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Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

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childoffireWhen people tell us about their favorite Black Gate authors and stories, one name that inevitably turns up in both staff and fan discussions is Harry James Connolly, whose tales have appeared three times now in our pages, with more on the way. You may not have seen much of him lately over at Black Gate, but he’s been very busy writing some best selling novels. You can find all about that over here, and a little bit more about Harry and his writing if you just keep reading.

A Conversation with Harry Connolly

Conducted and transcribed by Howard Andrew Jones October 3 – Oct 10 2010

BG: First tell us how long you’ve wanted to be a writer, and how long you were mulling over the novel that launched your career before you finally sat down to draft it.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was very small.  I was an early reader — like, age 3 — and when my parents explained that people made a living writing books like the one in my hands, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Not that I had any idea what that meant.  I do have a distinct memory of sitting in kindergarten learning to write the letter “M” and thinking  this is totally going to come in handy! (to paraphrase my young self).

As for Child of Fire, it’s a setting that I’ve written in before (some short fiction and a pair of novels–but with different characters), butI knew I wanted to do something very specific with it.  I spent several weeks working out the story and, more importantly, the tone before I dug into the writing.

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Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows Available for Pre-order

Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows Available for Pre-order

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Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, by Howard Andrew Jones. Coming February 2011Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones has had a busy year.

In addition to his upcoming Dabir & Asim novel The Desert of Souls, due in hardcover February 2011 from Thomas Dunne Books, Howard’s second novel Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows will appear from Paizo in early 2011.

Pathfinder Tales novels are standalone novels set in the world of Golarion, home of the succesful Pathfinder role playing game.  The first two volumes are Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross (August 2010) and Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham (November).

Here’s the book description:

The race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only his old elven mercenary companion Elyana has the wisdom — and swordcraft — to solve the mystery of his tormentor and free her old friend before three days have passed and the illness takes its course. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, the elf sets out with a team of adventurers across the Revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains to discover the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley warped by weird magical energies and inhabited by terrible nightmare beasts. From Black Gate magazine’s fiction editor Howard Andrew Jones comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

You can pre-order copies directly from Piazo, either individually or as part of their Pathfinder Tales subscription.

My First Novel Sale

My First Novel Sale

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childoffireThis essay first appeared as a part of Jim C. Hines’s First Book Friday series, in which authors describe their first sales. You can read the entire series on his blog or LiveJournal. This piece has been lightly edited for clarity.

The first thing to know about selling Child of Fire, my first novel, is that it happened after I’d already quit writing.

I’d spent years trying to sell longer works, but had no success; you might say I was a smidge discouraged. The book I’d written just before Child of Fire was very difficult and very personal; I’d literally wept while composing the first draft. What happened when I sent it out? Form rejection after form rejection.

I was angry (with myself, not with the people who’d rejected me; that’s one of my most important rules). I thought I’d been doing everything I needed to do, but apparently not.

For my next book, I used my anger as fuel. I started with a strange incident that needed to be investigated. I loaded the story with antagonists and conflicting goals. Then I ramped up the pace and kept it going, making even the slower parts, where the characters just talk with each other, quick and full of conflict.

But I was sure I was wasting my time. If my last book hadn’t gone anywhere, why should this one?

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The E-book Revolution

The E-book Revolution

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star-soldier1An atomic bomb has exploded in the world of writing. The mushroom cloud expanding over us awes some and terrifies others. Many claim it’s a passing thing and will blow away in time.

“Fah! I’ve seen other explosions before,” say the critics. “This, too, will fade.”

“Look,” they add, “only ten percent of readers will use Kindle, Nook, iPad or read on their computers. Everyone else will stick with print.”

The critics have a masterful argument, too. Smell. “A book smells sooo good,” they say. “I love the odor.”

I call them snifffers. Until the E-book Revolution, I had no idea so many people lovingly lifted their books to their nose like a bouquet of roses and inhaled the odor.

