Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Back at Black Gate


So my vacation from Black Gate ended this morning with my monthly roundup of short stories. Swords and Sorcery Magazine continues to be a decent site. Not many surprises but not many clunkers either. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly remains my favorite short fiction site. Sean P. Robson's "Tomb Robber's Tale" is a nice and gruesome. I also really liked Liz Colter's "A Breath of Darkness,"enough that I'm curious about her other stories.



I have a lot of reading to do these days. I'm reading Sabatini's Captain Blood books and The Queen's Necklace by Teresa Edgerton, among several others for review.  For myself I'm rereading Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley books. I want to read Laird Barron's The Croning and a book of Joe Lansdale short stories.  I love reading this stuff but it's almost starting to feel like a real job. Oh, well, it could be worse. No one's forcing me to do this and I could be stuck reading contemporary literary fiction.


I haven't been listening to much music lately but I did see a great show this past weekend. The Buzzcocks played Webster Hall and they were electrifying. I've seen great shows by them in the past but there was something extra about this show. Maybe now that Steve Diggle and Pete Shelley are pushing sixty they feel the need to remind people just how good they are.





6 comments:

  1. How far along are you with Sabatini? I am going to be reading the last Captain Blood short story here very soon (it's in a separate collection that hasn't turned up on my doorstep yet). I look forward to talking about the pirate captain's adventure with you.

    Howard

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    1. Done with Brethren and hope to finish Chronicles this weekend.

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    2. Should I even bother reading the first novel this soon after Brethren?

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  2. From what I have been able to determine, Brethren was later retitled as Captain Blood: His Odyssey. I've got that one, along with two other volumes published by Ballantine in the 70s.

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  3. While the plots of the short stories taken together form the same plot as the novel His Odyssey, they were written earlier. He rewrote and expanded them for the novel. They were originally reprinted in Premier Magazine. Check out the typo ridden collection of the two sold at amazon http://www.amazon.com/CAPTAIN-BLOOD-VOL-1-Brethren-Collection-ebook/dp/B00L4RP08U/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410470152&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=captain+blood+brethren+odyssey

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  4. You could just read the bits that aren't in the short stories, like the opening chapters, then skip around when you start to recognize things.

    I thought it a brilliant job of a mix-up novel. I couldn't even tell, the first time I read it.

    Howard

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