Angela Slatter's Blog, page 8

New collection from Brain Jar Press

From Brain Jar Press:It’s a pretty open secret that we’re gearing up to release a new Angela Slatter collection later this year. There’s news about that coming soon, but if you’re looking for some Angela Slatter fiction to slake your thirst in the meantime, might we suggest reading (or re-reading) the extraordinary Red New Day?It’s one of the first Angela Slatter books we published here at Brian Jar Press, and still one of our favourites!Find out more: https://www.brainjarpress.com/…/red-new-day-other…/Also, sign up for their newsletter for discounts on pre-orders and to learn more about The Wrong Girl and Other Warnings …

Free Book

Ghosts, brides, and vengeance! Angela Slatter’s ‘No Good Deed’ is FREE on all platforms, which means you can pick up it up for the low price of ZERO DOLLARS! If you’ve already read this one, perhaps consider spreading the word to a friend who’ll enjoy a slice of gothic fantasy.

Grab No Good Deed Today!

BLURB

Angela Slatter’s No Good Deed is a dark fantasy tale of magic, ghosts, and marriage set in her World Fantasy Award-winning Sourdough universe.

Isobel assumed her wedding would be the grandest day of her life, but when she wakes in a ghost-filled tomb still wearing her bridal veil, it’s clear events have taken an unexpected turn.

With the assistance of a vengeful spirit Isobel escapes her imprisonment, but her new husband Adolphus will not be pleased to discover his wife is alive. As Isobel comes to understand her husband’s darkest secret, the newlyweds begin a deadly dance that only one will survive.

This chapbook presents a stand-alone Sourdough story that does not appear in any of the three mosaic collections devoted to Slatter’s world of myth and magic, plus a chronology for all the publications that have appeared thus far.

BSFA Longlists

Longlists for the British Science Fiction Association Awards are out in the wild, and I’m delighted that The Path of Thorns is in the Best Novel category!

Here.

Dymocks 101 Voting

It’s time: the annual Dymocks Top 101 is open for voting … and The Path of Thorns is one of the books you can vote for … just so you know … 

Go here!

Castle Full of Blackbirds Collection

In around about June of 2023 the four-issue Castle Full of Blackbirds series will be collected together in a single volume with this amazing cover by Wylie Beckert. Story by Mike Mignola and I, internal artwork by Valeria Burzo, colour by Michelle Madsen and lettering by Clem Robins.

Variant covers for the individual issues were by Vanesa Del Rey, Marianna Strychowska, Evangeline Gallagher, and A. H. Szabla.

2022 The Year in Review

Well, that was a year. Year Three of the Plague? Who counts anymore? What even is time?

At any rate, there were good friends and family around, and there were publications – even though as I contemplated making this post, it was with my usual “I did nothing” moroseness. But I did do things, quite a lot actually.

Novel:

The Path of Thorns (Titan Books) is my love letter to Jane Eyre, Frankenstein and Dark Shadows – and and it made the Oprah Daily Top 25 Best Fantasy Books for 2022.

Comic:

I got to do something I never thought possible, and write a comic with Mike Mignola, set in the Hellboy Universe: Castle Full of Blackbirds (Dark Horse Comics). The internal artwork by Valeria Burzo and the covers by Wylie Beckert were incredible. We also had amazing variant covers by Vanesa Del Rey, Marianna Strychowska, Evangeline Gallagher, and A. H. Szabla. If I never get to do another comic again (but I really hope I do!) then I’ll be okay with that because I love this one so much, and it was a dream experience.

Novella:

The Bone Lantern (Absinthe Books) – thanks to Marie O’Regan for asking if I had anything for the 2022 Absinthe run! I got to put Selke in a wagon, travelling across the Sourdough world, meeting a werewolf, and telling tales Scheherazade-style to stay alive. It’s got a weird structure, and I’m working on the follow-up. The amazing cover is by the ever-amazing Daniele Serra.

Short Stories:

“Solivagant,” Isolation, Dan Coxon (ed.), Titan Books. Dan asked for a story about isolation – I gave him something weird and lonely. 

“Songs from Dark Annie’s Bower,” Gaslight Ghouls: Uneasy Tales of Sherlock Holmes, Monsters & Madmen, Charles Prepolec and Jeff Campbell (eds.), Belanger Books. I got another chance to bring Kit Caswell out to play with Holmes and Watson.

“The Woman Who Married the Minotaur,” Sunday Morning Transport Fran Wilde & Julian Yap (eds.). I was able to play with some favourite Greek mythology and write a sad love story.

Non-Fiction:

What To Do When You Don’t Have A Book Coming Out & Even More Sage Advice (Brain Jar Press). The Brain Jar collected a bunch more of my profanity-laden essays for your reading pleasure. As ever, apologies for the assumption that all writers drink – they don’t, but I do like to joke about it (and will continue to do so).

Translations:

It’s always a special delight to see your work getting translated into other  languages. In 2022, Of Sorrow and Such (novella) was translated into Spanish by Duermevela Ediciones, and they produced a truly beautiful version.

All the Murmuring Bones will be translated into Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Turkish, Dutch, Bulgarian and Spanish.

And The Path of Thorns will be translated into Polish!

