2020: There Can Be No Purpose In This

In trying to figure out this post, my mind kept drifting to the early Neil Gaiman graphic novel Signal to Noise.  Excepting a couple of volumes of The Sandman, it's my favourite thing Gaiman's written, and it's always stuck with me, but I'd rather hoped that its tale of a dying writer pressing on with a final project he knows he'll never complete wouldn't ever feel as relevant as it does now.  Not that I'm dying - I mean, not that I know of - but I'm three months into a book it's unlikely I'll even be able to finish, let alone attempt to sell.  Right now, I'm writing because, with months of near-total isolation behind me and many more ahead, I've no idea what else to do with myself.  Though I've effectively been out of paying work for half a year, I have underlying health problems that make hunting a new job in the middle of a pandemic a particularly dicey move.

And so I find my brain coming back to Signal to Noise, and especially to that one quote: "Today I did something strange.  I started to write.  There can be no purpose in this.  Still, I am writing."

2020 wiped me out in pretty much every conceivable way.  But specifically for the purposes of this post, it's left my career in tatters and killed off any real possibility that I can keep writing full time, with a large percentage of my output in limbo or languishing in other ways.  No doubt that has a lot to do with the pandemic that's wrecked so much for so many, so it's not like I feel singled out, but it's hard to know to what extent the year wouldn't have still gone disastrously if it had only thrown up the usual share of mishaps and complications.

I was supposed to have six and possibly seven books out in 2020.  Only one made it, my SF novel To End All Wars, and so far the sales figures for that - a book I poured more of myself into than anything I've written and, for me, definitely among the best I've produced - have been the lowest of any I've released.  Truth be told, I've had other books not do so great, and of course it's never fun, but those didn't break my heart so hard as this one.  I feel like there's a parallel universe somewhere where To End All Wars must have found its audience and connected with a bunch of people as something pretty unique, First World War-set science fiction mysteries with gay protagonists not exactly being ten a penny.  Hopefully publisher Aethon might yet figure out how to reach that readership, but in the meantime, if you've enjoyed any of my work and not yet picked it up, maybe now's a good time to?

As for those other five books, they were all with Michael Wills and his outfit Digital Fiction, which has been my principle publisher for the last four years.  One, of course, was the fourth and final entry in the Black River series, Graduate or Die, and another was my novella Graveyard of Titans; both are finished and have been ready to go since early summer.  The other three were my debut Tales of Easie Damasco series, which Michael persuaded me to withdraw from their original publisher Angry Robot so that he could give them a fresh lick of paint and an exciting re-release.  Clearly, none of that's happened, and I'd be lying if I claimed I know why.  Michael has mostly ignored my emails since the back end of 2019, but what he has said is that he's had a tough time in the pandemic and that he's seriously considering closing Digital Fiction, which already appears to be largely shuttered.  He's also, in fairness, said he still intends to put out these five books, but won't tell me when or discuss details.  With 2020 over and not a ghost of a release date, there doesn't seem much room for optimism.

All of that bad news would have been easier to suck up if there'd been any good news to counter it.  I guess the one book I haven't mentioned, the mysterious novella I'd hoped to have announced by now, falls into that category, except that here we are and I still can't, so the best to be said on that front is that it'll hopefully be a positive note in the very near future.  As for the short fiction side of things, the year got off to a fantastic start, with Ghost Drive in new market Hybrid Fiction and Not Us going to Nightmare, along with reprint sales of Casualty of Peace to The Dark and Parasite Art being picked up for this year's NewCon Press SF best-of.  Had it gone on in that vein, I'd have been more than happy, but the last nine months have been a wasteland: there's one sale I can't reveal yet and, fingers crossed, another coming soon, but given the staggering number of hours I've put in to revising and submitting short fiction, the results are effectively a disaster.

If all of this sounds as if I'm giving up, it's not like I've much of a choice at present.  I've no writing income and no particular hope of more coming along in sufficient quantity to save me from ruin.  But I have a couple of novels finished and a couple more at first draft stage, and I've spent a lot of the last six months readying a second short story collection, compiling and polishing a bunch of work I'm especially proud of, so I guess the time will come when I make moves in those directions.  It just won't be my priority if an alternative should come along.  Even were it not for the financial pressures, I don't have the heart for it right now.  Frankly, the publishing world hasn't treated me too kindly for the most part, and that's been particularly true of the last few months.  I am, at the very least, ready for a sizable break in which I try to figure out what the hell it is I'm doing.

