Search Results for: john C. hocking

Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek: “The Bonestealer’s Mirror” by John C. Hocking

Comments 0 Comment

Brand and his shipmates face dread sorcery on a strange isle in John C. Hocking’s “The Bonestealer’s Mirror,” the sequel to “The Face in the Sea” from Black Gate 13. We searched the labyrinth of sea-caves for hours, finally emerging in early afternoon, wet, hungry and tired. Asbjorn decided to return to Mord’s steading to collect Vali and Asdis, and to ask if the isle had more sea-caves in which the demon might lair.       We knew something was amiss as…

Read More Read More

New Treasures and Interview: C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Herald

Comments 1 comment

Black Gate’s interview series on “Beauty in Weird Fiction” queries authors/artists about their muses and methods to make ‘repulsive things’ become ‘attractive.’  We’ve hosted C.S. Friedman, Carol Berg, Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Smith Spark, and Janet E Morris (full list of 29 interviews, with Black Gate hosting since 2018). This round features C. S. E. Cooney (CSEC), who is no stranger to Black Gate [link to listings]. She is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: first, for Bone Swans: Stories, and most recently for Saint Death’s Daughter. Previously on Black…

Read More Read More

The Revelations of Zang by John R. Fultz released by Rogues in the House: Read the Foreword and Interview

Comments 0 Comment

The Revelations of Zang by John R. Fultz. The Rogues in the House Podcast (2023). John Molinero cover art. The Rogues in the House Podcast, publishers of the Sword & Sorcery anthologies A Book of Blades Vol I and Vol II, now bring us a re-release of John R. Fultz’s The Revelations of Zang (available now in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover). John R. Fultz is no stranger to Black Gate having published in the hardcopy magazine and hosting his Skulls…

Read More Read More

Beautiful Dark Worlds: An Interview with John R. Fultz

Comments 5 comments

JRF has deep roots in the weird fiction community and especially Black Gate, and you can learn about those in this post.  We recently reviewed his collections Darker than Weird and Worlds Beyond Worlds which were published after I interviewed the author in 2017 for my Weird Beauty interviews series (right before Black Gate began hosting them; see the listing of those interviews below). This reposts that interview and teases an updated one specific to Fultz’s Zang Cycle (to be…

Read More Read More

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: John Bullard on REH’s Rough and Ready Clowns of the West – Part I

Comments 8 comments

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) A (Black) Gat in the Hand was primarily about hardboiled Pulp stuff when it began, because that’s what I mostly what I was interested in, and knew about. And I was the one writing it….

Read More Read More

Beauty and Nightmares on Aliens Worlds: Interviewing C. S. Friedman

Comments 5 comments

We have an ongoing series at Black Gate on the topic of “Beauty in Weird Fiction” where we corner an author and query them about their muses and methods to make ‘repulsive’ things ‘attractive to readers.’ Previous subjects have included Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Smith Spark, Carol Berg, Stephen Leigh, Jason Ray Carney, and John C. Hocking (see the full list at the end of this post). Inspired by the release of Nightborn: Coldfire Rising (July 2023, see Black Gate’s review for more information), we are delighted to interview C.S. Freidman! …

Read More Read More

Hither Came Conan: David C. Smith on “Pool of the Black One”

Comments 8 comments

Welcome back to the latest installment of Hither Came Conan, where a leading Robert E. Howard expert (and me) examine one of the original Conan stories each week, highlighting what’s best. Up today, it’s author and Howard literary biographer David C. Smith. I reda Oron long before I discovered Conan. Read on! By mid-1932, when Robert E. Howard wrote “The Pool of the Black One,” his tenth story to feature Conan the Cimmerian, he was well past the journeyman phase…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Testament of Tall Eagle by John R. Fultz

Comments 0 Comment

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from The Testament of Tall Eagle by John R. Fultz, the new fantasy novel from the author of the Books of the Shaper trilogy. A second mountain sat atop the first. Yet the second mountain was made of glowing gold, beaded with shimmering crystals set in weird designs. The second mountain had been carved into slim, pointed spires like tremendous teepees of gold. Giant domes of sparkling stone…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Shadow of Dia-Sust” by David C. Smith

Comments 4 comments

David C. Smith’s 1978 sword & sorcery novel Oron is a classic of the genre. Its success led to four sequels: The Sorcerer’s Shadow (1978), Mosutha’s Magic (1982), The Valley of Ogrum (1982), and the collection The Ghost Army (1983). David’s new short story collection, The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, includes the first new Oron story in 30 years, “The Shadow of Dia-Sust,” in which the young barbarian helps a dying witch exact an overdue revenge; and…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Online Fiction: Dark Muse by David C. Smith

Comments 3 comments

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Dark Muse, the new noir thriller from David C. Smith. Jack Mathis, a bright young book editor in Chicago, has found the next great American writer. Yet this anonymous genius is inspired to create in the darkest way imaginable: he picks his victims carefully, murders them gruesomely, then gives them new life in the best stories Jack has ever read. The writer knows all about Jack. All about…

Read More Read More