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Goth Chick News: Hanging with Head Smash Creator Vlad Yudin

Goth Chick News: Hanging with Head Smash Creator Vlad Yudin

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image008At this year’s Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (“C2E2”), you couldn’t spit a piece of gum without hitting a promotional plug for Head Smash.

To be honest, you couldn’t spit a piece of gum without hitting a lot of unusual things at the May event, but Black Gate photog Chris Z and I couldn’t help but notice that the sheer quantity of Head Smash promotion was on par with the visual assault launched by Marvel for its own upcoming releases.

We had to admit, the curiosity factor was being driven off the scale for a graphic novel that hadn’t yet been released — not to mention an indy film adaptation barely into pre-production.

I had read that Yudin was creating Head Smash (penned by Erik Hendrix and illustrated by Dwayne Harris) for Arcana Comics, as well as writing the film adaptation of the story.  He is also producing and adapting the film’s screenplay with The Twilight Saga producers Mark Morgan and Michael Beckor.

So thanks partially to our nosiness–  but mostly to the tenacity of the PR company handling Head Smash and its creator — Chris and I got an early morning exclusive chat with the Russian-born-US-raised writer, director and producer Vlad Yudin.

And yes, I admit it, there’s no way I’m not going to talk to a guy named “Vlad…”

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Goth Chick News Meets The Resurrectionist

Goth Chick News Meets The Resurrectionist

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“If they knew what horrible things were available to them they would take comfort in their own suffering.”
                                                                        -Dr. Spencer Black

I have been sitting here for long moments and I am still not sure where to start telling you about this.

It is art and science and masterful storytelling packaged and tied with a blood splattered ribbon. It is at once indescribably beautiful and nightmarishly horrifying. It is my latest obsession and my signed copy caused me to remove everything else from my coffee table to ensure no other object would detract from it.

It is The Resurrectionist, by EB Hudspeth.

Hudspeth is one of the people I couldn’t wait to introduce you to, whom I met at this year’s C2E2 event in Chicago.  When Nicole at Quirk Books got in touch, she described EB (he said we could all call him Eric) as “author, artist and creator of ‘Frankenstein meets Gray’s Anatomy.'”

Couple this with Quirk’s charter of publishing only 25 strikingly unconventional books every year, and this amounted to an opportunity there was no way I was going to miss.

Eric Hudspeth came in out of the rain (literally) to sit down and talk about The Resurrectionist during his visit to Chicago – the 1893 version of which figures prominently in his tale.

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An Interview With Mystery Writer Todd Robinson

An Interview With Mystery Writer Todd Robinson

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Todd Robinson author photoTodd Robinson, also known as Big Daddy Thug, is similar to Pat Benatar in one essential way – he hits you with his best shot. His debut novel, The Hard Bounce, is a fast-paced, heart-pounder of a gritty mystery. Unlike Benatar, who shoulder shimmied her way out of knife fights, Robinson looks like he could punch a knife out of your hand, catch it mid-air, and fling it past your ear as a warning without breaking a sweat. He’s broad, bearded, often in black – and thank the literary gods – a peaceable author, too busy writing to get in many fights.

Robinson is the Chief Editor of ThugLit, a crime journal dedicated to “writing about wrongs.” His novel, The Hard Bounce, came out in January. It focuses on Boo and Junior, two regular guys who are bouncers at a Boston punk rock bar. Their security company, 4DC (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap), is hired to find a missing girl. What begins as an easy job quickly spirals out of control.

Robinson kindly took time out of his editing and writing to speak a piece to Black Gate.

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Ellen Datlow on Hating One of My Questions, a Brief History of Science Fiction Publishing, and What Kind of Short Fiction Writers She’s Looking For: An Audio Interview

Ellen Datlow on Hating One of My Questions, a Brief History of Science Fiction Publishing, and What Kind of Short Fiction Writers She’s Looking For: An Audio Interview

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ellen_datlow_bioEllen Datlow is one of the most award-winning, if not the most award-winning, editors in science fiction and fantasy. To date, she has won four Hugos, three Bram Stoker Awards, nine World Fantasy Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, two Shirley Jackson Awards, and five Locus Awards.

