed in one form or another since the dawn of human civilization, and before then, Elder terrors battled it out across this planet and this known universe in ways unimaginable.

It has always been a losing battle for our side since time began. Incidents like the Innsmouth raid, chronicled by H.P. Lovecraft, mere blips of victory against an insurmountable foe. Still we fight, against these incredible odds, in an unending nightmare, we fight, and why? For victory, for land, for a political ideal? No, mankind fights for survival.

Our authors, John Shirley, Mark Rainey, Wilum Pugmire, William Meikle, Tim Curran, Jeffrey Thomas and many others have gathered here to share war stories from the eternal struggle against the darkness. This book chronicles these desperate battles from across the ages, including Roman Britain, The American Civil War, World War Two, The Vietnam Conflict, and even into the far future.

Note: as far as I can determine, there’s no connection between this anthology and the World War Cthulhu fiction anthology edited by Jonathan Oliver and released in December of last year by Cubicle 7 Entertainment, based on their RPG of the same name. World War Cthulhu: A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories was published by Dark Regions Press on August 14, 2014. It is 358 pages, priced at $17.95 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: Weird Tales #1, edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: Weird Tales #1, edited by Lin Carter

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Weird Tales 1 paperback-smallIf you’ve hung around Black Gate for any length of time, you’ve heard us talk about Weird Tales, the greatest and most influential pulp fantasy magazine every published.

Weird Tales has died many times, and crawled out of the grave and shambled back to life just as often (if you’re a Weird Tales fan, you’ve heard countless zombie metaphors about your favorite magazine). When the pulp version of the magazine died in September 1954 after 279 issues, many believed it was for the final time. But it returned to life in the early 1970s, edited by Sam Moskowitz and published by Leo Margulies, and then perished again after four issues.

Bob Weinberg and Victor Dricks purchased the rights to the name from Margulies some time after that, and in December 1980 a brand new version appeared: Weird Tales #1, an original paperback anthology of horror and weird fantasy edited by none other than Lin Carter. On the inside front cover (under the heading The Eyrie, the name of the old editorial column in the pulp magazine) Carter introduced his anthology to a new generation of fantasy readers:

WEIRD TALES was the first and most famous of all the fantasy-fiction pulp magazines. It featured tales of the strange, the marvelous, and the supernatural by the finest authors of the macabre and the fantastic, old and new, from its first issue in 1923 until its 279th and last consecutive issue in 1954.

Now it is back, with all new stories — and even such an exciting find as “Scarlet Tears,” a recently discovered and never before published novelette by Robert E. Howard.

Over the years many great writers were published in the pages of WEIRD TALES, and now a great tradition is being continued into its second half-century.

“Scarlet Tears,” a Robert E. Howard story featuring his private detective Brent Kirby, never sold in his lifetime, and it’s not hard to see why (Kirby, a brawler who leads with his fists, doesn’t actually do much “detecting.”) Nonetheless, this kind of star billing for a Robert E. Howard trunk story gives you some indication just how much his reputation had grown since his death 44 years earlier.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Spawn of Cthulhu edited by Lin Carter

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Spawn of Cthulhu edited by Lin Carter

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The Spawn of Cthulhu edited by Lin Carter-smallThe Spawn of Cthulhu
H. P. Lovecraft and Others
Lin Carter, ed.
Ballantine Books (274 pages, October 1971, $0.95)
Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

Lin Carter edited more than one anthology for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Up until now, I’ve not discussed any of them. One reason is that where I am sequentially, there have only been two. The other reason is it’s easier to discuss a single novel than the contents of an anthology.

I’m going to break with that practice for this particular entry in the series. Carter has built a thematic Mythos anthology with The Spawn of Cthulhu. Taking references to the work of other writers referenced in Lovecraft’s short novel “The Whisperer in Darkness,” Carter then proceeds to include either the story referenced or other stories written about the Old Ones mentioned.

I’m going to include some mild spoilers in this post. If that is of concern to you, then let this paragraph serve as your warning. The discussion will start after on the other side of the Read More link just below.

