Interview with John C. Hocking and John O'Neill

John C. Hocking is the author of the Harper's Pen Award winning story, "The Face in the Sea," which appeared in Black Gate #13, published by John O'Neill. Recently I had an opportunity to ask these two gentlemen a few questions about the winning story, writing, and publishing.

Sorcerer's Guild: According to a note accompanying your story, "The Face in the Sea" is the first of three stories about Brand the Viking. Are the Brand stories closely connected by events? Are they part of a larger narrative, like a novel (finished or unfinished)?
John C. Hocking: The Brand stories I’ve written so far are tied closely together, as Brand and his shipmates reclaim their chieftain’s stolen daughter and try to bring her back home. I was originally working on a novel about the characters, but the elements I wanted to use ended up better expressed in short stories.


SG: How did "The Face in the Sea" and Black Gate meet?
John O'Neill: I think it all began with a book published in 2004 called LORDS OF SWORDS, edited by Dan Blackston. Word went around that it was a pretty good collection of heroic fantasy -- with some standout work by such folks as E.E. Knight, Howard Andrew Jones, Joe McCullough, and others -- when it got a hilariously off-base review at Tangent Online. It annoyed a few members of the staff, including Todd McAulty, who commandeered a chunk of the review section in BLACK GATE 8 to do a lengthy rebuttal, and celebrate the work of some of these emerging talents.

One of the stories Todd called out in LORDS OF SWORDS was called "Vali's Wound," by Mr. John C. Hocking. I took the time to read it, and was suitably impressed. It was the tale of a young and inexperienced Viking named Brand, who dared to defy a Valkyrie when she came to claim a fallen comrade.

I met John just a few weeks later at Windycon in 2005, and learned he had a series of these stories. When I asked John if he would ever send me one, he told me one was already sitting in my slush pile at home. I suppose I'd had know that, it I hadn't been busy having a good time at a convention.


SG: Was it love at first sight?
John O'Neill: Yes, actually. Although the story's actually a little more complicated. Literally, in this case.

The first story John submitted to me was called "The Bonestealer's Mirror" -- a really terrific piece in which Brand and his shipmates discover the rather chilling secret of a particularly loathsome demon haunting a lonely isle. I bought it immediately, and Storn Cook delivered a fabulous pair of illustrations to accompany it (the first work he'd ever done done us, incidentally.) I was all set to unleash it on the world.

John then delivered a NEW Brand story: "The Face in the Sea." I jumped at the chance to buy it, and scheduled it for Black Gate 13. And then John informed me this one occurred chronologically *first* in the series, followed by "Vali's Wound," and then "Bonestealer."

So John's appearance in Black Gate had to wait. I postponed "Bonestealer," commissioned art for "Face" -- which Storn delivered again -- and published "The Face in the Sea" in Black Gate 13.

"The Bonestealer's Mirror" has finally appeared in Black Gate 14, with Storn's art -- over four year after I purchased it. It's been a long wait, but I hope it's been worth it. John returns in our very next issue with the start of a brand new series. I think you'll like it.


SG: What do you like best about "The Face in the Sea"?
John O'Neill: "The Face in the Sea" is a textbook example at what John Hocking is best at -- and indeed, what all great heroic fantasy writers are good at. And that is creating, in swift and sure strokes, a group of valiant characters that we quickly come to care about, and a forlorn setting where the cast must stand alone.

And then, he unleashes the monsters.


SG: You've written three stories about Brand the Viking, so I take it you like writing in this setting. What is it about Vikings that attracts your creative energies?
John C. Hocking: I’m certainly not alone in finding the Vikings and their world deeply fascinating. Their barbaric yet oddly civilized culture, their astonishing drive to explore, their ideal of stoic bravery in the face of death, all capture and encourage the imagination. Brand lives in a slightly off-center, alternate version of the Viking world, where history has played out a little differently and magic works, but I like to think I get a little flavor of the sagas in there all the same.


