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Last Chance to Win a Copy of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

Last Chance to Win a Copy of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

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Check Out Time Mark Rigney-smallLast week, I told you that you had a chance to win a copy of Mark Rigney’s brand new Renner and Quist novel Check-Out Time, on sale next week from Samhain Publishing .

How do you win? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “Check-Out Time.” That’s it. That’s all that stands between you and a copy of one of the best horror novels of the year. Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries and we’ll announce the winners here on the Black Gate blog. What could possibly be easier? But time is running out — the contest closes October 1st.

Mark Rigney’s Tales of Gemen, which Tangent called “Reminiscent of the old sword & sorcery classics,” have dominated our Fiction charts since we published them in 2012. His thrillers starring occult investigators Reverend Renner and Dale Quist began with The Skates and “Sleeping Bear,” and anticipation has been building for their first novel-length adventure. Here’s the book description.

All things must pass — or so we’re told. When Reverend Renner responds to an invitation sent from a long-demolished hotel filled with ghsots of guests from times past, he soon discovers that checking out will be a lot harder than checking in. His sometime friend and investigative partner, Dale Quist, heads to the rescue, but it will take more than brawn and benedictions to put this particular hotel out of business.

All things must pass, indeed –– but that doesn’t mean they have to go quietly.

No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables. Check-Out Time will be published by Samhain Publishing on October 7, 2014. It is 250 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $5.50 for the digital edition. Be sure to read Mark’s article on the series, The Adventure Continues: the Return of Renner and Quist, published right here in February.

The Series Series: Diviners by Libba Bray

The Series Series: Diviners by Libba Bray

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The Diviners Libba Bray-smallWhat does YA urban fantasy need to breathe fresh life into its tropes? Prohibition! Not your first guess, either, was it? Yet it works beautifully.

Libba Bray set The Diviners and the series it opens in 1926, in a New York where all the superstitions have just become true, and all the forms of charlatanry have just started working. Most people don’t know it yet and the ones who find that they have powers they never believed in are still isolated and afraid.

The novel opens with two party tricks gone wrong. In Manhattan, a debutante desperate to liven up her birthday bash breaks out a Ouija board and releases something nasty. In Ohio, a girl with a world-class attitude shows off her talent for psychometry and the touch of the town golden boy’s class ring reveals his secrets to her.

She flaunts what she knows. The boy’s family is rich and powerful. Pretty soon, Evie O’Neill’s parents have to send her out of town to the farthest available relative on the soonest available train. A train to New York City, perhaps the only place on Earth big enough for Evie’s personality.

These two unquiet spirits, one living and one dead, circle around one another, both growing in power and community, through six hundred pages of suspense punctuated with bursts of laughter.

One of the things that impressed me most about The Diviners is that it’s a book about the Roaring Twenties written for a generation of readers who have, for the most part, never seen a black-and-white movie.

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New Treasures: Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction, edited by Laura K. Anderson and Ryan J. McDaniel

New Treasures: Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction, edited by Laura K. Anderson and Ryan J. McDaniel

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Sojourn-smallWhere have all the excellent small press anthologies gone? Wait, here they are. Right in front of me.

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction looks like a splendid example. It’s edited by Laura K. Anderson (The Chronicles of Baxarlian) and newcomer Ryan J. McDaniel, and is available in both print and digital editions. It includes enticing new fiction from a delightful assortment of new and established names, including Matt Forbeck (Blood Bowl), James Lowder (Prince of Lies, Knight of the Black Rose), Elizabeth Roper, Wayne Cole, Hans Cummings, Dan Repperger, and many others.

The moon’s rings illuminate the desert path before you. Up ahead a ridge rises, obscuring the horizon. You cannot go back. There is nothing to go back to. A hundred worlds lie behind you and a thousand more lie ahead. You smell smoke in the air and hear a hint of music somewhere far away. One foot after another, you head toward the horizon, beckoned by the mystery of what lies beyond.

The fifteen stories in this collection portray remarkable worlds for you to visit. These are worlds unlike our own — worlds where a pastor attends the 68th Periodic Interspecies Theologians’ Conference; worlds where a boy goes on a spiritual journey in the mists of prehistory; worlds where humans are enslaved and one freed woman will do whatever it takes to save her species; worlds where humans, zombies, and vampires rub elbows in the office. We invite you on your own journey in the pages of Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction, penned by the talented storytellers of the Fear the Boot podcast community. Some of these worlds will feel familiar, some will feel alien, and a few may entice you to sojourn just a bit longer.

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction was published by Fear the Boot on February 15, 2014. It is 302 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Check it out.

Is Size Important? Or, The Short Story Anthology Examined

Is Size Important? Or, The Short Story Anthology Examined

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Ellison DangerousIt’s well known in the publishing industry that anthologies don’t sell well. It may be a fact , but it’s one I don’t really understand. I’ve been buying and reading anthologies my whole life and I’m at a loss to explain why others don’t enjoy them as much as I do.

