Michael Kelly's Blog, page 19
June 22, 2015
June 20, 2015
Selection process for Year’s Best Weird Fiction
I’ve been asked a couple times about the selection process for Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Here’s what we are doing:
I try to cast as wide a net as possible. I basically hound publishers and editors for digital copies of their books. I prefer digital files as I can load the books on my tablet and easily access them on my commute to work. That’s where the bulk of my reading takes place – on the train to and from work. 40 minutes each way. And I also read a bit on my lunch break.
I’m on the lookout for any anthologies and short story collections that may contain weird fiction. And though I do constantly hound people for books, there are quite a few times when a publisher is simply non-responsive. There’s only so much I can do.
Thus far, I have received 71 books this year for review. I’ve read about 60 of them. On top of that, there are 51 (so far) online journals and magazines that I am monitoring and reading.
If I read a story that I think should be considered for the volume, I will ask the publisher or writer for a Word document file of the story. I explain to them that I would like to pass it along to my guest editor, Simon Strantzas, for further consideration.
Once I have the file, I note it in my Excel sheet. Then I strip the byline and any other identifiers from the story and send it along to Simon. He’s reading the submissions blind.
I estimate I’ve read 1200 stories so far. I’ve passed 16 along to Simon. By the end of the process, if previous years are to go by, I will likely have read 2500 – 2800 stories and passed along between 50 – 60 for final consideration.
Though the final stories are filtered through my aesthetics and sensibilities, the guest editors are free to read on their own and to make their own choices. My tastes are wide-ranging enough, I think, to offer a good selection to draw from.
All final selections for inclusion in the anthology are the responsibility of the guest editor. It makes for an exciting and vibrant volume.
‘Aickman’s Heirs’ reviewed in the Toronto Star
‘Aickman’s Heirs,’ edited by Simon Strantzas, is reviewed in the Toronto Star, in the latest SF ‘must-reads’ column. http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/...
June 18, 2015
New review of ‘Shadows & Tall Trees’
Just ran across this review of ‘Shadows & Tall Trees.’ It’s all arty and high-falutin’, apparently. I’m okay with that. http://darkling-tales.livejournal.com...
June 14, 2015
Book giveaway
You’ve 12 days left to enter our Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win a copy of ‘Aickman’s Heirs.’
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
June 13, 2015
Advance praise for ‘Skein and Bone’
I’m in the formatting and typesetting phase of production for V.H. Leslie’s ‘Skein and Bone,’ and am getting very excited about its release. I thought I’d share some advance praise.
Advance praise for Skein and Bone:
“The strange and vivid worlds in V.H. Leslie’s stories have a nightmarish fairy tale quality to them – a pantry full of secrets, nursery wallpaper whose pattern resembles ‘a forest of umbilical cords’, a crinoline petticoat ‘like an enormous birdcage’. An absorbing and gorgeously unsettling collection.”
Alison Moore, Author of The Lighthouse (Short-Listed for the Man Booker Prize)
“A delicate and considered approach to richly imaginative stories.”
Adam Nevill, Author of No One Gets Out Alive
“Tales of quiet unease, enigmatic, beautifully told, varied and darkly poetic. Your trepidation with a V.H. Leslie story is not that you might be disappointed but rather the thrill of just how good it is going to be.”
Stephen Volk, Author of Whitstable
“V.H. Leslie’s fiction builds in intensity, but at the same time possesses a strange, silky kind of calm. Like a spider, she constructs delicate webs, and she lures you in with elegant, oblique writing. There is an almost unbearable patience to her stories, and, in the best possible sense, a horrible inevitability that shivers within them.”
Conrad Williams, Author of The Unblemished
June 9, 2015
Skein and Bone update
V.H. Leslie’s collection ‘Skein and Bone’ will have some interior illustrations by Victoria, herself. And we are also working on a print giveaway of one of Victoria’s illustrations for the first 50 people who pre-order the collection direct from Undertow Publications. I’ll have pre-order details soon.
June 2, 2015
High praise for ‘Aickman’s Heirs’
Reviewer Des Lewis has high praise for ‘Aickman’s Heirs.’
“This book as a whole is a delight, truly worthy of its connection with Aickman. And I don’t say that lightly.
These authors seem to be upon the fulcrum or cusp of the act of automatically writing with the preternatural power of Aickman within them and of simply writing their own diverse stories in his tradition. The creative tension between these two phenomena has produced a number of masterpieces in their own right and an overall communal gestalt that is stunning.
I may be wrong but this is possibly the first multi-authored anthology of explicitly Aickman-connected stories that have deliberately been put together as such with his name in its overall title. If so, it is certain to make literary history. Deservedly so, as it happens.”
Reading for Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3
Another month and another reminder that Simon Strantzas and I are reading for volume 3 of Year’s Best Weird Fiction, for work FIRST published or translated this year, 2015. I can’t stress that last part enough. 2015 work only, please.
Publishers, please send PDFs of any relevant work to bestweirdfiction (at) gmail (dot) com.
Authors, please ask your publishers to send along books to which you have contributed weird fiction.
Readers, please let us know of any work you think we should consider.