Fortunately, there was some good that come out of 2020 - I've finally learned some slightly more than basic cooking skills, thanks to the rather brilliant Simplycook, my oldest friend has moved to the right end of the country, and at the very least I've enjoyed writing an absurd number of anime reviews - but my professional life has mostly been one long kick to the face, and I could do without twelve more months of that.  Up until recently, the plan was to wrap up the first draft of a book no one would read and then, assuming I could do so without major risk of death, look for whatever jobs people do who've gone from being self-employed in a profession nobody respects into an employment market ravaged by months of plague and government incompetence - but given the present vaccination schedules, even that's starting to look optimistic.  So who knows, maybe this new book will end up getting finished after all, whether I want it to or not?

Not Us in Nightmare, and Other News (or the Annoying Lack Thereof)

 If you're a regular reader of the blog and have been getting frustrated with the fact that for weeks now I've been posting endless anime reviews and nothing in the way of writing news then, believe me, I share that frustration.  And the fact of the matter is that there should be news: about the fourth Black River book, Graduate or Die, which is finished and ready and yet not out for reasons I'm not privy to, and about a novella that's similarly done and dusted, and about another major project with Digital Fiction that's seemingly in limbo, if not somewhere worse.  I hope those are all still happening.  I hope they'll all be happening really damn soon.  But I don't know for a fact, because I don't have that information.  I mean, I guess that's 2020, right?  Whatever else this year has been, it most definitely hasn't been the year when things went to plan.  And obviously, the minute I have some solid and meaningful information to share, I'll be doing just that.

Fortunately, I do have another major project nearing completion, and it's immensely exiting, and by "nearing completion" I mean "pretty much just waiting for a cover" - but the other thing it's waiting for is an official announcement from the publisher, and while I sort of have permission to discuss it, I figure it'd be nicer for everyone if I hold off until they're comfortable letting the cat out of the bag.  So for the minute I'll just reiterate what I've already cryptically said: it's a genre and topic unlike anything I've attempted to cover before, but a subject matter unusually close to my heart, and it's with one of my absolutely favourite publishers, who I'm very excited indeed to be involved with.

But there is a single concrete bit of good and announce-able news, and that's my real reason for finally getting around to a proper post: in what's turned out to be a mostly crummy year for short fiction (and, let's face it, everything) one of the few legitimately brilliant things to happen was selling my story Not Us to splendid horror 'zine Nightmare.  This is my third piece there, and my shortest at a trim 3000 words, and I'm not going to say it's my best because realistically that's probably Great Black Wave, but it's definitely one of the better horror stories I've written.  I mean, if it is a horror story; I suspect it's one of those pieces that very much gives back what you bring to it, and I'm curious to see what the response will be.  At any rate, I'm always grateful when I manage to sell something this thorny and hard to categorise.

If you just want to read Not Us then - well, that's cool and all, you're certainly allowed to, but you'd be missing out on some good stuff.  Nevertheless, if you really do, you can find it at the link here, along with a podcast version read by Stefan Rudnicki.  Oh, and there's an interview with me, too, where I talk about the story a bit, but mostly ramble at excessive length about movies and comics and whatever else came into my head.  Really, though, the thing to do would be to buy the entirety of issue 97, because that way you'll also get three more stories, in the shape of Furtherest by Kaaron Warren, The Monkey Trap by Adam-Troy Castro, and The Secret Of Flight by A.C. Wise.  And needless to say, you'd also be supporting a fantastic horror fiction venue that entirely deserves to be supported.

Writing Ramble: Nothing's Ever Really Finished

 I've been thinking a lot recently about a topic I've often considered over the years, and that I may even have blogged about before now: how there's always room for improvement in writing, however far along your career is and however much you feel you've nailed down a particular piece of work.  Now, that's abundantly not to say you should never let anything go; not putting work out into the world because it's insufficiently perfect is one of the archetypal writer mistakes.  As a wise man once said, if you never get anything a bit wrong, you'll never get to subsequently feel like such a dumbass that you don't make that same mistake ever again.

No, what I'm talking about is more along the lines of returning to work after months or years and really bringing a fresh perspective.  And the reason that's been occupying my thoughts is that I've been spending a lot of my time editing up short fiction.  This began as an attempt to finally start subbing some pieces I've written in recent years and had to step away from to focus on novels - the first of those to see the light being Not Us, coming very soon in Nightmare! - but has since expanded to take in others I've been sending out without success for years and that I felt were too good to give up on.

