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Black Gate Issue 14
I always enjoy receiving the latest issue of Black Gate, and I wish they came more often. Still, a gigantic version was a nice surprise for Issue 14, and it’s taken me quite a while to read through it. My only quibbles were the use of the scantily clad female imagery at the end of the stories; they just seemed to give the issue a cheapened feel. Also, I would have preferred something less revealing for the illustration to “Devil on the Wind”. I’m coming from a viewpoint of wanting to see Black Gate continue to gear itself towards a wide audience, age-wise, which I think has been done well to this point (such as providing warnings for stronger content).

Issue 14 had a mix of old and new authors, and I’m sure many Black Gate readers will be enthusiastic about the return of Morlock via “Destroyer,” a great novella by James Enge. My favorite story within the issue is “The Word of Azrael” by Matthew David Surridge. This was like a novel or series of novels condensed down into a single story in an impressive way; the world building was fantastic. I also want to mention another great read within the issue – “Folie and Null” by Douglas Empringham. This was a story that read really well; the narrative and flow were exceptional.

If you haven’t read this issue yet, you’re missing out. This is a good one.

Aldrom
My short story, “Aldrom,” is now available at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

What Does That Character Know?
I enjoy stories that add some complexities, depending upon me, as the reader, to use some intelligence. One component of that is the use of limited knowledge with characters. Each character’s knowledge may overlap in part with that of other characters, but knowledge is unique to each character. This is common sense, but it isn’t something that I always make use of in my writing.

While in college, I took a couple of psychology classes, and one of the interesting topics discussed was child development. I recall a study with children where children were shown a scene (perhaps from a movie or picture book) and asked to comment afterwards. The scene was something like this: Sam plays with a toy, places it in a box and leaves the room. While Sam is out of the room, Sally takes the toy out of the box, plays with it and puts it in the closet. When Sam returns, he wants to get the toy. Where will Sam look for the toy? Young children (I don’t recall the average age) will answer that he will look in the closet, not realizing that Sam doesn’t know what they know.

Now, shift this back to writing. Sam and Sally are characters in a story. We can make use of the facts Sam knows to do some interesting things but only if we trust the reader to realize Sam’s limitations. In the past, I’ve sometimes avoided this so that I wouldn’t confuse the reader, but in retrospect, I think I didn’t trust the reader enough. The danger, of course, is adding too many characters with too many facts. If I need to keep notes while I’m reading a story just to keep myself straight, I’m not going to enjoy it. That might work for text adventure games, but not for short stories.

The device of limited character knowledge can add the right degree of complexity to a story, and I encourage its use for others as well as for myself.