Editor’s Blog – Page 117

2010 Bram Stoker Award Winners

Friday, July 1, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Yes, these awards were actually given out last week, so technically this isn’t news. But I’m just getting around to it now, and you probably forgot who won already, so I’m sure this is still useful. Glad we could be of service.

The winners of the 2010 Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in the horror field are:

Novel: A Dark Matter, Peter Straub (DoubleDay)
First Novel (tie): Black and Orange, Benjamin Kane Ethridge (Bad Moon Books) & Castle of Los Angeles, Lisa Morton (Gray Friar)
Long Fiction: “Invisible Fences,” Norman Prentiss (Cemetery Dance)
Short Fiction: “The Folding Man,” Joe R. Lansdale (Haunted Legends)
Anthology: Haunted Legends, Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas, eds. (Tor)
Collection: Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster)
Non-Fiction: To Each Their Darkness, Gary A. Braunbeck (Apex)
Poetry Collection: Dark Matters, Bruce Boston (Bad Moon Books)

The Bram Stoker Awards have been presented annually by the Horror Writers Association since 1987. Winners are selected by ballot among active members of the HWA. In 2011 three new Categories will be added: Superior Achievement in a Screenplay; Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel; and Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

What about Superior Achievement in a video game? Any year that doesn’t include an award for Dead Rising is missing the boat, in my opinion.

The complete list of nominess for 2010 is here.

Matthew Wuertz reviews Black Gate 15

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Long time reader Matthew Wuertz contributes one of the first reviews of our latest issue on his blog, Adventures of a Fantasy Writer:

The immense tome is now the standard size, much to the chagrin of mail carriers everywhere. For those who love adventure fantasy, however, it is a welcome change for the bi-annual publication.

This is one of the best issues I’ve read. There is a mix of old and new writers, and there is even a theme around strong female protagonists (or “Warrior Women” as John puts it). If you’ve read Black Gate in the past but have fallen away from it in recent times, this is an excellent issue to jump back in with. If you’ve never read Black Gate, check them out.

Matthew has particular praise for “World’s End” by Frederic S. Durbin, “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” by Jeremiah Tolbert, “The Lions of Karthagar” by Chris Willrich, and stories by John R. Fultz and Maria V. Snyder. But he reserves his highest praise for “The Oracle of Gog,” the first story in an ambitious new S&S sequence by Vaughn Heppner:

Lod has survived as hunters’ bait and seeks to end his slavery. Meanwhile, the Nephilim, Kron, comes to his master – the terrible Firstborn named Gog – who has peered into the future and sees a threat. Kron’s mission is to eliminate that threat, while Lod’s mission is to simply survive in his newfound freedom. This was my favorite tale within the issue. Heppner’s narrative style wrapped me into each scene and into the characters’ minds. I hope to see more stories of Lod in future issues.

Read Matthew’s complete review here.

You can get more details on Black Gate 15 here, and purchase copies for just $18.95 (shipping included) at our online store.

Behind the Plague of Shadows

Monday, June 27, 2011 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Over at Flames Rising, Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones talks about the genesis of his Pathfinder novel Plague of Shadows:

I pitched [editor James Sutter] “Jirel of Joiry crossed with Unforgiven.” I wasn’t planning to lift the character or the plot, but I hoped to evoke a similar feel… I’d never written anything with orcs or dwarves, and while I’d scripted an evil sorcerer or two, they’d never been Pathfinder magic users. Writing deals in a lot of archetypes, and fantasy gaming fiction tends to wear those archetypes proudly on its sleeves — the elven archer, the surly half-orc, the mysterious wizard. I embraced those archetypes and tweaked them, as any gamer would when designing a character for play. I planned out scenes that would put the characters in conflict so I could get a better handle on who they were and what was important to them.

I started writing within a day or two of getting my outline approved, and pretty quickly I realized that I needed to stat out my main characters. I’ve been gaming regularly with a variety of systems since I was about 9, but in all that time, I’d never rolled up story characters prior to writing about them… I kept the rule book handy so that my spell descriptions would match, as closely as possible, the spiffy descriptions drafted by the Paizo maestros.

You can learn more about Plague of Shadows here, and the complete conversation with Howard is at Flames Rising.

New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

Sunday, June 19, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Fraser Ronald is an author who will be familiar to readers of Black Gate 15. His story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” is a terrific sword-and-sorcery action piece, featuring two legionnaires who become involved in a plot to cheat a necromancer — a plot that very quickly goes very wrong.

