AMC’s The Walking Dead: Devouring six million viewers, and me

AMC’s The Walking Dead: Devouring six million viewers, and me

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the-walking-dead-comic-imageConfession: I watch almost no TV. Well, that’s not quite true: NFL football, an occasional news program, and the odd episode of The Simpsons aside, I watch no TV. Lost is lost on me. There aren’t enough hours in the day for 24. The Sopranos? Fuggedaboutit. There are too many good books to be read in the world and not enough time for television.

Another reason I avoid TV, particularly serialized programming, is the “that guy” phenomenon. When it comes to shows like Lost, there’s always one person in the office who insists on telling you how much you’re missing, or describing the minutiae of a cast of fictional characters’ lives for whom you know and care absolutely nothing about. It just ends up making me hate the boob tube even more.

So now that I’ve set the stage for why I avoid TV, let me tell you all about AMC’s The Walking Dead! I’m a huge fan  of the zombie genre and the temptation to watch a TV program about the undead was too great not to tune in. After an excellent episode one I was hooked. I’m mortified that I have to wait until the fall for episode 2.

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The Four-Window Method

The Four-Window Method

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lion-of-cairoDuring the course of the past few days I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with a goodly number of writers. It’s been good for my soul to talk shop with knowledgeable peers. But one question that invariably cropped up concerned my method of writing. How did I prepare my drafts? And as I explained it, curious looks would blossom over the visages of my brother-and-sister scribes.

Apparently, my method is just a little odd.

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Art Evolution 13: Den Beauvais

Art Evolution 13: Den Beauvais

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Art Evolution, the continuing study of a single iconic character as imagined by the greatest fantasy RPG artists in the past thirty years continues, but if you want to view previous artists, you can begin here.

‘Dragonlance Lyssa’ was complete, as was a personal dream. I’d managed to get Larry Elmore, and was continuing down my list of incredible talent. As I’ve mentioned several times before, I like to read old issues of Dragon Magazine, and you can’t possibly do that without stumbling over an issue with a Den Beauvais cover.

This is also a good jumping off point in itself, and that is the very important role Dragon Magazine played in the landscape of the RPG field. In its original incarnation, ‘The Dragon’ was first published in June 1976, predating even the module series we’ve seen thus far in this article. Even its founder, Gygax, didn’t believe it would have the lifespan or impact that it did for gamers across the globe, but in its finality that print version of Dragon lasted thirty-one years.

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Wizard Trails: On the Making of the Black Gate Trailer

Wizard Trails: On the Making of the Black Gate Trailer

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Not so very many months ago, we posted Black Gate‘s first trailer ever.

We are still very proud of it. So proud, in fact, that we’re bringing it up again! Oh my gosh!

I figured, in the light of Harry Connolly’s posts about Walking the Trail(er), it would be interesting to interview the wizardly gentleman who aided and abetted (and conjured and conspired) in the making of Black Gate‘s own fabulous trailer.

So I wrote to Magill Foote and asked him some impertinent questions, and he was kind enough to answer them!

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A Writing Lesson about Pettiness from Poe

A Writing Lesson about Pettiness from Poe

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cask-of-amontillado-harry-clarkeIn his famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944) noir author Raymond Chandler discusses the separation between loftiness of subject in writing and its literary success:

Other things being equal, which they never are, a more powerful theme will provoke a more powerful performance. Yet some very dull books have been written about God, and some very fine ones about how to make a living and stay fairly honest. It is always a matter of who writers the stuff, and what he has in him to write with. As for literature of expression and literature of escape, this is critics’ jargon, a use of abstract words as if they had absolute meanings. Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.

Chandler’s thesis here also applies to an author’s intention as well as his or her subject matter. Most of us can safely say that anyone who sets out to write “The Great American Novel” or “The National Epic of [Insert Nation Here]” will inevitably fail at that task. On the other hand, an author might produce an enduring work of literature if he or she simply sets out to jab some pins into another author over a petty feud. That may sound dull-minded, like a schoolyard tussle over who was next in line for handball, but if the mind behind it isn’t actually dull, then the result could be a masterpiece.

Case in point: “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe. If you haven’t read this 1846 tale of revenge in Italy, than you must have been home sick from school that day in sixth grade.

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Apex Magazine 19 arrives, featuring C.S.E. Cooney

Apex Magazine 19 arrives, featuring C.S.E. Cooney

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apex19I’m very jealous of how punctual this magazine is. I suspect a pact with demonic forces.

The new issue of Apex has arrived, featuring fiction from our own marvelous C.S.E. Cooney, with her short story “Pale, and from a Sea-Wave Rising,” as well as less interesting people like Nick Wolven, with “Radishes,” and Erzebet YellowBoy, with the reprint “At the Core” (from Fantasy Magazine, 2006.)

The issue also includes two poems: “Flourless Devil’s Food” by Shweta Narayan, and “Cancelled Flight” by W.C. Roberts.

Apex Magazine 19 is sold online for $2.99; it’s also sold in a downloadable, pay-what-you-want edition through Smashwords, and in a Kindle edition (for 99 cents). Previous issues are available through their back issue page.

C.S.E.’s complete story is online. Here’s the first line:

Aquilo Vickery Makepeace, anatomy student, was looking for corpses when he found the undine.