One such is a story called Compassion Fatigue, which I've long regarded as among my best short work and been baffled and faintly annoyed as to why editors seemed to disagree.  And, look, I'm not going to turn around and say that everyone who turned it down was in the right, exactly - but returning to it certainly was an insight into how I've developed as a writer in the years since I last looked over it.  Yes, the story was good, and probably one of my best, but the execution let it down in ways both big and small.  The theme was obscured in places, where it was evident I'd left in first-draft material that ought to have been excised, attempts to wrong-foot the reader on a crucial plot point were wildly misconceived, and there was enormous repetition and overuse of certain words, something I've become extra sensitive to in recent months.

What was most striking, though, was the amount I cut.  Pro tip: shorter stories are more saleable, and 3000 to 5000 words is a definite sweet spot.  Compassion Fatigue was over 6000, and it didn't take me long to appreciate that there weren't 6000 words of narrative there.  I set out to get it down below the golden 5000 mark, but without much hope, because it was one of my better stories, wasn't it?  And surely I wouldn't have left over a thousand words flopping about when they could have been trimmed with a more judicious edit?  Well, not exactly; there was definitely some killing of darlings to be done to reclaim that lost ground.  And yet it absolutely did turn out to be possible, and more to the point, beneficial.  Some nice lines got sacrificed to the cause, if I do say so, but every one was slowing the pace or repeating points that had already been made or providing detail and texture that wasn't really necessary.  In the end, I broke my target with room to spare, and there was precisely one line I felt genuinely sad to see go, and that got cut simply because other cuts had stranded it between two paragraphs.  These things happen sometimes.

As a commercial exercise, I suspect this is a terrible waste of energy: I'd need a pro sale and then some to pay for all the hours I've poured in, and given that all the pro markets have turned it down, the odds aren't favourable.  But then, with all my major projects handed in and nothing on the horizon - yes, that's as bad news as it sounds, but a topic for another day - I have a certain amount of time to waste, and also an opportunity to decide what matters to me if I can't turn things around in the coming weeks.  Short fiction was always my first love, and I feel less inclined than ever to give up on stories I know in my heart deserve to see some success.  So fingers crossed, right?  Maybe I'll find a good home for Compassion Fatigue one of these days, and if and when that happens, it'll be a damn sight better than it would have been if I hadn't put this extra work in.

Short Fiction News June 2020

Due mostly to reasons of being crazy busy, I've been pretty lax with getting news out about my short story appearances, and only now do I realise that it's been more than six months since I last posted on the subject, which is all the worse because I actually have a ton of stuff to discuss, and a lot of it really deserved to be properly promoted at the time.  Sorry, publisher folks!

Most exciting for me, because I hardly ever get the time to write and / or edit up new fiction, I've sold a couple of brand new stories.  One of those has already been out, in the first issue of the magazine Hybrid Fiction way back in February.  As the name suggests, Hybrid's gig is fiction that mashes multiple genres together, and my piece was definitely that.  Originally written on spec for an anthology of steampunk ghost stories, the editors of which I guess didn't consider it steampunky or ghosty enough, Ghost Drive ran off with that brief to some mad places, imagining an alt-historical Victorian England waging war against its former colonies and dangerously obsessed with the Matter of Britain.  There's spiritualism and dog-fighting and airships and, in retrospect, this one was probably never going to find a home except in a market that was specifically on the look-out for demented mashups, so no doubt things worked out for the best.

My other new sale is something else entirely, though I suppose it's still not exactly a story that slots neatly into a single genre.  I mean, it's going to be appearing in the fantastic Nightmare - the first market I tried, making for one of the easiest, most satisfying sales I've ever had! - so you'd assume that it's basically horror.  And sure, that's true, but in common with a lot of my horror fiction, it's much more about people and the messes they get involved in inside their own heads than it is about blood and guts.  Not Us is my take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers template, and I dare say it's rather different from the usual approach.  Beyond that, I'd better keep schtum, because I suspect this one works better if you come at it without too much foreknowledge.  Er, not that it's out yet anyway!  More news as I have it and all that.

The rest is all reprints, but there's been a fair few of them and they're in some exciting places, so I'm not grumbling.  Top of the list has to go to Casualty of Peace - my sort-of-First-World-War sort-of-ghost story - appearing in the March issue of The Dark, in part because it was a rare occasion of being approached for a story and in part because the one I picked is high on my list of personal favourites.  Between this, its original appearance in the sixth Horror Library anthology, and popping up in Flame Tree's Lost Souls collection, I'm really pleased that it's done so well for itself - plus, this time around, it's available to read for free, so go take a look at the link above.

