Angela Slatter's Blog, page 64
January 21, 2016
Goodreads Giveaway: The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings
To celebrate the out-of-printness of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, I’m giving away a last limited edition hardcover over at Goodreads.
Go here to enter.
New Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016
Woohoo! The new Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016!
Made the cover on this one! And look at that ToC – another cracking volume from Paula Guran and Prime Books.
I love that “Ripper” is getting another outing – it’s one Kathleen Jennings and I have discussed doing as a limited edition illustrated novella at a later date.
“The Door” by Kelley Armstrong (Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong, Tachyon)
“Snow” by Dale Bailey (Nightmare, June 2015)
“1Up” by Holly Black (Press Start to Play, ed. Adams, Vintage)
“Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin (Aickman’s Heirs, ed. Strantzas, Undertow)
“The Glad Hosts” by Rebecca Campbell (Lackington’s #7)
“Hairwork” by Gemma Files (She Walks in Shadows, eds. Moreno-Garcia & Stiles, Innsmouth Free Press)
“Black Dog” by Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, William Morrow)
“A Shot of Salt Water” by Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #8)
“The Scavenger’s Nursery” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Shimmer # 24)
“Daniel’s Theory About Dolls” by Stephen Graham Jones (The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
“The Cripple and Starfish” by Caítlin R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #108)
“The Absence of Words” by Swapna Kishore (Mythic Delirium #1.3)
“Corpsemouth” by John Langan (The Monstrous, ed. Datlow, Tachyon)
“Cassandra” by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld # 102)
“Street of the Dead House” by Robert Lopresti (nEvermore, ed. Kilpatrick, EDGE)
“Mary, Mary” by Kirstyn McDermott (Cranky Ladies of History, eds. Roberts & Wessely, Fablecroft)
“There is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold” by Seanan McGuire, The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
“Below the Falls” by Daniel Mills (Nightscript 1, ed. Muller, Chthonic Matter)
“The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir (F&SF Jul-Aug)
“The Greyness” by Kathryn Ptacek (Expiration Date, ed. Kilpatrick, EDGE)
“The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” by Kelly Robson (Clarkesworld # 101)
“Those” by Sofia Samatar (Uncanny #3)
“Fabulous Beasts” by Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
“Windows Underwater” by John Shirley (Innsmouth Nightmares, ed. Gresh, PS Publishing)
“Ripper” by Angela Slatter (Horrorology, ed. Jones, Quercus)
“The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy #59)
“Sing Me Your Scars” by Damien Angelica Walters (Sing Me Your Scars, Apex)
“The Body Finder” by Kaaron Warren (Blurring the Line, ed. Young, Cohesion)
“The Devil Under the Maison Blue” by Michael Wehunt (The Dark #10)
“Kaiju maximus®: “So various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Fantasy #59)
January 20, 2016
Bitterwood first edition out of print!
Well, that’s it. The beautiful hardcover limited edition of 
Bitterwood has sold out. You might find copies with a few booksellers, but there ain’t gonna be anymore produced.
Except the paperback version is on its way! This should be available from Tartarus Press around the end of January – more details to hand as I have them. And you can still buy the ebook here.
January 19, 2016
Bitterwood over at the Melbourne Review of Books
Chris Johnstone has posted a most gorgeous review of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, which he’s called ‘an unrelenting beauty of words’ over at the Melbourne Review of Books.
So exciting!
A little bird tells me that there will be a paperback edition of Bitterwood available towards the end of February from Tartarus – more details to hand as I have them.
Occasionally, when we are all very good, the story-gods are kind to us, and they send a writer whose voice and vision are so deeply felt, so confident and so intricately imagined, that the whole of their work is a wonderment from end to end. I experienced that electric wonder-shock to the senses on first reading Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners (for example), or Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (which I read before reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for reasons that made sense at the time, but are now forgotten). And now, I find myself experiencing the feeling of wonder-shock anew. The author is Angela Slatter and the work, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. This collection of interwoven short-stories 
really is that good. I think even if I had only been allowed one page of this short story collection to use as the basis for my whole review, I’d still be recommending Angela Slatter unreservedly. The prose jumps off the page the way prose does when the person responsible is a master at their craft. Sometimes, you don’t need more than a sentence or two. Sometimes, you can just tell. But as it was, I had the luxury to be drawn in, and to step my way through all the tales within. And what tales they are.
The rest is here.
January 13, 2016
And Finnegan’s Field is out in the world …
Art by Greg Ruth
… and making people feel uncomfortable. It’s proper horror, folks.
Thanks to Ellen Datlow and Tor.com for loving it, and thanks to Irene Gallo for the superb Greg Ruth cover.
Read it here.
A Feast of Sorrows!
It’s official! My collection A Feast of Sorrow: Stories will be published by Prime Books this coming October! Thanks to Sean Wallace and Paula Guran for saying ‘yes’, and to Theodora Goss for agreeing to write the Introduction!
It’s made up mostly of reprints BUT there will be two brand spanking new, never before seen novellas in there too: “Darker Angels” and “The Tallow-Wife”.
And the cover is gorgeous – I remain very lucky with my covers!
Ze blurb:
A Feast of Sorrows—Angela Slatter’s first U.S. collection—features twelve of the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award-winning Australian author’s finest, darkest fairy tales, and adds two new novellas to her marvelous cauldron of fiction. Stories peopled by women and girls—fearless, frightened, brave, bold, frail, and fantastical—who take the paths less traveled by, accept (and offer) poisoned apples, and embrace transformation in all its forms. Reminiscent of Angela Carter at her best, Slatter’s work is both timeless and fresh: fascinating new reflections from the enchanted mirrors of fairy tales and folklore.
January 12, 2016
Soooo …
If anyone’s been paying attention to the Prime Books “Forthcoming” section (which you should, always), they might have noticed something sneaking in right at the bottom.
Just saying. More details as they come to hand.
January 11, 2016
Best Books to Read Over Summer …
Of Sorrow and Such gets a gong and makes the SMH list!
Huzzah!
Ze rest is here, and includes work by the excellent Sean Williams, Sulari Gentill, Angela Savage and Emma Viskic.
January 8, 2016
January 7, 2016
In Your Face
One of the excellent FableCroft Publishing’s 2016 projects is the In Your Face anthology, a collection of original and reprinted provocative spec-fic stories. The pozible campaign has reached its original goal (very quickly!), but there are stretch goals, people, so throw some spare shekels here.
My “Home and Hearth” (originally published as a limited edition chapbook by Spectral Press in the UK) is one of the reprints. It’s a pretty confronting story and Tehani asked what was the genesis of the tale.
Original chapbook art
It began when Simon of Spectral asked if I’d write a ghost story for his chapbook range. I’d had some ideas floating around about very young murderers and I guess it was time to put those into print because I started seeing the protagonist Caroline in my head, and her dreadful son Simon, and the little Romany ghost-boy. I’ve always wondered about parents whose children kill: what do they do? Go to any lengths to protect their little monster, or decide they’re responsible for protecting the world. I wondered what it must do to you, to know that this is your baby, they come from you and yet they’ve done something dreadful that you’d never dream of doing … what does it to do your sense of self? I wondered about what the lives of such parents become.
And Home and Hearth was born.
