east of never

 

So the second collection is out. East of Never collects a bunch of my fantasy pieces. Not so loaded with dragons and sword and sorcery, perhaps, as calling something fantasy would suggest, but still, the tales contain - here and there - elves, djinn, a fox, a fairy tale and a re-imagining of a fairy tale, and other traditional fantasy thingies. So I think it qualifies as a fantasy collection. 

Some of the tales have appeared in various publications before, some were scheduled to appear in other magazines or anthologies that ultimately never happened, and the longest piece is entirely new and rounds off the collection, bringing it to a nifty 250+ pages. A fair length for a short story collection, I feel. 

You can get yourself a copy of the paperback original here in the UK, here in the USA, and here in Canada.

Amazon also carries the book in many European countries, Australia, and Japan. 

Hope you like it, gang. 

supernatural tales 44 review

I just noticed a tidy little review of Supernatural Tales 44, which as I mentioned in my previous post, contains my short story "Ghost Stories". If you're interested and fancy a read,  here's the review.

ghost stories

It's been a while since I've had a fresh story published outside of one of my own collections. And, actually, in this case it is for wont of trying. I'd been getting fed up of chasing down editors to see if that story of mine they'd had on the slush pile/ in their "going to be included some time" folder was ever going to spread its arms wide, show some teeth, and stun the world any time soon. The record for one of my pieces being on the brink of being published is eight years and counting. So I kind of gave up subbing. Too much else was going on (see blog post "housekeeping"), and anyway, I had a viable way of getting stories out if I wanted to (see here). I was content to carry on doing my thing, as and when it was possible for me to do so - admittedly to little or no noticeable effect on the wider world. But that was okay. That was fine. Things were cool. Fight all you like, but it's hard to press your shoulder against chance and circumstance - what the ancients might have called Fate - and then dig your heels in and push and expect to get a result. So yeah, I was blithely doing what I was doing, and didn't really expect anything to change.

Cue David Longhorn.

Earlier this year a notice popped up on my twitter account saying I'd a Direct Message awaiting me. Swirling the little pointer arrow around on the screen, I opened it up. It was David, wondering if I'd anything I might like to submit to his journal (and surprisingly still one of the best kept secrets in UK speculative fiction) Supernatural Tales.

I've been lucky enough to have had a few stories appear under David's stewardship of ST. You don't turn down an opportunity to submit lightly.

Straight away I opened up the files on my PC to see if I had anything of the right flavour for David's journal. A couple of pieces looked like they might - at a push - be close enough to squeeze in, but I wasn't convinced. Mm, thunked I, it's not looking good. Nearly everything I'd written recently was either SF, fantasy, or mainstreamish-slipstreamy stuff. Then I noticed a tale I'd yet to second draft, called, somewhat appropriately, "Ghost Stories." Okay, that had  to  be worth a look. I opened the file, and much to my relief, it was. I gave it a second draft, and then cut as much as I could, and polished things up, and I'm pretty sure that I had sent it to David by close of play.

The good news - for me - was that David liked it enough to include in a future issue. And now, at least for some of us, the future has arrived. Issue 44 of Supernatural Tales contains "Ghost Stories", as well as fiction by the always excellent Steve Duffy, Victoria Day, Michael Kelly, James Machen, and Sam Dawson, who has also produced the cover art.

I can't lie. It's nice to see my stuff in the company of other writers' work again.

You can buy a paperback of Supernatural Tales 44 here. Get it as an epub ebook for ereaders here. And as a Kindle ebook here.

reading and reviewing walking horatio

“It is a privilege to be reviewed by D.F. Lewis.” Nicholas Royle.

It is. An absolute honour. Over the last years, D.F. Lewis has turned reviewing books into something like performance art, marrying criticism with literary synchronicity and real-life crossovers. The result can sometimes be stunning, infuriating, exhilarating, perplexing, and luminous all at the same time. I have had the good fortune to have had a couple of short stories reviewed by him in the past, but this is the first time he has taken his considerable talents and intellect to one of my full-length works. I am pleased that he has found something of worth in my book.

Here is his real-time review of WALKING HORATIO.

To read it via that link, you might have to click on “Leave A Comment”. But you don’t have to comment yourself. It just opens up the comments thread, where the review appeared one day at a time, over the period of his reading.

I’d just like to add my thanks not only to D.F. Lewis for taking the time to review the book in such a way, and so generously, but also to Tony Lovell for bringing the book to D.F.’s attention in the first place. During the lockdown, it’s been a genuine pleasure following the review. Thank you, both.

Here are the links to the paperback of WALKING HORATIO:

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia