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My Agent Hunt

My Agent Hunt

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childoffireI should start by introducing myself: my name is Harry Connolly and I’m a Del Rey author. My second novel came out on the last day of August and I’m pretty proud of it. I’m also proud that my first fiction sale was to Black Gate: “The Whoremaster of Pald” headed the table of contents of the second issue (and can be read for free on this website). Happily, there have been a couple of other sales here, too. I also spoke about the details of my first novel sale last Saturday, and my interview with Howard Andrew Jones appeared here Monday.

Anyway, per John’s request, I’d like to describe the method I used to find my agent. I’m a cheap bastard, so I didn’t spend any money but the search did take a while. I’ll also detail the mistakes I made, which may be instructive for others.

First, I don’t need to say I spent a long time revising my query letter, right? You guys all know that the letter has to be specific, intriguing and on-point, I’m sure. So let’s skip the part where I recommend you revise it several times and ask smart friends for feedback.

But where to send it? Being cheap, I went to the internet. Specifically, I went to agentquery.com and used their “Full Search” to compile a long list of agents that represent fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Thank you, copy and paste.

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Excerpt from Star Soldier by Vaughn Heppner, Book 1 of the Doom Star Series

Excerpt from Star Soldier by Vaughn Heppner, Book 1 of the Doom Star Series

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star-soldier1Last month we reported that Black Gate author Vaughn Heppner had cracked the bestseller list at Amazon with Star Soldier, Book #1 of the Doom Star Series.

Star Soldier and its sequels, Bio-Weapon and Battle Pod, now occupy the top three spots at Amazon’s bestseller list for Series Science Fiction in Kindle ebooks, — outselling Dune, Foundation, and many others.

In the general Science Fiction Bestsellers list for Kindle editions, Star Soldier remains solidly at #2, where it’s been for nearly two months.

Star Soldier is a full 82,000 word novel, available for download at Amazon.com for just 99 cents.

We’re very proud to offer you an exclusive preview of the first 5,000 words of Star Soldier, an action-packed space opera of the invasion of Earth in 2350, Doom Star pirates, and genetically designed super soldiers caught in a brutal war of extinction.

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The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, by James Kakalios

The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, by James Kakalios

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amazingquantumJames Kakalios, the author of The Physics of Superheroes, is out with another popular science text: The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science That Made Our World.

I took a couple courses in Quantum Theory, including a graduate course in Quantum Mechanics as part of my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois —  just about the most difficult course of my career. And mama, it had some math.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrödinger’s wave equation, the Atomic orbital model and Quantum field theory. Good times, good times.

Now James Kakalios is trying to make all those anguished nights attempting to comprehend the inner workings of the universe using only my incomprehensible class notes obsolete, with a new book that depends on far more reliable sources: comic books and American pulp magazines. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Most of us are unaware of how much we depend on quantum mechanics on a day-to-day basis. Using illustrations and examples from science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics explains the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we live in.

Sheer genius.  More complete details are in the Amazon.com listing.

Kakalios, buddy, where were you 20 years ago?  All those evenings wasted studying, when I could have been trying to pick up girls. Don’t make my mistake, students of the future. Buy your copy today.

A Review of King’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper

A Review of King’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper

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kb4aKing’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper
Ace (202 pages, $2.50, 1983)

I know Sheri S. Tepper primarily as a science fiction author. She tends to write sociological stuff, a little bit like Ursula K. LeGuin’s science fiction. I feel that she’s prone to having her message hijack her story, but I still read her books whenever I see a new one in the library. I wasn’t sure what to expect out of her fantasy.

As it turns out, King’s Blood Four might or might not be set in a fantasy universe. There is a strong hint that it might be crypto-SF. In a way, it doesn’t matter; fantasy or science fiction, it’s still a study of an alien society.

