David A. Riley's Blog, page 135

Robert Aickman - Sub Rosa

Ray Russell posted a comment to any earlier entry of mine about this magnificient Tartarus Press collection, including a link to a Youtube ad he created for it.

I thought I would place a copy of this a bit more prominently on my blog.

Happy New Year

A belated Happy New Year. Unfortunately I succumbed to the flu bug after Christmas and haven't been in to doing much posting since. I'm still not over it, hence the brevity of this posting. Hopefully, normality will return soon!

Angry Robot - Open Submission Period

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Major horror/fantasy/SF publisher, Angry Robot, have announced they will be having an open submission period for non-agented writers during the month of March next year. Click on the link I've provided for details.

Wordsworth Books - New Blog

The excellent Wordsworth Books have now created their own blog.

Wordsworth Books aren't only fantastic because of the vintage ghost or horror novels and collections they have published at really affordable prices over the past few years, but all the other marvellous books they have published too, from well known classics to ichonistic detective novels, like those of Bulldog Drummond.

And all from a tight, very small group of full-time employees.

Go over there and take a look. Of all the British publishers at the moment they are one that we should all support.

Vault of Evil's Advent Calendar 2010

The Vault of Evil's 2010 Advent Calendar has had some amazing entries so far and is well worth looking at as a respite from more traditional and more boring ones.

Every day the site's host, demonik, has uploaded pdf of various horror stories, some old (and obscure) and some much, much newer from Vault regulars like Mark Samuels, John L. Probert, Thana Niveau, Craig Herbertson and the notorious Richard Staines, plus today's pointedly anonymous entry.

Treat yourself and take a look. If you like horror you won't be disappointed.

Animated Accrington

This is a film about some of the artistic activities that have been taking place in the Accrington area this year, including my daughter, Cassandra's involvement organising the Flash Mob.

Goblin Mire - lost amongst erotica!

This dark fantasy novel was originally published as an e-book by Renaisaance E-Books several years ago. So far it's earned me nothing at all. A bit of a wasted exercise. Okay, quite a bit of a wasted exercise, in fact.

I was just checking up on the site, and it seems to have changed a lot since I last looked at it. It now goes by the name SizzlerEditions,com and appears to specialise in erotica!  Must be where the money is. And explain why my poor novel about goblins and elves isn't striking a cord with its readership.

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Dexter - Series 5

I've now watched the final episode of the fifth series of Dexter - and what a brilliant finale it was!

I can't believe how the writers and everyone else involved with this series has managed to maintain such a high standard. Series four was great enough, with the Trinity Killer and John Lithgo, and had a final episode that left more than just me in stunned silence. I knew nothing could ever quite equal this, but the final episode of the fifth series certainly had enough twists and turns and never let the viewer down in any way with high tension, drama, poignancy, sadness and, oddly enough, a feel good factor too - not something you would necessarily expect from a series about a serial killer!

It is still one of the best series ever on TV and head and shoulders above anything British TV has produced for a long time, in my opinion at least.

How to and how not to self promote

A useful link was provided on Shocklines to a piece about how writers (and others) should use the internet to self promote without becoming a downright nuisance. Some people do annoy me when all they almost ever do on various websites like shocklines or the BFS forum or elsewhere is talk about their own books and virtually never have anything to say about anything else. They should definitely take note of what Jerrod Balzer has to say about the subject.

Riley Books

I have just made some long overdue alterations to our bookshop website, which was looking decidedly untidy. Hope it looks a lot better now.

Riley Books