It's here! My story, "The Dubious Apotheosis of Baskin Gough," along with 20 other great stories are available in one creepy package known as ARCANE II.. Check out the e-book at Amazon,, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. The Print edition will be out soon for those of you who, like me, prefer that inky pulpy smell to the ambient glow of a screen. Help spread the word to anyone who you think might dig it. Cheers!

Why I have to remember to check out Locus more often -- or Black Gate is back!

I used to have a subscription to Locus Magazine, which bills itself as "The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field" and is, in fact, the premiere news source for anyone interested in the business/writing end of the speculative fiction field. It was a Christmas gift from my wonderful mother-in-law/drinking buddy (when my wife was pregnant the first time, her mother, who we lived with, valiantly stepped in to keep me from having to drink alone). Anyway, long story short, the subscription expired, and I have yet to pony up the cash for another. And boy, do I miss it.

Luckily, Locus also happens to have a really cool and useful website, so one would think that I could stay up-to-date on who's doing what. Except I forget to check it, and important things slip by me. One of those is the super exciting news that Black Gate has reentered the field with an online fiction offering once a week or so. Let me just say, that is awesome news! Best of luck to John O'Neill and the rest of the crew--I'll be reading.

I have loved Black Gate since its inception as a beefy print magazine packed with adventure fantasy, articles, a comic strip, and much more. I have nearly every issue. I even have one really encouraging rejection from John O'Neill from years ago, and I regret not having submitted more to them back then. Black Gate has long been one of the magazines I really want to see my work in, and I even have a quartet of linked stories I started writing with this particular market in mind. The problem is they have been closed to submissions for some time. They have a very active and interesting blog, but the most recent print issue was Spring 2011, and for a while now I have been dreading the announcement that they were closing for good, like so many other good magazines have done (RIP Realms of Fantasy). I've been periodically checking their submissions guidelines for a change, but missed the big news in their blog that they are publishing fiction again. True, they are still closed to submissions, but once the backlog of stories they have already purchased clears, it sounds like they will be reopening.

I guess that means I'd better get cracking on finishing up the quartet (#1 is mostly drafted, #2 is completely drafted, #3 is mostly drafted, while #4 exists only in my mind). Ah, motivation is such a fine thing.

So get on over and check out Black Gate, and take a look at Locus while you're at it. I plan to review Black Gate's first online offering, Jason E. Thummel's "The Duelist," shortly, so be on the lookout for that. Until next time then.

Publishing News

My most recent story, "Wit's Soul" can now be read on the exciting new online art and literature review, Ad-Hominem. Incidentally, Larissa is also the featured artist on Ad-Hominem right now, and some examples of her fine photography can be found there.

In addition, "Hard Winter," which may be my favorite of the stories I've written, is now available free of charge in a PDF version of Paradigm Volume One. It is dark story set on Beaver Island, and I apologize if anyone thinks they see themselves in it - it is purely coincidental. I did use mash-ups of real island names for flavor, but it was a random process. So if your see your first or last name on a character, rest assured, the character is nothing like you--it just means I like your name. I promise. On a side note, strangely enough, in the listing for Paradigm on the Poets and Writers magazine's markets page, I am listed as one of three "representative authors" for this journal, which I guess is a good thing, though I'm not entirely sure what it means.

Furthermore, my story, "Rumble Strip" can be found in the PDF version of Word River. This one is a bit racy, and so not for the faint of heart.

Thanks for reading!

The rebirth of the Novel?

I am always on the lookout for anything that articulates my own feelings about writing and reading better than I can articulate them myself. This evening, I came across this impressive and comprehensive article about plot and the novel (and more generally, in all fiction). I once wrote an application letter for a scholarship, in which I lamented the death of plot in contemporary literary fiction and vowed to commit my remaining years to righting that egregious wrong. I got the scholarship (thanks Ari!), but I still haven't made much in the way of progress. But luckily, I am not the only one working on the problem. I've never read a more unpretentious and straightforward assessment of the state of things in the biz than Lev Grossman's article for The Wall Street Journal. Grossman has, this blogger believes, hit the old nail squarely on the head. But don't take my word for it.

Check it out for yourself:

"Good Novels Don't Have to Be Hard"