The story is narrated by Peter, a fifteen-year-old boy who lives at a boarding school devoted to teaching a peculiar chess-like game. In fact, it’s a training exercise for the deadly True Game. It seems that many people in this world have magic — or possibly psychic — powers, and the True Game forms a framework for their power struggles. It includes everything from dueling to intrigue to outright war, and children such as Peter are sent to the Schooltowns so that the True Game doesn’t chew them up as cannon fodder before they can come into their power. (We find out later that peasants — called pawns, in keeping with the chess theme — don’t ordinarily get this privilege, although at least one pawn’s mother found a way to manage it.) We also find out that Peter has been seduced by one of the teachers, a man named Mandor. The affair is forbidden, and one of the other teachers tries to warn Peter about it, but he’s convinced that he has it all under control.

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Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

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childoffireWhen people tell us about their favorite Black Gate authors and stories, one name that inevitably turns up in both staff and fan discussions is Harry James Connolly, whose tales have appeared three times now in our pages, with more on the way. You may not have seen much of him lately over at Black Gate, but he’s been very busy writing some best selling novels. You can find all about that over here, and a little bit more about Harry and his writing if you just keep reading.

A Conversation with Harry Connolly

Conducted and transcribed by Howard Andrew Jones October 3 – Oct 10 2010

BG: First tell us how long you’ve wanted to be a writer, and how long you were mulling over the novel that launched your career before you finally sat down to draft it.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was very small.  I was an early reader — like, age 3 — and when my parents explained that people made a living writing books like the one in my hands, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Not that I had any idea what that meant.  I do have a distinct memory of sitting in kindergarten learning to write the letter “M” and thinking  this is totally going to come in handy! (to paraphrase my young self).

As for Child of Fire, it’s a setting that I’ve written in before (some short fiction and a pair of novels–but with different characters), butI knew I wanted to do something very specific with it.  I spent several weeks working out the story and, more importantly, the tone before I dug into the writing.

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The Time is Out of Joint: The Silver Skull, A Review

The Time is Out of Joint: The Silver Skull, A Review

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silver-skull2The Silver Skull is the first book in a new series by Mark Chadbourn, Swords of Albion, following the adventures of Will Swyfte, spy for Queen Elizabeth the First of England, as he fights a secret war against the faerie-folk of the Unseelie Court. That’s a brilliant hook for an ongoing series of adventure novels. And in fact Chadbourn’s new book is best described as modern-day pulp, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies.

It’s a swashbuckling tale of adventure, filled with sword-fights, melodrama, action set-pieces, heroes, and villains. But its characters are flat and uninteresting. And, ultimately, its depiction of its setting is gravely disappointing.

Let’s look first at what the book does well. The plotting is strong and sure, and builds nicely through a series of action sequences. Tension is manipulated skillfully, and the staging of events is imaginative and clearly described. Chadbourn moves his story through a number of interesting places in the Elizabethan world, filling those places with cloak-and-dagger suspense, mysterious riddles, ancient Indiana-Jones-style deathtraps, and the like.

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Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows Available for Pre-order

Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows Available for Pre-order

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Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, by Howard Andrew Jones. Coming February 2011Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones has had a busy year.

In addition to his upcoming Dabir & Asim novel The Desert of Souls, due in hardcover February 2011 from Thomas Dunne Books, Howard’s second novel Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows will appear from Paizo in early 2011.

Pathfinder Tales novels are standalone novels set in the world of Golarion, home of the succesful Pathfinder role playing game.  The first two volumes are Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross (August 2010) and Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham (November).

Here’s the book description:

The race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only his old elven mercenary companion Elyana has the wisdom — and swordcraft — to solve the mystery of his tormentor and free her old friend before three days have passed and the illness takes its course. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, the elf sets out with a team of adventurers across the Revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains to discover the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley warped by weird magical energies and inhabited by terrible nightmare beasts. From Black Gate magazine’s fiction editor Howard Andrew Jones comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

You can pre-order copies directly from Piazo, either individually or as part of their Pathfinder Tales subscription.

