Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

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image0021Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this news.

Back in 1986, Sonny Bono, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Noah Hathaway (who played the lead character “Boxy” in the original TV version of Battlestar Galactica and “Atreyu” in The NeverEnding Story), got together in a cinematic train wreck called Troll. This film, such that it is, is not to be confused with Troll 2, called “the most beloved-best worst movie of all time,” which was released in 1990 and had zilch to do with the plot of its namesake.

In Troll, the sister of Hathaway’s character (played by ex Charlie’s Angel Shelly Hack) is possessed by an evil wizard in the form of a troll.

Hathaway’s character in Troll was “Harry Potter Jr.”

Since JK Rowling first published her famous book series about a boy wizard in 1997, I rather doubt she stole the character from John Carl Buechler’s wretched film (or even saw it for that matter). But the people behind Troll do have a claim on the name Harry Potter; and we are in the middle of a remake craze…

Can you guess where this is going…?

If you guessed a remake of Troll called Troll: Rise of Harry Potter, you’d win. You’d also likely win a lawsuit from Rowling and Warner Brothers Studio.

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: More on Writing, and Teaching, on Your Feet

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: More on Writing, and Teaching, on Your Feet

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To my surprise, I got a bunch of emails asking for more details about the weird teaching gig I described in last week’s post. How exactly did it work, teaching creative writing while kicking a soccer ball around my student’s basement?

This student was so blocked about writing in most areas of his life that, unless I was right there with him, he rarely wrote anything on his project–as much as he loved it. The first thing we did when we got to our work space was run around kicking the ball back and forth for five minutes or so while he talked his way through what he wanted the next scene to do. As soon as he reached the point where he had some proto-sentences in mind and a paragraph’s worth of ideas about how he wanted to string them together, I’d say, “Okay, now write that down, quick!” We were trying to catch the thought before it got lost. He’d tinker while he got the words on the paper, and sometimes take out his hard copy of the manuscript so far and check details or make small changes to integrate the new material. I pressed him to keep at the pen-on-paper step for a minimum of five minutes; sometimes he wanted to go on far longer than that when he was on a roll. When he ran out of steam for his longhand work, we were up and running again.

In some ways, it was not so different from the office hours I held when I taught freshman composition at a big state university. I learned early in the freshman composition gig not to let the anxious or reluctant writer leave my sight before s/he put some words on paper, or else by the time s/he got back to the dorms, all the ideas we had discussed would have evaporated. In content, though, the texts could not have been more different.

The soccer kid and I read Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea together early on. He decided the story would have been much cooler if Ged had continued down the dark path of arrogance and folly.

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Book Launch Week (Plus Giveaway)

Book Launch Week (Plus Giveaway)

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bones-of-the-old-ones-contest-win11First, I want to point everyone to a book giveaway at Reddit. Until the end of the week, you can drop by, write what your favorite fantasy setting, world, or culture is (and why) and be entered in a drawing to win a signed copy of both The Bones of the Old Ones and its standalone predecessor, The Desert of Souls.

Second, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about what a book launch week is like. Long time visitors to Black Gate may remember that I promised to take you with me  as I crossed over from regular bloke side of the street to man with a book contract side.

If you peruse the articles I wrote about signing my book deal with the St. Martin’s Thomas Dunne Books imprint, my glee practically drips off the screen (1. How to Get a Book Deal. 2. Signing the Contract. 3.  After the Book Deal). Finally, after decades of trying, my words were going to be in a real live (well, dead tree) book, in bookstores nationwide. I felt like Charlie at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Willy Wonka asks him what happened to the boy who got everything he wanted. “He lived happily ever after,” says Willy with a smile.

It turns out that when you actually get through that door, what you’re doing is becoming an artist who is also a small business owner, for one of the things you absolutely must do is promote your work, er, product. There is a lot of work, and not so much chocolate. I got pretty busy, and I forgot to tell everyone here at Black Gate what was going on.

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Tangent Online on “The Trade”: “Marvelous Tale. Can’t Wait for the Next Part”

Tangent Online on “The Trade”: “Marvelous Tale. Can’t Wait for the Next Part”

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mark-rigney-smallLouis West at Tangent Online reviews the latest original fiction from Black Gate, published here on Sunday, December 9:

Mark Rigney’s “The Trade” immediately drew me into this world with powerful depictions of Gemen and his two companions… Together they are unstoppable. Individually? That is part of their mystery. Hints of background story leak through for each, not enough to explain but enough to tantalize, to [make you] want to read on and know more.

The pace is fast. They arrive in Andolin late in the spring, quickly dispatch several bandit attacks, then are in the far north of Andolin at Tynnefast Reach where Gemen finds a magic mirror. Since the locals refuse to trade for it, he takes it, wakening the wrath of a guardian stone golem. But stone is slow. More than enough time for Gemen’s trio to make it to Corvaen, swap the mirror for knowledge about the Cryptlord’s grave and leave before the stone golem arrives to fetch back the mirror.

