Goth Chick News: A Decomposing Neverland — an interview with Douglas Clegg

Goth Chick News: A Decomposing Neverland — an interview with Douglas Clegg

Comments 3 comments

neverlandImagine the family vacation from hell.

I know you can do that because you’ve had one, and I know you’ve had one because everybody has. Usually the “from hell” part has to do with long-term forced exposure to family members in an environment you have no hope of escaping for the duration of your tortured imprisonment (known as the “vacation”).

For me it was a remote cabin in the Canadian woods; go north, turn left at anything that looks like fun, and drive for another four hours. The location alone was the perfect setting for a knife-wielding maniac to off a few sinful teenagers including at least one cheerleader; which is probably what got me to where I am today. But enough about me…

What if your personal family vacation from hell, contained a real Hell? I mean a dictionary-definition Hell complete with a soul-eating demon? It is under this premise that we follow author Douglas Clegg into the no-Tinker-Bell, Peter Pan-less nightmare called Neverland.

Beau Jackson is destined to spend another summer with his extended family in their run-down “summer home” on Gull Island. Isolated and remote, the island is privy to even more nasty little secrets than the ones the adults spill out each evening during their alcohol-induced arguing, and Beau’s cousin Sumter is up to no good at all in that broken down shed at the back of the property.

Sumter has always been a little off, maybe even a little evil. But what he’s got hiding in a box back there is about to rip the fabric between reality and Sumter’s sadistic imagination, taking Beau and the rest of the Jackson family along for the ride.

…

Read More Read More

Original Fiction: “THE WEIRD OF IRONSPELL” by John R. Fultz

Original Fiction: “THE WEIRD OF IRONSPELL” by John R. Fultz

Comments 7 comments
http://sheikman.blogspot.com
http://sheikman.blogspot.com
In the grand tradition of the classic heroic fantasy pulps comes “The Weird of Ironspell” — a series of all-new Sword-and-Sorcery adventures coming to you over the next few weeks, a new self-contained chapter every Wednesday right here at blackgate.com. The saga begins now…

“The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz

Illustrations by Alex Sheikman

1. Born of Stone

The child would never know its father. 

In the amber glow of their hearth fires, villagers traded whispers about its mother. The witch had come out of the forest heavy with child. Some said she dallied with a demon, or a wood-spirit, but the witch never revealed her secret paramour. She gave birth in the light of a silver moon, while wolves howled like ghosts among the hills. 

As the child grew, its mother worked like a man at her anvil, forging a blade for her son. She smelted a strange, gleaming metal from the heart of a stone that had fallen from the sky while she was in labor. The village elders said she must be weaving a great spell, and her hammer rang across the village like a doomful bell. In the space of a month she had finished the sword. She christened it with several drops of her own blood, which flowed down the blade’s length and sank into the metal, taking on the shapes of crimson runes. 

…

Read More Read More

C.S.E. Cooney reviews Black Gate 14

C.S.E. Cooney reviews Black Gate 14

Comments 6 comments

hangmans1Author C.S.E. Cooney has become the third reviewer to post her thoughts on our latest issue, which she read over several train rides:

It’s MASSIVE! It’s GLOSSY! It’s full of ILLUSTRATIONS! There are THREE POEMS in it!… After chortling my way through John O’Neill’s wry romp of an editorial, laughing though the letters, and reading Rich Horton’s essay on older fantasy fiction… I finally started on the actual fiction.

She seemed to particularly enjoy “The Hangman’s Daughter” by Chris Braak:

HURRAH for the FORMDIABLE girl-child protagonist with her laconic but fiercely interesting dad and the incredible world built around them… This story was, in a word (an old-fashioned hippie word), BITCHIN’.

Dan Brodribb’s “The Girl Who Feared Lightning”

My favorite bit in “The Girl Who Feared Lightning” was a short exchange between the protagonist and her boyfriend over the phone. It was very natural and easy, yet loaded with all sorts of things left unsaid. It’s always amazing to me how a few sentences of dialogue can define an entire relationship. And then, of course, there were the mummies.

And Robert J. Howe’s “The Natural History of Calamity”

Witty and well-plotted. I expended very little effort in reading – the story just swept me along. It took most of two train rides, and I was in a panic lest I’d have to get off the train before I’d FINISHED it. Another author I must GOOGLE. Kick-ass lady protag, too, I must say. And kick-ass without being INDOMITABLE, you know. She gets knocked around her fair share and is not NOBLE about it all the time. I’d like to meet her again. In, like, a novel. Please.