Elsewhere, UK zine The Future Looms has released its first-ever best of, and it contains not one but two of my stories, which happens to be the precise number of stories I've had appear in The Future Looms.  Glamorous Corpses finds reality TV taken to horrifying extremes, then mixes in a hefty dose of cyberpunk noir because why not?  And Life, Without Possibility envisages a future society that's effectively cured death and asks, what do they do with those who don't belong and who want nothing less than to live forever?  Indeed, much like life itself, they're both nasty, bleak and short - but, you know, in a good way!  Anyway, I haven't seen a copy of the collection outside of the proofs, but I've been impressed by the 'zine itself, so if you're into cyperpunk, I'm willing to bet it's worth a look.

Next up, we have my one and only crime short story in the one and only crime anthology I've appeared in - well, okay, mystery anthology, strictly speaking, what with it being called The Black Beacon Book of Mystery and everything!  And Step Light - originally picked up through some mad fluke by the excellent and venerable Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, who still send me a Christmas card to this day - is definitely a mystery, but of a rather convoluted sort.  It's actually more of a why-dunnit, and the misdeed that was misdone isn't clear until right near the end, at which point the whole shebang transforms into something else altogether.  I've only had the opportunity to glance through my contributor copy, but I was impressed by what I saw.  You can find Black Beacon Books here, and there's a brief interview here that I took part in as part of the promotion.

The next one was a real blast from the past: nearly the first magazine I was published in was The Willows, a compendium of classic-style weird tales of the sort I wrote quite a lot of in the early days (enough, anyway, to produce an entire collection out of them!)  I had three stories appear there, The Gate in the Jungle, The Facts in the Case of Algernon Whisper's Karma, and what ended up being titled The God Under the Church, and The Burning Room would have appeared there too had they not closed.  Anyway, out of the blue last year I got an e-mail from editor Ben Thomas asking if I wouldn't mind my three tales appearing in a reprint anthology of all the issues.  I wouldn't have been thrilled at the thought of early work being put out as was, but fortunately all of them had been rejigged in the time since, and Ben was happy to take the more recent versions.  My contributor copy got temporarily mislaid in the postal system, but that made it all the more of a treat when it eventually arrived, because it's awfully impressive.  The presentation is lovely and the thing is absolutely massive; you could bench press the paperback, so I daren't imagine what the hardback weighs!  You can grab either (or both) here, and if classic weird fiction is your bag, the collection's certainly a worthy investment.

And to finish on a high note, I've made it into NewCon Press's Best of British Science Fiction for the second year running!  Last year was cool and all, but that story, Cat and Mouse, as much as I was fond of it and glad to see it reprinted, was an older piece and submitted primarily because it happened to be the one science fiction story I'd had out.  This time around, I got to go with a piece I legitimately think is one of the better science fiction stories I've produced and just maybe deserves to be in the sort of fabulous company these collections provide.  Parasite Art originally appeared in Interzone, and that makes sense because it's a very Interzone-y sort of story.  My good friend and beta reader Tom Rice's response to it was "You were really channelling Phillip K Dick that day!" which is either the nicest praise or the least scathing criticism I've ever had.  It's a piece about art, and creativity, and gatekeepers, and possibly me trying to work out all of my many issues with those subjects ... but, you know, it also has a bunch of weird aliens in it, because sci-fi.  The book's out in mid-July and available for pre-order, and as ever with the NewCon anthologies I've been a part of, the line-up's one I'm thrilled to be associated with.

Short Story News, June 2016

Let's start with the big news: the hardback of The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories is out very soon from NewCon Press, I've put my illegible squiggle to all 100 copies (well, 98, it's weird to sign your own contributor copies) and more to the point I've seen it and, holy hell, this book is stunning.  Between Duncan Kay's phenomenal artwork and the work Ian Whates has put into making SitM the bestest, shiniest thing it could possibly hope to be, I'm overjoyed with how this collection has turned out.  That it also contains some of the finest short fiction I've produced seems almost trivial compared with just how lovely the whole book looks.  And feels, for that matter - because even the paper is outrageously posh.

We'll be officially launching at this year's Edgelit, but the actual release date is likely to be a little sooner than that - or, rather than wait, you can pre-order your copy here.   (As ever, if you can't stretch to the deluxe hardback, there's the paperback and e-book already available from Digital Fiction Publishing.)

