Aurealis Awards 2015

Aurealis Awards: “Home and Hearth’ ©2014-2015 Angela Slatter/Spectral Press

See that photo above? That has brought BIG smiles to us here at Chateau Spectrale, as well as a huge boost – Angela Slatter’s Spectral chapbook Home and Hearth won in the ‘Best Horror Short Story’ category at this year’s Aurealis Awards, which were presented last weekend in a glittering ceremony in Canberra. It just goes to show that quality will always win out.

We must thank Angela for sending us the story in the first place, and trusting us with it. Plus, we must also thank the illustrious Neil Williams for providing such an atmospheric cover for it.

Onwards and upwards!!

Home and Hearth © Angela Slater/Spectral Press. Artwork © Neil Williams 2014

Review & News 02:03:2015

The first Monday of a new month and we already have a lot to get through, so here we go:

“Ricochet” by Tim Dry ©2015 Tim Dry/Theatrum Mundi. Artwork ©2015 John Oakey

We have a new review of Tim Dry’s Theatrum Mundi novella Ricochet – this one is from Chris Hall of DLS Reviews and clicking HERE will take you right to it.

PRICES INCLUDE POST AND PACKING

UK £10

EU £15

US & RoW $30

NEWS

Congratulations are due to Angela Slatter for receiving a nomination for her Spectral chapbook Home and Hearth in the prestigious Aurealis Awards. The ceremony will held in Canberra on April 11th. Good luck to Angela and to all the nominees!

Chapbooks

For those of you who have subscribed to the chapbooks and have been wondering where they are, wonder no more. Spectral is relaunching the line with a new look designed by regular Spectral graphics artist Neil Williams, and the first one will be Lisa Hannett’s eerie Smoke Billows, Soot Falls, which will be due out within the next two months. We thank all our subscribers for their incredible patience in this – we promise that the wait will have been worth it!

New books

Also, we have news about more acquisitions. The first one we would like to tell you about is The Laws of Horror, a series of interviews conducted by novelist Stephen Laws at the Manchester Festival of Fantastic Film over the years. With interviewees of the calibre of Hammer beauty Ingrid Pitt, directors Norman J. Warren, Freddie Francis, Roy Ward Baker and John Landis, plus many others, this is going to be one hell of a book.

Still with film, we are looking at issuing a regular series of small books on individual films, which are intended to analyse and provide background to whichever film it is in question. The plan at the moment is to issue six a year, but nothing has been set completely in stone yet. At present, the titles will concentrate on horror films, but if successful will eventually expand to include cult films of a genre nature.

Finally, we may be publishing some new work by artist, writer , and lecturer Stephen Bissette, who should be well known from his work on Swamp Thing and his publishing venture Spiderbaby Graphix, which issued the seminal From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

More news soon!

The Quarantined City by James Everington

Cover: Detail from Europe after the Rain, 1940–42 by Max Ernst (German, 1891–1976)
Oil on canvas, 21-9/16 x 58-3/16 in.
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1942.281
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

Available from today from both Amazon UK & US is the first episode (of six) in the latest eBook serial from Spectral Press, The Quarantined City by James Everington, and featuring a detail from Max Ernst’s 1942 painting Europe After the Rain II, with magnificent graphics skills by Neil Williams. You get your copy of the episode from here:

AMAZON UK

AMAZON US

NEWS

Also, congratulations are due to Angela Slatter on her Spectral chapbook from last year, Home and Hearth, making it on to Locus magazine’s Recommended Reading list as well as Brian Hodge’s story from The Spectral Book of Horror Stories. Congratulations all round!

Acquisitions news

“The Witch’s Scale” by Angela Slatter. Cover artwork “Hexenwippeoel” © Michael Hutter

For those with long memories, sometime ago we told you about a novella, featuring cover artwork by Michael Hutter (see above), from Angela Slatter called The Witch’s Scale – it is scheduled for publication next year, along with more novellas from women writers including Kathe Koja and at least one other who shall remain nameless for the moment while negotiations are ongoing. We are also hoping that a few more will come on-board as well.