Claire’s complete (and highly entertaining) review is here.

Art by John Kaufmann for “The Hangman’s Daughter.”

The Spider vs. The Empire State

The Spider vs. The Empire State

Comments 3 comments

Layout 2The Spider Revival: Part III

The Spider vs. The Empire State
Norvell Page (Ace of Aces Books, 2009)

I have previously written about the revival in trade paperback of the adventures of The Spider, the bloodiest of all 1930s pulp heroes. My reviews of The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham and The Spider: City of Doom, both published by Baen, contain plenty of background about the character and his main author, Norvell Page, so if you’re unfamiliar with the blood-soaked vigilante insanity of this region of the pulp universe, I’d advise that you start there.

This third collection of Spider adventures comes from a new publisher (Ace of Aces Books) and presents for the first time three connected novels that were originally published consecutively in The Spider Magazine. These three novels, which ran in the September, October, and November 1938 issues, form “The Black Police Trilogy,” one of the darkest episodes in the character’s history. Norvell Page and his editor Harry Steeger decided to put newspaper headlines and national fears into their pulp adventures: an allegory for Nazism, viewed as it might arise in the middle of contemporary New York State. It Does Happen Here might serve a good alternate title.

The first book of the trilogy, The City That Paid to Die, came out exactly a year before the Nazi invasion of Poland. The U.S. and the rest of the world were in an uneasy position with the seemingly unstoppable rise of fascism in Europe and the apparent weakness of the liberal democracies. A few small fascist sympathetic groups bubbled up in the U.S., but by 1938 the isolationist nation was becoming concerned about the ambitions of the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was an era ripe for terror and panic—and Norvell Page seized those feelings to create a pulp adventure uncomfortably close to 1938 concerns.

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate 14 now available in PDF

Black Gate 14 now available in PDF

Comments 0 Comment

bg-14-cover3Black Gate 14 is now available in PDF format for just $4.95. 

Black Gate 14 is a landmark issue ­ and at 384 pages, it’s also the largest in our history. The print version retails for $15.95, but now you can order the complete magazine — including the wraparound cover — for the same price as all our PDFs: $4.95/copy, or as part of a 4-issue PDF subscription for just $17.95.

Existing subscribers can purchase the issue for just $2.95.

Here’s what  Grasping for the Wind has to say about our latest issue:

One of the best collections of fiction on the market – whether books, magazines, or online. The latest edition has just been released, and Black Gate 14 is massive, topping out at 384 pages …  this massive collection of fiction shows why, even with their irregular publishing schedule, Black Gate is one of the most popular magazines (print or online) available today.

The issue includes a Morlock novella from James Enge, and new fiction from John C. Hocking, Michael Jasper & Jay Lake, Pete Butler, Robert J Howe, Martin Owton, Chris Braak, Matthew David Surridge,  and much more — including an 8-page Knights of the Dinner Table strip!

The complete Table of Contents, with artwork and brief story excerpts, is here, and you can read the complete reviews from Grasping for the Wind and Locus Online here.

Order the magazine on our Subscription page here.

Cover art by the great Bruce Pennington.

Short Fiction Roundup: Serialization

Short Fiction Roundup: Serialization

Comments 0 Comment

apex-blogReturn with us now to those thrilling days of yesterday, when publishers employed serials as a way to keep reader interest in wondering what happens next.  Apex is presenting a 20 part serial of “Jesus and the Eightfold Path” by Lavie Tidhar.  You can start reading here.

Locus Online reviews Black Gate 14

Locus Online reviews Black Gate 14

Comments 2 comments

wine_dark_sea1Following the excellent review at Grasping at the Wind, Lois Tilton at Locus Online has weighed in on Black Gate 14. 

Here’s what she said about Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael”:

Enough adventures to fill many books. Here might well be the ultimate sword and sorcery, in that it both epitomizes and deconstructs the form with a subtle irony…The author is compressing all possible adventures into one, and eventually the threads begin to come together. The tale illustrates how much of what we recognize as S&S lies in certain tropes and themes, and in particular the tone of its prose. RECOMMENDED

She also had kind words for “The Wine-Dark Sea” by Isabel Pelech:

Very dark fantasy. Newyn was disfigured as a child by the local magic called lohan; now she is a masked assassin. She is hired by an old woman to rescue her son from a lohan-filled submerged city, fallen long ago to some malevolent magic. The lohan haunting the place makes it possible to breathe the water, but persons who venture there rarely return… There is nothing commonplace about the setting. The submerged city is filled with wondrous horrors. RECOMMENDED

She also gave a RECOMMENDED rating for “Devil on the Wind” by Michael Jasper and Jay Lake, calling it:

All fireworks, as the authors have pulled out their purpurean pyrotechnics in depiction of Lena and her sorcerous battles.