After that, the next biggest piece of news is surely the fact that my story Great Black Wave is up to read (and listen to) in the latest issue of Nightmare.  This may well be the best podcast of any of my work, Stefan Rudnicki narrates extremely well indeed, so I'd start there, personally, and avoid the strain of reading all of those pesky words.  Either way, though, I'm proud of this story; it was a tough write on a difficult subject.  Great Black Wave follows a bomb disposal unit in a very near future Afghanistan, as what begins as a routine operation turns into something much darker and stranger.  That meant a fair bit of research - which I talk about in the accompanying interview - followed by a descent into some weird mental places.  And also Arcade Fire references, because why not?  At any rate - and as always - I would recommend picking up this month's Nightmare, it's a terrific magazine, and isn't that cover just about the most horrible thing ever?  Yeah, I think so.


In other release news, I have a new story out from Digital Fiction, in solo e-book format, with the anthology no doubt soon to follow.  This time around it's Black Horticulture, my stab at writing a conventional fantasy story, except in so much as it's mostly about magical gardening.  So ... um ... maybe not that conventional at all.  Anyway, you can pick it on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here, at an exceedingly reasonable price.  Oh, and I've agreed to do a bit of slush reading for Digital, who are currently open for previously published fantasy, SF and horror submissions.  So if you send something in, there's a one in three chance that I'll be the one to read it.  You have been warned!

Finally, on the anthology front, there's a table of contents now up for Far Orbit: Last Outpost.  And, with the Mysterion anthology due to arrive soon, there are extracts of stories up on the website, including one for my story Golgotha.  You can find that, along with other extracts and pre-order details, here.

2015: Lukewarm Catastrophe, Moderate Triumph

Well, I've left this rather late, haven't I?  But part of the reason for that, I think, is that I hate being vague and there's a disproportionate amount of news this year that I can't, for one reason and another, share here.

So, for example, all I can say about the beginning of the year is that something very bad indeed happened, something that threw all of my plans into chaos and had (has) the potential to end my writing career for good.  Many of those reading this, I imagine, will already know what I'm talking about, but my instinct is to not discuss a problem of such magnitude until I've managed to solve it once and for all - as, frustratingly, I still haven't almost a year later.

It seems like the rest of 2015 has been a struggle to crawl out from the shadow of that one event - if only due to the vast amount of extra work it's generated.  Nor did it help that the two projects I'd hoped to have out this year, my debut collection The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories and C21st Gods, both ran into problems outside of my control that left them drastically delayed.   Things even dried up on the short fiction sales front for a long spell in the first half of the year, and by the summer the situation was looking bleak indeed.

Which is about all of the bad news, because since then things have picked up dramatically.  Certainly those short story sales finally materialized, and in a veritable flood; 2015 turned out to be my most profitable year for short fiction yet, and by quite a margin.  There were return sales to Nightmare and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (A Killer of Dead Men, out now!), a couple of Digital Science Fiction anthologies, and that gorgeous collection from Flame Tree Publishing, amongst numerous other highlights.

As for work done, I'm about on schedule, and although it doesn't feel like it somehow, I've definitely produced more than in 2014 by quite some margin.  My medieval detective fantasy White Thorne is finished in first draft, and post-apocalyptic superhero noir The Uplifted is a couple of weeks off being at the same stage.  Between those two I managed to wedge in another sci-fi novella, Graveyard of Titans, and a handful of short stories, to a total count of somewhere around 300'000 words.  I also did considerably more editing, with the final draft of To End All Wars completed way back in January, and Degenerates and my first attempt at a crime novel The Bad Neighbour both going through their second and third drafts.

Now here we are and it's a whole new year.  Looking back, I enjoyed 2015 rather a lot; it may have seen only mixed success on the writing front, but in general my life got substantively better, as I settled into my new existence back in the north of England and starting putting down some roots.  Which, ugh, sounds kind of weird now that I read over it ... but what I mean to say is, I made new friends and got back in touch with old ones, whilst also finally finishing off my house and finding time to expand my hobbies and social life a little.  None of which probably sounds like a big deal, but when you've spent more than half a decade of your life knowing you'd likely be moving to yet another part of the country within a few months, a little stability goes a long way.

And at least a few definitely positive things are going to happen in 2016.  I'm already thrilled for the release of my debut novella Patchwerk from Tor.com in a little under two weeks from now - especially since the early reception has been strong.  The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories should be out from Spectral at around the same time, and if it isn't then I have plans in place that will hopefully ensure that it still sees the light of day sooner rather than later.  C21st Gods has a new artist tenuously attached, and there's a good chance there'll be at least an issue or two of that out before year's end.  And then there's my biggest bit of news - and the other major thing I can't talk about.  I suppose I can safely so that I've sold a new novel on pitch, that I'm going to be writing it between now and May, and that there's a solid likelihood it will be out before the end of the year.  Needless to say, this is hugely exciting for any number of reasons, but the one that I keep coming back to is that it's relaxed some of the financial strain I'm under; I now have actual income, at least for a while, and that fact alone is enough to make 2016 a much more hopeful place than 2015 ever was.

