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Novel Writing: Le Morte d’Arthur

Novel Writing: Le Morte d’Arthur

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Idylls of the KingNational Novel Writing Month is well underway for me. I’ve gotten a start on my novel, at the same time as I’m still getting the structure figured out. I’ll have some thoughts on my process, and what I’m learning, a bit later in this post; first, I want to write a bit about the subject I’m wrestling with, the Matter of Britain.

I’m writing an Arthurian fantasy. Like, I’d imagine, most people, I’ve been vaguely familiar with the stories of Arthur and his knights since I was very young. At different times in my life I’ve been more or less intensely interested in different aspects of the Arthurian tales and the way they developed over time; writing a story using that material, though, forces a new perspective on me.

I’ve had to think a lot about what precisely interests me about these stories. And which stories, in particular, have grabbed me? Why do they matter? Why do I want to write about them?

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Win a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

Win a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

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kuttnerHaffner Press has released the first volume of their new series The Early Kuttner, titled Terror in the House, and we have no less than three copies to give away.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers  — including the legendary Kaldar: World of Antares by Edmond Hamilton, copies of which now sell for $2,000 and up — are some of the most collectible books in the genre, and Terror in the House promises to be popular indeed. Here’s the book description:

Henry Kuttner was a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines that specialized in the weird, supernatural, horror, and science fiction genre. Beginning in 1936, with the minor classic “The Graveyard Rats,” Kuttner launched a steady stream of short stories aimed at Weird Tales, Mystery Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and others… Kuttner set several stories in Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” and several are presented in Terror in the House including: “The Secret of Kralitz,” “The Eater of Souls,” “The Salem Horror,” The Jest of Droom-Avista,” “The Frog,” “The Invaders,” and “The Bells of Horror.”

He contributed reams of copy to the weird-menace (a sub-genre of horror where a seemingly supernatural plot is resolved with a pedestrian ending) pulps, Thrilling Mystery and Spice Mystery… Terror in the House is the first volume in a set collecting many of Kuttner’s earliest stories, most of which have never been reprinted.

Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, with a preface by Richard Matheson and introduction by Garyn G. Roberts, Ph.D. It is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst, and has a retail price of $40.

How do you win a copy? Easy! Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Kuttner Contest,” with a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. 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. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Seriously, these things are heavy and we’re on a budget.

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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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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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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Goth Chick News: Featuring Tabitha, Goth Girl in Training

Goth Chick News: Featuring Tabitha, Goth Girl in Training

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lovely-bad-ones2During Goth Chick’s absence she’s asked our resident Goth Chick in training, eleven year-old Tabitha, author of our recent review of The House of Dead Maids, to fill in.

Tabitha: What exactly are we supposed to be doing?

Black Gate: Your friend Goth Chick is on vacation this week. She’s asked you to be her replacement on the Black Gate blog.

Tabitha: Goth Chick? The one we go to scary movies with?

Black Gate: Yes.

Um… okay. So what am I supposed to do?

Black Gate: How about you pick some of the scariest books you’ve ever read, and tell me about them.

I’m more of a scary movie person.

BG: But… you’ve told me about a bunch of scary books you’ve read recently.

They weren’t very scary. And there’s only one that jumps to mind: All The Lovely Bad Ones.

BG: I’m scared already. Tell me about it.

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The Book Fair

The Book Fair

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Book Fair flyerThe McGill book fair is the largest English-language used book sale in Montreal. It’s been held for decades, every October, on the second Wednesday and Thursday after Thanksgiving (which in Canada is on the second Monday in October). Every year an eclectic mix of thousands of books are sold, helping to raise money for scholarships.

I’ve been coming to the sale for about a dozen years. I’ve found novels by Lord Dunsany, a biography of C.S. Lewis, a book about Hypatia of Alexandria, a Dennis Wheatley omnibus, Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, Paul Park’s Celestis, a volume combining Bede’s Ecclesiastical History with The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, collections of poetry by John Clare and Francois Villon and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Southey and Don Marquis, a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds — and all of these (along with books by Neal Stephenson, Tad Williams, and T.H. White) in just one year, 2008, when I bought a total of 65 books for $161.

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JOHN CARTER OF MARS (or: Barsoom, Anyone?)

JOHN CARTER OF MARS (or: Barsoom, Anyone?)

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A great painting by Joe Jusko featuring a convergence of Barsoom's most memorable elements. That's John Carter and Dejah Thoris in the midst of all the savage beasties. The setting is one of Mars' ancient ruined cities, home to the savage green Tharks.

It’s a sublimely gorgeous rainy day here in Napa. I’m listening to the ancient, pattering rhythm of the rainsong and thinking about Mars.

No, not the red dustball of our modern age, where tiny robots scour the dunes for microscopic life. I’m thinking of BARSOOM, the title the red planet bore a long, long time ago.

I’m thinking of ancient cities crumbling across dead sea-bottoms, tusked green warriors standing ten feet tall, snake-haired plant-men, four-armed white apes, ten-legged lions, flashing swords, and blasting radium pistols. I’m thinking of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his most original creation John Carter of Mars.

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, his first novel. John Carter, his rugged hero, was a Civil War veteran who stumbled into a mystical cave and was transported through space and time to an ancient version of Mars (Barsoom) where various races of Martians (some obviously descended from Native American stock, some wholly alien in design) battled constantly for survival among the remains of a fallen civilization.

Here was swordplay, swashbuckling, and adventure in the grandest style. From 1912 to 1964, Burroughs wrote a total of 11 novels set on Barsoom (most of which featured John Carter).

These books, not to mention the author’s Tarzan, Venus, Pellucidar, Westerns, and various other works, make ERB one of pulp fiction’s towering giants.

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A Review of Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

A Review of Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

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warwarriorsWarriors, edited by George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois
Tor Books (736 pages. $27.99. March 16th, 2010)

Warriors is a unique anthology. With its smorgasbord of genres, there is a tale and a Warrior for any reader. Well, there is a tale for every reader. Similar to Swords & Dark Magic, the other 2010 mega-sized mega-star-studded co-edited anthology, Warriors’ cover — title and text — misleads the reader as to the nature of its contents.

The cover — which at my very first glance I mistook as a pencil rather than a bared blade of steel — gives the impression of being a ‘how-to’ text on writing about Warriors. This struck a chord with me, for it bears a remarkable resemblance to a looming RBE publication. Turns out, this is not the nature of the anthology. This is a collection of…what, exactly? Experimental works? Writing exercises? Explorations of what being a Warrior is? Perhaps. Yet the back cover cites Homer, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Crane, and Jones, and does not in fact mesh well with an experimental/instructional image, or the actual contents.

Unlike S&DM though, I was unable to read Warriors straight through. No, this anthology took me several months to read, months of setting it down to fill my sparse personal reading time with something more entertaining, more exciting, then reluctantly returning to and finally bulling through it due more to Black Gate’s looming deadline than any other reason. Fortunately for me, five of the final seven tales were winners. In these (and a few earlier) delightful tales, I also happily discovered a few authors new to me.

Unfortunately, almost half the tales contained in Warriors are not of ‘Warriors’ as such titling and portrayal would have one believe. ‘Fighters’ most certainly: every tale delivers a fight. ‘Survivors’ more accurately: every fight delivers a survivor… But Warriors? I think not.

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