Pottermore Revealed: Unique “Online Reading Experience” says Rowling

Thursday, June 23, 2011 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 2 comments

pottermorescreen Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling announced this morning (video here) that she will be releasing

“something unique: an online reading experience unlike any other. It’s called Pottermore. It’s the same story, with a few crucial additions. The most important one is you. Just as the experience of reading requires that the imaginations of the author and reader work together to create the story, so Pottermore will be built in part by you, the reader. The digital generation will be able to enjoy a safe, online reading experience built around the Harry Potter books.“

She claims that this new website will include not only the ability to buy digital audiobook and e-book versions of the Potter series, but also that she will be directly involved with the community, revealing tidbits about the universe which she’s known for years but which never made it directly into the novels.

youtubepotterscreen For about a week, rumors have been swirling across the internet about the exact nature of Pottermore, since Rowling established a website by that name and a mysterious countdown clock appeared on YouTube (shown below).

Speculations ran wild throughout the week, fueled by tantalizing clues, some of them intentional, such as an online Google Maps-based game, and some unintentional, like the discovery that Warner Bros. had registered the website for trademark as a “global information computer network.”

Rowling and her spokesmen have been quiet on the details, except to stay that it is definitely not a new novel set in the Harry Potter universe, but still some have wondered if it was the long-anticipated Harry Potter encyclopedia, which Rowling has hinted may someday be released for charity.

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New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

Sunday, June 19, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Fraser Ronald is an author who will be familiar to readers of Black Gate 15. His story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” is a terrific sword-and-sorcery action piece, featuring two legionnaires who become involved in a plot to cheat a necromancer — a plot that very quickly goes very wrong.

Two of the hallmarks of Fraser’s writing are his gift for worldbuilding, and his clear love of sophisticated action tales in the noir genre. Both of these have served him well in his next projects: For Simple Coin, a collection of four tales of “Sword Noir,” and a compact, complete role-playing game called simply Sword Noir:

Hardboiled sword & sorcery – it’s Conan seeking for the Maltese Falcon, it’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in The Big Sleep, set in Lankhmar, it’s hardboiled crime fiction in the worlds of sword & sorcery.

Inspired by mashing up the novels and stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E Howard, and Fritz Leiber, Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery is a new RPG from Sword’s Edge Publishing. In it, characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest. Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

Now is the time for your characters to walk down mean streets, drenched in rain, hidden in fog, and unravel mysteries, murders, and villainy.

Sword Noir is available today from Sword’s Edge Publishing or RPGNow in PDF format for just $4.99, and in print for $10.73. It is a 6″ x 9″ softcover book with black & white interiors — including maps — running 104 pages.

For Simple Coin is 90 pages, and collects three short stories which originally appeared in AtFantasy, Forgotten Worlds, and On Spec, as well as one story original to this collection. These tales perfectly illustrate the appealing mix of dark fantasy and noir detective fiction that Fraser has perfected.

If you’re a fan of the hard-boiled fantasy of Alex’s Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels or Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I., you’ll want to check these out.

For Simple Coin is $1.99 in PDF, or $6.99 for the print version. It is available through RPGNow. Cover art is by Paul Slinger.

LOVECRAFT eZINE: Keeping It Weird

Thursday, June 16, 2011 John R. Fultz Comments 1 comment

LOVECRAFT EZINE #1 - 5 are available for reading NOW.

Horror fans and Lovecraft afficionados have been darkly singing the praises of LOVECRAFT eZINE. Editor/founder Mike Davis and Crew offer monthly chills and thrills that “share the tone and themes of Lovecraft.” That is, cosmic fear, or simply “weird fiction” if you prefer. Within that spectrum there is a vast array of possibilities for horror, dark fantasy, and beyond. Some of the zine’s current best include tales by horrormeister W.H. Pugmire, an Old School Gent when it comes to all things Lovecraftian, as well as stories by Joe Pulver and David J. West.

