My story “Black Hill,” which originally appeared earlier this year in Historical Lovecraft, has now been revived in audio form thanks to the fine folks at Pseudopod. Longtime readers may recall that Pseudopod previously did an audio version of my story “The Worm That Gnaws” and knocked it completely out of the park, so I’m very excited to have them produce another of my stories.
Check out “Black Hill” here, and if you previously missed “The Worm That Gnaws” it’s still available here.
My story “The Reading Room” was originally published in Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English. It went on to get me my first-ever honorable mention from Ellen Datlow, and the anthology itself was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, so it’s a story I’m pretty proud of. It’s also going to be one of the stories in my forthcoming collection Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, and as a preview my publishers have made it available as a stand-alone story on Kindle (and Kindle apps). What’s better, it’s free for a limited time!
If you pick up this release, you not only get a sneak peek at the title illustration that the fabulous Bernie Gonzalez did for the story, but you’ll also get access to some special “bonus content” that I wrote especially for this release. All for the low, low price of $0. So, please, check it out!
It was a couple of years ago at Readercon when I first pitched the idea of a weird fungus anthology. Not to a publisher or anything, just to the writers around one of the tables in the bar. But even before that, I’d been thinking about it for a long time.
There’s a rich vein of fungal stories that runs through weird fiction, from Hodgson’s “Voice in the Night” through Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth” all the way up to Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris books and others, but, to the best of my knowledge, it’s never been mined into an anthology gathered around that theme. Until now.
When I first started writing columns for Innsmouth Free Press, one of the first movies I mentioned to Silvia was the Japanese mushroom-person classic Matango, which she said traumatized her for life. The rest, as they say, is history.
Which is all an incredibly long-winded way of saying that, after talking about it and thinking about it for years, I’m finally going to be co-editing an anthology of weird fungus stories, alongside Silvia, for Innsmouth Free Press. To say that I’m excited about this project would be the worst kind of understatement. We’ve solicited some exciting authors, the official guidelines have gone up as of yesterday, and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing lots and lots of awesome fungus stories come pouring in once the reading period begins. Between now and then–and throughout as well, I’m sure–I’ll be posting more about the anthology, about what I’m looking for as an editor, about some of my favorite fungus monsters, and so on, so stay tuned!
So much has happened in the last couple of days that I’m having trouble keeping it straight, so my lovely wife suggested that it might be wise for me to post a quick summary of it here so everyone following along at home could keep up. Or at least so I’d have something to refer back to.
First off, as you can see if you take a look around the site, my Vincent Price Halloween countdown is proceeding apace, and I’ve got a bunch more great stuff lined up for the rest of the week, so stay tuned for that!
Before I get into any of my own news, I want to quickly say a big congrats to my good friend Molly Tanzer on her recent announcement that Lazy Fascist Press will be publishing a collection of stories chronicling the cursed family of the infernal Ivybridge Twins. If you’ve read her original “Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” (first in Historical Lovecraft, then reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu) then you know why this is great news. If you haven’t, well, you’re in for a treat!
Now to less exciting news involving yours truly. First, my second column for Strange Horizons just went live. This one’s about cosmic horror in John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” which is two subjects near-and-dear to my heart. Thanks to the wonderful S.J. Chambers for facilitating that, and to Strange Horizons for having me back!
Second, I was recently invited by Scott Candey to participate in the relaunched Spookatorium podcast, and the episode featuring my contribution (a brand-new vignette called “The Big, Dark House by the Sea”) went live today. That’s me reading it, though the recording quality on my part isn’t the best, because I’ve never recorded myself before, and I turned out to not be so great at it. But the rest of the podcast is aces, full of great music and other excellent tidbits. I’m in good company, too, as the previous episode featured none other than Richard Gavin, our Vincent Price Halloween guest for today.
Finally, a couple of pieces of news relating to Candle in the Attic Window have surfaced. The micro-interview I did on the subject at Innsmouth Free Press is up, and there’s a really nice review of the book over at Shock Totem, that has some pretty lengthy and complimentary things to say about my story.
I think that’s it for now (it’s plenty, right?), but, like I said, we’ve got a lot of other cool stuff coming in the lead-up to Halloween, so stick around.
For years (since at least 2007) I’ve wanted to edit an anthology of dark fungus stories. I love fungus monsters, from William Hope Hodgson’s “Voice in the Night” to Matango to various comic books and video games to the “moldy corpse” enemies from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Fungus monsters are (some of) the best monsters, and they’re near and dear to my monster-loving heart.
Well, after all this time, I’m pleased to announce that that anthology is really happening! Back when I first started writing columns for Innsmouth Free Press, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and I had a discussion about Matango, in which I revealed that it was a favorite of mine, and she revealed that it scarred her for life. This, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I won’t trouble you with the specifics, but suffice it to say that somehow between then and now I tricked convinced them to let me co-edit (with Silvia) an anthology of fungus stories.
This’ll be my first anthology as co-editor, and I’ve already learned things I didn’t know about the process, but Silvia has been awesome and patient with me so far. It’s early days yet, so there’s not a lot I can announce, but it is really going to happen! We’ve got some really amazing writers who’ve already agreed to contribute pieces (again, sorry to tease, but they’ll have to stay under wraps for now) and big plans for the anthology, including possibly releasing a limited edition as IFP’s very first hardcover! That may not be much for now, but I promise you’ll be hearing a lot more about this one as it develops!
My first short story collection is coming out sometime early next year from Evileye Books! For most of you reading this, that’s probably not news, though the “early next year” part might be. The fact is there’s still not a date set in stone, but we’re shooting for March.
