Michael Kelly's Blog, page 4

New review of All the Fabulous Beasts

A terrific new review of “All the Fabulous Beasts,” has appeared at Teleread. https://teleread.org/2018/08/28/revie...

Review copies

Hey reviewers! And I mean legitimate reviewers for review venues. I have the following new books available for review:


 


“Nothing is Everything” by Simon Strantzas. (Trade paperback, Kindle, ePub, or PDF).


 


“Simon Strantzas’s compelling stories unfold across a liminal landscape of small towns and ordinary situations where encounters with the uncanny are often revelatory. With his latest collection, he further cements his place as a significant voice among a wave of writers who are redefining the boundaries of genre, blending a literary sensibility with a powerful sense of the possibilities for transcendence in the everyday.”


-Lynda E. Rucker, author of The Moon Will Look Strange, and You’ll Know When You Get There


 


The Silent Garden, by various. (PDF only). This volume features fiction, poetry, works in translation, and essays and criticism. It also features the very first English-language translation of Marcel Brion’s brilliant “Le Escales de la Haute Nuit,” one of the most anticipated translations ever, and a piece sure to interest anglophone readers of the Weird.

The Silent Garden – now available for pre-order

‘The Silent Garden’ pre-order

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

“The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism” is now available for pre-order. Copies are expected to ship late August / early September. The pre-order price is $45 (and includes worldwide shipping). The regular price is $50.

 

DELUXE SQUARE (8.5” X 8.5”) HARDBACK, WITH INTERIOR COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS, PRINTED ON 70LB. PAPER.

 

To pre-order visit either of these links:

 

The Silent Garden

 

https://www.thesilentgarden.com/new-p...

 

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”

– Leonora Carrington

 

The Silent Garden is a peer-reviewed journal of esoteric fabulism, edited and curated by the Silent Garden Collective, a professional group of editors, writers, and scholars interested in exploring those liminal borderlands where darkness bends.

 

The Collective’s aim is to provide an annual journal of exceptional writing and art focussed on horror and the numinous, the fabulist, the uncanny, the weird, the gnostic, the avant-garde, the esoteric, and the dark interstices of the known and unknown world.

 

Each volume of The Silent Garden will feature original, translated, and reprint fiction and non-fiction, including; film and book reviews; essays; opinion and commentary; as well as poetry and art.

 

Volume 1 features the first English-language translation of Marcel Brion’s “Les escales de la haute nuit,” a masterpiece of weird fiction, and 42 full color illustrations throughout the book.

 

The inaugural volume features the following:

 

ART

 

Transcending the Grotesquerie: The Surreal Landscapes of David Whitlam

 

NON-FICTION

 

“Translating The Ritual,” by J.T. Glover

 

“The Raw Food Movement: Comparing Transformative Diets in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2015) and Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016),” by V.H. Leslie

 

“Unstitching the Patriarchy: A review of Camilla Grudova’s The Doll’s Alphabet,” by Rudrapriya Rathore

 

“Cinema of the Body: The Politics of Performativity in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and Yorgos Lanthimo’s Dogtooth,” by Angelos Koutsourakis

 

POETRY

 

“Lincoln Hill,” by Daniel Mills

 

“Deposition of Darkness,” by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (Translated by Kristine Ong Muslim)

 

“Contortionist,” by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (Translated by Kristine Ong Muslim)

 

FICTION

 

“Waystations of the High Night,” by Marcel Brion (Translated by Edward Gauvin)

 

“Her Blood the Apples, Her Bones the Trees,” by Georgina Bruce

 

“La Tierra Blanca,” by Maurizio Cometto (Translated by Rachel S. Cordasco)

 

“Embolus of Cinnabar,” by Patricia Cram

 

“Palisade,” by Brian Evenson

 

“Under the Casket, A Beach!” by Nick Mamatas

 

“The Other Tiger,” by Helen Marshall

 

“Coruvorn” by Reggie Oliver

 

“Blood and Smoke, Vinegar and Ashes” by D.P. Watt

 

“The Palace of Force and Fire,” by Ron Weighell

 

“Nox Una,” by Marian Womack

 

Kind regards,

 

-Michael (and the Undertow team)

 

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Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award

Stunningly, “Shadows and Tall Trees, Vol. 7” has won the Shirley Jackson Award for Edited Anthology. I am truly gobsmacked.

Here’s my brief acceptance speech. Those who were in attendance can attest to the fact it was difficult for me to get through this. There were tears.

“This is a truly humbling moment. The esteem and regard in which I hold Shirley Jackson is immense, immeasurable. So, to be given an award that honours her legacy is truly a great honour. Running an independent press is a daunting task, and I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my life partner, Carolyn. Thank you, Carolyn. I love you. I’d also like to thank the Shirley Jackson jurors, the Board of Directors, and the administrative staff, especially JoAnn Cox and her tireless efforts. Thanks are due to all the contributors of Shadows and Tall Trees. I’m heartened by your belief in me and the books. And thank you to all the readers, reviewers, artists, and others who have supported the press. Finally, it’s safe to say that many of us wouldn’t be here today without the influence of Shirley Jackson. So, here’s to Shirley Jackson. May her memory be eternal.”