LOVECRAFT eZINE will be featuring my story “The Lord of Endings” in its August issue. This is a tale inspired by Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, the Black Pharaoh, the Haunter of the Dark, the Faceless God and Messenger of the Old Ones. It’s also about hate, and the power it has to poison the dreams of the living. Fans of Lovecrafts’ Dreamlands stories will either love it or weep about it.

The inspired art at the site is done by Pat (mimulux). Above is the fantastic cover of the first issue. Issues #1-5 are available for reading at: lovecraftzine.com/

Check it out now and keep an eye open for “The Lord of Endings.”

Sweet dreams!
John

Goth Chick News: Zombie Contamination and Other Stuff You’ll Only Find Here

Thursday, June 16, 2011 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

Fresh from their final exams and smelling strongly of AXE body spray, the new batch of summer interns creeps tentatively down the stone steps into the underground offices of Goth Chick News. After orientation, which in this case includes a thorough hosing off, they are scurrying around collecting information for their first assignment.

Akin to the pleasure of taking the Margarita salt out from its long winter storage is the joy of taking on twice as many interns as necessary and making them fight each other to the death in their first week, to remain one of the chosen few.

“Bring me pop horror culture!” I shout; frothy frozen cocktail in one hand and riding crop in the other. “And make sure it’s fresh! We’re not running some crappy Ryan-Seacrest-production here!”

C.S.E. Cooney laughs maniacally from the corner and asks if she can have a go with the riding crop.

Summer is definitely in the air at Black Gate headquarters.

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The Weekly Standard on The Comic Crash of 1993

Thursday, June 16, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard has written a surprisingly lucid piece of history on the so-called speculator boom, and subsequent spectacular crash, in the comics market from the late 1980s through 1997:

By the time the bubble’s soapy residue washed away, nine out of ten comic book shops in America had closed their doors. Publisher sales of new comics dropped by 70 percent. On December 27, 1996, Marvel, the General Motors of comics, filed for bankruptcy. The market for used comics was flooded with the cadaverous inventories of out-of-business stores… the contours of the industry have changed almost beyond recognition. In 1950, Marvel and DC together sold roughly 13 million comic books a month. In 1968, they put out 16 million a month. Since 1993 the overall sales trend has been inexorably downward. For January 2010, all American publishers combined sold a total of 5.63 million comics.

In the shadow of the crash, Last draws the same conclusion others have about the true value of modern comic franchises like Spider-Man and Batman:

This might sound like an industry marching toward oblivion, yet in 2009, Disney paid $4 billion to acquire Marvel (DC was already owned by Time-Warner). The reason for this gaudy valuation is that the comic books themselves are no longer important to the comic-book industry. They’re loss leaders. The real money is in the comic-book properties, which power toy and merchandise sales, theme parks, and above all else movie franchises. Since 1997, 26 comic book adaptations have gone on to gross more than $100 million at the box office. Twelve of these grossed more than $200 million. More — many more — are coming soon to a theater near you.

As a financial concern, comic book publishers are no longer in the publishing business: They’re curators of, and incubators for, extremely valuable intellectual property.

In the midst of it all, Last draws parallels to the comics crash to help explain the collapse of the U.S. housing market. Never seen that done before. Check out the complete article here.

Scott Taylor at Game Knight Reviews

Monday, June 13, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Black Gate‘s Scott Taylor, our esteemed Wednesday blogger and author of the Art Evolution series, is the first ever guest blogger at Game Knight Reviews this week. GKR is a terrific source of roleplaying game reviews, interviews and news, run by Brian Fitzpatrick.

Scott talks about how he first discovered Black Gate:

Sometime in 2008 I was shopping short story markets and someone on a blogging site indicated that the Swords & Sorcery magazine Black Gate was an option for a story I was writing. As a person always dedicated to wanting to know my market, and being a huge fan of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, I ordered three of the most recent copies of the magazine as ‘research material.’

When they arrived at my home I was intrigued to find that they were included with a two page letter of thanks that was actually a ‘choose your own adventure’ concerning a haunted house and the spirits of half a dozen literary fantasy greats. I laughed and laughed as I went through it, died probably three times, and in my minds-eye was whisked away to the junior high library where I first picked up a copy of The Cave of Time.