You can read the complete review here.

Art by Mark Evans for “The Wine-Dark Sea.”

Goth Chick News: A Long, Weird Journey

Goth Chick News: A Long, Weird Journey

Comments 2 comments

weird-illinoisWeirdness surrounds you, trust me.

I know that’s a bold statement considering the only thing I know about you is that you’re a Black Gate fan, but then again, one might argue that information alone is enough.

But I can go one step further; I can actually prove it.

Just head over to www.weirdus.com and click on “stories by state.” OK, you won’t find anything there yet, as this part of the website isn’t completely finished. But if you click on “stories by category” you’ll find the categories broken up by state and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

What you have just discovered is that no matter where you live in the good old US of A, there are stories about your hometown that will likely curl your hair. If you’re very lucky, enough stories have been gathered by the research team of Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman to create an entire book. So far there are thirty in all with new ones being released every six months or so.

Weird Illinois hit the book stores in 2005, and when I picked up my copy I hunkered down on a Sunday afternoon and didn’t get up until I had turned the last page. The stories ran the gambit from urban legend to documented hauntings, to real events grotesque enough to barely be believable. The local editor Troy Taylor (each book has someone from that state doing the heavy lifting) says the stories are all chosen for being a little “left of center.”

That’s an understatement.

…

Read More Read More

ORC STAIN: Update

ORC STAIN: Update

Comments 1 comment
The first five issues under one cover...it's Orc-tastic!
The first five issues under one cover...it's Orc-tastic!

ORC STAIN Volume 1 collection coming in July…

ORC STAIN, VOL. 1 TP
story JAMES STOKOE
art & cover JAMES STOKOE
JULY 28
168 PAGES / FC
$17.99
For a million millennia the world has cracked and convulsed under the indomitable mob of the orc. Savage, bloodthirsty creatures, they are without number, staining nearly every corner of the globe. The mighty Orc Tzar, newest leader of the mob, marches ever north to find the lost organ of a forgotten god. Only a lone one-eyed orc with a mysterious gift can find the key to breaking the cycle forever.
Collects ORC STAIN #1-5
RETAILER WARNING: MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES

Tanith Lee’s LIONWOLF Trilogy

Tanith Lee’s LIONWOLF Trilogy

Comments 2 comments

A Masterwork of Transcendent High Fantasylionwolf16

“Is she Weird? Is she White? Is she promised to the Night?”
 — The Pixies, Bossanova 1990

“When I was nine, about a year after I learned how to read, I started to write.”
 — Tanith Lee, LOCUS, April 1998

 

Introducing Tanith Lee is seldom necessary.

The majority of fantasy fans already know her name. After 77 novels and 300 short stories, among them such seminal fantasy classics as the Birthgrave trilogy, the Wars of Vis trilogy, the Tales From the Flat Earth quintology, the Secret Books of Paradys quadrology, and the Secret Books of Venus quadrology, her storytelling powers are still in full effect.

In a publishing world that does not always honor its Great Ones, it is often possible to miss out on the latest and greatest works of the field’s most gifted writers. Even a writer as established and lauded as Lee can get lost in the desperate shuffle to market and promote “hot-sellers.” Quality often takes a back seat to what the marketing department thinks will sell…and some amazing works of fantasy get less than the attention they deserve.

Case in Point: Tanith Lee’s latest masterpiece The LIONWOLF Trilogy. The series consists of three books that chronicle the birth, life, death, rebirth, and redemption of a rampaging man-god who strides red-handed across a world of endless winter and primordial savagery. The books are: Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, and No Flame But Mine. Chances are you’ve missed seeing these books on your local bookstore’s shelves…which is a tragedy in and of itself. Like much of Lee’s previous work, this is a trilogy that no self-respecting fantasy fan can afford to miss. In today’s world of online booksellers — led by the grandaddy of them all, www.amazon.com — you no longer have to settle for what shows up on your local bookstore’s shelves. Thank the Gods for that…

…

Read More Read More