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Category: Editor’s Blog

The blog posts of Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones and Editor John O’Neill

Scheherazade’s Bequest 11 now Online

Scheherazade’s Bequest 11 now Online

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cabinet-2So I’ve discovered this cool thing called Scheherezade’s Bequest. It happened while reading C.S.E’s LiveJournal, when I should have been working.  Right next to a pic of a young woman kissing a horse is this entirely C.S.E-like comment:

OH, SEE!!! Scheherezade’s Bequest 11 is up at www.cabinetdesfees.com! And [info]cucumberseed‘s story is there, and [info]shvetufae‘s got a thing in it, and I wish I weren’t at work, so I could REEEEEAAAAAAD IT!!!

To conceal my curiosity about the horse (not to mention my obvious guilt at having less self-control than she during work hours), I asked C.S.E. to explain Scheherezade’s Bequest to me.

Because she knows everybody (and I mean everybody), C.S.E. passed my request along to co-editor Erzebet YellowBoy, who kindly explained that Scheherezade’s Bequest is the online component of the altogether splendid Fairy Tale Journal Cabinet des Fées, which explores the fairy tale in fiction and fact.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies Celebrates Two Years

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Celebrates Two Years

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bcs1The relentless Beneath Ceaseless Skies published their 52nd issue last week (Sept. 23, 2010).

I continue to be amazed at this magazine. Issues appear online every two weeks like clockwork — and if you do the math, issue 52 issue marks exactly two years since they published their first, back in early October 2008. 

Each issue contains two original works of literary adventure fantasy, and the magazine’s artwork and production values remain top-notch.  Over the past two years Editor-in-Chief Scott H. Andrews and Assistant Editor Kate Marshall have earned a stellar reputation for discovering and promoting new talent, and stories published in BCS have received acclaim from Locus, the Internet Review of Science Fiction, and various Best of the Year anthologies, among many others.

If you’re a regular reader of Black Gate, many of the authors appearing in BCS will be familiar to you — including Matthew David Surridge, Renee Stern, Holly Phillips, and Richard Parks. They’ve also published Brian Dolton, Chris Willrich, Catherine Mintz, Marie Brennan, Vylar Kaftan, Yoon Ha Lee, Saladin Ahmed, and many others.

Issue 52 includes “The Guilt Child” by Margaret Ronald, and “Invitation of the Queen” by Therese Arkenberg. Over at Torque Control, there’s a spirited discussion — and plenty of praise — for Margaret Ronald’s earlier “A Serpent in the Gears” (BCS #34), set in the same world as “The Guilt Child.” Cover art this issue is by Andreas Rocha.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is completely free, but they appreciate your support, and they’re well worth it. Their latest issue is here. Drop by and check them out.

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Available October 2010

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Available October 2010

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claire-254Our own C.S.E. Cooney has sent us some good news about her latest fiction extravagana:

The Big Bah-Ha is a novella by yours truly, coming out at Drollerie Press in October 2010!!! It is a post-apocalyptic katabasis story, complete with kiddie gangs, slingshot battles, strange clowns, Tall Ones, and one very dead (very brave) child protagonist.

No, I didn’t know what a “katabasis story” was either.  Thank God for Wikipedia, which tells me “Katabasis is a descent of some type. Katabasis may be a moving downhill, a sinking of winds, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld.” Oooh, now I get it.

The Big Ba-Ha is a macabre post-apocalyptic fairy tale, a rollicking fantasy of a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest. To rescue one of their own, they will ally with the monstrous and enigmatic Flabberghast — who arrived only after the world ended and eats the bones of the dead — and penetrate the mystery of Chuckle City, home to ravenous packs of balloon aminals, murderous Gacy boys, and the elusive Gray Harlequin. The Big Ba-Ha — it’s The Goonies meets The Road Warrior, perfectly suited for both ordinary children and gifted adults, and one of the most original fantasies I’ve read in a long time.