That, my friends, is what Black Gate is about, pure nostalgia, humor, and of course some of the most outstanding fantasy fiction one can find on today’s market.

Thanks for the plug, Scott! Glad to hear you enjoyed the mini solo-RPG we included as a subscriber letter with Black Gate 12. It’s still available with every copy shipped.

You can read the complete guest blog here, and check out the excellent Game Knight Reviews here.

Locus Online Reviews Black Gate 15

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Lois Tilton at Locus Online is one of the most diligent short fiction reviewers in the industry, and she’s been a friend and frequent champion of Black Gate for years. She’s the first to check in with a complete (and I do mean complete) review of our latest issue, although as usual she’s cranky about our fondness for series fiction:

I found much to praise in the last issue, and particularly the absence of the usual series stories. Possibly just to vex me, this time the zine has at least four new series and more sequels.

She had many kind words for the issue, including this about Jonathan L. Howard’s “The Shuttered Temple”:

Kyth the Taker… has taken a commission from the priesthood of Prytha to enter the Shuttered Temple, originally built years ago by an emperor whose power was being eroded by the Prythians. No one has yet survived the attempt… What Kyth is, besides broke, is apt at recognizing a trap when she sees it.

This one features the protagonist from one of the most enjoyable tales I’ve read in this zine, and the current story shares the same qualities of cleverness and ingenuity, with a light, engaging narrative.

–RECOMMENDED

We’re fans of sequels and series, of course, because truly great characters and stories aren’t always recognized immediately. Sometimes it takes a few installments for rich, complex fantasy to really find its audience.

Case in point: it’s great to see that Lois now considers the first Kyth story, “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13), “one of the most enjoyable tales I’ve read in this zine.” Especially since she dismissed it with faint praise in her original review, giving a “Recommended” label to the tale that followed it instead. It’s frequently only in retrospect that rich fiction truly reveals itself, and the best way we know to keep exciting characters fresh in your mind is to present them to you as often as we can.

And that’s why we publish sequels. I’m glad it’s working.

“Captivated and Disquieted”: ARCANE Arrives!

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 John R. Fultz Comments 1 comment

arcanepic2 ARCANE is a slick new magazine from Cold Fusion Media and publisher Sandy Petersen. The first issue just dropped and it’s quite a breath of fresh air for horror fans — or should that be a fetid, graveyard breath? Anyway, this new quarterly publication is both an e-mag AND a print mag—it plays no favorites in the “print vs. digital” debate. According to its manifesto ARCANE will be publishing “weird horror, the supernatural, and the fantastic. ” It aims to leave readers highly entertained and slightly disturbed, like the best weird fiction always does.

Copies are now available on Amazon and the mag’s official site: www.arcanemagazine.com.

Here’s an interview with ARCANE Editor Nathan Shumate, who gives BG the inside track on all the weirdness. Find out where ARCANE came from and where it’s going, as well as what kinds of stories the editor is looking to find.

An Interview With Nathan Shumate

Conducted and Transcribed by John R. Fultz, May 2011

BG: We keep hearing that the “market’s down” — yeah, what else is new? But the market’s also up: E-books are outselling print books on Amazon, millions of dollars spent on books print AND digital. You obviously saw a way to capitalize on both online and print markets when you launched the beast that is ARCANE: PENNY DREADFULS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. But the question remains: Why start a magazine? What drove you to the mad proposition of launching a fantastic new fiction venue?

ARCANE (Shumate): I originally started the magazine ARKHAM TALES in late 2008; I had always wanted to edit a “weird fiction” magazine, and I realized there was no time like the present. Actually, any time would have been better, as late 2008 was right when the U.S. economy started circling the bowl. The business model I had was a free PDF magazine, paid for with ads, but the ad sales never panned out, and five issues in, I had exhausted the funds on hand to keep the magazine afloat. The magazine was subsequently bought by Leucrota Press, which retained me as editor, but the format stayed the same — even as I realized that a Kindle format, which precluded the inclusion of ads, would have a much larger potential marketshare than a PDF format. Leucrota and I didn’t see eye to eye on that, and I left when the eighth issue was completed, which is right before Leucrota declared bankruptcy. (I swear I had nothing to do with that.)