Also coming next year, in January, will be Gary McMahon’s novella The Grieving Stones, which sees him at the top of his form. Deeply unsettling, spooky yet deliciously ambiguous, this is a story which will linger with you for a long time. We here at Spectral definitely think it’s one of his best. Additionally, its publication will mark Spectral Press’ 5th anniversary, so it’ll be good to have the author who launched the imprint with What They Hear in the Dark back once again.

Glyphotech by Mark Samuels. Cover artwork © PS Publishing

We are also very pleased to announce that Mark Samuels’ collection Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes, long out of print, will be be reissued in paperback with a new cover and bonus stories. It was originally published by PS Publishing, and Mark is one of our finest, but egregiously underrated, writers of weird fiction in the UK. We hope this new edition will go some small way of spreading his work to a wider audience.

More details of all books in due course.

News and stuff

Photo by Liz Marshall-Jones

First, here’s the publisher, Simon Marshall-Jones, holding a copy of Ray Cluley’s ice-bound novellette Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, a box of which arrived yesterday evening. This has the distinction of being the very first Theatrum Mundi title, and we couldn’t have chosen a better tale to start the new imprint with. Along with the main story, there are five bonus short stories included. Top that off with a stunning cover by the legendary Jim Burns and it all adds up to a winner.

“Within the Wind, Beneath he Snow” ©2014 Ray CluleySpectral Press. Artwork ©2014 Jim Burns

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY!

UK £15

EU £16

US & RoW $30

In January 2016, Spectral will be celebrating its FIFTH ANNIVERSARY, and to mark the occasion (amongst other things) Spectral will be publishing a novella by Gary McMahon, whose chapbook What They Hear in the Dark inaugurated the press in January 2011. Title TBC, but more details will be forthcoming within the next few months.

Also, contracts have now been exchanged with Kathe Koja for her dark fairytale The Prince of the Air, due out next year under the Theatrum Mundi imprint. Kathe has been on our ‘must-publish’ authors list ever since we began, and we were so thrilled when she agreed to let us publish something by her. Also next year, you can look forward to new works from Angela Slatter, Simon Bestwick, and Conrad Williams – 2016 is shaping up nicely already.

Don’t forget too that you can also preorder Tim Dry’s Theatrum Mundi novella Ricochet – see previous blog entry for full details.

A Duo of Reviews

Home and Hearth © Angela Slater/Spectral Press. Artwork © Neil Williams 2014

For the first time in a while, we have two reviews to link you to this morning of chapbooks. The first of them is of Angela Slatter’s Home and Hearth from Mario Guslandi and posted to  the British Fantasy Society – you can find that one HERE.

And here’s one of Simon Kurt Unsworth’s Rough Music, which we don’t think we’d come across at the time – it’s from Dreadful Tales, is written by Colum McKnight, and you can read that one HERE.

25:08:2014 – Interview, review, and news

Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris – ©2014 respective individual authors/Spectral Press. Artwork ©2014 Vincent Chong

On this Monday morning, which is a Bank Holiday for us here in the UK, we present the final mini-interview of contributors to Spectral’s forthcoming The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, conducted by Angela Slatter. So, who’s the lucky person featured today? Well, it’s Simon Marshall-Jones, the erstwhile publisher/editor/El Presidente/Dictator for Life of Spectral itself. What does he have to say? Furthermore, will it make sense to anyone? To find out, go HERE.

We’ll follow that up with a new review of the volume, by Anthony Watson and posted to his Dark Musings blog – that one can be accessed HERE.

This is going to be a very special anthology, so we really do encourage you to pre-order your copy today of this first volume in a projected annual series – ordering buttons below (if you want to pay by any other means, please contact us at spectralpress[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll happily send you details). All prices are INCLUSIVE of postage and packing:

£12.50 UK

FOR THOSE ATTENDING FANTASYCON 2014 YOU CAN ORDER AT THE SPECIAL PRICE BELOW AND PICK IT UP AT THE CONVENTION VENUE.

