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On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

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cs-lewisThough he’s best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was also a prolific essayist and an ardent defender of fantasy literature. In addition to medieval studies (The Allegory of Love) and Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity), Lewis wrote several essays about the enduring appeal of mythopoeic stories, connecting fantasy’s remote, heroic past to its flowering in the early 20th century.

Lewis’ passion and erudition in the mythopoeic comes pouring through in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, a collection of essays and reviews loosely tied around fantasy literature. Lewis’ overarching theme in On Stories is that the best mythopoeic/romance literature (which includes works like E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and H. Rider Haggard’s She) stacks up with the best mainstream literature, and thus deserves to be not only enjoyed, but studied and preserved (I can sense a lot of nodding heads around here, but keep in mind that Lewis wrote these essays in an age when it was heresy to compare fantasy fiction to “real” lit).

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Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

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image004Fresh off my movie frenzy of the last few blog entries, I felt it was time to unplug for a least a week and pick up what looked like the most interesting of the new book releases to find their way first to the Black Gate front office, and then to the underground bunker of Goth Chick News.

With the summer interns finally packing off to their respective institutes of higher learning, I am back to actually getting my mail — as opposed to having it pillaged by a pack of over-hormoned neophytes who snag anything with a girl on the cover. Thus I felt fortunate that this particular new release made it to my mail slot.

On July 27th, prolific author Kelley Armstrong released the 11th book in her Women of the Otherworld series, Waking the Witch. Narrated by twenty-one year old witch Savannah Levine, who readers will recognize from her appearances in prior stories, Savannah is eager to prove herself not only as a sleuth, but as a storyteller in her own right.

And though it is first and foremost a mystery, Waking the Witch is chock full of enough supernatural beings to satisfy the most devout occult enthusiast, though I am almost relieved to say; no vampires to be found. And really, haven’t we all had enough at this point?

Readers like me who haven’t read the prior books, will be intrigued enough by the many hints of multiple back stories to head out in pursuit of the first ten in the series; while devotees will be thrilled with the continuing saga that was born in 2001 with Kelley Armstrong’s first book in the series, Bitten.

I was honored to have recently discussed the books as well as the creativity behind them with Ms Armstrong herself.

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Barnes & Noble up for sale

Barnes & Noble up for sale

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barnes-and-noble2When I moved to St. Charles, Illinois, in 1997, one of the things that drew me to the town was the abundance of used bookstores. There were roughly a half-dozen in easy driving distance, and two in walking distance. I spent a lot of happy hours picking through the vintage science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, until Alice finally pulled me away to go look at stoneware or baby clothes.

Those bookstores are now gone. Several factors conspired to destroy the viability of the small-town bookstore in the 1990s, but one of the chief culprits was the arrival of the suburban megabookstores erected by Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Scarcely a decade later, Borders USA narrowly avoided bankruptcy with a round of debt refinancing in 2009 (Borders in the UK was neither so swift nor so lucky, and went belly up last year). And now comes the news that America’s largest chain of high-end bookshops, Barnes & Noble, has put itself up for sale in the latest sign of the turbulent changes in US book retailing in the new age of the iPad and the Kindle.

B&N owns some 720 bookstores across the US.  The announcement comes after a 45% slump in share price over the last year, and a nearly 5% decline in year-over-year sales from its store operations, to $4.3 billion.

It’s hard to drum up too much sympathy for the corporation partly responsible for the death of all those local bookshops, and part of me sees a healthy dose of poetic justice here.  But at the same time, B&N built some of the finest, most attractive, and most well-stocked bookstores I’ve ever seen, and it put one right on my streetcorner. If they vanish, they’ll be dearly missed.

A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

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ladiesThe Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly
Del Rey (311 pages, $2.95, March 1984)

The first note I made on The Ladies of Mandrigyn was, “too many adjectives!” I also took an immediate dislike to the main character, a mercenary captain who routinely buys and keeps teenage concubines.

The second problem resolved itself nicely during the course of the story, but the adjectives never did let up. If you like spare prose, this is probably not a book for you.

Before I talk about the story, I should mention that I’ve only read this book once. For all my previous reviews, I chose books that I’d read before. If these reviews have a theme, after all, it’s “good books you probably don’t know about,” so I started with some stories I remembered fondly. With this one, I checked to make sure it was the first of a series (the other two are The Witches of Wenshar and The Dark Hand of Magic) and bought it.

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Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

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frank2Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, by Jane Frank
McFarland Publishing Co (534 pages, $148.00, February 2009)

My initial interest in amassing my collection of SF & Fantasy magazines began with the appeal of the cover art.

I jumped on Robert Weinberg’s Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists when it was published in 1988. This work has been virtually alone since then as a definitive coverage of the lives and work of most all of those whose art graced the genre pulps and digests. As with Mike Ashley’s work on the history and accounting of the magazines themselves, Weinberg’s book took front and center on my shelf of core reference books which explain so well to me what I have in my collection.

Reference books of this sort are few, and a work of passion, and as such become updated only with supreme will and dedication, as in the current case of Mike A’s updating of his original 4-volume history of the science fiction magazine. I really hadn’t expected a similar effort to come out of the Art segment of the field. Fortuitously it has now appeared.

