Black Gate – Page 854 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Whispers Around Every Corner: Try Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh, the First Great Serialized Novel of 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Marie Bilodeau’s first post for Black Gate, “Nine (mostly) Distinct (almost) Positive Traits of Chainmail Bikinis,” was the top article on the blog for the month of December. Her sparkling sense of humor, and her considerable prose gifts, instantly made Marie one of our most popular writers.

Marie has far too much energy to be content with just blogging, however, and I was not at all surprised to see her first fiction release in 2015 is in ambitious project that’s already getting a lot of buzz. Nigh is a serialized novel that will be released over the course of 2015; Book 1 is due in just 10 days. You can pre-order it now on Amazon for just 99 cents.

A disappearing watch. A thief in the night. Whispers around every corner…

Then a mist rolls into town and refuses to dissipate.

Alva Viola Taverner has lived in her small town all of her life, working as a car tech while saving for her little sister to go to university. But everything is about to change as the veil between our world and the world of the faeries weakens and falls.

Suddenly, even the smallest bump in the night can prove the deadliest.

Marie is the author of the Heirs of a Broken Land trilogy, published in 2009-2010. Her space fantasy Destiny’s Blood was nominated for the Aurora Award. Her short stories have appeared in When the Hero Comes Home, Masked Mosaic, Ride the Moon, and other places.

Book 1 of Nigh will be released by S&G Publishing on January 29, 2015. It is 59 pages, priced at 99 cents.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ya Gotta Ask

Monday, January 19, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

One of the cool things about Black Gate is that there are a bunch of authors who post here. I’m not an author. I do write. As I’ve earned less than $5 from my writings, I don’t flatter myself to be a professional writer. However, I write things that other people (generally, in really small numbers) read. So, I’ll go with calling myself a writer.

Now, many authors here at Black Gate can (and have) given you advice on how to write a novel or get a book published. Do that and then you can be an author too. I’m going to make a suggestion on how you can become a writer, like me. I know, I know: you’re all a tingle.

I’ve got two blogs. My newer one, Almost Holmes, is where I post mostly about mystery-related fiction and a few other key interests, like Humphrey Bogart. Walking Through the Valley, which I’ve had for quite awhile, is mostly about my other interests: including baseball history and Christianity. But anybody can write a blog. A good one is tough to do, but you can sign up at WordPress or Blogspot and voila,’ you’re a blogger. So, no big accomplishment on my part.

Back around 2000, I couldn’t find a single picture of Ronald Howard, the (massively under-appreciated) star of a Sherlock Holmes TV series, on the internet. Not one. So, with no qualifications whatsoever, I created a website that became HolmesOnScreen.com. I’m no Alan Barnes (great book), but the Sherlockian community generally knows that I’m pretty knowledgeable on the subject.

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Win a Copy of Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones

Sunday, January 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Back in October we gave away free copies of The Madness of Cthulhu, the new horror anthology from Titan Books, to three lucky winners. Contestants submitted short comments on their favorite H.P. Lovecraft story, and we announced the winners alongside all the best entries on Oct 27th, in The Best One-Sentence Reviews of H.P. Lovecraft.

I’m very pleased to report that Titan Books has another horror anthology in the works, and they’ve once again offered us copies to give away. Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones, will be released on January 27. It’s the sequel to two earlier volumes, the World Fantasy Award nominee Shadows Over Innsmouth (1994), and Stoker and World Fantasy nominee Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth (2005). Both were returned to print in matching trade paperback editions by Titan Books in 2013.

Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth collects fifteen recent tales of Lovecraftian horror, many of them original to this volume, alongside “Innsmouth Clay,” a 1971 tale by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, and a poem by H.P. Lovecraft. Contributors include Caitlín R. Kiernan, Kim Newman, Angela Slatter, Michael Marshall Smith, Brian Lumley, Brian Hodge, Ramsey Campbell, and Adrian Cole.

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Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor II, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Sunday, January 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Karl Edward Wagner continued his sword-and-sorcery anthology series with Echoes of Valor II, published in hardcover by Tor Books in August 1989, two years after the release of Echoes of Valor.