Let’s start with “The Whisperer in Darkness,” shall we? It’s 85 pages long, by far the lengthiest story in the book. The story concerns a folklorist at Arkham University named Wilmarth who is writing a series of newspaper articles debunking sightings of strange bodies seen in swollen rivers and creeks after a particularly bad storm in Vermont. The articles generate some lively discussion in the paper, and are eventually reprinted in Vermont papers.

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New Treasures: Premonitions by Jamie Schultz

New Treasures: Premonitions by Jamie Schultz

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Premonitions Jamie Schultz-smallThe trick with the plethora of urban fantasy on the shelves these days is sorting through it all to find the really promising stuff. Buried between all that werewolf romance and those countless vampire sex novels are some undiscovered gems. It takes a little patience to find them, but they’re often worth the effort.

Last weekend, I stumbled on a promising supernatural noir offering from first-time novelist Jamie Schultz. It was easy to miss, crammed into the crowded shelves next to John Scalzi, James H. Schmitz, and Charles Stross, but I found a single copy of Premonitions, and was sold immediately by the cover art and the back cover copy. See what you think.

TWO MILLION DOLLARS…

It’s the kind of score Karyn Ames has always dreamed of — enough to set her crew up pretty well and, more important, enough to keep her safely stocked on a very rare, very expensive black market drug. Without it, Karyn hallucinates slices of the future until they totally overwhelm her, leaving her unable to distinguish the present from the mess of certainties and possibilities yet to come.

The client behind the heist is Enoch Sobell, a notorious crime lord with a reputation for being ruthless and exacting — and a purported practitioner of dark magic. Sobell is almost certainly condemned to Hell for a magically extended lifetime full of shady dealings. Once you’re in business with him, there’s no backing out.

Karyn and her associates are used to the supernatural and the occult, but their target is more than just the usual family heirloom or cursed necklace. It’s a piece of something larger. Something sinister.

Karyn’s crew and even Sobell himself are about to find out just how powerful it is… and how powerful it may yet become.

Premonitions was published on July 1, 2014 by Roc. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital version.

The End of the Story: Sorceress of the Witch World by Andre Norton

The End of the Story: Sorceress of the Witch World by Andre Norton

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oie_324651kfYzNZDkAndre Norton’s Sorceress of the Witch World (1968) completes the trilogy begun with Three Against the Witch World and continued in Warlock of the Witch World. (Follow the links to read my reviews here on Black Gate). The trilogy itself is a continuation of Norton’s Witch World saga begun in Witch World and followed with Web of the Witch World.

The heroes of the first two novels, Simon Tregarth and his wife Jaelithe, mysteriously disappear at the beginning of the trilogy. Their triplets, born between Web of the Witch World and this trilogy, are searching for them. Each volume tells the adventures of one of the siblings, Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea.

In Three, brothers Kyllan and Kemoc rescue their sister Kaththea from her forced induction into the ranks of the Witches and escape into the magically hidden eastern land, Escore. In addition, the warrior Kyllan’s talents are put to the test against a growing horde of vile enemies. In Warlock, the scholarly Kemoc travels across dimensions to rescue his sister from her evil suitor.

You can probably tell from the title that Kaththea herself takes center stage in Sorceress of the Witch World. For reasons related to her situation in the previous book, Kaththea is spiritually damaged. Sadly, for the reader that damage seems to have rendered her a little boring also. She narrates the entire story in a dull voice that distances the reader from the action.

At the end of Warlock, Kaththea lost most of her magical abilities. Now, fearing that stripped of her defenses she is vulnerable to control by the powers of Shadow, she decides she must return to the West and seek guidance from the very same Witches from whom she once fled.

While trying to cross the mountains back into the West Kaththea’s party is caught in an avalanche. She is taken prisoner by a hunter from the Inuit-like nomads, the Vupsall. She manages to escape from the tribe during a bloody attack on their camp by raiders. Armed with magical knowledge gleaned from the possessions of the tribe’s wise woman, she makes for a great ruined city nearby. Hoping to escape the forces of Shadow she still fears, she enters an old dimensional gate. She doesn’t know what lay on the other side, only hoping it will be some sort of sanctuary. What she encounters are tremendous dangers in an utterly alien world.

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