SG: When I first read "The Face in the Sea," I had recently finished reading Poul Anderson's War of the Gods. Have you read this novel? Was your work influenced by Anderson's?
John C. Hocking: I love Anderson’s work, especially Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, but the Brand stories are more influenced by the Icelandic sagas and Weird Tales magazine of the 1920’s and 30’s than anything else.


SG: I detected influences of Robert E. Howard in this tale, especially Brand's Conanesque solution to their monstrous problem. Would you say Howard was a big influence on this story?
John C. Hocking: Of course I would! Howard’s imagination, passion, and seemingly effortless handling of the elements of plot continue to amaze me.


SG: Speaking of Howard, you published a Conan novel with Tor in 1995. How did that come about?
John C. Hocking: Long story. In short, I wanted to write for Weird Tales in 1932, but since that was impossible I tried to write a tale with its roots in that period. The Conan pastiche novels I was reading back then seemed to me to have an overly distant relationship with REH and Weird Tales, so I tried to bring that back together. It was a strange way to spend my time, as I had no way of knowing if the book I was working on would ever be read by anybody but me. Some have pointed out that Conan and the Emerald Lotus is a less than entirely successful experiment, but 15 years later it’s still in print and I can still find reasons to be proud of it.


SG: You wrote that novel without a commission from Tor Books, yet they accepted it for publication? That's a pretty incredible authorial feat.
John C. Hocking: It's true, I wrote Conan & the Emerald Lotus all by myself, with no sanction from TOR, Conan Properties, or anyone else. Ridiculous thing to do. Like an amateur animator spending years in the basement making a cartoon about Mickey Mouse. I had no right to put down a word of it but I was inspired by trying to pay tribute to Conan, REH, Lovecraft, Smith, Bloch, and the whole Weird Tales circle, and kept working away until it was done.

And THEN I wondered what I should do with it.

Figured I might as well see if it could even be considered for publication, but didn't even know how to do that. Sent out a volley of letters to anybody I thought might know and got a response from L. Sprague de Camp. He told me they got unsolicited Conan manuscripts all the time and that they were uniformly poor and summarily rejected, but that he would look at my book if that's what I wanted. I sent it to him and he liked it enough to back it for publication.


SG: What's on your launch pad right now? What's in your future?
John C. Hocking: The third Brand tale, by far the longest and most ambitious, is in Black Gate #14, which just came out. Five years back, when Howard Andrew Jones was editing the Flashing Swords e-zine, I wrote a trio of stories for him about a different set of characters. I’ve written two more tales of the Archivist and his friend Lucella, and Black Gate has accepted them. I’ve been stalled on both a novel about the Archivist and the final Brand story, Home to Midgard, but I hope to get both into action before too much longer.


SG: One of your more recent projects was co-editing a book called Detroit Noir. With a title like that, it's not hard to guess, but go ahead and tell us about the book, what's inside the covers, who published it, and where we can find it.
John C. Hocking: I love noir and hardboiled fiction almost as much as I love Sword and Sorcery. My friend Eric Olsen and I noticed that Akashic Books acclaimed Noir series featured anthologies of stories set in specific cities, yet there was no volume for Detroit. We convinced the publisher we were for real and, over the course of a couple years, solicited a fearsomely tall stack of brand new manuscripts from Detroit authors. Then we had to select and arrange our favorites into a book. The tales range from gentle mood pieces to savage hardboiled thrillers, and I was somewhat overwhelmed by the quality of the material we received. There’s work from established masters like Joyce Carol Oates and Loren D. Estleman, as well as memorable tales from authors who have gone on to make a name for themselves, like Megan Abbott and Michael Zadoorian. Desiree Cooper’s haunting Night Coming was selected for inclusion in Best African American Fiction 2010, and Estleman’s Kill the Cat was up for the Shamus Award for best private eye short story of the year. Detroit Noir is still available at many bookstores and all the major on-line booksellers.


SG: Do you consider yourself primarily a short story writer or a novelist?
John C. Hocking: Neither. I write what I can. I’d like to produce more novel length work, but the process is as arduous as the end product is uncertain of publication. Right now, shorter work suits me.