Short Story News, October 2015

Okay, I realise it's not October, but this is mostly October news so let's just close our eyes and pretend.  Except, wait, you can't read with your eyes closed and I'm not convinced I could knock out an entire blog post that way.  Um.  Let's just think October thoughts, shall we?  Maybe pretend its not quite so dark and horrible and nearly-wintery outside?  That should do it.

Now I mentioned back in my September round-up that I hadn't quite covered all of the short fiction news on the horizon, but I certainly didn't anticipate the flurry that would come almost immediately after that post went up.  But hey, flurries are good!  We like flurries.  I mean, when they're good flurries, like this one has been.  Not when they're flurries of snow.  Or fish.  Or razor blades.

Firstly there are now a few more things out there with my short stories in them.  The Coven anthology from Purple Sun Press finds the discombobulated royal guardsman from my No Rest For the Wicked (as published in the Death God's Chosen collection) on another, even weirder case, this one involving an apocalypse cult that may actually be onto something.  I can't comment much beyond that since my contributor copies literally arrived this morning, but I adore that cover image and I seem to be having a good year for anthologies, so odds are this one will be worth a look.

What I have seen copies of, because they arrived all the way from the snow-bound lands of Canadia, is Second Contacts from Bundoran Press, the cleverly-themed anthology that contains my grim but heartfelt science-fiction tale Free Radical.  Basically the idea of the collection was to foreground not stories of humans meeting aliens but how those interaction might work out ten or twenty years later, a fun notion that - based on the stories I've read so far - succeeds very well indeed.  And Free Radical, a tale of well-intentioned but ill-considered occupation with some obvious real world parallels, seems to have proven a nice fit.

Speaking of things I've actually read, I recently got through Gaia: Shadow and Breath vol. 2 from Pantheon Magazine, containing my The Hair of the Hound, and enjoyed it a great deal.  Will Manlove's A Bare Bones Outfit is, I think, the best short story I've read this year, one of those pieces that takes an idea you thought had been worn out entirely and offers it completely afresh, all wrapped up in some splendid prose.  Joshua D. Moyes's The Temporary Freedom of Clockwork Birds was another standout in a collection not exactly lacking standouts.  I'd definitely recommend this one, and it's a real shame that Pantheon aren't pushing it a little more (or, apparently, at all.)

Meanwhile, Jenny's Sick has been seen before, in Lightspeed and then the Lightspeed Year One anthology, but with all due respect to one of my favourite science-fiction 'zines, it's never been behind quite such an outrageously lovely cover as this.  It doesn't entirely show up in a flat image, but that there is a metal-inlaid hardback and this book - along with its companion volumes, Chilling Ghost Short Stories and Chilling Horror Short Stories, is something special indeed.  I mean, I don't know how it was made, though I suspect the involvement of magic, but it's indescribably lovely.  Oh, and also huge, and crammed with fantastic sci-fi stories, with a roughly half and half split between genre classics, (the whole of Flatland is in there, along with writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and Mark Twain) and more recent work.

Back in the present, I'm in this month's Urban Fantasy Magazine, both with an interview - performed by the goodly mister Pete Sutton - and a reprint of my story Bad Times to be in the Wrong Place, which originally appeared in the 250th issue of Interzone.  I confess that I floundered for a while in coming up with a story of mine that could be classed as urban fantasy, that not being a genre I've dabbled much in, but this one certainly fits - unless it's urban science fiction, which the more I think about it probably isn't a thing.

Last only because I've already talked about this particular story and this particular market recently is Across the Terminator, which was recently made available, (and still is available), as a self-contained e-book and now is also out as part of the rather gloriously named Cosmic Hooey anthology from that selfsame publisher, Digital Science Fiction.  This one I feel entitled to speak highly of, because I've read most of the stories in their individual e-book forms and enjoyed the majority, and because Digital Science Fiction are doing something extremely fun, and because it's called Cosmic Hooey, goddamnit, what more could you realistically need?

Phew!  That's a lot of stuff out in a relatively teeny piece of time - which probably means there's a drought a-coming, that being how it tends to go, but it was a good deal of fun while it lasted.  And at least I have a few bits and pieces still scheduled.  Digital Science Fiction have picked up another story for e-book release, The Painted City, as originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issue 43.  And on the new stuff front, my Afghanistan-set, Arcade Fire-inspired near future horror tale Great, Black Wave is set to mark my second appearance in John Joseph Adams's marvelous horror 'zine Nightmare.