However, things don’t go as planned in the crypt, revealing much more about how fragile the bonds between the three may be.

Marvelous tale. Can’t wait for the next part.

“The Trade” is the first installment in an exciting new heroic fantasy series. “The Find,” which explores Gemen’s past and reveals more of his mysterious quest, will be published here next year, followed quickly by the third installment.

You can read the entire review at Tangent Online, and the complete 7,000-word short story free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, is here.

Red Sonja 1

Red Sonja 1

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red-sonja-1-coverFinally, after four years of guest appearances and Marvel Feature auditioning, Red Sonja gets her very own title. And judging from the cover, it’s going to be some opening story. We’ve got a wizard, a giant snake that’s about to bite her leg (even though its head’s already been cut off and guts are spilling out of its neck stump), a giant dead spider, some little gray goblin-looking guy in the background, and a unicorn. And Sonja herself is walking past her own title banner, seemingly ready to step out of her issue, bloody sword in hand, to kill YOU. “To the death” is always a good bad-ass line for an action hero, so we’re ready to see everything on this cover that isn’t Red Sonja dead by issue’s end.

Well, first of all, there’s no giant snake. There’s no giant spider. There’s no goblin. It’s just a mean-looking wizard and a unicorn. Just so you know.

The story begins with Sonja having to kill her horse after it breaks a leg. She’s still feeling pretty bad about it a few hours later when she stumbles on a group of men with torches surrounding a horse, apparently intent on killing it. Coming closer, she realizes that they’ve cornered a unicorn. Seeing a mob abusing a “helpless proud creature” bothers her to the point that she starts cutting through a dozen men to free it. Jumping on the unicorn’s back, the two of them ride away. During the struggle, the unicorn’s horn was broken off, so that it just looks like a horse with a head injury; but Sonja’s quite happy to have the beast as her companion.

So, for those who are reading Red Sonja on a subtextual level, the woman who’s sworn a vow of de facto chastity rushes to help the mythic representation of purity only after its phallic symbol is removed. Of course, there’s no reason to read any symbolism in a naked woman and a symbolically castrated beast bathing together, sleeping together, or leaning against one another in a picaresque sunset. And there’s certainly nothing about the nervous creature growing a new horn, “even more beautiful than the other,” as it gets to know Sonja. Nor is there anything to the bitter old man inciting ignorant villagers into a fury over the unnatural union of Red Sonja and the unicorn.

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Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

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arthur-kingJust as an older generation recalls with perfect clarity where they were when they heard of Kennedy’s assassination, I know precisely where I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): perched on the floral-print sofa in my parent’s house, watching the film on a poor, weather-impacted PBS broadcast. I also remember falling right off that sub-par couch in paroxysms of laughter when the animator saved King Arthur’s band by conveniently suffering a heart attack.

I’d never seen anything like it.

And you know what? I’ve never seen anything like it since –– except perhaps Brian’s rollercoaster romp aboard a purple-people-eater’s spaceship in another Python outing, Life of Brian. (That one I saw in a theater, with my church-going mother sitting next to me. She laughed her head off.)

What I didn’t know back when I fell of that couch, as I’m fairly sure I do now, is that comedy is little more than tragedy plus time.

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Ridiculous Sale on Stuff You Want at TwoMorrows Publishing

Ridiculous Sale on Stuff You Want at TwoMorrows Publishing

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write-now-16-smallI was going to write a thoughtful and probing blog article on an urgent topic tonight. That’s all the detail I can give you, because the moment I sat down at my desk and saw the e-mail about the big sale at TwoMorrows Publishing, I forgot everything else.

Let’s review. TwoMorrows Publishing, publishers of the Jack Kirby Collector, Alter Ego, Back Issue!, Rough Stuff, Write Now!, and other fine comics publications, is selling much of their overstock at 70% off.

That includes over a dozen issues of Rough Stuff and Write Now! for two bucks each, and books including Comics Introspective: Peter Bagge (marked down from $16.95 to $5.09), the Wallace Wood Checklist (was $5.95, now $1.79), and Best of Write Now! (was $19.95, now $5.99).

The sale runs for exactly one week, until December 16. Some items are nearly sold out, so act fast.

As a special bonus, most print edition purchases come with a free digital edition. TwoMorrows Publishing does an excellent job with their PDF conversions, preserving the layout and the copious artwork on every page in crisp detail.

Check out the sale at www.twomorrows.com. Click on the banner at the top of the page to see the full clearance list. While you’re there, have a look at some of their other catalog items, including the Comic Book Artist Ultimate Bundle — every in-stock issue of the excellent Comic Book Artist magazine for just $54.00 — The Best of From The Tomb at 15% off, and much more.