Anthologies come in different flavours, of course. There’s your original anthologies versus your reprint anthologies. Then there’s your single-author collections versus your multi-author. Original anthologies can come in either multi-author or single-author, and . . . well, I think you can do the math for yourselves.

Probably the most famous multi-author anthology of original stories is Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions (1967). A glance through the table of contents is like reading a Who’s Who of famous and celebrated SF writers – many of whom were novices at the time of publication. There’s Robert Bloch, Philip Jose Farmer, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, as well as Theodore Sturgeon, RA Lafferty, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny . . . okay, you get the idea.

Dangerous Visions, and its follow-up, Again Dangerous Visions, are examples of a themed anthology. In this case, writers had to create not only a story of the future, but the story had to show a dangerous future. Physically dangerous, like Larry Niven’s “The Jigsaw Man” or spiritually dangerous, like Leiber’s “Gonna Roll the Bones” (my husband’s favourite story of all time).  Sometimes, the danger lay in the author’s pushing the envelope of what contemporary mores were, like Farmer’s “Riders of the Purple Sage” or Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah.”

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Goth Chick News: Pride, Prejudice and Zombies (and Cersei and Tywin)

Goth Chick News: Pride, Prejudice and Zombies (and Cersei and Tywin)

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-smallJust in time for the start of the Halloween season, we hear that Pride And Prejudice And Zombies has truly risen from the grave.

Based on the 2009 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austin of course) P&P&Z tells the tale of “manners, morals and brain-eating mayhem” and has been sitting in movie development hell ever since before the book hit store shelves.

Back then, the British Sunday Times reported that Hollywood was all over Grahame-Smith, which he confirmed at a book-signing just after P&P&Z’s release, saying the novel had officially been purchased by an undisclosed major film company to be produced as a feature film.

Lionsgate turned out to be the film company and Natalie Portman was in to star as Elizabeth, but she later reconsidered and decided instead to serve as a producer.  Shortly thereafter, director O. Russell left production due to scheduling conflicts (or Portman’s involvement if you believe gossip, which of course we never do…) and Mike White stepped in to direct the adaptation.

But nearly a year later, in January 2011, White also left the project due to “scheduling conflicts” as did his successor Craig Gillespie who signed on in April, 2011 but bailed in October.

What the heck?

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Vintage Treasures: Orlando Furioso, the First Big Fat Fantasy Ever?

Vintage Treasures: Orlando Furioso, the First Big Fat Fantasy Ever?

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1024px-Orlando_Furioso_20
Includes …a Hippogriff — winged horse born of a mare and griffin!

I’m reading Jack Campbell’s Lost Stars series — good rip-roaring Military Space Opera with a brain — and suddenly a Marfisa is talking to a Bradamante about a love interest called Ruggerio, and I almost fall out of my armchair laughing.

It’s an Easter Egg and it feels like it’s just for me, the thirteen year-old me to be precise, in the Penguin Classics section of Edinburgh’s now-defunct James Thin bookshop.

I’d made the amazing discovery that I could actually buy translations of the medieval books I’d read about.

I’d already wandered in a fervour through Malory’s Le Morte D Arthur — untranslated, actually, and I think it had an odd effect on my speech patterns at the time — and a verse translation of Beowulf. I’d discovered the French Arthurian writers, some actually pretty awful — just ‘cos it’s old doesn’t make it good! — and now I was looking for another breath of medieval air.

And there’s a black-bound book with knights on the cover. Orlando Furioso, the adventures of Charlemagne’s paladins… oh it’s Renaissance. Yuk.

But despite the late period cooties, I find myself looking at the “Characters and Devices” at the front…

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An Interview with Emmy Jackson, Author of Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson

An Interview with Emmy Jackson, Author of Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson

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the untimely death of corey sanderson coverOH MY GAWD. I loved The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson. Seriously. It’s a dusty, road-dog, land-pirate adventure ride reminiscent of Mad Max. Comparing it to the Mad Max franchise may be unfair because The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson has SO MUCH MORE. There are shapeshifters! And I actually got to see a plethora of women in the world – evil women, good women, women on the road, women in town, women who have guns, women who have families. It sounds silly to crow about women – but a lot of books only have like…eh, maybe two women characters and one is usually a girlfriend. The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson is a fast-paced, post-apocalyptic road trip full of compelling characters of all ages, genders, and species. And, holy crap, the WORLDBUILDING! There are class issues. There are townies vs. road folk politics. There are gender and conception talks to be had. I want to see more of this world. I want to talk about this world with other people. I am so glad this is a SERIES.

Oh? You want to know more? What’s it about, you ask? I’ll tell you!

Ivy Anarim is scav. She drives the country delivering packages from one town to the next, scavenging for anything she can sell or trade along the way. She’s gotten used to being alone, though she’s searching for her twin sister, Holly. What Ivy doesn’t need is a bastard gleaner beating the crap out of her, trying to steal her rig.

