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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

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2010-discoveryRogue Blades Entertainment (RBE) has published some terrific fantasy anthologies over the past few years, including Return of the Sword and Rage of the Behemoth, featuring original work from writers such as E.E. Knight, James Enge, Bill Ward, Michael Ehart, Thomas M. MacKay, S.C. Bryce, Steve Goble, Brian Ruckley, C.L. Werner, Harold Lamb, and many others.

This week Rogue Blades publisher Jason M. Waltz announced the first annual RBE Challenge! Writing Contest. The competition is open to anyone, and the top stories will be printed in the competition anthology, Discovery (cover at right).

Submissions must consist of heroic adventure in any genre, and must arrive between June 1st and September 1st, 2010.  The top twelve stories will recevie a copy of the anthology; the top three will also receive cash awards, and a detailed critique from the contest judges.

The entry fee is only $10, almost criminally cheap. If you’re any aspiring writer looking for an opportunity to show your stuff, now’s your chance to appear in a new anthology from one of the top publishers of modern heroic fantasy.

More information is on the Official Announcement page, including this invitation from Jason Waltz:

Using V Shane’s artwork and the title Discovery as inspiration, pen me mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure. Speculative fiction is NOT required… Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even Horror and Romance! You name it, so long as it’s heroic fiction, you can submit it.

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A Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines

A Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines

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avon_fantasy_reader_17sI recently stumbled across G.W. Thomas’ marvelous Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines, which is well worth a look for short fiction readers interested in the history of the genre.

G.W. Thomas is editor and publisher of Dark Worlds,  the pulp-Descended magazine of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery and other genres.  Dark Worlds was nominated for the Harper’s Pen Award earlier this year for Michael Ehart’s original sword & sorcery tale “Tomb of the Amazon Queen.”

But back to the Reader’s Guide already. You should check it out, it’s cool.  There are more complete magazine guides out there, certainly — the amazing Coverpop site, for example, with scans of literally thousands of old SF magazines, and a truly fun all-in-one SF Cover Explorer, as well as the magazines section of The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide, and even Wikipedia’s Science Fiction Magazine entry is pretty darn comprehensive — but few assembled with such a  focus on, and devotion to, heroic fantasy.

Thomas’s guide covers all the magazines that were instrumental in shaping modern Sword & Sorcery, starting with Weird Tales and Strange Tales, and continuing through Unknown, The Avon Fantasy Reader, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantastic, Weirdbook, Dragon, and many more. In between he also highlights lesser known (but still fascinating) titles such as The Fantasy Fan (1933-1935) and Midnight Sun (1974-1979). Finally, he provides links to some of the best sources of online S&S today, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Silver Blade, and Sorcerous Signals.

Here’s what he says about Black Gate:

This recent publication is the hottest place to read new S&S today. With authors like Martin Owton, Howard Andrews Jones, Charles Coleman Finley, Darrell Schweitzer, Charles deLint , it delivers a mix of Sword & Sorcery and other forms of Fantasy.

The guide includes some magnificent cover art, commentary from G.W, and links. The commentary is very short, and you can read through the entire guide in a few moments.  But the fiction it will introduce you to will last a lifetime. 

If you enjoyed the Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines, you will likely also enjoy his broader and more ambitious Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery, which also covers anthologies, short fiction, comics, TV/films, and much more.  I especially recommend his encyclopedic A-to-Z Guide to S&S authors, which covers virtually every major S&S writer of the last century, with copious cover scans of much of their major work. It’s still being updated, with links to work published as recently as last year. It’s like wandering though a well-stocked library.

How to Get a Book Deal

How to Get a Book Deal

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vengence-small2In late July of 2009 I got an offer for a historical fantasy novel from St. Martin’s imprint Thomas Dunne featuring my series characters, Dabir and Asim.

The deal itself reads anti-climatically, which is why I delayed posting about it. But I think that there’s something to be learned from the story of publication, so I’ve decided to share it.

I finished revising a book, I gave it to a friend, he showed it to his editor, I got an offer, I talked to agents of two writer friends, agonized about which agent to select, then chose one.

Boiled down, the process sounds simple; after all, I’m just one of those lucky guys who wrote a novel and showed it to a friend, then got a book deal after just a few weeks from the first pro who looked at it. Easy as pie, right?

This account of events manages to miss a couple of things.

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Mark Sumner reviews Black Gate

Mark Sumner reviews Black Gate

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devils-tower2Well, sort of.

Mark Sumner, the Nebula Award-nominated author of the Devil’s Tower books — and one of Black Gate‘s most prolific and popular contributors — has a popular blog at Daily Kos where he discusses… well, everything.

Recently he touched on the impermanence of fiction, especially short fiction:

Speaking as someone whose entire lifetime oeurve is at this moment out of print, I can tell you with certainty that books are no more guarantee of immortality than games….But if novels are transient, short story collections are the mayflies of the literary world… Still, a good short story is a jewel of writing, and a collection of stories from the same author can subject you to more ideas, more emotion, and more pure wonder than any novel. They’re a great chance to get an insight into the most important character in any book — the one behind the pen.

