Black Gate

You want to know my three favorite things? (It’s a rhetorical question; you don’t actually have to email an answer. Seriously, don’t.) Dabir, Asim, and Kaiju. Sometimes Kaiju is #2, ’cause Asim is occasionally kind of a lunkhead.

So how awesome would it be to have Howard Andrew Jones’s Arabian adventurers Dabir and Asim in the same volume as some of the most diabolical Kaiju of the decade? (Again, rhetorical question. Stop e-mailing me stuff.) For the record, if would be thoroughly awesome.

Well, I think you can tell where this is going. Kaiju Rising, the Kickstarter-funded anthology we pulled the lid back on last September, has finally landed — and left a Godzilla-sized footprint on the industry. The Kickstarter campaign was a rousing success, raising $18,562 against a $10,0000 goal, and one of the unlocked stretch goals was a new Dabir and Asim story from the distinguished Mr. Jones. Here’s what Howard had to say about his contribution:

Monsters turn up a lot in my fiction, and Kaiju style critters wandered across the stage in the first two Dabir and Asim novels. In true Ray Harryhausen fashion, The Bones of the Old Ones features a titanic battle between a Roc (the giant predatory bird of Arabian Nights fame) and a huge spirit wolf fashioned of snow and ice.

Given my interests, I naturally jumped at the chance to create a story for Kaiju Rising. In one or two of the Dabir and Asim stories I’ve referenced a deadly encounter the boys had on the ocean, and now I’m finally setting the tale down.

Howard’s story is “The Serpent’s Heart,” and it appears alongside 22 other stories focused on the theme of gargantuan creatures in the vein of Pacific Rim, Godzilla, and Cloverfield. The authors include Larry Correia, James Lovegrove, Gini Koch (as J.C. Koch), James Maxey, C.L. Werner, Joshua Reynolds, Jaym Gates, Shane Berryhill, Natania Barron, Paul Genesse & Patrick Tracy, and many others. Howard’s tale isn’t the only one to draw on existing characters; Edward M. Erdelac’s story is set in the world of the Dead West and James Swallow contributes a Colossal Kaiju Combat tie-in.

Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters was published February 9, 2014 by Ragnarok Publications. It is a massive 493 pages, priced at $4.99 for the digital version. The print version is forthcoming; its price has not yet been announced.

There are many pleasures involved in running a magazine. But nothing like watching the talented young writers you’ve published and nurtured move on to even greater success and acclaim.

Iain Rowan is a fine example. I published four of his delightful adventure fantasies in Black Gate, all featuring the clever con man/accidental exorcist Dao Shi. Since those early days, Iain has gone on to great success as a crime novelist, with his debut novel, One of Us, shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award. He followed that with the YA novel Sea Change, about haunted, folklore-ridden England, and two collections, Nowhere to Go and Ice Age.

He’s also published over thirty short stories, been reprinted multiple times in Year’s Best anthologies, and won a Derringer Award.

But his clever and funny Dao Shi stories — “Looking for Goats, Finding Monkeys“ (BG 6), “The Turning of the Tiles” (BG 8), “Welcome to the Underworld” (BG 10, selected for Rich Horton’s 2007 Best of the Year), and “From the Heart of the Earth to the Peaks of the Sky“ (BG 11, selected for Dave Truesdale’s 2007 SF & Fantasy Recommended Reading List) — remain my favorites. What can I say?

Now Iain has finally collected all four stories in a single volume, with an entertaining afterword discussing the tales. Published under the name I.F. Rowan — presumably to differentiate it from his crime work — Welcome to the Underworld offers a compact and economical way to read all four tales, nearly 40,000 words of adventure fantasy.

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