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Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part One

Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part One

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void-captain2Science Fiction author Norman Spinrad, author of Bug Jack Barron, The Void Captain’s Tale, and the classic Star Trek episode that introduced the world to cigar-shaped starships of death, “The Doomsday Machine,” talks about the cruel math of “order to net:” 

Here’s how it works. Barnes and Noble and Borders, the major bookstore chains, control the lion’s share of retail book sales… Let’s say that some chain has ordered 10,000 copies of a novel, sold 8000 copies, and returned 2000, a really excellent sell-through of 80%. So they order to net on the author’s next novel, meaning 8000 copies. And let’s even say they still have an 80% sell-through of 6400 books, so they order 6400 copies of the next book, and sell 5120…. You see where this mathematical regression is going, don’t you? Sooner or later right down the willy-hole to an unpublishablity that has nothing at all to do with the literary quality of a writer’s work, or the loyalty of a reasonable body of would-be readers, or even the passionate support of an editor below the very top of the corporate pyramid. Voila, the Death Spiral. And I too am in it.

Read the complete article at his blog, Norman Spinrad At Large.

Rogue Blades Entertainment conjures Demons

Rogue Blades Entertainment conjures Demons

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demons-cover2Our review copy of Demons, the new heroic fantasy anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment and publisher/editor Jason M. Waltz, finally arrived last week.

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while.  It’s the first Clash of Steel anthology to appear under the RBE banner, although more are planned — including Sea Dogs, Reluctant Heroes, and Assassins.

Demons includes stories from Black Gate Contributing Editor Bill Ward and contributors Brian Dolton and Steve Goble, as well as Elaine Isaak, C.L. Werner, Carl Walmsley, Christopher Heath, Ty Johnston, Laura J. Underwood, TW Williams, and many others.

Twelve of the twenty-eight stories originally appeared in a small press title from now-defunct Carnifex Press in 2006: Clash of Steel: Demon, edited by Armand Rosamilia. As Jason relates in his lengthy Acknowledgements:

It was a sorry day indeed when Carnifex Press was forced to close its doors, prematurely bringing to an end the Clash of Steel series. Or so I thought. In a flash of inspiration, I contacted Armand Rosamilia and made a proposal: Allow Rogue Blades Entertainment to adopt the series, and RBE would swear to carry on its fine tradition of hard-hitting steel-centric sword and sorcery tales. He accepted. Here now is the result of that agreement.

Demons is an anthology

…devoted to the devilish fiends who seek to wreak havoc among mankind upon the mortal plane – and of the paladins and warriors who return the vanquished denizens of all the hells to whence they’ve come!

Looking forward to digging in to this one.  You can find the complete TOC here.

A Review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

A Review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

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hero-and-the-crownThe Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
Ace Books (240 pages, $6.99, 1987)

Almost two decades before The Hero and the Crown begins, we are told, a witch seduced the king of Damar.

She married him, bore a child, and then died of disappointment when the child turned out to be a girl, unlikely to take the throne and fulfill her ambitions. Or, at least, that’s the version of the story that everyone knows.

The protagonist of the story is that daughter, a young woman named Aerin. I have to admit to some positive prejudice here: the maladjusted princess is a favorite archetype of mine, and Aerin fits it perfectly. Awkward, prickly, shy, taller than all the other women around her, an outsider in her own family and to her own court — it’s even mentioned that her embroidery is lousy, which has gotten to be a little bit of a cliché.

But she’s also determined, kind, brave, and — interestingly — thinks very scientifically for a quasi-medieval person, so even if you don’t like princesses with problems, I believe she’s a relatable hero.

Shortly after the story begins, we get an extended flashback explaining how she came to her current place in life. At fifteen, Aerin hadn’t yet manifested the magical gifts that mark Damarian royalty. To prove to her cousin Galanna that she truly had royal blood, she ate some leaves from a plant that was supposed to be deadly poison to all those outside the royal family — and nearly killed herself.

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

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“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
— Joseph Heller

Previously in this series about writing, we’ve talked about ways to get story ideas as well as different approaches you can take to writing your story, novel, comic script, screenplay, or other related screed, tome, or pamphlet.

Pen image by Michael ConnorsBut what about the single most important aspect of the writing process? Yes, I’m talking about butt-in-chair time. How do you get yourself into a good schedule and motivated to write?

Very good question.

My answer? Below I’ve listed my top-ten list of tricks and techniques I’ve used that help me get more productive (and less annoyed with myself for not having gotten and writing done):

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A review of The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane

A review of The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane

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door-into-fire2aThe Door Into Fire, by Diane Duane
Dell Fantasy (304 pages, $1.95, 1979)

Prince Herewiss of the Brightwood has two major problems.

First, he’s the first man in generations to have the Flame, a form of energy that’s much more potent than ordinary sorcery — but he can’t use it at all if he can’t make a physical focus with which to channel it.

His other problem is his lover Freelorn, exiled Prince of Arlen and trouble magnet. The summary on the back of The Door Into Fire refers to Freelorn as Herewiss’s “dearest friend” — which, in my opinion, does the book a disservice.

The Door Into Fire is about magic power, overcoming old tragedies, and the beginning of an epic kingdom-changing quest. It’s about a very hands-on Goddess and how she deals with her creation.

But it’s also about sex. Sex and love, sex and jealousy, sex in a culture where bisexuality and polyamory seem to be the default — sex that starts from a different set of assumptions than the average American reader carries around.

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