Sumner points to four classic short fiction collections, any one of which is a great place for a new short fiction reader to get started.

They are: the horror collection Soft and Others: 16 Stories of Wonder and Dread by F. Paul Wilson, Simak’s book of  terrific early SF, The Worlds of Clifford Simak, Cordwainder Smith’s expansive future history The Rediscovery of Man, and especially George R. R. Martin’s Sandkings.

His recollection of Sandkings was right on the money, and made me want to read it all over again.

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Frank Frazetta enters Valhalla

Frank Frazetta enters Valhalla

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death-dealer2Frank Frazetta, the greatest fantasy artist of his generation, died today at age 82.

Frazetta got his start in comics in the early 1950s, working with legendary artists such as Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Al Capp, and Harvey Kurtzman on Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Li’l Abner, as well as many titles at EC Comics.

In 1964 Frazetta did his first movie poster for (of all things) Woody Allen’s first film, What’s New Pussycat?  This eventually led to cover paintings for some of the most popular paperbacks of the 60s and 70s, most notably the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, including Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.

For fantasy fans Frazetta is best remembered for his groundbreaking Sword & Sorcery images — such as “Death Dealer” (right), the cover to Lin Carter’s 1973 anthology Flashing Swords 2 — and most especially his colorful and visceral depictions of Conan, which revolutionized fantasy art.

Until Frazetta, Conan was primarily depicted as a white, clean-cut warrior in pseudo-roman garb, straight off the set of a Cecil B. DeMille film (see the covers of Robert E. Howard’s first Gnome Press editions from the 1950s, such as Conan the Barbarian).

But Frazetta swept away all who had come before, re-envisioning Conan as a muscular, dark-skinned titan, a true barbarian in spirit and appearance. Since Frazetta, in defining work by artists like Ken Kelly, Sanjulian, Barry Windsor Smith, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni, Conan has been revealed as both heroic and fearful, a thick-sinewed, long-haired mongrel, a truly striking figure in all respects.

Frank Frazetta died at a hospital near his home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

For a sampling of some of his finest work, visit the unofficial Frazetta Fantasy Art Gallery.

Exploring Towers of Adventure

Exploring Towers of Adventure

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towers-of-adventureA while back I placed an order with one of my favorite online vendors, FRP Games, whose selection and discounts are both excellent. At the last minute I added an item to my cart that I hadn’t budgeted for: James Ward’s Towers of Adventure, a boxed set for Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord Games.

Not only had I not planned to buy it, I’d never even heard of it until I saw it in FRP’s product newsletter.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for marketing copy:

Towers of Adventure offers the Castle Keeper a marvelous set of interchangeable tower levels, rooms, monsters, NPCs, traps and treasures. This box set allows you to make literally millions of exciting towers for your players to explore. Treasures, tower inhabitants, and tower maps are at your fingers and so easy to use you can put together a complex adventure in five minutes or less.

It’s true!  This isn’t a typical adventure supplement, with a set of interlinked encounters and rooms carefully described for the game master. In fact, while the box contains designs for 15 wildly different towers — including a Zombie Tower, Vampire Tower, Cloud Giant Tower, and Lonely Wizard’s Tower — I couldn’t find a room description anywhere.

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Pyr Books Fall Winter 2010-2011 Season

Pyr Books Fall Winter 2010-2011 Season

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thewolfage1Editorial director Lou Anders has posted Pyr’s complete Fall Winter 2010-2011 catalog online.

There’s a lot of great stuff to look forward to, including James Enge’s third Morlock book, The Wolf Age:

Wuruyaaria: city of werewolves, whose raiders range over the dying northlands, capturing human beings for slaves or meat. Wuruyaaria: where a lone immortal maker wages a secret war against the Strange Gods of the Coranians. Wuruyaaria: a democracy where some are more equal than others, and a faction of outcast werewolves is determined to change the balance of power in a long, bloody election year.

Their plans are laid; the challenges known; the risks accepted. But all schemes will shatter in the clash between two threats few had foreseen and none had fully understood: a monster from the north on a mission to poison the world, and a stranger from the south named Morlock Ambrosius.

Morlock first appeared in Black Gate 8, in the story “Turn Up This Crooked Way.” 

Now he’s all grown up, and taking on Strange Gods in werewolf cities.  It makes us proud.

hornsofruinThere’s plenty more on the Pyr list to command your attention, including Tim Akers’ The Horns of Ruin, which sounds very intriguing indeed:

Eva Forge is the last paladin of a dead God. Morgan, God of battle and champion of the Fraterdom, was assassinated by his jealous brother, Amon… When a series of kidnappings and murders makes it clear that someone is trying to hasten the death of the Cult of Morgan, Eva must seek out unexpected allies and unwelcome answers in the city of Ash. But will she be able to save the city from a growing conspiracy, one that reaches back to her childhood, even back to the murder of her god? 

All this plus Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Salute the Dark, and new novels from Paul McAuley, Mark Chadbourn, Mark Hodder, Jasper Kent, Sam Sykes, Joel Shepherd, James Barclay, and many more.