Two of the hallmarks of Fraser’s writing are his gift for worldbuilding, and his clear love of sophisticated action tales in the noir genre. Both of these have served him well in his next projects: For Simple Coin, a collection of four tales of “Sword Noir,” and a compact, complete role-playing game called simply Sword Noir:

Hardboiled sword & sorcery – it’s Conan seeking for the Maltese Falcon, it’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in The Big Sleep, set in Lankhmar, it’s hardboiled crime fiction in the worlds of sword & sorcery.

Inspired by mashing up the novels and stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E Howard, and Fritz Leiber, Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery is a new RPG from Sword’s Edge Publishing. In it, characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest. Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

Now is the time for your characters to walk down mean streets, drenched in rain, hidden in fog, and unravel mysteries, murders, and villainy.

Sword Noir is available today from Sword’s Edge Publishing or RPGNow in PDF format for just $4.99, and in print for $10.73. It is a 6″ x 9″ softcover book with black & white interiors — including maps — running 104 pages.

For Simple Coin is 90 pages, and collects three short stories which originally appeared in AtFantasy, Forgotten Worlds, and On Spec, as well as one story original to this collection. These tales perfectly illustrate the appealing mix of dark fantasy and noir detective fiction that Fraser has perfected.

If you’re a fan of the hard-boiled fantasy of Alex’s Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels or Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I., you’ll want to check these out.

For Simple Coin is $1.99 in PDF, or $6.99 for the print version. It is available through RPGNow. Cover art is by Paul Slinger.

Free RPG Day 2011

Friday, June 17, 2011 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 4 comments

This Saturday is Free RPG Day, and as a lifelong gamer I wanted to encourage all of you current, former, and interested potential gamers to drop by your local gaming store to see what free role-playing game products are being offered for your enjoyment.

I’m especially interested in the new Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game Adventure Starter. Any readers of the Black Gate game review section know what a fan I am of Dungeon Crawl Classics, so I’m expecting good things. The Adventure Starter includes an atmospheric scenario for beginning characters, as well as one for higher level characters, and I’m looking forward to running my group through them this evening.

The Adventure Starter is just half the tale, though, for the beta version of the Dungeon Crawl Classics game is available online here. It looks to be a back-to-the-basics style heroic fantasy game, with no feats, prestige classes, attacks of opportunity, etc. Some days I like the fussy bits and customization of modern fantasy adventure games as much as the next guy, but sometimes I want to throw those books across the room and run something without so many rules, exceptions, and charts. The DCC Beta looks promising: I’ll find out this evening how it plays out, and report back.

The Weekly Standard on The Comic Crash of 1993

Thursday, June 16, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard has written a surprisingly lucid piece of history on the so-called speculator boom, and subsequent spectacular crash, in the comics market from the late 1980s through 1997:

By the time the bubble’s soapy residue washed away, nine out of ten comic book shops in America had closed their doors. Publisher sales of new comics dropped by 70 percent. On December 27, 1996, Marvel, the General Motors of comics, filed for bankruptcy. The market for used comics was flooded with the cadaverous inventories of out-of-business stores… the contours of the industry have changed almost beyond recognition. In 1950, Marvel and DC together sold roughly 13 million comic books a month. In 1968, they put out 16 million a month. Since 1993 the overall sales trend has been inexorably downward. For January 2010, all American publishers combined sold a total of 5.63 million comics.

In the shadow of the crash, Last draws the same conclusion others have about the true value of modern comic franchises like Spider-Man and Batman:

This might sound like an industry marching toward oblivion, yet in 2009, Disney paid $4 billion to acquire Marvel (DC was already owned by Time-Warner). The reason for this gaudy valuation is that the comic books themselves are no longer important to the comic-book industry. They’re loss leaders. The real money is in the comic-book properties, which power toy and merchandise sales, theme parks, and above all else movie franchises. Since 1997, 26 comic book adaptations have gone on to gross more than $100 million at the box office. Twelve of these grossed more than $200 million. More — many more — are coming soon to a theater near you.

As a financial concern, comic book publishers are no longer in the publishing business: They’re curators of, and incubators for, extremely valuable intellectual property.

In the midst of it all, Last draws parallels to the comics crash to help explain the collapse of the U.S. housing market. Never seen that done before. Check out the complete article here.

Scott Taylor at Game Knight Reviews

Monday, June 13, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Black Gate‘s Scott Taylor, our esteemed Wednesday blogger and author of the Art Evolution series, is the first ever guest blogger at Game Knight Reviews this week. GKR is a terrific source of roleplaying game reviews, interviews and news, run by Brian Fitzpatrick.

Scott talks about how he first discovered Black Gate:

Sometime in 2008 I was shopping short story markets and someone on a blogging site indicated that the Swords & Sorcery magazine Black Gate was an option for a story I was writing. As a person always dedicated to wanting to know my market, and being a huge fan of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, I ordered three of the most recent copies of the magazine as ‘research material.’