Wagner settled into an established pattern with this volume. The first one had been unusual for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it contained only novellas — three big stories by Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Henry Kuttner. Not that you can go wrong with Howard, Leiber, and Kuttner, but the next two books in the series offered a more varied table of contents.

Echoes of Valor had also been bare bones from an editorial standpoint. Not even an introduction, let alone commentary on the stories. Wagner rectified that with Echoes of Valor II, which included new and reprinted story intros and author retrospectives by C. L. Moore, Sam Moskowitz, Forrest J. Ackerman, and Wagner himself. This seems more what Wagner had in mind for EoV, which he clearly intended to be a definitive S&S anthology series.

In fact, it’s probable that the first volume was put together much more hurriedly than the last two. Not only was it missing the editorial content that would be the hallmark of the series, but it went straight to paperback. Echoes of Valor II appeared first in a handsome hardcover edition, and was reprinted in paperback in February 1991.

This one contains a rich assortment of classic S&S and heroic fantasy, including a Conan tale by Robert E. Howard, a Jirel of Joiry story and two Northwest Smith tales from C. L. Moore, a Venus novella by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, and a Hok the Mighty novella by Manly Wade Wellman… along with fascinating articles on how some of the stories came together.

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Shimmer 23 Now on Sale

Sunday, January 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’m someone who believes that the core of the fantasy genre is still its short fiction magazines.

This used to be a lot more true, of course. When fantasy and science fiction were still fresh and new as distinct literary genres in the early 20th Century, the only place they regularly appeared was pulp magazines. For fantasy, that meant Weird Tales, the shot-lived Unknown, and later Famous Fantastic Mysteries and the like. Mass market paperback fantasy didn’t take shape until the 1950s, and didn’t really become popular until The Lord of the Rings appeared in paperback in the 60s. Nowadays when people think of fantasy, they tend to think of paperback bestsellers like George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, and Brandon Sanderson.

Where did all three of those writers get their start? In magazines, of course.

Magazines are where the next generation of breakout fantasy writers are already at work today. And if you’re interested in trying a magazine that has a fabulous rep for discovering and promoting stellar writers long before they’re well know — authors like Amal El-Mohtar, Genevieve Valentine, Lou Anders, Chris Roberson, Aliette de Bodard, and many others — then I highly recommend Shimmer.

Shimmer is published bi-monthly, and edited by E. Catherine Tobler. It’s available in both print and your choice of DRM-free electronic formats (indeed, a wide range of formats, not just PDF and Kindle.) It has shown a talent for rooting out great fiction across a wide range of fantasy and SF, and takes pride in publishing “Speculative fiction for a miscreant world.”

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Introducing BlackGateDate.com: Examining the Dating Profiles of the Men of the Fantasy World

Saturday, January 17, 2015 Derek Kunsken Comments 3 comments

Science fiction writer Amy Sundberg recently wrote an excellent post about dating on her blog. This inspired me to think a little more about dating too. Dating is not something I have a lot of time to do, but I have been on a dating site or two and this set me wondering about how to approach dating from the angle of the fantasy genre. It isn’t pretty, but it’s perhaps more honest than what is shown on dating websites.

Username: ImTooSexyForTheMaiar,TooSexyForTheMaiar
Summary: I am the all-seeing eye and I have spread my shadow across the world and crushed the races of Middle Earth. I also make jewelry.
Body type: I am a burning eye. I looked really good when I was an angel. Now that I’ve conquered Middle Earth I’m getting back into shape. Work out partner?
I’d Fit Well With: I’m All-Dominating, in the bedroom and out. I fit well with someone into that.
Six Things I Could Never Do Without: The One Ring.
Deepest Secret: I sometimes I wonder what it would be like to submit to a lover or get a spanking. I’ve been a bad boy. Also, I haven’t told any of my friends, but I make kick-ass balloon animals.

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The Shock of the Old: The Professor Jameson Space Adventures by Neil R. Jones

Saturday, January 17, 2015 Thomas Parker Comments 7 comments

Few things are more exciting than finding an unheralded new author or reading an impressive new book fresh off the press. It is exhilarating to be present at the advent of a significant new work, to witness the beginning of an important writer’s career, or to feel yourself at the cutting edge of a genre. That sense of exploration and discovery is at the very heart of science fiction and fantasy.

