David A. Riley's Blog, page 125
November 8, 2011
The Century's Best Horror Fiction
The following notice has hust been emailed by Cemetary Dance: (Good news to me necause my story, The Lurkers in the Abyss is in it)
The Century's Best Horror Fiction:
Two Huge Volumes!
More Than 1,700 Pages and 700,000 Words!
Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Charles Beaumont, Jack Ketchum, Gary Brandner, Dennis Etchison, Michael Bishop, Ramsey Campbell, David Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, Poppy Z. Brite, Lucy Taylor, Stephen Laws, Brian Hodge, Glen Hirshberg, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson, W.W. Jacobs, H.G. Wells, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman, Theodore Sturgeon, and nearly six dozen others!Hi Folks!
Today we're pleased to announce that The Century's Best Horror Fiction edited by John Pelan has been sent to the printer!
Cemetery Dance Publications commissioned this spectacular two-volume anthology project under the editorship of noted author and historian of the horror genre, John Pelan.
John selected one story published during each year of the 20th Century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year — all 100 stories were then collected in this amazing two volume set to be published as The Century's Best Horror Fiction.
The ground rules were simple: Only one selection per author. Only one selection per year.
Two huge volumes, one hundred authors, one hundred classic stories, more than 700,000 words of fiction — history in the making!
Booklist had this to say about about the spectacular set:
"...more powerful, more defining of what has gone on between the years 1901 and 2000 in horror fiction... horror readers will have to admit that this treasure trove will bring the realization of a dream to them as well, for there is sufficient material within the multitudinous but highly entertaining and dramatic pages of this grand publishing project to occupy many hours, weeks, even months of their time... The term "old-fashioned" flies out the window when even new readers to horror fiction taste the perfection achieved by these masters... Reading this entire second volume will acquaint even those new to horror fiction with the authors who have shaped the genre during the past 50 years."
The Century's Best Horror Fiction:
Two Huge Volumes!
More Than 1,700 Pages and 700,000 Words!
Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Charles Beaumont, Jack Ketchum, Gary Brandner, Dennis Etchison, Michael Bishop, Ramsey Campbell, David Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, Poppy Z. Brite, Lucy Taylor, Stephen Laws, Brian Hodge, Glen Hirshberg, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson, W.W. Jacobs, H.G. Wells, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman, Theodore Sturgeon, and nearly six dozen others!Hi Folks!
Today we're pleased to announce that The Century's Best Horror Fiction edited by John Pelan has been sent to the printer!
Cemetery Dance Publications commissioned this spectacular two-volume anthology project under the editorship of noted author and historian of the horror genre, John Pelan.
John selected one story published during each year of the 20th Century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year — all 100 stories were then collected in this amazing two volume set to be published as The Century's Best Horror Fiction.The ground rules were simple: Only one selection per author. Only one selection per year.
Two huge volumes, one hundred authors, one hundred classic stories, more than 700,000 words of fiction — history in the making!
Booklist had this to say about about the spectacular set:
"...more powerful, more defining of what has gone on between the years 1901 and 2000 in horror fiction... horror readers will have to admit that this treasure trove will bring the realization of a dream to them as well, for there is sufficient material within the multitudinous but highly entertaining and dramatic pages of this grand publishing project to occupy many hours, weeks, even months of their time... The term "old-fashioned" flies out the window when even new readers to horror fiction taste the perfection achieved by these masters... Reading this entire second volume will acquaint even those new to horror fiction with the authors who have shaped the genre during the past 50 years."
Swan Song
Just finished a new 7,800 page story tonight, Swan Song. Read it to Lin to see what she thougnt of it. She liked it, though she did admit that parts of it made her feel sick. Is that a sign of success?
November 7, 2011
The Eighth Black Book of Horror
Another review of this anthology, this time on the British Fantasy Society website.
There have certainly been some varied reviews of this collection, with reviewer's having some widely differing likes and dislikes.
There have certainly been some varied reviews of this collection, with reviewer's having some widely differing likes and dislikes.