When they arrived at my home I was intrigued to find that they were included with a two page letter of thanks that was actually a ‘choose your own adventure’ concerning a haunted house and the spirits of half a dozen literary fantasy greats. I laughed and laughed as I went through it, died probably three times, and in my minds-eye was whisked away to the junior high library where I first picked up a copy of The Cave of Time.

That, my friends, is what Black Gate is about, pure nostalgia, humor, and of course some of the most outstanding fantasy fiction one can find on today’s market.

Thanks for the plug, Scott! Glad to hear you enjoyed the mini solo-RPG we included as a subscriber letter with Black Gate 12. It’s still available with every copy shipped.

You can read the complete guest blog here, and check out the excellent Game Knight Reviews here.

Locus Online Reviews Black Gate 15

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Lois Tilton at Locus Online is one of the most diligent short fiction reviewers in the industry, and she’s been a friend and frequent champion of Black Gate for years. She’s the first to check in with a complete (and I do mean complete) review of our latest issue, although as usual she’s cranky about our fondness for series fiction:

I found much to praise in the last issue, and particularly the absence of the usual series stories. Possibly just to vex me, this time the zine has at least four new series and more sequels.

She had many kind words for the issue, including this about Jonathan L. Howard’s “The Shuttered Temple”:

Kyth the Taker… has taken a commission from the priesthood of Prytha to enter the Shuttered Temple, originally built years ago by an emperor whose power was being eroded by the Prythians. No one has yet survived the attempt… What Kyth is, besides broke, is apt at recognizing a trap when she sees it.

This one features the protagonist from one of the most enjoyable tales I’ve read in this zine, and the current story shares the same qualities of cleverness and ingenuity, with a light, engaging narrative.

–RECOMMENDED

We’re fans of sequels and series, of course, because truly great characters and stories aren’t always recognized immediately. Sometimes it takes a few installments for rich, complex fantasy to really find its audience.

Case in point: it’s great to see that Lois now considers the first Kyth story, “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13), “one of the most enjoyable tales I’ve read in this zine.” Especially since she dismissed it with faint praise in her original review, giving a “Recommended” label to the tale that followed it instead. It’s frequently only in retrospect that rich fiction truly reveals itself, and the best way we know to keep exciting characters fresh in your mind is to present them to you as often as we can.

And that’s why we publish sequels. I’m glad it’s working.

2010 Nebula Award Winners Announced

Sunday, May 22, 2011 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

The Nebula Awards for the best science fiction and fantasy published in 2010 were awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America in a gala celebration yesterday, part of the Nebula Awards Weekend.

The Nebulas have been awarded every year since 1965. This year’s presentation was at the Washington Hilton in Washington D.C. It was especially poignant for Black Gate, since our own Amal El-Mohtar was nominated for her short story ‘‘The Green Book’’ (in the November issues of Apex magazine).

And the winners were:

Novel
– Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)
Novella
– “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window,” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean, Summer 2010)
Novelette
– “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made, Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)
Short Story (tie)
– “Ponies,” Kij Johnson (Tor.com, January 17 2010)
– “How Interesting: A Tiny Man,” Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy, February 2010)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Production went to Inception, and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy was won by I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper).

The Solstice Award for impact on the field of science fiction and fantasy was given to both Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr), and the artist Michael Whelan. The SFWA Service Award went to John E. Johnston III. Complete details on the awards can be found at Locus Online.

Congratulations to all the winners! And to Amal, both for being nominated, and for being so damn cool.

Saladin Ahmed on Black Gate

Saturday, May 21, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, guest blogger Saladin Ahmed had this to say about the modern landscape for heroic fantasy:

In recent years I’ve also discovered that there is a wealth of short-form heroic fantasy out there… Anthologies like the excellent Swords and Dark Magic feature some of the top names in the field (Erikson, Lynch, Abercrombie, Moorcock, Nix, Cook). And writers like Peter V. Brett have produced collections of short works set in their bestselling worlds (The Great Bazaar and Other Stories, Brayan’s Gold). But there are also some great short story ezines out there publishing the next generation of heroic fantasy writers: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has made it their mission to bring back the pulp era with unabashedly larger-than-life adventures. Black Gate (the magazine where James Enge’s awesome Morlock Ambrosius got his start) is also working hard to revive the sense of wonder that heroes like Conan and John Carter of Mars used to evoke in readers. And Beneath Ceaseless Skies specializes in what the editor calls ‘literary adventure fantasy’ – stories that combine excellent prose and psychological depth with fantasy elements like alchemists, samurai, werewolves, and talking swords.

Thanks for the shout-out, Saladin! For our part we’re looking forward to your upcoming novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon.

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