Award shortlistings are always fun and I had some great finalist berths this year:

2022 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel: All the Murmuring Bones

2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection: The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales

2022 Locus Award for Non-Fiction: You Are Not Your Writing & Other Sage Advice

2022 Aurealis Award for Best Collection: The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales

2022 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel: All the Murmuring Bones

2022 Australian Shadows Award for Best Collected Work:The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales

I think the best “highlight finish” was the fact that David Samuels very kindly created a signature cocktail for The Path of Thorns, the Morwood!

And so to next year: in theory there will be a new short story collection (The Wrong Girl and Other Warnings – Brain Jar Press), and three short stories, including “Through the Woods, Due West” in Jonathan Strahan’s The Book of Witches and “The Tissot Family Circus” in Twice Cursed edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane. I don’t think The Briar Book of the Dead (my next Sourdough novel) will make it out until 2024 (due to publishing schedules), but it’s almost finished, so it will be out. PS Publishing will bring out a paperback version of The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners, as well as a paperback of Black-Winged Angels.

I did a LOT of teaching and it wore me out, frankly, so any teaching

Art by Kathleen Jennings

activities for 2023 will be minimal: The Art of Writing in Feb (taking a deep dive into Character), and Hidden Nerve at MARION in May. That’s it.

And that’s all, folks. Thanks to everyone who’s stuck around and been a support, and thanks to all the readers who keep me going!

The Art of Writing: Brisbane

Art by Kathleen Jennings

One of my very few teaching appearances in 2023 will be at Lisa Clifford’s The Art of Writing in Brisbane next Feb! I’ll be doing a deep-dive into creating characters.

Lisa usually runs her workshops in Florence, Italy so it’s a treat to be able to attend much closer to home. Here are the details.

The speakers for this three-day event are:

Lisa Clifford
Laurel Cohn
Literary agent Alex Adsett
Angela Slatter, author
Tabitha Bird, author

Hellboy: Castle Full of Blackbirds, Issue 3

Hellboy: Castle Full of Blackbirds, Issue #3 is out on 7 December! Here are the amazing covers – Wylie Beckert to the left, Evangeline Gallagher to the right. And there’s a sneak peek of the opening pages over at Buzz Comics!

Oprah Daily’s 25 Best Fantasy Books of 2022

To my utter surprise and delight The Path of Thorns has been listed as one of the Oprah Daily’s 25 Best Fantasy novels of 2022!

“The Path of Thorns is a dark and engrossing fairy tale with an engaging protagonist and compelling secrets lying underneath the surface.”

The full list is here.

Shirley Jackson Awards

This morning there’s some undignified dancing around the house (much to the consternation of the dogs) as All the Murmuring Bones has been nominated in the novel category of the Shirley Jackson Awards. Thanks to the team at Titan Books!

This is a particular delight because (a) it’s my first time on the SJA list and (b) there are so many friends and colleagues also there with me!

The nominees for the 2021 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter (Titan Books)

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD)

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press)

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone Publishing)

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire)

NOVELLA

Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)

Dirty Heads: A novella of cosmic coming-of-age horror by Aaron Dries (Black T-Shirt Books)

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn (Tordotcom)

A Rose / Arose by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate, translated by David Bowles (Innsmouth Free Press)

NOVELETTE

House of Crows by Lisa Unger (Amazon Original Stories)

“The Nag Bride” by A.C. Wise (The Ghost Sequences, Undertow Publications)

The Night Belongs to Us by Jess Landry (Independent Legions Publishing)

“We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It” by E. A. Petricone (Nightmare Magazine, February 2021)

The Women by Margaret Jameson (F(r)iction)

SHORT FICTION

“Dizzy in the Weeds” by L.D. Lewis (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)

“Forward, Victoria” by Carlie St. George (The Dark Magazine, April 2021)

“Gordon B. White is Creating Haunting Weird Horror” by Gordon B. White (Nightmare Magazine, July 2021)

“Human Reason” by Nicasio Andres Reed (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)

“You’ll Understand When You’re a Mom Someday” by Isabel J. Kim (kh?ré? magazine, August 2021)

  SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons: Stories by Keith Rosson (Meerkat Press)

People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull Press)

Sometimes We’re Cruel by J.A.W. McCarthy (Cemetery Gates Media)

We are Happy, We are Doomed by Kurt Fawver (Grimscribe Press)

Where All is Night, and Starless by John Linwood Grant (Trepidatio Publishing)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

Giving The Devil His Due: A Charity Anthology, edited by Rebecca Brewer (Running Wild Press)

Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, edited by Eric J. Guignard (Dark Moon Books)

Stitched Lips: An Anthology of Horror from Silenced Voices, edited by Ken MacGregor (Dragon’s Roost Press)

There Is No Death, There Are No Dead, edited by Jess Landry & Aaron J. French (Crystal Lake Publishing)

Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness, edited by dave ring (Neon Hemlock)

SPECIAL AWARD

The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc., also is committed to promoting the legacy of Shirley Jackson and, as part of this mission, will present a Special Award to Ms. Datlow in recognition of the anthology When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson (Titan Books, 2021).

Ms. Datlow was a nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award for Edited Anthology for the years 2011, 2013 (with Terri Windling), 2015, 2017, and 2019, and won the award in this category for the years 2007, 2009, and 2014.

Previous recipients of a Special Award from the Shirley Jackson Awards are Joyce Carol Oates as editor of the Library of America edition of Shirley Jackson:  Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010) and Ruth Franklin in recognition of her biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016).