The Halifax Ghost Story Festival - Dean Clough, Saturday 12th November
It's only a few days now to the Halifax Ghost Story Festival. Lin and I are going. In fact we've booked into a town centre hotel in Halifax for both Friday and Saturday nights and are looking on this as, in part, a bit of a mini-holiday.Last year's two day event was a great success and we enjoyed it immensely. This year's has a completely different list of activities, concentrating on two great writers in particular, Arthur Machen and Robert Aickman. The list of activities is:
1.30am-2.00pm:
Reggie Oliver reads "Ritual", a short story by Arthur Machen
2.00pm - 2.30pm:
Panel discussing Arthur Machen, chaired by his most recent biographer, Mark Valentine, and including Gwilym Games and Reggie Oliver.
2.30pm - 2.50pm:
Dr Mark Goodall introduces "The Happy Children" (exquisite black and white Machen short film)
Break for drinks and snacks
3.15pm - 4.00pm:
Panel discussion: Pushing the boundaries of the ghost story, with Nick Royle, John Llewellyn Probert and Chris Maloney.
4.00pm - 4.50pm:
Ray Russell introduces screening of "Three Miles Up" (adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard story) running time: 50 minutes
5.00pm - 5:50pm
Rare screening of "The Hospice" by Robert Aickman (TV adaptation starring Jack Shepherd) running time: 45 minutes
5.50pm - 6.10 pm
General discussion about the festival and the programme for next year.
6.10-6.25
Screening of a pacey short film by Ashley Thorpe
Viaduct Theatre opens for "Ghosts in 60 Seconds" (one minute playwriting festival) at 8pm. Ends 9pm
Viaduct Cafe bar open 7pm-11pm
November 6, 2011
The Year
'THE YEAR' ANTHOLOGY NEEDS YOU!!!
Screaming Dreams and Noose & Gibbet are proud to announce a joint project, simply called 'THE YEAR'. It will be published in 2013 and edited by Johnny Mains and Steve Upham. This will be an anthology which will showcase the very best writings of Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy. 52 stories, one for each week of the year...
This project will be open to submissions from today and while we are mainly focused on new, original fiction – there will be three classic reprints from each genre from different periods in that particular field's history.
As the budget for the publishers will be rather taxing, payment will be £10 and a copy of the finished book. Stories will have to be no more than 3k in length. If you're a horror writer but have always wanted to write a crime tale, give it a shot – if you're a die-hard sci-fi scribe, why not jump into the land of orcs and magic talismans. What will NOT get in the book are mash-ups, emotive vampires and sadly there will be no room at the inn for zombies. Try and stay away from the drunk, emotionally scarred detective and steampunk shenanigans. TV and film related spin off stories will also be a no-go.
The deadline will be July 1st 2012 – this will give you enough time to think of a story, write it and send it in. In the subject box put your name, title of the story and its genre. You will be informed of whether you are in the book by Sept 1st 2012. No multiple submissions allowed and the date for all authors to sign off their individual stories will be February 1st 2013 with the book being published at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton Oct 31st – Nov 3rd 2013. Due to prohibitive postage costs in sending contributor copies, story submissions will only be accepted from authors residing in the U.K. Payment and contributor copies will be sent out the week of Monday 13th November, 2013 unless authors are in attendance at the convention.
All submissions and enquiries to theyearanthology@gmail.com
Good luck!
The Editors
http://www.theyearanthology.blogspot.com/
November 1, 2011
The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror
My 1975 tale, The Satyr's Head, will be published again shortly in a reprint of the original anthology edited by David A. Sutton, The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror, from Shadow Publishing.
Original cover for the 1975 Corgi paperback:
This is from Dave Sutton's press release:
"Shadow Publishing is pleased to announce its forthcoming titles.
