I woke up this morning the same way I have on Christmas morning for the last 18 years: to the excited screams of children telling Alice and me to get out of bad, Santa has come. Ten years ago, I thought I had only a few more years of this. Turns out teenagers love to shout on Christmas morning even more than toddlers. Well, at least it got me up early. After all the presents were unwrapped, and we’d all snacked…
The Black Gate offices are empty, the lights are off, and the only illumination is from the tiny tree the interns put on top of the filing cabinets during the Christmas party. Another year gone. Another 780 books discussed, 112 games reviewed, 84 comics examined, and numerous issues of critical importance to the genre fiercely debated. The staff are all at home with their loved ones, sleeping the sleep of the just (and the exhausted), and the office is strangely quiet….
It always gets quiet around the Black Gate offices at Christmas time. It’s a good time to let go of the daily hustle and bustle of running an online magazine, and reflect on the really important things. People frequently ask me what Black Gate is all about. There’s so much to the story — fifteen issues of a terrific print magazine, hundreds of original stories, the new writers we’ve discovered, nearly 4,000 blog-posts since 2007 — but none of that…
The lights are dim at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, and there’s a light dusting of snow on all the desks. I dropped by to pick up the leftover egg nog from the Christmas party and discovered a rare thing: a deserted office. Even Goth Chick’s minions seem to have slipped their chains. The only noise I hear comes from deep in the comic archives, where the tireless Mike Penkas is scribbling a Christmas Red Sonja post, muttering “For the love of…
It’s Christmas morning. A mantle of crisp white snow blankets hill and dale. You rise from your bed and patter down the stairs to find . . . what? What is your fondest Christmas morning memory? Mine goes back to when I was fourteen years old. That summer, I’d boldly announced to my parents that I wanted to be a writer. This pronouncement was met with stony silence. “But Scott,” my mother said at length, “how will you be able…
One of the earliest Christmas ghost stories concludes with dismemberment and a fart joke. Those familiar with the tradition of telling horror stories at Yuletide rather than Halloween may associate it with the late 19th and early 20th century, as those decades are considered the golden age of the traditional English ghost story, which despite its cozy label, includes tales as gruesome as anything by Lovecraft. But it is referenced in Britain as early as 1623, with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s…
Just about everyone is familiar with A Christmas Carol. The first short movie was made in 1901, based on a play adapted from Charles Dickens’ novel. And there were new adaptations this year. THAT is enduring. I’ve seen different word counts, but Dickens’ work is about 29,000 words long. That’s a very short novel. But, as with any adaptation, some things are left out. I took Dickens’ original novel – not one of the movie versions – and rewrote it…
It all started with Big Cheese John O’s Facebook post in which he tagged me on a painting of a Yule Cat by Emi Boz [Macabre Cabaret Artist]. True, I love pretty much everything Boz does, but that’s not the reason J.O. tagged me. Instead he was commenting on how I had warned him about the Yule Cat. Actually, this legend is one of the many which are referenced in The Dead of Winter, a new holiday release I wrote…
The Book For the last few Decembers I have reposted an article I wrote about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Wish.” It is a Christmas tale of loss and love and magic which Bradbury penned following the death of his father. When it first appeared in Women’s Day magazine in 1973, my Dad was deep in his own grief having lost his own father, my beloved Grandpa, earlier that year. The story I told in Black Gate was how “The…
If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” Ebenezer Scrooge A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, published first in 1843, is nearly two hundred years old, and nothing remains to be said about it, it would seem. Charles Dickens’s fairy tale has become…