Regular readers of Black Gate will remember her brief interview calling for backers for a Kickstarter Campaign, and readers delivered in a big way. Her campaign was funded and even reached a stretch goal, and that anthology, Fearful Symmetries will be open to submissions May 1, 2013, so if you have a horror story to submit, mark your calendar. Details will be on the Kickstarter campaign page.

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Howard and Sandra Tayler Discuss Being Mercenary, Living By Faith, And Sergeant Schlock: An Audio Interview

Howard and Sandra Tayler Discuss Being Mercenary, Living By Faith, And Sergeant Schlock: An Audio Interview

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HowardI had the privilege of meeting Sandra Tayler last year at the Nebulas and Howard online at the start of this interview. Famous as the team behind Schlock Mercenary, they’re a noteworthy example of how to build a creative business. What began as a hobby for Howard, doodling a space opera, has become the primary source of income for their family of six, and I really wanted to get a chance to talk to them about the process of moving from a corporate job to self employment. Their web comic has been nominated four times for the Hugo Award and the Taylers have branched out into print books, merchandise, and even a board game.

downloadHoward originally did his degree in music and then went to work for Novell, the software company, for a decade. He and Sandra ran a small music production company for several years before Howard’s interest turned to drawing and comics.

Sandra earned her degree in humanities, which she says she chose, in part, because it didn’t require math. However, one of the first jobs she took on for the family business was the accounting, which she learned through her own study to do as well as a professional accountant. She also took on the book design portion of the business, again teaching herself how to use InDesign and manage the workflow.

In this interview, we discuss that whole journey, and even share a few anecdotes about our mutual faith. As coincidence would have it, all three of us are Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons), and religion also played a significant role in Howard and Sandra’s business decisions.

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Kiini Ibura Salaam on Advice Received in the Bathroom from Octavia Butler, Selling Books at the Green Market, and Holding Five Jobs When Life Only Has Room for Two: An Audio Interview

Kiini Ibura Salaam on Advice Received in the Bathroom from Octavia Butler, Selling Books at the Green Market, and Holding Five Jobs When Life Only Has Room for Two: An Audio Interview

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e3667e7c97f30a7f0235ec.L._V149931200_SX200_I’m a total fangirl around Kiini Ibura Salaam.

When people ask what the best thing about Clarion West was, my first answer is: everything I learned about writing; but a very close second is: that it made me cool enough to hang out with people like Kiini. Originally from New Orleans, she has traveled the world and writes mind-bending stories rich in culture and sensuality. She is also a painter, mother, and blogger for KIS List, an email newsletter she started over a decade ago.

At the time of this posting, she has just earned out her advance on her collection of short stories, Ancient, Ancient, which any short story author can tell you is no small feat. In this interview, she discusses both her artistic process and her marketing strategy as she continues to build a name and a brand for herself in the modern publishing era.

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Speculate! Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

Speculate! Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

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bones-of-the-old-ones-contest-win11Gregory A. Wilson and Bradley P. Beaulieu interview Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones for episode 65 of Speculate!, the Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans.

We kick off 2013 with an interview of author Howard Andrew Jones, who writes both original world novels and books set in Paizo‘s Pathfinder universe, adding to our ever-growing list of speculative fiction authors who enjoy gaming almost as much as they enjoy writing! We cover the influences on Howard’s work (including an abiding interest in 1,001 Arabian Nights), his fascination with the short story writer and novelist Harold Lamb, and the differences between writing an original world book like The Bones of the Old Ones and a shared world book like Plague of Shadows.

The interview covers a lot of ground — everything except, apparently, Howard’s growing herd of horses.

Gregory A. Wilson’s first novel, The Third Sign, was published by Five Star Press in 2009, and Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh were published by Night Shade Books. Next episode, they talk about the state of the field with Michael Stackpole and Matt Forbeck.

Listen to the complete 38-minute podcast here.

Cataclysms, Ghosts and Monsters: An Interview With Jeffrey E. Barlough

Cataclysms, Ghosts and Monsters: An Interview With Jeffrey E. Barlough

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what-i-found-at-hoole-smallThere’s nothing out there on the shelves like Jeffrey Barlough’s Western Lights novels. The series — called such because “the sole place on earth where lights still shine at night is in the west” — is a bouillabaisse of mystery, ghost story, and post-apocalyptic gaslamp fantasy. His seventh and most recent book, What I Found at Hoole, was published in November.