The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror , edited by David A. Sutton, covert art by Steve Upham. This is the first new edition of the long out of print Transworld/Corgi Book "The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror", first published in 1975. With stories by Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Joseph Payne Brennan, Eddy C. Bertin, David A. Riley and others, this new edition will bring back into print some ten chilling tales of the supernatural and the sub-human, of ghosts and demons, strange phenomena and the inexplicable"
The release goes on to detail other publications due to be released by Shadow Publishing:
"Writers from the Shadows Series . These very special collections revive the work of some of the genre writers whose work has been overshadowed and overlooked down the years.
The first of these will be The Female of the Species & Others by Richard Davis (1945-2005). The author worked in the 1970s as a script editor for the BBC's "Out of the Unknown" series and edited the first three volumes of "The Year's Best Horror Stories", published by Sphere Books, as well as editing a string of other horror and science fiction anthologies. He published a number of short stories, which have remained uncollected and this new book will remedy this. Also included will be an interview conducted with the author in 1969, in which he discusses his writing, his film "Viola" and working as story editor for "Late Night Horror" and "Out of the Unknown", plus a comprehensive introduction.
Temple of the Fox: Writers from the Shadows Series # 2 , by James Wade (1930-1983), collects a number of the author's genre short stories from the 1960s onwards. After army service James Wade settled in Korea and he wrote widely on music for a variety of periodicals. His symphonic and chamber music has been performed in many countries, and he completed an opera based on Richard E. Kim's best-selling novel of the Korean War, "The Martyred". James Wade's work includes Cthulhu Mythos, "The Deep Ones" and "A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth" and others such as "Temple of the Fox", which only ever saw print in Korea. His work has been anthologised by such noted editors, August Derleth, Ramsey Campbell and Herbert Val Thal. The collection will also contain an essay, "The Mass Media Horror", a short article first published in 1971, plus some verse and a comprehensive introduction.
The Shadow Book of Horror. An anthology of new and obscure short stories. No further details yet on the content or format. Writers may wish to contact me to receive writers' guidelines when available.
For further updates on any of the above titles, join the mailing list by completing the online form at Shadow Publishing
Original cover for the 1975 Corgi paperback:
This is from Dave Sutton's press release:
"Shadow Publishing is pleased to announce its forthcoming titles.
The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror , edited by David A. Sutton, covert art by Steve Upham. This is the first new edition of the long out of print Transworld/Corgi Book "The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror", first published in 1975. With stories by Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Joseph Payne Brennan, Eddy C. Bertin, David A. Riley and others, this new edition will bring back into print some ten chilling tales of the supernatural and the sub-human, of ghosts and demons, strange phenomena and the inexplicable"
The release goes on to detail other publications due to be released by Shadow Publishing:
"Writers from the Shadows Series . These very special collections revive the work of some of the genre writers whose work has been overshadowed and overlooked down the years.
The first of these will be The Female of the Species & Others by Richard Davis (1945-2005). The author worked in the 1970s as a script editor for the BBC's "Out of the Unknown" series and edited the first three volumes of "The Year's Best Horror Stories", published by Sphere Books, as well as editing a string of other horror and science fiction anthologies. He published a number of short stories, which have remained uncollected and this new book will remedy this. Also included will be an interview conducted with the author in 1969, in which he discusses his writing, his film "Viola" and working as story editor for "Late Night Horror" and "Out of the Unknown", plus a comprehensive introduction.
Temple of the Fox: Writers from the Shadows Series # 2 , by James Wade (1930-1983), collects a number of the author's genre short stories from the 1960s onwards. After army service James Wade settled in Korea and he wrote widely on music for a variety of periodicals. His symphonic and chamber music has been performed in many countries, and he completed an opera based on Richard E. Kim's best-selling novel of the Korean War, "The Martyred". James Wade's work includes Cthulhu Mythos, "The Deep Ones" and "A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth" and others such as "Temple of the Fox", which only ever saw print in Korea. His work has been anthologised by such noted editors, August Derleth, Ramsey Campbell and Herbert Val Thal. The collection will also contain an essay, "The Mass Media Horror", a short article first published in 1971, plus some verse and a comprehensive introduction.