FCon 2014 Special £10

£15 EU

$30 US & RoW

NEWS

Don’t forget that we have a new website, which is now live and ready to use. It features a shop, from which it is easier to order books and accessories, and even has a swish postage calculation system which will work out how much postage and packing you should pay. Aside from that, there will also be the usual news and reviews, plus plenty of other material for you to read and digest. Sign up today to be alerted to new posts and other stuff. The URL is https://www.spectralpress.co.uk/

From tomorrow, both here and on the new website, we will be celebrating the life of JOEL LANE: BLACK COUNTRY PROPHET, the writer who sadly died last year at the far-too-young age of 50. Allen Ashley asked various writers and figures in the genre to choose their favourite stories of his and to write a brief introduction explaining why they chose that particular story, to be followed by the story itself. The first entry will be introduced by legendary editor/anthologiser Stephen Jones. Look out for it.

22:08:2014 – mini-interview and news

Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris – ©2014 respective individual authors/Spectral Press. Artwork ©2014 Vincent Chong

It’s Friday, the one day everybody agrees is the best day of the week, because the weekend is here! It also means that it’s time for another one of Angela Slatter’s mini-interviews of contributors to The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, and today she talks to herself about her story The October Widow. You can read it for yourself HERE.

NEWS

In other Spectral Book of Horror Stories news, the eBook edition is now available for pre-order at Amazon UK & US. Just click the links below to order your copy:

AMAZON UK

AMAZON US

Even more exciting news is the fact that the new Spectral Press website is LIVE – go HERE to have a look. We shall be blogging on THIS site for a while longer to maintain continuity but we do encourage you to go on over and sign up to get regular updates on what’s happening in the world of Spectral. The new site is much more flexible and easier to use, the shop is fully enabled, and finding what you’re looking for is also a whole lot easier. You can also contact us directly through the contact form should you have any questions.

More next week!

20:08:2014 – Stephen Laws gets the Slatter treatment

Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris – ©2014 respective individual authors/Spectral Press. Artwork ©2014 Vincent Chong

Mid-week yet again, and time once more for one of Angela Slatter’s mini-interviews of contributors to The Spectral Book of Horror Stories. Under the spotlight today is Stephen Laws, whose story The Slista appears in the book’s Table of Contents – read the exchange HERE.

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY – PUBLICATION DATE 6TH SEPTEMBER!!

This is going to be a very special anthology, so we really do encourage you to pre-order your copy today of this first volume in a projected annual series – ordering buttons below (if you want to pay by any other means, please contact us at spectralpress[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll happily send you details). All prices are INCLUSIVE of postage and packing:

£12.50 UK

FOR THOSE ATTENDING FANTASYCON 2014 YOU CAN ORDER AT THE SPECIAL PRICE BELOW AND PICK IT UP AT THE CONVENTION VENUE.

FCon 2014 Special £10

£15 EU

$30 US & RoW

18:08:2014 – Two interviews, a review, and some news

Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris – ©2014 respective individual authors/Spectral Press. Artwork ©2014 Vincent Chong

It’s Monday yet again, and that means another mini-interview of writers appearing in the inaugural volume of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories – this time the subject is Brian Hodge, whose tale Cures for a Sickened World brings together music journalism and cosmic horror in terrifying way, appears in the book. The interview can be found on Angela Slatter’s blog HERE.

The second interview is of the book’s editor Mark Morris – this one’s been put together by Paul Simpson, and appears in Sci-Fi Bulletin. Readers can find that one HERE.

And finally, here’s a short but very nice review of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories from the Book Geek – it’s right HERE if you’d like to read it.

This is going to be a very special anthology, so we really do encourage you to pre-order your copy today of this first volume in a projected annual series – ordering buttons below (if you want to pay by any other means, please contact us at spectralpress[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll happily send you details). All prices are INCLUSIVE of postage and packing:

£12.50 UK

FOR THOSE ATTENDING FANTASYCON 2014 YOU CAN ORDER AT THE SPECIAL PRICE BELOW AND PICK IT UP AT THE CONVENTION VENUE.

FCon 2014 Special £10

£15 EU

$30 US & RoW

For those who prefer eBooks, this edition of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories will appear from pre-order on Amazon this week.