SG: Have you always been a writer, or did you come to it gradually? Or suddenly?
John C. Hocking: I’ve always been a writer, always told stories. There is little that makes me happier than learning someone who I’ve never met read and enjoyed something I wrote.


SG: Putting together a magazine is no easy task. Putting together a magazine as enormous as Black Gate must be Herculean. What inspires you to sit down every day and work on it?
John O'Neill: First, let's dispel this myth that it's "Herculean." What I do to create Black Gate is simple: I read fantasy stories, and select the ones I like the most. Nothing to it. Anyone who's read an anthology or magazine and said, "I liked these stories the best" has done what I've done.
 
Physically creating the magazine is only slightly more work. But with modern desktop publishing programs such as Quark or Microsoft Publisher, even that is a cinch. Quite a bit easier than putting together a web page, for example.
 
No, the only hard thing about producing a magazine is finding a printer, and a way to distribute and sell it. And you really only have to do that once.
 
But I'm dodging your question.
 
Yeah, it takes time -- a lot of time, in which I could be playing with my kids, or watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA with Alice. What keeps me going? There's a real joy in finding new authors -- folks like James Enge, Joe McCullough, and Peadar O Guilan -- and giving them a stage. Few people remember the editor who first discovered a promising writer.
 
But editors do. And that's enough.

Harper's Pen Finalist in The Million Writers Award

Dale Carothers' Bright Wings in the Ebony Hall (Electric Spec) has been chosen as a Notable Story in the storySouth Million Writers Award.

Congratulations to Dale for his truly excellent story. The recognition is well-deserved.

Finalist Notes - Where Virtue Lives by Saladin Ahmed

The set-up for this story is rather traditional, but Saladin handles it quite nicely. Basically, you have a jaded, older warrior in the form a ghul hunter, who takes on an eager, idealistic young apprentice, in the form of a bad-ass swordsman. They set out to rescue the wife of some villager, who was taken by a ghul.

The setting has a strong Middle Eastern flavor, described with excellent detail, firmly setting the reader down in a believable world almost from the first line. Saladin's storytelling voice is authoritative and compelling.
The jaded ghul hunter is wonderfully jaded, in that he's not some grouchy Nick Nolte character who can barely drag himself out of bed to solve another case. His "clients" still believe him to be a pious doctor of monsterology.

As does the young ascetic swordsman who comes to join him and learn to slay ghuls, at the behest of his temple. He is a pious killer in the finest paladinic tradition, seeing the world around him through a veil that only admits black and white. When they meet their first ghuls, he strikes without fear in a scene of whirling mayhem dotted with sorcerous flourishes. More magic ensues when a girl appears and attacks them with knot-blowing magic, a sort of sympathetic magic on steroids. This was, I thought, the best part of the tale. The resolution was satisfying, though I felt it came a bit too quickly, and the magic of the evil sorcerer at the center of the plot seemed weaker than the knot-blowing magic of his magically compelled accomplice.

There were, however, a few weaknesses which kept the story out of the top spot. Though the story hook is good, the adventure hook is weaker - the good doctor is asked to rescue a woman. He has no compelling reason to do so other than duty, which he secretly resents. The lack of a strong adventure hook subsequently robs the story of some of its emotional impact. This is mitigated by the relationship that builds between master and apprentice, as both learn and grow from the experience.

Also, the only monsters in the story are the ghuls, which appear briefly in the middle of the story and are quickly dispatched. As the doctor is a ghul hunter and ghul hunting is the adventure hook, I hoped the ghuls would prove to be more central to the resolution of the plot.

No Foolin'

A few of those fools foolish enough to pursue the largely thankless task of publishing fantasy short fiction (though hopefully not so thankless as once it was) seem to have chosen April Fools Day as a fine day to publish the newest issue of their fine online magazines.

New stories to be devoured at Aurora Wolf, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (eh-hm, you might notice a slightly familiar name there), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (March 25).

No foolin', do check out Living Totem by Vaughn Heppner at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. What a powerful tale! A new genre - Flint Axe & Sorcery.

Also of note, the website for Enscorceled, the University of California Berkeley student-run magazine of fantasy and sci-fi, is finally back up and running. Alas, no new content, but hopefully they will have a spring issue out soon.

Finalist Notes - Slow Stampede by Sara Genge

I decided to save the winner's notes for last. Instead, I'll begin at the top of the list, with "Slow Stampede" by Sara Genge.

"Slow Stampede" was published in Asimov's Science Fiction. When this story was first nominated, I thought, no way Asimov's published a S&S story. I was only partially right. "Slow Stampede" is best qualified as Sword and Planet. There are a couple of technological mentions in this story - a pair of binoculars, and a scientist whom a mer-woman once ate (he was delicious), and the world setting is clearly not earth-like (Eldora's low gravity) - otherwise, the overall technology is primitive. The characters fight with blades and crossbows, and caravans of behemoths stride through an enormous swamp filled with barbarian raiders, as well as muddy merpeople who dwell below the muck. The setting is well-described and thoroughly believable, from the village to the caravan, to the way the swamp elephants move and the swamp flowers bloom.

The story hook begins with a moment of tension - Raj is watching the caravan, picking out his target. The adventure hook flows from that - he is also plotting to knock off his chieftain during the raid.

The character of Raj is well drawn. He is an ambitious young man with designs upon the throne of his clan, but his mother is trying to marry him off. The merwoman he meets is sly and sultry, with plans of her own. The weakest character in the story is the hapless caravan driver, who remains nameless throughout.

The monsters are the swamp elephants, who are huge, reminding me of the Oliphaunts from Lord of the Rings. There are also merpeople, who live below the muck and pick off the weak and injured, including Raj when he is shot by one of the caravan drivers. There is plenty of exciting mayhem during the raid on the caravan.

Sara provides us with a satisfying, belieavable ending, which I won't ruin here by describing it. Suffice to say that not everything goes the way Raj had expected, yet he is able to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. Her storytelling voice is quite good, and the story does not lack for entertainment value.

What's missing? Magic. I give it some points for magic because of the nature of the world itself. There are magical creatures in the form of the merpeople. Whether or not they use actual magic is never stated, but they certainly seem magical. For that reason, and because it is such a good story, I included it in the finalists. However, without more overt magic, I couldn't award it The Harper's Pen.

And the winner is...

John C. Hocking for "The Face in the Sea," and Black Gate for publishing the best all-around Sword&Sorcery short story in 2009. In my humble opinion, of course.

Alas, there can be only one. This was not an easy decision to make. I read and reread every story, taking notes along the way, spent most of yesterday weighing my decision, then slept on it. When it came right down to it, I had to select the story I liked best and that I felt was truest to the form. But every finalist was worthy and selecting just one has taught me that the Sorcerer's Guild has its work cut out for it in 2010.

John's story is a superb example of the genre, harkening back to the master himself - REH. It hit all the points I mentioned in my previous post: two strong hooks (story and adventure); well-crafted, believable historical fantasy setting; solid characters; monsters, mayhem and magic aplenty; a satisfying ending, and an entertaining storyteller's voice.

Over the next few days, I will post my notes on each of the finalists, starting in my next post with the winning story. Meanwhile, please use the comments to send John and Black Gate your well-deserved congratulations.

Also of note, Black Gate #14 just came out. It includes another of Mr. Hocking's Brand the Viking stories.


Update:
Rather than add another post, I also want to give a few shout-outs to finalists magazines.

First, Silver Blade has to be the best-looking zine on the web. Their art is superb and I love the way they present each issue and the stories within. Reading Silver Blade is as pleasurable as reading a book, perhaps moreso.

In addition to being chock full of good stories, the production quality of Rage of the Behemoth was excellent. It's a solid book put together with professional care, excellent art, design and typography. It now has an honored place on my shelf.

Based on the quality of the two nominations sent to me from Dark Worlds 3, I'm going to have to pick up a copy and see what else it holds.

A big shout out to editor Sheila Williams and Asimov's for publishing Sara Genge's sword-and-planet story, "Slow Stampede." I'm not an enormous sci-fi fan so this magazine isn't on the top of my must-have list. But I'll be inclined to check more often now, to see what other jewels they let fall.