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Interzone #229 Arrives

Interzone #229 Arrives

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interzone229And by arrives, I mean I finally found a local bookstore — Barnes & Noble, in Champaign, Illinois — that carries it at a reasonable price ($7.50 US).

I like Interzone. This British science fiction magazine has had a long and illustrious history, and has published some terrific work. They’ve also had some really great covers, especially in the last few years. (Okay this issue, with the Lego Road Warriors look, maybe isn’t the best example.) If I could find a domestic distributor, I’d subscribe in a heartbeat.

Still, it’s worth the hunt every two months. The full-color interiors and top-notch design give the zine a distinct look and real appeal. My favorite features are frequently the non-fiction — including Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn film column, Tony Lee’s Laser Fodder DVD articles, David Langford SF gossip column Ansible Link, and especially the book reviews, which provide an often tantalizing look at British SF and fantasy titles. 

Fiction this issue is by Jim Hawkins, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Toby Litt, Antony Mann, and Paul Evanby. There’s also an interview with Finch author Jeff VanderMeer, and an editorial.

Interzone is published by TTA Press, and edited by Andy Cox and Andy Hedgecock.  Their website is here.

Writing Against Resistance

Writing Against Resistance

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warofart1I think one of the reasons that there are so many books out there offering writing advice is that there are so many ways up the mountain. Different writers use different ways to battle their way up the height, sometimes changing their own approaches day to day or project to project. I wouldn’t be surprised if most serious writers have at least one or two of these books on their shelf, or in a box somewhere, its resting spot likely depending upon how useful the writer really found the information.

My current favorite is titled The War of Art, and it has held that position for almost two years, partly because I’ve been too busy to read many writing books, but mostly because it gave me everything I needed to fight my most recent battles. You may recognize its writer, Steven Pressfield, as the author of Gates of Fire, Tides of War, The Legend of Bagger Vance and sundry other works.

But it doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of Pressfield or read a line of his work if you’ve ever had trouble procrastinating with your writing or any other creative pursuit. Pressfield names your opponent in the battle between creation and NOT-creation “Resistance,” with a capital R, and in this short, concise book, tells you how to recognize it and move forward up that mountain.

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Adventure Tales #6 Arrives

Adventure Tales #6 Arrives

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adventure-6Wildside Press continues their excellent pulp reprint series with the sixth issue of Adventure Tales, presenting tales of classic fiction from Nelson S. Bond, Arthur O. Friel, Talbot Mundy, and Zorro creator Johnston McCulley, and poetry by Poul Anderson and Clark Ashton Smith, among others. The issue is cover-dated Winter 2010, but the publication date on the copy we received was September 13.

This is a special H. Bedford-Jones issue, with three complete stories from the pulp master. As usual the issue is handsomely illustrated, with finely detailed reproductions of the original accompanying artwork. It also includes a reprint of the complete first issue of George Scithers’ legendary Sword & Sorcery fanzine Amra, which is pretty darn cool, and I hope future issues of Adventure Tales  keep up this tradition.

John Betancourt’s editorial laments the loss of Scithers, one of the most accomplished editors in our field. Scithers was founding editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction and edited both Amazing and Weird Tales in a long and varied career. He was a typesetter and Assistant Editor at Wildside until his death at 80 (and perhaps the loss of George’s keen eye explains the rather unfortunate back cover credit to “Frits Leiber,” for the poem “The Gray Mouser: 1” )

Overall this is a very handsome package, typical for Wildside’s pulp reprints, and there were brief fisticuffs atop the Black Gate rooftop headquarters to determine who would take home our sole review copy.  John Fultz sucker-punched Bill Ward and had me in a headlock when Howard Andrew Jones unleashed an evil trained chicken who swooped in and scored the prize. Howard retreated to Indiana and, in his latest mocking transmission back to headquarters, claims to be already at work on a review.

Adventure Tales is 152 pages and is now available directly from Wildside for just $12.95.