DeMatteis and Muth’s Moonshadow

DeMatteis and Muth’s Moonshadow

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The Compleat MoonshadowThere was a time in the 1980s when it looked like Marvel and DC Comics might slowly evolve into something like mainstream book publishers: publishers who gave creators fair deals respecting copyright, and who lived off of the publication of new titles rather than the exploitation of intellectual property from decades previous. That hasn’t really happened, so far as I can see. Both companies dabbled in various kinds of creator ownership, but both appear mostly to have retreated to the relative safety of work-for-hire deals in recent years. Vertigo, a DC imprint featuring better deals for creators, seems to have become more strict in their contracts, and the recent departure of their founding editor doesn’t seem promising for the imprint’s future. Epic, Marvel’s attempt at a creator-owned line, largely faded away in the 1990s (though Marvel does still occasionally do some creator-owned work through their Icon imprint). Before it died, though, Epic published what might have been the best comic series in the 1980s to be printed with a Marvel Comics logo, up there with Walt Simonson’s run on Thor: J. M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth’s twelve-issue series Moonshadow. Later reprinted by Vertigo, with a slightly changed conclusion, Dematteis and Muth also created a sequel, Farewell, Moonshadow, now reprinted along with the original series in a paperback collection of the whole work, The Compleat Moonshadow. It’s a weird, heady mix of science fiction and fantasy, of fairy tale and scabrous parody. I want to talk a bit about it here.

Moonshadow is a curious coming-of-age story. A hippie named Sunflower is abducted from Earth by smirking balls of light called G’l Doses, who have the power of gods and utterly inscrutable motives; one of them impregnates her, and their child’s named Moonshadow by his mother. The book is his story, told by an aged Moonshadow recalling his youth. He remembers his growing up in the G’l Doses’ ‘zoo’ before his exile in company of his mother, his cat, and a faceless furry humanoid named Ira who’s all id: sex drive and scatology. They kick around the universe, and Moonshadow becomes orphan and outcast; alternately soldier and nanny, confidant of kings and outcast untouchable. He grows older, encounters sex and death and things of the spirit. It’s picaresque on a grand scale, the plot loose, characters fading in and out, recurring and being abandoned.

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Analog, July 1961: A Retro-Review

Analog, July 1961: A Retro-Review

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analog-july-1961This is one of the earlier issues after Astounding completed its name-change to Analog. (The issues from February through September 1960 showed both titles on the cover – so October 1960 was the first purely Analog issue.)

Its Table of Contents is familiar to readers of the magazine even to the present day – there’s an editorial, there’s In Times to Come, there’s The Reference Library (book reviews), there’s the letter column (Brass Tacks). There is also a Science Fact article, and a serial, two novelettes, and two short stories.

The only item you won’t find in most present-day issues is The Analytical Laboratory, which ranks the stories from the issue two months earlier based on reader votes. (This was discontinued some time after I became a subscriber in the ’70s – I remember sending in my postcard with my votes a number of times.)

At any rate, for the April issue the number one story was the opening of Clifford Simak’s serial “The Fisherman”, better known these days by the book title, Time is the Simplest Thing.

The cover shows an asteroid mining setup. It’s by Thomas, who did a few covers for Analog in 1961 and 1962, and nothing much else I can find. I don’t even know his first name. Interiors are by Douglas, John Schoenherr, and H. R. Van Dongen.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Trade” by Mark Rigney

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Trade” by Mark Rigney

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mark-rigney-smallGemen the Antiques Dealer undertakes a dangerous quest for a mysterious stone, in the opening chapter of a thrilling new adventure fantasy series:

“Whatever happens,” Gemen said, “stay close.”

“What is this place?” Velori asked. “What are we dealing with –– and what are we looking for?” A mist loomed ahead, but not chill and cool, nor even white; it was warm, vaguely yellow, and stank with all the putrid force of recently rotted flesh.

“We are about to violate the final resting place of an ancient monarch, Cleon Cryptlord. The elders of his time would not suffer him to be buried anywhere near the city. Inside is a chamber, half-flooded with water, with a great keystone. I need that keystone, my friends. It is for that that we have come.”

Ahead lay a clearing devoid of plant life, centered on a great earthen mound the size of a tumbledown barn. Part way up the naked slope was a gap, not so much a cave as a mouth, and from this hole poured the fog through which they walked. It emerged in gasps and billows as if blown from the lungs of something both vast and immeasurably sick.

“No,” said Velori. “I’m not going in there.”

“We are going, and we are going now. Corvaen and his mad companion agree on one point: whatever lies beneath is not especially alert. If we are quick about our business, we may never encounter what they did.”

Mark Rigney is the author of the plays Acts of God and Bears, winner of the 2012 Panowski Playwriting Competition, as well as the non-fiction book Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Black Static, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, Not One Of Us, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and many more. His contemporary fantasy novel, A Most Unruly Gnome, won the 2009 First Coast Novel Contest. Two collections of his stories (all previously published by various mags and ‘zines) are available through Amazon, Flights of Fantasy, and Reality Checks.

You can see the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, here.

“The Trade” is a complete 7,000-word short story of weird fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.