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Osprey Adventures

Osprey Adventures

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teutonic-knightWhat if one day you woke up and found yourself in charge of a publishing imprint?

You had financial backing, the support of an experienced production and marketing team, and a wide-open remit. You also had the weight of a lot of expectation.

Well, about a month ago, this happened to me.

My name is Joseph McCullough, which some of you may recognize from Black Gate. At various times I have worked as an author and an assistant editor for the magazine, and I continue to be a fan and supporter.

I have also recently been made the Project Manager for Osprey Adventures, an imprint of Osprey Publishing.

I mentioned my new position to John O’Neill, and he kindly invited me to write a series of blogs about my experiences in the publishing world, and my trials and tribulations as I attempt to bring some new, fun, semi-fantasy books to market.

For those who don’t know, Osprey Publishing is arguably the most famous publisher of military history in the English language.

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Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now

Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now

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jp-holiday-articleinlineSo it would seem that the death of the physical book and the physical bookstore is greatly exaggerated. According to The New York Times, bookstores are having a banner year. In part this is because some of the competition (i.e., Borders) is no longer a factor in brick-and-mortar retailing, a number of popular books (ironically including the biography of Steve Jobs, the very guy who sought to digitize and commodify the object in question) and a desire among consumers in a slowly recovering economy to give gifts that are attractive in a way that bits on a screen don’t quite emulate.

Also, content owners are, as they are prone to do, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to digital retailing. Despite the fact the e-book readers are more affordable than ever with a growing proliferation of titles in e-book format, pricing strategies are frequently rendering physical books as less expensive than their digital counterparts, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Long live the dog-eared book, if only for another few years.

On another note, and though it has nothing to do with the normal realm of Black Gate matters, I’m sad to note the passing of Christopher Hitchens.  Right up to the end, he was one gutsy bastard.  Here’s what I presume was his last piece of Vanity Fair.

Enjoying the Unique Character of Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade

Enjoying the Unique Character of Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade

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dark-crusade-wagnerWhy has swords and sorcery languished while epic fantasy enjoys a wide readership? In an age of diminished attention spans and the proliferation of Twitter and video games, it’s hard to explain why ponderous five and seven and 12 book series dominate fantasy fiction while lean and mean swords and sorcery short stories and novels struggle to find markets (Black Gate and a few other outlets excepted).

During a recent reading of the late Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade (1976) a potential answer coalesced: Many readers want and expect deep characterization in their fiction, and it’s simply not a particularly strong suit of the swords and sorcery genre (or at least of classic swords and sorcery, circa 1930 through the early 1980s). Wagner is one of a handful of classic swords and sorcery authors to whom history has not been particularly kind*. His dark, God-accursed hero-villain Kane deserves a place alongside Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in the roll of great genre heroes, but is sadly left off many “best of” swords and sorcery lists. Relegated to the status of cult figure, Kane is the darling of heroic fantasy connoisseurs but unread of by many casual genre fans, and unheard of by most of the larger fantasy fan base.

Kane and many of his swords and sorcery ilk are not what most modern readers would consider fully realized characters. You just don’t get anything close to the same level of introspection and cradle to the grave development of Kane in Dark Crusade as you do of, say, Kvothe in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.

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Goth Chick News: The Best Book to Not Read on a Plane

Goth Chick News: The Best Book to Not Read on a Plane

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image0021Until recently, reading on a plane was one of my personal joys.

As an electronics geek (admitting it is the first step) it is a rare thing indeed for me to find myself in an environment where connectivity isn’t possible.  Okay, I know that some flights are now offering Internet in the sky, but I prefer to ignore this for the time being in the name of preserving the one place where I can guiltlessly escape email, IM and my cell phone.  And though it is still possible to “work” while disconnected, I generally ignore this as well and relish the opportunity to sink uninterrupted into a novel.

And this was precisely what I did on a recent getaway to my favorite US destination; New Orleans.  I boarded the American Airlines jet and settled back in my window seat with Chris Bohjalian’s fourteenth novel, The Night Strangers.

Things went all wrong shortly thereafter.

We had only just pushed back from the gate when the plane came to a rather abrupt halt and the engines shut down.  The pilot’s voice sounded a tad embarrassed when he explained our aircraft had just experienced an “electrical abnormality” and mechanics were being called to look into the issue before we would be cleared to take off.

Now, as someone who has clocked countless hours on airplanes, this “electrical abnormality” didn’t concern me all that much.  I imagined that some unexpected red light was blinking away in the flight deck that probably wouldn’t have meant much if it had occurred aloft, but as it had started up while we were still on the runway, the crew was obligated to halt our journey and have it looked at.

I went back to The Night Strangers.

In case you’re not familiar (I certainly wasn’t prior to picking up his latest book), Chris Bohjalian is a New York Times bestselling author, and his latest outing The Night Strangers is a ghost story inspired by both a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger’s successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

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Fantasy Out Loud

Fantasy Out Loud

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the-hobbitNearly every night, I read aloud to my boys.   For Evan, my seven-year-old, I have lately been reading The Hobbit.  Two nights ago, no sooner had I begun than Evan interrupted, saying, “It’s funny how they spell ‘Smaug.’”

“Oh?” I asked.  “How would you spell it?”

“S-M-O-G.”

“Good,” I said.  “That is how you would normally spell it.”  But privately, I thought how wonderful it was that Tolkien chose this other, more evocative spelling.  It also occurred to me that without Evan’s commentary, I might not have even noticed.

What we choose to read to our children has ramifications almost beyond counting.  Certainly, a shared reading experience is pivotal to the in-home dynamics and shared knowledge of any family, but insofar as one tackles a diet of writing that qualifies as “fantastic,” reading aloud is also crucial to the development and enculturation of an entire new generation of fantasy readers.  Given a world that grows ever more hectic, and therefore has less and less time for “pleasure” reading, this is no small thing.

I am fortunate to have two children, both boys, and I can see the results of my reading choices –– the goblin fruit, as it were, of my labor –– as if I had scrawled on their souls with indelible ink.  Corey, my older boy, now reads nothing but fantasy fiction, at least not by choice.  (He has also, to my dismay, discovered comics, and for this, too, I blame myself.)

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New Treasures: Strange Worlds

New Treasures: Strange Worlds

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strange-worldsBack on October 7th I reported on a promising little artifact called Strange Worlds,  an anthology of sword and planet stories from Space Puppet Press, collected and edited by Jeff Doten.

Now I’m holding a copy in my hot little hands, and I can report that it’s just as cool as it looks.

Strange Worlds collects nine pieces of original fiction from Ken St. Andre, Charles A. Gramlich, Paul R. McNamee, Lisa V. Tomecek, Charles R. Rutledge, and others.

Each story is also illustrated by Doten with a full color plate, done in loving homage to the Ace Doubles of the 50s and 60s, where much of the most-loved sword & planet in the genre first appeared.

Doten also provides some fine black & white interior illustrations for each story.

Interior color plate by Jeff Doten
Interior plate by Jeff Doten
It’s a quality package, and no mistake. There’s even a 13-page full-color “Strange Worlds” comic, written and illustrated by Doten, rounding out the book.

It’s very clear to me that Doten knows his stuff, and his love and knowledge of the genre comes across on every page. There’s even a three-page Suggested Reading list, an invaluable reference for modern fans covering virtually every major practitioner of the genre — from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, Gardner Fox, Leigh Brackett, and Lin Carter, all the way up to more modern writers experimenting in the same playground, such as S.M. Stirling.

In his introduction Doten says Strange Worlds was “my effort to rectify the tragic lack of Sword and Planet stories in the modern world.” He has succeeded with flying colors.

Strange Worlds is 189 pages printed on quality stock in oversize format. It is available from Space Puppet Press for $27 plus $3.75 U.S. shipping, and richly deserves your support.

Order today from strangeworldsanthology.com.

Mur Lafferty on Reading the Classics

Mur Lafferty on Reading the Classics

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Mur Lafferty, author of The Afterlife Series and Playing For Keeps, has kicked off an interesting discussion on reading classic SF and Fantasy on her blog:

earth-abidesI’m not quite sure how to read classic SF. You know the stuff that was groundbreaking with its expanse of ideas that hadn’t even been considered yet? But it was also the stuff that was very likely sexist, had cardboard characters, was completely lacking women or POC, used what we consider now to be hack tools (eg “looking in a mirror to describe the protag”), and may have protags that are total jerks.

I couldn’t finish The Stars My Destination, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever or the Book of the New Sun. I can’t root for a rapist protagonist. And I really wanted to read Stars and New Sun.

Recently I couldn’t finish Earth Abides (despite the wonderful intro by one of my favorite authors of all time, Connie Willis.) I got bored and annoyed with the elitist, “It’s the end of the world, but I’m CERTAINLY not going to hang out with whores and drunks,” attitude of the protagonist. And WTF is up with mentioning that a woman is “young enough” in her description, and leaving it at that? …how can I appreciate the classics when I run into such painful roadblocks like this? It’s hard to read things I’m not enjoying, even for academic purposes.

Speaking as someone with an unnatural fondness for pulp fiction, this is a problem I’m intimately familiar with. My last attempt to re-read Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy ended in utter failure. And I dearly loved that book in my early teens. But I didn’t pay much attention to girls then, and I suppose a book that also pretended women didn’t exist just didn’t seem very unusual.

Comments are now closed on Lafferty’s blog (she notes they had “gone into unhelpful areas“), but you can read the original post and comments here.