Another jewel of a find was Electric Spec. I happened upon Dale Carother's story almost by accident and have been taken with it ever since.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a wonderful webzine, producing a pair of quality fantasy stories twice each month. "Where Virtue Lives" was Saladin Ahmed's first published story.

I don't plan to publish my short list of stories, from which I drew the finalists, but you should know that Heroic Fantasy Quarterly had the most stories of any publisher on my short list - four. And that's out of nine total stories published in 2009. If this were baseball, they'd be millionaires with that batting average.

The judge delivered his instructions to the jury

Selecting the winner of The Harper's Pen Award is no easy task. Now that I come down to it, each of these eight stories are worthy, and my final selection, when it comes, will probably be a matter of personal taste.

Nevertheless, I thought I would outline here my thoughts about heroic fantasy and what makes for a good sword-and-sorcery story. These are the categories and what I am looking for in each:

Story hook - This is the first five paragraphs or so, in which the author grabs and holds the attention of the reader. None of the finalists would have reached the finals without a solid story hook.

Adventure hook - Different than the story hook, the adventure hook is what draws the characters into the plot and keeps them (were they not characters in the story) from walking away.

Believable, interesting setting - The setting must feel real even if it is utterly alien. It must have at least three dimensions, unless there is a good reason to have more or fewer. It must obey the laws of physics, unless there is a good reason not to. Even better if the setting is almost a character within the story, if it plays a vital role in the actions and decisions of the characters and serves as more than static backdrop to the play.

Interesting is subjective, but I don't put a lot of emphasis on settings that are entirely undreamt of. In selecting the stories for this award, I read pages and pages of chimerical worlds and heroes cobbled-together from things and ideas that have never been cobbled together before, all in some vain quest to come up with something entirely new.  Humans have been telling stories for a hundred thousand years, and most of those stories have been set in worlds intimately familiar to both the storyteller and the audience. The best new recipes are not born from never-before-tasted ingredients, they are concocted from the same ingredients put together in interesting new ways. As a reader, I am not often bedazzled by shiny things.

Engaging characters - Storytelling tells the story of people. Heroes are just people - flawed, imperfect, prone to mistakes. What makes them heroic is what they do despite their imperfections and how they go about fixing their mistakes. Neither perfect heroes nor perfect villains are interesting or believable. But what makes a character engaging is how he or she connects with the reader, and every reader is different.

Monsters - Human or otherwise, there must be monsters in heroic fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. Huge, queer hulking beasts or dainty, sprite-winged creatures, they must be more than an afterthought. They are the foil and the fodder of the hero, obstacles in the path to the big boss. Or they are unlooked-for allies and fonts of arcane knowledge to be found nowhere else. Or perhaps they are both. But there must be monsters here.

Mayhem - This is the sword in sword-and-sorcery - a hefty dollop of pulse-pounding, teeth-gritting action. People finding fairies in their cupboards might be fantasy, but it isn't heroic fantasy. Sooner or later they must draw swords and enter the fray.

Magic - Which is the sorcery part of the equation. Without magic, it's adventure fiction. I'm looking for a strong magical element which plays an important role in the action and resolution of the story.

Catharsis - Consequences that matter. The story delivers a strong emotional impact, both to the characters and to the reader, if the reader cares about the characters at all.

Satisfying end - I'm looking for a believable, complete, though not necessarily tidy ending. The villain may escape, the hero may fail, but in failing achieve some other, more desirable end, bringing the story to a satisfying close.

Storytelling voice - Vitality of delivery. This is the most difficult aspect to explain, but it's what makes a good story into a great story. The same tale, told by two different authors, can be entirely different based on nothing more than the life the storyteller breaths into the tale. Some people are just good at telling jokes, and some people are born storytellers. The best ones are able to draw upon a depth of personal experience and a profound understanding of the human puzzle. But defining it is difficult. You know it when you see it. They have a spark, a vitality that other people, telling the same story, don't.


I will announce the winner of the award by Wednesday, March 31, after which I will post why I chose that story and how the finalists fared in each of the above categories.