The Shadow Book of Horror. An anthology of new and obscure short stories. No further details yet on the content or format. Writers may wish to contact me to receive writers' guidelines when available.
For further updates on any of the above titles, join the mailing list by completing the online form at Shadow Publishing
October 27, 2011
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!
Picked up my copy of this mass market anthology, Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! this morning from the Post Office, which strangely decided the parcel was too big for our letterbox (it isn't!)
Lovely looking 810 page book, containing some great stories by the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, etc., etc - and me.
I was surprised to see that mine is the second story in, immediately after what editor, Otto Penzler, describes as the first ever zombie story, W. B. Seabrook's Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields. In his introduction to my story Penzler quotes Hugh Lamb in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural: "...the nearest literature has yet come to creating George Romero's cinematic effects in words."
After Nightfall was first published in Weird Window edited by David A. Sutton (1970), then in The Year's Best Horror Stories edited by Richard Davis (Sphere Books, 1971). It will also be included in my collection from Noose & Gibbet next year, The Lurkers in the Abyss.
October 26, 2011
Revising Stories
I'm still working through the stories to go in Lurkers in the Abyss. While most have just need the odd alteration here and there and a few typo corrections, the longest story in it looks like needing a major overhaul to me. Out of Corruption is also the most reprinted. It was originally published in Steve Jones' Mammoth Book of Zombies in 1993 (Robinsons and Carrol & Graf). Since then this anthology has been reissued as The Giant Book of Zombies (Magpie Books, 1996), The Monster Book of Zombies (Metro Books, 2009), ttranslated into Italian in Il Ritorno Degli Zombi (Mondadori, 1994), and into Russian in ЗОМБИ (АЗБУКА, 2010).
I could leave it mostly as it is, but it looks too wordy to me now and, though deliberately set in the 1920/30s, too anachronistic, sometimes in what I now see as not a good way. So it looks like I'm going to have to spend several days going through it far more throroughly, for my own peace of mind if no one else's.
I could leave it mostly as it is, but it looks too wordy to me now and, though deliberately set in the 1920/30s, too anachronistic, sometimes in what I now see as not a good way. So it looks like I'm going to have to spend several days going through it far more throroughly, for my own peace of mind if no one else's.
October 25, 2011
The Lurkers in the Abyss
I have been working my way through my stories for the collection that Noose & Gibbet Press will be publishing next year, slightly revising them and checking for typos. Some of these stories, which I have arranged in chronological order in which they were first published, I haven't reread for more years than I care to think. It's been a fascinating voyage of rediscovery. And interesting to see how my writing style has altered so much since then.The stories are: The Lurkers in the Abyss was first published in The Eleventh Pan Book of Horror (Pan Books, 1970)After Nightfall was first published in The Year's Best Horror 1 (Sphere Books, UK and DAW Books, USA, 1971)The Farmhouse was first published in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural (Sphere Books, 1971)A Bottle of Spirits was first published in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 2 (Sphere Books, 1972)The Urn was first published in Whispers (Whispers Press, 1972)Terror on the Moors was first published in World of Horror (1974)The Shade of Apollyon was first published in World of Horror (1974)The Satyr's Head was first published in The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror (Corgi Books, 1975)Prickly was first published in Death (Playboy Paperbacks, 1982)Writer's Cramp was first published in Fantasy Tales (1988)Winter on Aubarch 6 was first published in Fear (1989)Retribution was first published in Peeping Tom (1991)The Shadow by the Altar was first published in Peeping Tom (1992)Out of Corruption was first published in The Mammoth Book of Zombies (Robinson Books, 1993)A New Lease was first published in The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural (Tiger Books, 1994)Gwargens was first published in Beyond (Parallel Universe Publications, 1995)No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought was first published in Peeping Tom (1996)Help-plants was first published in Aboriginal Science Fiction (1998)Hoody was first published in When Graveyards Yawn (Crowswing Books, 2006)Inside the Labyrinth was first published in Alone on the Darkside (ROC Books, 2006)