The man who attacked Ivy did it near Hanson’s Home, a small town in the middle of nowhere. Hanson’s Home, they’ll aid her, but it isn’t outta kindness. Ivy is untouched by Empty Cradle – a disease that can hit a woman at any time in her life and leaves her barren. A woman untouched by Empty Cradle, that’s hard to find and Hanson’s Home wants a baby for their trouble.

Corey Sanderson wants to get the hell outta Hanson’s Home. He’s a kid who’s sick of living in the sticks. He wants to see the world and Ivy and her truck are the only ticket outta town.

Do Ivy and Corey make it out of Hanson’s Home? Where would they go if they did? Can a town kid like Corey Sanderson make it on the open road? Will Ivy ever find her twin? What the hell kinda weirdos are they gonna meet on their journey?

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Future Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

Future Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

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The Skull Throne Peter V Brett-smallThe Warded Man, the first novel in Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series, was released in March 2009. His second, The Desert Spear (March 2010), became an international bestseller, and the third, The Daylight War, followed in February 2013.

Now comes word that the fourth book in the series, The Skull Throne, will be released in March of 2015. Here’s the scoop from Peter’s website:

Ever since I posted a sample chapter from The Skull Throne last week, I’ve been getting a lot of people asking when it will be out. It’s wonderful and gratifying to see so many people interested in the series and excited about the new book…

It’s a BIG book, shaping up to be the biggest yet, and that is after the monster 268,000 word Daylight War.

The fifth (and final?) book in the series, The Core, does not yet have a release date. Read the first chapter of The Skull Throne here.

The Skull Throne will be published by Del Rey on March 24, 2015. It is 656 pages, priced at $28 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent features on upcoming books here.

Vintage Treasures: The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt

Vintage Treasures: The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt

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The Voyage of the Space Beagle by van Vogt, A. E. Mission Interplanetary-small The Voyage of the Space Beagle 1963-small

And now we move to one of the great SF classics of the Golden Age: A. E. van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle, the tale of an intrepid crew of space explorers and their adventures on distant and deadly worlds, frequently cited as an obvious influence on both Star Trek and Alien.

But first, a few words about A. E. van Vogt, one of the greatest and most prolific writers of SF’s Golden Age, whom we haven’t discussed much at Black Gate (probably because he didn’t write a lot of fantasy). I read his classic novel Slan (1946) at an early age, and it had a big impact on me, pulpy and simplistic as it was. Van Vogt wrote nearly 40 SF novels between 1946 and 1985 — including the classics The World of Null-A (1948), The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951), and The War against the Rull (1959) — and published two dozen short story collections. He received the 14th Grand Master Award by The Science Fiction Writers of America in 1995.

Van Vogt has taken something of a beating from modern critics for his pulpy style and rather sloppy plotting, but he had many ardent fans, including Philip K. Dick, who said:

There was in van Vogt’s writing a mysterious quality, and this was especially true in The World of Null A. All the parts of that book did not add up; all the ingredients did not make a coherency. Now some people are put off by that. They think that’s sloppy and wrong, but the thing that fascinated me so much was that this resembled reality more than anybody else’s writing inside or outside science fiction.

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Three Men And A Dog: The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock

Three Men And A Dog: The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock

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oie_222310129FBVSmfjWhen word comes to the good people of Twombly Town that the traders of Willowwood Village have vanished and the whole town has been abandoned, they are worried there will be no honeycakes from the great dwarf baker, Ackroyd, or elfin toys for Christmas. When the mayor calls for an expedition down the Oriel River to the city of Seaside to procure the cakes and toys from their source, the only man deemed capable of the task is the cheeser, Jonathan Bing. Despite his own misgivings, but to the townspeople’s delight, Bing agrees.

Clearly inspired by Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, The Elfin Ship (1982) is James P. Blaylock’s first published novel. Like Grahame’s book, it is a paean to adventure, home comforts, food, and male camaraderie. For those who take note of these things, only one female character makes a brief, wordless appearance and a second is just mentioned. Nonetheless, it’s not set in a world labeled “NO GIRLS!”, but rather one where the men are more interested in a good bottle of ale, good pipe tobacco, and a raft trip down a meandering river than the whereabouts of the absent women.

I’ve loved this book for decades and have read it several times over the years, chuckling each time. I was inspired to pick it up after reading and contemplating M Harold Page’s piece “Why Humorous Fantasy Isn’t Popular” here at Black Gate a few weeks ago. Most of the comedy here is gentle and might even be deemed old-fashioned. If that doesn’t deter you — and I don’t think it should — give The Elfin Ship a read for some good-hearted goofiness.

Jonathan Bing is a stolid man with little experience beyond the warm and comforting confines of his home, but one who has always dreamed of adventure. Among his prized possessions are several well-read volumes by G. Smithers of Brompton Village, with titles like The Tale of the Goblin Wood and The Troll of Ilford Hollow. When Mayor Bastable suggests to Bing he is a “stout enough lad to sail downriver yourself, all the way to Seaside with your cheeses and back again with cakes and elfin gifts,” despite some trepidation, the cheeser decides he is indeed the man best suited for the job.

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