All told, it hasn't been a bad year for short fiction.

Announcing The War of the Rats

As their officially delegated spokeshuman, it falls upon me to announce that the rat populace of the world is - as of this date, the 18th of January 2015 - declaring total war upon the human population of the Earth.  They've had enough, frankly, and they're just not going to take it any more.  Pack your bags, people, and start looking for another planet with more placid rodents, because as of tomorrow this one is officially Ratworld Prime.

No, wait, that's not at all what this post was supposed to be about.   (Shuffles notes.)

Hum.  Okay.  So, I mentioned a few incoming projects in my round-up of last year, and it was a huge relief, because all of them were things I've been getting horribly excited about for ages now and not been able to talk much about.  And, thinking about it, a couple of them still fall into that category - though hopefully for not too much longer - but there's one at least that I can finally announce, and so this is me doing just that.

Here's one of the illustrations we DIDN'T use.

The War of the Rats and Other Tales, as it's tentatively known, is my first single-author collection of short fiction.  It's coming out from Spectral Press, (you know Spectral, they get nominated for British Fantasy Awards with alarming reality and have or are due to publish work by most of the top writers in British horror,) in August of this year, in e-book, paperback and super special, limited edition hardback.  And all of those editions will include illustrations by my artist mate and long term collaborator Duncan Kay, who seems to get better by the month and is currently sending me stuff that, frankly, would make your toes curl.  Seriously, there's a reason I've wrangled Duncan into two of my major releases for this year, and that reason is that he's shockingly good at this illustrating lark.  Whatever else The War of the Rats and Other Tales is, it's going to look beautiful.

That possibly means that I run the risk of my stories being upstaged in my own first short story collection; still, if readers manage to tear their eyes from the pictures, I'm hopeful that some of my all-time best fiction is going into this thing.  I mean, we have stories that have appeared in some of my favourite markets: places like Nightmare, Bull Spec, Flash Fiction Online.  We've got a tale that was in a Stoker-nominated anthology, another that was in last year's Stoker winner, (which, by the way, also happens to be my personal choice for the best horror story I've written.)  Maybe most exciting for me, we have my Spectral novelette, previously only available in very limited edition, and a new novelette written at the end of last year especially for the collection.

That one's called The War of the Rats, funnily enough.  And it isn't about rats declaring war on humanity.  I just made all of that up.

Or ... did I?

No, I did.

Crown Thief Out in Audiobook, and Other Listenables

I've been looking forward to the Brilliance Audio adaptation of Crown Thief coming out.

As I've explained before, it would be undeniably weird and inappropriate and self-indulgent to read your own book, but no one ever said you can't listen to it.  Which is a good thing, because it's much more fun anyway, especially when you have the excellent James Langton returning to do his thing and make your book a good bit wittier and more entertaining than it ever was on the page.

I loved James's take on Giant Thief, so much so that I think it might have become the official version in my head; by the time I got to writing Prince Thief, I couldn't help noticing I'd mentally adopted James's accents for some of my major players - Marina Estrada is forever going to have an Irish lilt in my head now - and I can't wait to hear what he's made of some of the new players.  I have a feeling that his take on Synza, and one particular Synza-starring scene in particular (if you've read it, I'm sure you know which I mean*) is going to be a whole lot of fun.

Since I'm being hopelessly unrepentant about how much I enjoy podcasts of my own work, I should admit that I also recently listened to John Rubinstein's totally appropriate reading of The Sign in the Moonlight at Nightmare, and that I've made a start on Kate Baker's elegant, understated take on Across the Terminator, recently posted at the mighty Clarkesworld.


* Or, thinking about it, if you've seen the cover.

Sign in the Moonlight Out, and Other Short Story News

Considering that I'm working hell for leather (whatever the hell hell for leather means) on getting Prince Thief wrapped for its end of March deadline and Endangered Weapon B ready for July, I'm a bit surprised by how much short story stuff I seem to have going on right now.

Because even freaky ghoul kids need hobbies.

For a start, there's The Sign in the Moonlight just up at Nightmare magazine; you can read or listen to it for free here, and personally I'd go for the audio version, since in John Rubinstein they seem to have actually found an early twentieth century mountaineer to narrate this weird tale of  Tibetan adventuring amongst the Edwardian rich.  Or you can buy the full issue here for a measly $2.99, roughly the price of three quarters of a bagel in Jimmy's New York Bagelorama, and also get stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Molly Tanzer and Livia Llewellyn, along with plenty of non-fiction goodies.  Speaking of which, there's also an interview with me regarding Sign here.