I had the opportunity to buy back the ARKHAM TALES intellectual property, but I decided to make a clean break rather than spend months deciding which contractual commitments I’d be taking on, and instead formed ARCANE (the name is intentionally reminiscent of that of the former magazine) with Lovecraftian game guru Sandy Petersen, with whom I’ve been acquainted for a few years.

BG: ARCANE crosses the line between fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and more horror. Is genre ultimately meaningless when you find a Great Story to publish?

ARCANE (Shumate) : I think that everything we publish in ARCANE, whether sci-fi, fantasy, or what have you, has cross-pollinated with horror; there is a certain darkness, a certain sense of brooding disquiet, that characterizes our magazine more than out-and-out horror.

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2010 Nebula Award Winners Announced

Sunday, May 22, 2011 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

The Nebula Awards for the best science fiction and fantasy published in 2010 were awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America in a gala celebration yesterday, part of the Nebula Awards Weekend.

The Nebulas have been awarded every year since 1965. This year’s presentation was at the Washington Hilton in Washington D.C. It was especially poignant for Black Gate, since our own Amal El-Mohtar was nominated for her short story ‘‘The Green Book’’ (in the November issues of Apex magazine).

And the winners were:

Novel
– Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)
Novella
– “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window,” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean, Summer 2010)
Novelette
– “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made, Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)
Short Story (tie)
– “Ponies,” Kij Johnson (Tor.com, January 17 2010)
– “How Interesting: A Tiny Man,” Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy, February 2010)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Production went to Inception, and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy was won by I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper).

The Solstice Award for impact on the field of science fiction and fantasy was given to both Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr), and the artist Michael Whelan. The SFWA Service Award went to John E. Johnston III. Complete details on the awards can be found at Locus Online.

Congratulations to all the winners! And to Amal, both for being nominated, and for being so damn cool.

Larry Tritten, 1939 – 2011

Friday, May 20, 2011 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Black Gate lost one of its own last month with the passing of noted short story writer Larry Tritten.

Larry began his lengthy career in 1968 with the story “West is West,” in Worlds of If magazine. He appeared in dozens of magazines such as The New Yorker, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Twilight Zone, and many others. In 2005 his story “It’s a Wonderful Con,” featuring a man who cons Santa Claus out of $200, appeared in Black Gate 9.

As much as I enjoyed his fiction, I was even more charmed with Larry’s letters, which related fascinating details of a writing life. I got his permission to include a few of those anecdotes in a sidebar that accompanied the story, and got more mail about that than about his fiction. The sidebar read, in part:

I was in the Mammoth Book of Future Cops a while back, with a Chandler parody set in future San Francisco, and not long ago I was the lone male (heterosexual) writer in the British anthology Va-Va-Voom – Red Hot Lesbian Erotica. Just me and 32 Lesbian writers. I try to cover all territories. Had a piece in Minnesota Parent a while back, though I am not a parent and have never been to Minnesota (except to change planes). Had one in Range (but am not a cattle grower). And so on.

The count is about 1500 pieces since the sixties, so I’ve had time to get around. I’m probably one of the few writers to have published in both Hustler and The New Yorker. I’m often astonishing younger writers with memories of the those early days. For example, in December 1978 I made four or five sales (one to The New Yorker for, I think, about $1250), and the money added up to close to $5,000. I was living in an apartment where the rent was $185 per month. Rent for two years! Hard to believe such times ever existed. Today my rent and bills are about ten times what they were then, and just the next month’s rent always looms like the sword of Damocles.

F&SF editor Gordon van Gelder wrote:

He was a smart, talented, and funny writer. He was also the sort of professional writer that seems to be disappearing, the kind of professional who never met a market he didn’t like and had the versatility to tailor almost any work to meet the needs of any market.

He contributed a lot of funny stuff to F&SF over the years.

Larry died in April, 2011. A more complete obituary appears in the May issue of Locus.

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