Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire
Harry James Connolly made his first fiction sale with “The Whoremaster of Pald,” way back in issue 2 of Black Gate.
It was the most popular piece in the issue by a fair margin, and not just because the title grabbed readers’ attention (although, speaking as the person who picked it out of the submissions pile, the title definitely didn’t hurt).
Since then Harry has appeared frequently in our pages and his fourth story, “Eating Venom,” will be in BG 15. But he hasn’t spent all his efforts on short fiction, as evidenced by the arrival of his first novel, Child of Fire.
Child of Fire is described as “a contemporary fantasy in the tone and style of a crime thriller,” and it’s received a lot of great press — including a mention on the Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2009 list.
Here’s what bestselling author Jim Butcher says about it:
“Excellent reading… has a lot of things I love in a book: a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you’ll get something in your eye just reading it, and a gorgeously flawed protagonist. Take this one to the checkout counter. Seriously.”
And here’s the publisher’s blurb:
Ray Lilly is just supposed to be the driver. Sure, he has a little magic, but it’s Annalise, his boss, who has the real power. Ray may not like driving her across the country so she can hunt and kill people who play with dangerous spellsespecially summoning spellsbut if he tries to quit he’ll move right to the top of her hit list.
Unfortunately, Annalise’s next kill goes wrong and she is critically injured. Ray must complete her assignment alonehe has to stop a man who’s sacrificing children to make his community thrive, and also find the inhuman supernatural power fueling his magic.
Before he became a regular artist for Black Gate, Bernie Mireault was already something of a Renaissance man in the comics industry. He’s been a writer, artist, letterer, and highly acclaimed colorist, and worked with Matt Wagner (Grendel), Joe Matt, Mike Allred, and many others. His comics include Dr. Robot, Bug-eyed Monster, The Blair Witch Chronicles, and his masterpiece, The Jam.
I say “first meeting that we know of” because Bernie and I were born in the exact same (and very small) place — a Canadian Air Force base in Marville, France — only a few years apart in the early 60s. Did we pass briefly as toddlers in the officer’s mess, and maybe compare our love for cartoons and comics while our fathers saluted each other over trays of french bread and beans? Probably not. But hey, man. It’s possible.
I’m a sucker for retrospective anthologies. And F&SF is one of my favorite magazines — and has been since I first discovered tattered copies in the tiny library of Rockcliffe Air Force base in Ottawa, Canada, in the late 70s. Editor Gordon van Gelder has assembled an imposing, 470-page collection spanning more than five decades, starting with Alfred Bester’s “Of Time and Third Avenue” (1951) and ending with Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007).
What’s the point of toiling long hours in relative obscurity for Black Gate, if we don’t pimp your new books?
Heroic fantasy anthologies are a rare sight these dates. And those willing to to take a gamble on emerging authors – virtually non-existant.
Issue 33 of Clarkesworld Magazine features a