A Review of The House of Dead Maids

A Review of The House of Dead Maids

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house-dead-maidsLast week I was contacted by Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media, who’s been recommending and sending review copies to me for nearly fifteen years. Barbara had flagged The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle (author of the Hollow Kingdom trilogy), just released in hardcover from Holt, as of possible interest to Black Gate readers. And from her description, it sounded like she could be right:

The House of Dead Maids is billed as a prelude to Wuthering Heights, as it features a character who will come to be known as Healthcliff. The novel is a scary blending of Yorkshire lore and Bronte family history. The child (Heathcliff) is already a savage little creature when Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House as his nursemaid. The ghost of the last maid will not leave Tabby in peace, and her spirit is only one of many. As she struggles against the evil forces that surround the house, Tabby tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness can’t alter his fate.

The real task, as always, was matching the ideal reviewer with the book… a bit more of a challenge for a 151-page book with an eleven year-old narrator, I grant you.

As luck would have it, I happened to have an eleven-year old reader in the house, who innocently picked up the book the day it arrived.  I know when the stars have aligned, and sat down with a notepad and pen to interview her minutes after she finished reading The House of Dead Maids.

We’ll call this young reader “Tabitha,” because of what happened when her mother found out I was going to use her picture and real name on the Internet.

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Werewolves and Ghost-powered Zeppelins: Sample Chapters from The Wolf Age Now Available

Werewolves and Ghost-powered Zeppelins: Sample Chapters from The Wolf Age Now Available

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thewolfageJames Enge tells us (rather gleefully) that “A slab of The Wolf Age is up at the Pyr samples site. Werewolves. Ghost-powered zeppelins. The usual stuff.”

The Wolf Age is the third novel of Morlock the Maker.  Morlock, the soft-spoken hunchback and recovering alcoholic who may also be the finest artificer the world has ever seen — not to mention a formidable swordsman — featured in Enge’s first published story, “Turn Up This Crooked Way,” in Black Gate 8, and has appeared six times (so far) in our pages, most recently in Black Gate 14.

Tired of dominating Black Gate‘s pages with an iron fist, Enge turned to more ambitious goals, producing the first two Morlock novels Blood of Ambrose (2009) and This Crooked Way (also 2009 — it makes other writers look bad, doesn’t it?), both published by Pyr.

Blood of Ambrose was recently nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the obvious next step in Enge’s ruthless plan for domination of Western civilization.

You can read the first two chapters of The Wolf Age at the Pyr website, and see for yourself how Enge’s evil scheme is taking shape.  It’s not to late to stop him.

Werewolves. Ghost-powered zeppelins. On second thought, it probably is too late.  Join the Black Gate staff in line to sign up as Enge’s evil henchmen, and get your black leather tunics and infrared goggles before they’re all gone.

Writing Tools: Notebooks, the Kind with Paper

Writing Tools: Notebooks, the Kind with Paper

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Ye olde trusty notebook.
Ye olde trusty notebook.

From the time I was in grade school all the way up until after I graduated from college I wrote in notebooks. It seemed such a natural process that I wonder now how I got away from it, and why it was such a revelation when I took up writing in notebooks again.

In my school days I used to carefully comb through available notebooks  and select one with multiple subjects, college-ruled. Usually it would be a spiral-bound Mead, 8 1/2 by 11, but sometimes I’d experiment with slightly smaller sizes. When I was older and wandering through the Kansas City Renaissance Festival with my wife, I purchased a lovely Celtic leather notebook cover with an unlined sketchbook, and I filled a succession of replacement sketchbooks between those covers with my scribbles for years after.

As striking as that notebook was, though, I eventually fell out of using the thing. It became impractical to drag it wherever I went: my student days were over so I no longer had a backpack over one shoulder, and I didn’t have the kind of job where I always toted a briefcase. In those rare instances where I DID have a briefcase, it was already so loaded down that something weighing as much as a hardback book was a nuisance. I never used a notebook for writing unless I was at home, at which point I might as well have been writing on the computer. I thought that I had “outgrown” the use of a notebook.

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