My First Novel Sale

My First Novel Sale

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childoffireThis essay first appeared as a part of Jim C. Hines’s First Book Friday series, in which authors describe their first sales. You can read the entire series on his blog or LiveJournal. This piece has been lightly edited for clarity.

The first thing to know about selling Child of Fire, my first novel, is that it happened after I’d already quit writing.

I’d spent years trying to sell longer works, but had no success; you might say I was a smidge discouraged. The book I’d written just before Child of Fire was very difficult and very personal; I’d literally wept while composing the first draft. What happened when I sent it out? Form rejection after form rejection.

I was angry (with myself, not with the people who’d rejected me; that’s one of my most important rules). I thought I’d been doing everything I needed to do, but apparently not.

For my next book, I used my anger as fuel. I started with a strange incident that needed to be investigated. I loaded the story with antagonists and conflicting goals. Then I ramped up the pace and kept it going, making even the slower parts, where the characters just talk with each other, quick and full of conflict.

But I was sure I was wasting my time. If my last book hadn’t gone anywhere, why should this one?

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Goth Chick News: Candy Corn for the Imagination

Goth Chick News: Candy Corn for the Imagination

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image0062The six-foot grim reaper is out in the front yard pointing eerily at the tombstones poking out of the grass. The fog machines are strategically placed; one in the bushes and one in the coffin leaning against the house. There’s a sound-activated specter that will slide from tree to gutter, moaning and waving its arms at the slightest hint of a visitor. And most important, there’s an eight-foot python curled around the mailbox.

The python is the sure-fire giveaway; it’s Halloween at Chateaux Goth Chick.

Now all that’s left to do is relax and wait for the thirty-first when, decked out in full zombie regalia, I will lie in wait in that front yard coffin, concealed in machine-made fog and scare the crap out of the neighbor kids.

The anticipation is brutal.

But adequately filling the moments between now and then calls for a lot of activity, some of which I described to you last week; the rest of my time I spend buried in my favorite Halloween-time books.

Are there really books such as these, you ask? Stories that make the blood run as cold as the dry ice in my cauldron of rum punch? Tales that cause more terror than running out of bite-sized Snickers before the doorbell rings for the last time?

You betcha.

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Babble About Cabell: Domnei

Babble About Cabell: Domnei

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James Branch Cabell‘s often expressed ambition was to “write beautifully of perfect happenings.” He was born in 1879; one of his first jobs was reporting the society news in New York City; and his work frequently hinges on romantic love of a very old-fashioned sort. A reasonable person might conclude from all this that the man wrote slop but, as so often, the reasonable person would be wrong.

domneiWhere to start with Cabell? He didn’t go out of his way to make it easy. His major work is a 25-book eikosipentology ohmygodthatstoomanybooksology series titled The Biography of Dom Manuel. Only one of the books (Figures of Earth) actually deals with Dom Manuel, the legendary hero of a fictional French county Poictesme. The rest of the books supposedly deal with Dom Manuel’s life as it passes to his heirs, physical and otherwise, under three grand divisions: chivalry, poetry, and gallantry. If you think it is possible to be more old-fashioned than this, I’m afraid my seconds will have to call upon you for an explanation.

Not all of this stuff is equally readable, and some of it is not readable at all. Things like Beyond Life: The Dizain of the Demiurges is strictly for the Cabellian completist or the literary masochist. (There may be some overlap between those groups.)

But Cabell had complete control over his style, and he used it to hilarious and harrowing effect. He spun fantasies of heroes and damsels in a Middle Ages that never was but (in the words of one of Dashiell Hammett’s most cynical characters), “Cabell is a romantic in the same way the horse was Trojan.” He tells these tales, unrolls these dreams; he cherishes them; he deconstructs them; he mocks them–somehow all at the same time. Cabell’s spirit kills these dreams; his letters give them life.

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