The book is going to be called Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings. It’s going to consist of ten stories, two of which are previously unpublished anywhere, one of which is my currently out-of-print novella The Mysterious Flame. It’s going to be fully illustrated by the incredible Bernie Gonzalez, who also did the cover, which you can see here. I’ve seen the illustrations, and I can say that this book is going to look amazing. Hopefully you’ll like the stories, too.
There’ll be more news about it coming down the line, but for now I can say that we’re planning to release the collection in trade paperback and e-book editions in the spring, and then later on there’ll be a limited-edition hardcover, if there’s enough demand. And here’s the part where I ask for some help. If you’re interested in the collection, and would like to stay in the loop on it, it’d help out if you dropped a line to theloop@evileyebooks.com and let them know. And if you’re a reviewer and would like to get an ARC, send an email to reviews@evileyebooks.com. Finally, if you want a copy of the limited-edition hardcover, send an email to bookclub@evileyebooks.com and let them know that you’re interested in the hardcover of my collection. None of these will commit you to anything, but it’ll help let the publisher know that the demand is there.
To say that I’m excited about this would, of course, be the grossest of understatements, and I want to say thank you to everyone who has already expressed their enthusiasm for it, and to everyone who reads this website, no matter how you got here. I’ll have more news (and other things) coming down the pipe very soon.
Those of you who were around this weekend may’ve already seen this, but it deserves a good big post of its very own. The pre-production (so not necessarily final, but probably close) front cover of my forthcoming collection Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings has been revealed:
You can go to the publisher’s site to read a little about the background that went into the cover, but for now I can tell you that the cover art is by the fabulous Bernie Gonzalez, who also did illustrations for every story in the collection (more on that later). There’ll be a lot more news and details about the collection coming down the road, but for now I wanted to share the cover with everyone.
In other news, I believe I can safely announce that I sold my story “The Labyrinth of Sleep” to the fine folks at Innsmouth Free Press for inclusion in their forthcoming Future Lovecraft anthology. Stay tuned and you’ll be hearing more about that in the near future, as well!
The website and table of contents for the first volume of The Burning Maiden, which will feature my story “Count Brass,” is up here. I’m in a really just jaw-dropping table of contents. I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here this time, though I should, but we’re talking about the likes of Cullen Bunn, Matthew Pearl, Tim Lebbon, Mike Oliveri, Jeremy Shipp, Sarah Langan, Mort Castle, and Joe Lansdale, among others! So yeah, wow!
It’s coming out this October from Evileye Books, the same folks who’re going to be publishing Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings (my collection). “Count Brass” will also be in my collection, though I sold it to them for The Burning Maiden before we’d ever started talking about the collection. Still, this means October is going to be a big, big month for me, for lots of reasons.
While I’m on the subject, you should check out the Evileye book club. It’s the only way to get the limited-edition hardcovers of their various books, including Never Bet the Devil, The Burning Maiden, Cullen Bunn’s Crooked Hills, and Mike Oliveri’s The Pack: Winter Kill, among others. There’s no commitment involved, and it also gets you access to various other special deals. Plus, even though it looks like you do, you don’t have to have a Twitter handle to sign up. Just, if you do, they do updates and stuff via Twitter.
The cover and table of contents for the second anthology from Innsmouth Free Press have been posted. As before, I’ve bolded my story, but, as before, I’m in some very august company, all of whom are well worth a look.
Dark Epistle, Jim Blackstone
Obsessions, Colleen Anderson
Stone Dogs, Paul Jessup
The Victorians, James S. Dorr
Liminal Medicine, Jesse Bullington
Nightmare, Wenona Napolitano
The Shredded Tapestry, Ryan Harvey
Desideratum, Gina Flores
The Seventh Picture, Orrin Grey
Housebound, Don D’Ammassa
Elizabeth on the Island, Josh Reynolds
At the Doorstep, Leanna Renee Hieber
The Ba-Curse, Ann K. Schwader
Broken Notes, Maria Mitchell
I Tarocchi dei d’Este, Martha Hubbard
The Malcontents, Mary E. Choo
Frozen Souls, Sarah Hans
New Archangel, Desmond Warzel
The Ascent, Berit K.N. Ellingsen
Nine Nights, Theresa Sanchez Bazelli
Vodka Attack, Meddy Ligner
The Forgotten Ones, Mary Cook
The City of Melted Iron, Bobby Cranestone
A Fixer-Upper, Amanda C. Davis
The Snow Man, E. Catherine Tobler
In His Arms in the Attic, Alexis Brooks de Vita
Hitomi, Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas
I’m very excited about this anthology. I’m a big fan of Gothic stories, and you don’t see many contemporary anthologies themed around them. At least, I don’t. So I think this is going to be something pretty special. It’s set to be released in September, so it should be out in plenty of time for your Halloween reading.
Today I can finally announce what is without a doubt the biggest news in the history of my writing career so far: My first short story collection will be coming out this October from Evileye Books. This has been in the works for a little while now, but this is the first time I’ve been able to talk about it officially. Here’s the press release, though I’ll summarize a couple of salient points below.
The collection is called Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings. An official announcement of its complete table of contents will be forthcoming, along with some other details, but it’ll feature nine stories plus my out-of-print novella The Mysterious Flame. A couple of those stories will be previously-unpublished. There will be a trade paperback edition available at launch, as well as digital editions, with plans for a special hardcover edition sometime next year. And did I mention all this is planned for October, in time for Halloween? Happy birthday to me!
I’ll have a lot more information on this between now and publication, so keep an eye on this space!