These genres we love have roots that reach deep into the past, though, some of those roots extending into the cheap pulp magazines of the 20’s and 30’s, venues that at the time — and for long after — were utterly disreputable; anything that had even a whiff of such seamy origins was utterly damned in the eyes of critics.

Today’s top writers have moved far beyond those simple beginnings, and their finest works exhibit a thematic sophistication and literary polish that their progenitors can’t match, even as the best of those pioneers have finally achieved a hard-won respectability (penny-a-word pulpsters like Leigh Brackett and H.P. Lovecraft escaping the lurid confines of Planet Stories and Weird Tales to appear between the staid covers of the Library of America?! It’s about time.)

Writers like Neil Gaiman, China Meiville, and Susanna Clarke are expanding the boundaries of what can be accomplished with what is decreasingly called genre fiction, and for that we should all be grateful. Sometimes though, I must confess that I am compelled to put aside the careful work of the current generation for a while, because I just need a jolt of unadulterated pulp, and nothing else will do. (I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t around for the pulps, much as I wish I had been, so I have to rely on paperbacks, most of which are themselves now as old as I am, or older.)

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New Treasures: Stomping Grounds, edited by Neil Baker

Saturday, January 17, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

April Moon Books is a new press, but they’re not acting like it.

They’ve produced two of the most innovative — and frankly, most fun — anthologies of the past year, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu and Amok! Editor Neil Baker explains the concept at the heart of their newest release in his introduction:

Just one look at the face of Calvin as he stamps through a sandbox city while Hobbes looks on aghast, or the sheer, unadulterated joy of Stitch as he trashes a carefully constructed city in Lilo’s bedroom, reveals the stark truth; it must be a hell of a lot of fun to reduce a city to rubble under your mighty, scaled feet.

Stomping Grounds is the second volume of Short Sharp Shocks, April Moon’s short fiction horror line. The third, Ill-considered Expeditions, featuring tales of exploration and derring-do gone horribly wrong, will be released in April.

Stomping Grounds includes 17 short stories celebrating the joy of rampaging giant monsters from CJ Henderson, Aaron Smith, Michael Thomas-Knight, D.G. Sutter, and many others.

Here’s the book description.

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Historical Cthulhu: That Is Not Dead, edited by Darrell Schweitzer

Friday, January 16, 2015 John R. Fultz Comments 3 comments

According to H.P. Lovecraft’s legendary canon of cosmic horror tales, the Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog Sothoth, and all-mighty Azathoth have lurked in the dim places of the cosmos since the beginning of time.

“That is not dead,” wrote the mad poet Abdul Alhazred, “which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” One of Lovecraft’s most famous lines is the inspiration for a new hardcover volume of historical Cthulhu Mythos fiction from PS Publishing.

That is Not Dead features all-new tales of cosmic horror set in various periods of history. Here’s what editor/contributor Darrell Schweitzer had to say about the book:

That is Not Dead is a collection of Mythos stories, based on the premise that if the Old Ones have been around since elder aeons, someone should have noticed before Lovecraft’s characters did about 1900. The theme then is lurking presences. Inasmuch as the stories deal with history, it is secret history, i.e. “what really happened…”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents (by historical era).

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Crush It Like Cthulhu

Friday, January 16, 2015 Jackson Kuhl Comments 2 comments

narragansett_honeyale

Southern New England staple Narragansett Beer is trying to corner the Weird Tales beer-drinker market by releasing four beers inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The first, available this Monday, is based on Lovecraft’s, “The Festival”:

[O]nce Narragansett came up with the idea to release a line of H.P. Lovecraft beers, it made sense. “The Festival” is generally acknowledged as the first story in the Cthulhu Mythos. It was published in January of 1925, almost 90 years ago exactly. And the Cthulhu Mythos has a name for the stuff that Kingsport’s residents drink to allow them to survive the ride across interstellar space on the back of the Byakhee: space mead.

“Our head brewmaster, Sean Larkin, was just fascinated with this idea of space mead,” says Hellendrung. “So he tried to come up with a recipe, inspired by the honey meads that were popular in Lovecraft’s time.” The finished beer is a robust dark ale with an edge of sweetness, brewed from five malts and two different kinds of hops.

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