Dr. Barlough, who moonlights as a veterinary physician, kindly spoke to me about the world-building of the Western Lights, his latest project, and which Ice Age animal he’d most like to meet in a dark alley.

An Interview with Jeffrey E. Barlough

Conducted and transcribed by Jackson Kuhl, January 2013

Black Gate: The world of the Western Lights is technically an alternate history — the last glaciation never ended and British civilization has colonized North America’s western coast — and yet the timeline is so divergent — an environmental cataclysm, ghosts and monsters from mythology — that it might as well be a secondary world fantasy. Where did the disparate ideas for the Western Lights come from? What inspired you to write the first book, Dark Sleeper?

Barlough: Dark Sleeper resulted from combining three different projects I was working on at the time. One was a sci-fi story set in Ice Age California, another was a relatively straight-forward “Dickensian” mystery, and the third was a tale of the supernatural concerning an immortal Etruscan who turns up in 1920s Santa Barbara! At one point, I realized that combining these various elements into a single storyline might produce something unique. The backstory of the series was filled in by extrapolation from these differing components. My interest in Victorian fiction and paleontology dates from my childhood, while the Ice Age setting in particular was inspired by my time as a volunteer excavator at the famed Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

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Call for Backers, Fearful Symmetries, Edited by Ellen Datlow in Conjunction with ChiZine on Kickstarter: An Audio Mini-Interview

Call for Backers, Fearful Symmetries, Edited by Ellen Datlow in Conjunction with ChiZine on Kickstarter: An Audio Mini-Interview

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ellen_datlow_bioThis is a very brief interview – I’ll be doing a longer one with Ellen in the next few months. I wanted to catch up with her, though, about her Kickstarter campaign for Fearful Symmetries, an unthemed horror anthology she will edit, published by Chizine. As of right now, the campaign is underway and not yet fully funded. I thought it worth calling people’s attention to it because:

1) Ellen edits amazing anthologies, mixing work by seasoned pros and promising newcomers (and no, she’s never bought anything from me, and likely won’t for this anthology either. She only takes the very best).

2) This campaign was one Ellen purposely undertook the hard way. She could have partnered with a publisher and raised only the amount of money needed for author’s advances, but decided this was a poor precedent to set.

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Ian Tregillis on Secret Government Demonology, Writers Group Hazing Rituals, and Vlad Jetpack, King of the Space Vampires: An Audio Interview

Ian Tregillis on Secret Government Demonology, Writers Group Hazing Rituals, and Vlad Jetpack, King of the Space Vampires: An Audio Interview

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Readers with an eye for detail will note that this interview with Ian Tregillis was conducted in July, but not posted until now, and one might wonder why I waited so long. This one took a lot of sound editing because the interview covers two topics that are so intermeshed that we jumped back and forth in the actual interview, but I’ve re-edited it so that it’s got what I hope is a more logical progression. We discuss Ian’s trilogy, The Milkweed Tryptich, which includes: Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, and the yet to be released Necessary Evil, which I cannot recommend highly enough. And while we discuss how these books came to be, we talk at length about our time in Critical Mass.

bitterseeds2coverCritical Mass is a writers group that has been around for nearly two decades. During the time I lived in New Mexico and was attending meetings, the membership included: George RR Martin, Walter Jon Williams, S.M. Stirling, Melinda Snodgrass, Victor Milan, Yvonne Coats, Sally Gwlan, Terry England, Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck, among others who came and went. (And now readers will cease to be the least bit impressed by whom I’m able to get interviews with, I know.) When Ian joined this group, I’d already been a member for about five years and he and I shared the distinction of being the youngest and only unpublished members. We were also the only members from Los Alamos and the meetings were always in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, which meant either a one- or a two-hour commute, so we carpooled. That probably gave us way too much time to form in-jokes.

This interview isn’t with just a fantastic writer, though he is that; Ian’s also a comrade in arms with whom I shared an important period of my career. The story of how his first novel trilogy came to be is inextricably connected to his tenure in Critical Mass and the high-powered, dynamic group it was and is.

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