“Ahhh, just smell this, honey. Oooo, it gets me in the mood.”

Like Guttenberg’s printing press, the E-book Revolution is changing the dynamics of the game.

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Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize for Literature

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war-of-the-end-of-the-worldPeruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the finest writers in the world — perhaps, indeed, the finest writer — was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature by the Royal Swedish Academy yesterday.

Vargas Llosa wrote two of the best novels I’ve ever read: Time of the Hero, based on his experiences at a Peruvian military academy — which caused such an uproar that a thousand copies were publicly burned by military authorities — and The War of the End of the World, which he’s called his finest book. This historical novel of End-of-the-19th-Century Brazil reads like epic fantasy, chronicling the apocalyptic fate of the small town of Canudos, in the grip of a visionary prophet and home to the country’s outcasts — prostitutes, bandits, and beggars — and a place where money, taxation, and marriage do not exist. Until the Brazilian government deems it must be destroyed at any cost.

In total he’s written over 30 novels and plays, including The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, and In Praise of the Stepmother.

Vargas Llosa ran for President of Peru in 1990, but lost to Alberto Fujimori, who was later convicted of bribery, embezzlement, and human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 1976 Vargas Llosa famously punched his former friend Gabriel García Márquez (author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and a 1982 Nobel Prize winner himself) in Mexico City, and the two have reportedly not spoken in decades.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is regarded as the highest award a writer can receive. Previous winners have included Guenter Grass, Toni Morrison, William Golding, Saul Bellow, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, William Faulkner, and George Bernard Shaw.

Writing: Serial Characters and the Book Deal

Writing: Serial Characters and the Book Deal

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World Fantasy Award Nominee
World Fantasy Award Nominee.

A growing number of Black Gate authors have moved on to book deals, and some were published novelists before they appeared in the magazine.

Two of us, James Enge and myself,  landed book deals featuring recurring characters that had appeared in Black Gate short stories.

They were the Dabir & Asim stories for me (“Whispers from the Stone” and “Sight of Vengeance“) and the Morlock tales for James (six appearances in BG so far, starting with “Turn Up This Crooked Way” and “Payment Deferred,” and most recently the novella “Destroyer” in Black Gate 14).

Back before James got nominated for the World Fantasy Award in the Best Novel category (for his first novel, no less! — that’s Blood of Ambrose, if you don’t have a copy yet) the two of us got talking one day about the connections between magazine sales and book deals.

We decided to turn the thing into a public back-and-forth discussion about writing serial fantasy characters, starting with a look at the idea that short story successes lead naturally to selling books.

I’ve captured and condensed that conversation here for your enjoyment.

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Writing Against Resistance

Writing Against Resistance

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warofart1I think one of the reasons that there are so many books out there offering writing advice is that there are so many ways up the mountain. Different writers use different ways to battle their way up the height, sometimes changing their own approaches day to day or project to project. I wouldn’t be surprised if most serious writers have at least one or two of these books on their shelf, or in a box somewhere, its resting spot likely depending upon how useful the writer really found the information.

My current favorite is titled The War of Art, and it has held that position for almost two years, partly because I’ve been too busy to read many writing books, but mostly because it gave me everything I needed to fight my most recent battles. You may recognize its writer, Steven Pressfield, as the author of Gates of Fire, Tides of War, The Legend of Bagger Vance and sundry other works.

But it doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of Pressfield or read a line of his work if you’ve ever had trouble procrastinating with your writing or any other creative pursuit. Pressfield names your opponent in the battle between creation and NOT-creation “Resistance,” with a capital R, and in this short, concise book, tells you how to recognize it and move forward up that mountain.

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The Weather: Part Art, Part Science, and Part… Magic?

The Weather: Part Art, Part Science, and Part… Magic?

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poison-study2Predicting the weather is an art and a science… yes, really, it’s a science, believe me. I spent four years at Penn State University learning chemistry, calculus, physics, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics to earn my Meteorology Degree – I should know.