Check out all the details (and the fabulous cover art) here.

C.S.E. Cooney reviews Black Gate 14

C.S.E. Cooney reviews Black Gate 14

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hangmans1Author C.S.E. Cooney has become the third reviewer to post her thoughts on our latest issue, which she read over several train rides:

It’s MASSIVE! It’s GLOSSY! It’s full of ILLUSTRATIONS! There are THREE POEMS in it!… After chortling my way through John O’Neill’s wry romp of an editorial, laughing though the letters, and reading Rich Horton’s essay on older fantasy fiction… I finally started on the actual fiction.

She seemed to particularly enjoy “The Hangman’s Daughter” by Chris Braak:

HURRAH for the FORMDIABLE girl-child protagonist with her laconic but fiercely interesting dad and the incredible world built around them… This story was, in a word (an old-fashioned hippie word), BITCHIN’.

Dan Brodribb’s “The Girl Who Feared Lightning”

My favorite bit in “The Girl Who Feared Lightning” was a short exchange between the protagonist and her boyfriend over the phone. It was very natural and easy, yet loaded with all sorts of things left unsaid. It’s always amazing to me how a few sentences of dialogue can define an entire relationship. And then, of course, there were the mummies.

And Robert J. Howe’s “The Natural History of Calamity”

Witty and well-plotted. I expended very little effort in reading – the story just swept me along. It took most of two train rides, and I was in a panic lest I’d have to get off the train before I’d FINISHED it. Another author I must GOOGLE. Kick-ass lady protag, too, I must say. And kick-ass without being INDOMITABLE, you know. She gets knocked around her fair share and is not NOBLE about it all the time. I’d like to meet her again. In, like, a novel. Please.

Claire’s complete (and highly entertaining) review is here.

Art by John Kaufmann for “The Hangman’s Daughter.”

Black Gate 14 now available in PDF

Black Gate 14 now available in PDF

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bg-14-cover3Black Gate 14 is now available in PDF format for just $4.95. 

Black Gate 14 is a landmark issue ­ and at 384 pages, it’s also the largest in our history. The print version retails for $15.95, but now you can order the complete magazine — including the wraparound cover — for the same price as all our PDFs: $4.95/copy, or as part of a 4-issue PDF subscription for just $17.95.

Existing subscribers can purchase the issue for just $2.95.

Here’s what  Grasping for the Wind has to say about our latest issue:

One of the best collections of fiction on the market – whether books, magazines, or online. The latest edition has just been released, and Black Gate 14 is massive, topping out at 384 pages …  this massive collection of fiction shows why, even with their irregular publishing schedule, Black Gate is one of the most popular magazines (print or online) available today.

The issue includes a Morlock novella from James Enge, and new fiction from John C. Hocking, Michael Jasper & Jay Lake, Pete Butler, Robert J Howe, Martin Owton, Chris Braak, Matthew David Surridge,  and much more — including an 8-page Knights of the Dinner Table strip!

The complete Table of Contents, with artwork and brief story excerpts, is here, and you can read the complete reviews from Grasping for the Wind and Locus Online here.

Order the magazine on our Subscription page here.

Cover art by the great Bruce Pennington.

Adventures in Pulp Awesomeness: The Clayton Astounding

Adventures in Pulp Awesomeness: The Clayton Astounding

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claytonOver at Dark Worlds, editor G.W. Thomas has completed the first of three planned reprints of the Clayton Astounding, the first incarnation of the grand old lady of science fiction.

Astounding changed its name to Analog in 1960 and continues to publish today, 80 years after its first issue hit the stands in January, 1930. In an era when most genre magazines last only a handfull of issues, that’s an incredible run.

During most of that time it’s been the single most important magazine in the field, discovering such names as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, and literally hundreds of others.

The first volume of this new series, The Clayton Astounding: Vagabonds of Space is 212 pages in paperback, and is now available at Lulu for $13.99.

This volume collects the best Space Opera from the Clayton years. According to Thomas, future volumes will include Out of the Dreadful Depths (undersea tales), Planetoids of Peril (stories set on moons, planets, and asteroids) and possibily “a book of space invaders, robots and mechanical enemies.” Yeah baby.

Here’s the description from Lulu:

Before John W. Campbell’s “Golden Age” (beginning in 1938) editor Harry Bates created an SF Pulp that was meant to entertain with stories of adventure and action in outer space and on far planets. This magazine has become known as “The Clayton Astounding” to delineate it from later incarnations. The first volume, VAGABONDS OF SPACE, represents the best Space Opera from the magazine’s first run of 1930-1933. Features stories by Harl Vincent, Edmond Hamilton, Anthony Gilmore, Sewell Peaslee Wright, Nat Schachner, Edwin K. Sloat and Jack Williamson. Each author is introduced with commentary by G. W. Thomas.

Fiction from an era when “space opera” meant sword fights in space with weird metal sticks.  All I need to know. You had me at “adventure and action in outer space and on far planets.”

Looking forward to the next volumes.