Cthulhu PI.

On top of that, I've had a couple of new sales.  My main reason for submitting to new outfit 01 Publishing's inaugural anthology Whispers From the Abyss was that gorgeous cover on the right.  But having dug a little further, I think these guys are going to be seriously worth watching; they're putting out some stunning-looking books.  Anyway, my blackly comic take on Lovercraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, ridiculously titled My Friend Fishfinger, by Daisy Aged 7 - and once, long ago, my first story to appear in print, back in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #30 - should be appearing behind that lovely bit of artwork sometime soon.

Last, there's First Date, another older tale and beyond doubt the kinkiest thing I've written, so much so that I was starting to think that no publisher was ever going to embrace it's take on a near future where digital smoke and mirrors can make any sexual fantasy come to life.  So special extra thank you's to editor D F McCourt at AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review for giving it a chance; I can't wait to see what people make of this one!

Signs and Nightmares

One of my regrets this year is that I've been so busy with novels and other big projects that not have I not been able to write any new short stories, I haven't even had time to send out the ones I've already written.  In fact, until recently, the closest I've come is editing some of the backlog I've been stockpiling over the last four years.

That's changed a bit in the last couple of months, with the first draft of Prince Thief done and dusted, and the extra hard work of beginning to tout some twenty stories began to pay off last week, when John Joseph Adams accepted my The Sign in the Moonlight for his new horror webzine Nightmare.  Considering that my first sale to John, Stockholm Syndrome, appeared in the World Fantasy Award nominated anthology The Living Dead, and my second was Jenny's Sick, published in Lightspeed during its multi-Hugo nominated first year, I've got to admit I have some hopes and expectations for this one.

As for The Sign in the Moonlight itself, I'm sure I'll talk about it plenty when it comes out.  For the moment, suffice to say that it was one of the most satisfying but also bizarre writing experiences I've ever had.  Acting completely out of character, I did a ton of research - into Alesteir Crowley, rock climbing, Tibet and the mountain of Kanchenjunga, amongst other things - and the stuff I came up with was almost too perfect for the tale I wanted to tell ... so much so that I got quite spooked before I was done.  Then, once it was finished, I weirded myself out even more when I discovered that the final word count was 5555; an odd coincidence given how significantly and often the number five occurs throughout the story.

(Go on, just guess how many points that sign in the title has!)

Help Kickstart a Nightmare

It's always good when life just hands you a wacky blog title post out of nowhere.

Don't go through the scary door.

In this case, I had an e-mail earlier this week from John Joseph Adams, who you may or may not - but probably have - heard of as editor (and as of recently, publisher) of professional web magazines Lightspeed and Fantasy, not to mention any number of anthologies - one of which, The Living Dead, provided my first big short fiction break.  Turns out that John is looking towards completing his genre publishing empire by adding a little horror to that line-up, in the form of a new webzine to be known as Nightmare.

Obviously, this is very good news - because there just aren't that many pro horror markets, and John is a terrific editor, both in the sense that he puts out some fine fiction* and in the sense that he manages to achieve commercial successes in a field that people are constantly trying to declare unprofitable, unfeasible or downright dead.

Both of those points are particularly relevant here, because the reason John got in touch was that he's planning to fund the initial getting-off-the-ground of Nightmare using Kickstarter.  For anyone unfamiliar, Kickstarter is basically a method of funding creative projects, which lets people pledge potential investments, in return for rewards should the project go ahead.  In this case, the rewards are things like issues and subscriptions, or if you really have some serious cash to throw around, unique print editions and samples of John's blood and toe nail clippings**.

Basically then, the idea is that you get to read an issue of or subscribe to what will inevitably be one of the best horror magazines around, based on the facts that John knows his stuff, is already editing excellent fantasy and sci-fi magazines and has some top fiction cued up for issue one.

A completely and utterly irrelevant picture I found somewhere.

This makes an emminent amount of sense to me, so I have no problem with promoting it in whatever limited fashion I can - even though other people who were quicker off the mark than me have already helped John kickstart the crap out of his target.  Still, all that means is that if you choose to chuck a bit of money at Nightmare now, you know for sure that you'll be getting an issue / subscription / unique genetic sample.***

Anyway, here again is the official Nightmare Kickstarter link, which explains everything at least nineteen times more coherently than I just did.


* In my ridiculously biased opinion, obviously, since John also took my story Jenny's Sick for Lightspeed.
** An obvious lie on my part.
*** Still a lie.