Hal Duncan’s The Book of All Hours, or Vellum and Ink

Hal Duncan’s The Book of All Hours, or Vellum and Ink

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VellumHal Duncan’s The Book of All Hours is a dazzling, fascinating, frustrating work. A duology consisting of 2005’s Vellum and 2007’s Ink, it plays with structure and story in powerful ways, while also seeming to fall back too easily into black-and-white absolutes and traditional forms. The oddity of the book is that although in some ways it appears radically new, in other ways, as one reads further into it, it comes to feel more and more familiar.

The basic idea might have come from a Marvel comic book: hidden among mortal humans are individuals who, when they undergo certain traumas, develop great powers to shape the world — they become gods, angels, demons. Archetypes. Unkin. Their powers extend not only across time and space, but through the array of alternate worlds called the Vellum; and, as well, into worlds deeper and more profound than our own and its cognates.

A long time ago one of these Unkin created the Book of All Hours, which is, among other things, a map of the Vellum, and a text describing everything, defining everything, holding all stories and worlds within itself. Various Unkin factions want to get their hands on the Book, to rewrite it to suit themselves. The Covenant, a primal patriarchy ruled by archangels, represent one major faction. Another loose grouping is formed by seven individual Unkin, seven archetypes we trace through a range of alternate selves. These seven are (to use only one version of their various names, and a reductive description of their identities) Jack Flash, eternal rebel; Joey Pechorin, eternal traitor; Guy Fox, mastermind; Seamus Finnan, a tortured Prometheus; Don MacChuill, the old soldier; Phreedom Messenger, warrior queen; and her brother, Thomas Messenger, the eternal sacrifice.

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Dabir and Asim return in The Waters of Eternity

Dabir and Asim return in The Waters of Eternity

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waters-of-eternityDabir and Asim, the heroes of The Desert of Souls, return in a new collection from Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones.

The Waters of Eternity includes six short stories of Arabian fantasy, including “Sight of Vengeance” (BG 10), which brings our heroes face to face with a supernatural horror while searching for a killer in the heart of ancient Baghdad.

Venture into the time of the Arabian Nights with stalwart Captain Asim and the brilliant Dabir as they hunt an unseen killer that craves only the eyes of his victims, and pursue a dark entity haunting the halls of an opulent mansion. Ride with them on a desperate journey to preserve a terrible weapon from Byzantine agents, and seek the waters of eternity to save a dying girl’s life. In six tales brimming with mystery and sword-slinging action Dabir and Asim stride forward into adventure. With nothing to shield them but Asim’s sword arm and Dabir’s wit, the two heroes must unravel sinister puzzles, confront dark wizards, rescue fair maidens, and battle the terrifying monsters of legend.

The Waters of Eternity was published by Macmillan in a Kindle Edition on November 22. It is available for $2.99 from Amazon.com, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. The cover art is by Ervin Serrano.

This is excellent stuff… mysteries surrounded by magic… in the grand tradition of high adventure, Arabian Nights, and Sherlock Holmes. These are unique, clever and well-written little gems.

Joe Bonadonna, author of Mad Shadows

If you’re a fan of adventure fantasy, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Pathfinder Tales: Death’s Heretic by James L. Sutter

Pathfinder Tales: Death’s Heretic by James L. Sutter

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Death's Heretic-smallIf there’s one potential flaw in reading stories set in roleplaying game settings, it’s that the emphasis is more on the mechanics of the system and magical setting than on the development of the characters. The best stories, of course, are able to avoid this and create complex, dynamic characters that resonate among some of the most memorable in all of fantasy. Raistlin Majere, Elminster, and Drizzt Do’Urden all come to mind as iconic characters born in roleplaying tie-in novels.

Into this esteemed category steps Salim Ghadafar, the protagonist of James L. Sutter’s Death’s Heretic (Amazon, B&N), an upcoming addition to the Pathfinder Tales fantasy novel series from Paizo Publishing. Salim serves the goddess Pharasma, the Lady of Graves, goddess of birth, death, and prophecy, but he does so only grudgingly. This unusual tension, together with a compelling plotline, draws the reader deeply into the world of the story.

Salim is called upon by Pharasma to investigate a man who died shortly after obtaining one of the greatest treasures available to mortals: the sun orchid elixir, which grants near immortality. The details of his death are of secondary concern, though, compared to the events that followed. Pharasma is far more concerned with why her priests are unable to resurrect him. His soul has gone missing … seemingly stolen from the goddess’s very realm of the dead, the Boneyard itself. Salim’s investigation takes him – and the victim’s orphaned daughter, who is bankrolling the investigation – from local rivals for the elixir, including a crimelord and a gorgeous half-elven brothel madame, to the outer planes and Pharasma’s Boneyard. The investigation brings him face to face with creatures who predate the creation of the world itself, with the power to thwart the natural laws of life and death.

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