Did that transform me into a great forecaster? Er…no. So I must have relied more on my artistic side, right? Er… no again. Good thing for the masses of people that might have relied on me to forecast their daily weather that I decided to go into environmental meteorology, and work with air quality and air pollution instead. Did you hear that sigh of relief? I did.

Eventually, I ended up changing careers and becoming a writer (long story, but it involves boredom, rage, despair, dissatisfaction, and sex… you really don’t want to know, trust me). But it seems my initial love of weather and storms wouldn’t just die quietly.

No, it found ways into my writing without my conscious consent. My first book, Poison Study, has a very rare weather phenomenon that my one friend (a meteorologist that can forecast – imagine that!) has been the only person to recognize.

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Writing Tools: Notebooks, the Kind with Paper

Writing Tools: Notebooks, the Kind with Paper

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Ye olde trusty notebook.
Ye olde trusty notebook.

From the time I was in grade school all the way up until after I graduated from college I wrote in notebooks. It seemed such a natural process that I wonder now how I got away from it, and why it was such a revelation when I took up writing in notebooks again.

In my school days I used to carefully comb through available notebooks  and select one with multiple subjects, college-ruled. Usually it would be a spiral-bound Mead, 8 1/2 by 11, but sometimes I’d experiment with slightly smaller sizes. When I was older and wandering through the Kansas City Renaissance Festival with my wife, I purchased a lovely Celtic leather notebook cover with an unlined sketchbook, and I filled a succession of replacement sketchbooks between those covers with my scribbles for years after.

As striking as that notebook was, though, I eventually fell out of using the thing. It became impractical to drag it wherever I went: my student days were over so I no longer had a backpack over one shoulder, and I didn’t have the kind of job where I always toted a briefcase. In those rare instances where I DID have a briefcase, it was already so loaded down that something weighing as much as a hardback book was a nuisance. I never used a notebook for writing unless I was at home, at which point I might as well have been writing on the computer. I thought that I had “outgrown” the use of a notebook.

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Black Gate‘s Vaughn Heppner reaches #1 at Amazon with Star Soldier

Black Gate‘s Vaughn Heppner reaches #1 at Amazon with Star Soldier

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star-soldierStar Soldier by Vaughn Heppner, Book #1 of the Doom Star Series, has reached the Top of Amazon’s bestseller list for Series Science Fiction in its Kindle edition.

Number 2 on the list is the second volume in the series, Bio-Weapon — outselling Dune, Foundation, and Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, among many others. In the general Science Fiction Bestsellers list for Kindle editions, Star Soldier reached #2, second only to the brand new Zero History by William Gibson.

Star Soldier is a full novel, 82,000 words in length, and is available for download for just 99 cents.  Here’s the description:

It’s survival of the fittest in a brutal war of extinction! Created in the gene labs as super soldiers, the Highborn decide to replace the obsolete Homo sapiens. They pirate the Doom Stars and capture the Sun Works Ring around Mercury. Now they rain asteroids, orbital fighters and nine-foot drop troops onto Earth in a relentless tide of conquest. Marten Kluge is on the receiving end. Hounded by Thought Police, he lives like an ant in a kilometer-deep city. The invasion frees him from a re-education camp but lands him in the military, fighting for the wrong side. Star Solider is the story of techno hell in a merciless war, with too many surprises for any grunt’s sanity.

Vaughn has sold three really terrific linked Sword and Sorcery tales to Black Gate, the first of which, “The Oracle of Gog,” will appear in our next issue.  I asked him to tell us a little bit about the novels:

In many ways Star Soldier is based from my years of reading about the Eastern Front during WWII. Social Unity is like the Soviets. The genetic super-soldiers think like Nazis. Marten Kluge, the hero, just wants to be free. But there is precious little freedom in the Inner Planets of the Solar System in 2350… I’m writing hard these days. I’m working on the third book of the Doom Star Series, Battle Pod.

Congratulations Vaughn!