I like it. We last profiled Apex with their November Arab/Muslim issue, the October issue and in August (also featuring C.S.E. Cooney).

Apex Magazine is edited by the ethereally beautiful Catherynne M. Valente. To join the Apex Army and donate, subscribe, or help spread the word, visit their online store.

Writing: Historical Fantasy and the Book Deal

Writing: Historical Fantasy and the Book Deal

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lion-of-cairo
Scott’s new book. Go buy it!
A few months ago James Enge and I sat down for a cyber conversation about serial characters and the book deal.  We both had a lot of fun, and the the exchange seemed of interest to Black Gate readers, so I asked my friend Scott Oden to join me  for a similar back-and-forth interview.

If you haven’t yet heard of Scott Oden, you’re missing a rising star in historical fiction. I learned of his work when our mutual friend, Robert E. Howard scholar Morgan Holmes, handed me a copy of Scott’s first book and urged me to read it. My “to-be-read” pile is as tottering as that of most readers, but I took Morgan at his word and was launched into an action-packed thrill ride at the side of Phoenecian mercenary leader Hasdrabal Barca in Men of Bronze. Oden’s skill with character, pacing, and description — not to mention his action chops — impressed me greatly. When I learned Scott was a fan of historical fiction writer Harold Lamb, I invited him to write an introduction for one of the Lamb historical collections I was editing.

As I’ve mentioned in previous writing posts, it was Scott who introduced me to his editor, the talented Pete Wolverton of Thomas Dunne Books, and Scott who introduced me to the agent we now share, the gifted Bob Mecoy. Scott wrote on this topic some months ago, after I took news of my own book deal public last November.

Scott’s new novel, a historical fantasy set in 11th century Cairo, hits bookstore shelves this Tuesday. I had the privilege of reading the book in manuscript, so I can tell you that it’s one of the best historical novels of the year.  Its impending release seemed like a fine excuse for a discussion about  historical fiction, middle-eastern protagonists, and, naturally, Harold Lamb. I lead off, then Scott follows. At the end of each exchange, we trade questions, and occasionally we interject responses.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.10 “Caged Heat”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.10 “Caged Heat”

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The Winchesters and the Angel Castiel meet back up with an old friend: demon Meg.
The Winchesters and the Angel Castiel meet back up with an old friend: demon Meg.

The demon Crowley is now the king of hell, since Sam and Dean trapped Lucifer back in the pit, and he’s on a mission to track down a way to claim Purgatory next. Monsters, it seems, come from Purgatory and go there when they die, so he thinks that by collecting the creators of different monsters – the Alphas of their respective races – he’ll be able to figure out how to take over Purgatory. Toward that end, he’s resurrected Sam, but without his soul, and is blackmailing Sam and Dean into working for him to get it back.

One of the monsters they’ve already caught is the Alpha Shifter, who Crowley is interrogating. The casting director got a bit of a break this week, because the shifter has taken the form of Crowley, so he’s torturing himself. It ends with Crowley decapitating the Alpha, which really doesn’t particularly seem to help his case, but then, Crowley is a demon, so you can forgive him for being driven by his passions.

Speaking of demons, an old favorite, the demon Meg, returns and kidnaps Sam and Dean. It seems that since Crowley’s taken over Hell, he’s been cleaning house of all of the Lucifer loyalists. She’s trying to use them to get a lead on Crowley, but the Winchesters haven’t actually seen him in a while, dealing instead with middlemen as they drop off their prey. Instead, Sam makes a deal with Meg to take out Crowley. Oh, what a tangled web they weave …

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Novel Writing: A Summation in Praise of Long Books

Novel Writing: A Summation in Praise of Long Books

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Nanop BadgeAnother NaNoWriMo has come and gone, with mixed results for me. I won, in that I wrote more than 50,000 words. But I didn’t come close to the target of twice that, which is what I was aiming for. In the past, my pace tended to pick up as the month ended; this time around a bad cold hampered my progress, and I didn’t even crack 60,000.

Still, there’s a sense in which I think I accomplished what I was after this month. I took an idea, or a collection of ideas, and started giving it form as an actual story. I wrote enough to gain a sense of the thing; how it’d be shaped, what sort of themes would be prominent, what kind of voice I’d use to tell the tale.

Perhaps the main point is that I learned what the scale of it would be. I started with the notion that I’d be writing two books, totalling maybe a bit more than 100,000 words; I know now that I’m working on a four-volume story, probably with a word count of between 300,000 and 400,000 words.

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“The Word of Azrael” Selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

“The Word of Azrael” Selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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yearsbest2011Matthew David Surridge’s novellete “The Word of Azrael” has been selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.

Congratulations, Matthew!  “The Word of Azrael” has been praised in many places since it appeared in Black Gate 14. Here’s what Rich said in his Locus magazine review in the August issue:

Even better is Matthew [David] Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael.” It concerns Isrohim Vey, who sees the Angel of Death on a battlefield and as a result is spared — more a curse than a blessing — to search again for the Angel. His search almost takes the form of a catalog of sword & sorcery tropes, his many adventures told briefly but with style and an ironic edge. Surridge both celebrates and winks at the genre. It’s very entertaining, clever, and even thought-provoking.

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