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ReaderCon

Friends,

Carolyn and I will be at ReaderCon. We are arriving late Thursday, but do have a Red Sox game that evening. Friday onward we’ll be around. We are not vending, but will have a limited numbers of books available at the Lethe Press table thanks to the kind and gracious Steve Berman. We look forward to seeing you all.

Simon Strantzas on his new book

It’s been four years since my last collection, and the field of horror fiction (or, at least, what I think of as horror fiction) has changed just as much as it had in the years between that previous book and the one that preceded it. During that span, the idea of Weird Fiction (note the capitals) was starting to become a thing, focused most especially (it seemed) on the works of Lovecraft, and on his Cthulhu Mythos. That last book was released, if not right at the moment Weird Fiction was getting a firm footing, then pretty close to it. I got lucky with the timing.

 

As much as I enjoyed writing the stories in that book, when the time came to start working on a followup I’d pretty much burnt myself out on Lovecraft and related works. There were only so many tentacled Old One stories in me, I guess, and as much fun as it was to play in that playground, I was itching to get out. So I started writing the stories that make up NOTHING IS EVERYTHING.

 

I’m not going to claim there’s nothing at all of Lovecraft in these stories—we all work in a continuum, after all, and are the sum of our influences—but I will say that it’s not the primary drive of any of the stories, and even then hardly the point of any.

 

It’s hard to know what to say to sell this book to people on the fence about reading it. The smart thing would be to lay it all out here and now and try to hype the book, but I don’t want to do that. I want people to read and experience the book on their own. I want them to come across its secrets organically, and see if and how it makes them feel. I want people to be surprised if these stories are able to surprise them, or be touched if the stories are able to touch them. I want people to experience the book on their own, sans as much hype as possible, if possible.

 

Since I don’t really want to talk too much about the stories themselves, let me explain that the book contains ten stories, one of which is a 30K-word novella. Of these stories, half of them have been published before, and half (including the novella) are new. What that really means, though, in terms of words, this book is about 75% new. After the last book, I promised not to write another book that was mostly new fiction, but I’ve done it again for a number of reasons, one of which being that by the time I started having the stories completed, I realized there wouldn’t be enough time to publish them elsewhere and still be able to assemble a collection for 2018, and I was eager to have a book out this year. I’d already put it off too long while editing other books and working on other projects. Plus, I don’t know, there was just something about this book that made me want to present it to the world fully formed.

 

I’m not sure how past readers of my work will take this new book. It’s not like any of the collections I’ve published before, and yet it’s a lot like them. All I can really say is I’m really proud of this one. Really proud, and really excited to share it with readers. I hope you give it a chance, and tell your friends and enemies and lovers to give it a chance. I think it’s worth your time, but I guess I would, wouldn’t I?

 

Simon Strantzas, Toronto (June 2018)

 

‘Nothing is Everything’ is now available for pre-order

 

http://www.undertowbooks.com/shop/

New reviews of All the Fabulous Beasts

Two new reviews of note for Priya Sharma’s stellar “All the Fabulous Beasts.” Please consider grabbing a coy if you haven’t already. It truly is a fabulous book. (See what I did there?)

Five Weird Books for Strange Times

All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma

NIE pre-order

Dear Friends,


 


‘Nothing is Everything’ the highly anticipated new collection from Simon Strantzas, is now available for pre-order from this site in either hardback or trade paperback. Ships in October. In due time it’ll be up on Amazon, BN.com, etc. If you take out a 2018 Undertow subscription you get all 3 of our 2018 releases, including Simon’s book, at a discount. I hope you’ll partake. It’s a great deal for some great books.
http://www.undertowbooks.com/product/...

Hardback cover reveal for Nothing is Everything

Cover reveal for the hardback edition of “Nothing is Everything” by Simon Strantzas. Art by Aron Wiesenfeld. Design by Vince Haig. @strantzas @aronwiesenfeld — with Aron Wiesenfeld – Artist,Vince Haig and Simon Strantzas.

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Back Catalogue Sale

Back Catalogue Titles on Sale!

Dear Friends,

Firstly, thanks very kindly for sticking with this newsletter. We here at Chateau Undertow appreciate it. Should you no longer wish to receive these brief missives, you can unsubscribe using the link at the bottom. We do hope you’ll stay, though, as we have some exciting news upcoming.

We are now offering a sale on select Trade paperback titles from our back catalogue. If you have any gaps in your Undertow library, now is the time to fill them. From the list below you can select any TWO trade titles for U.S. $25, OR any THREE Trade titles for U.S. $35. As always, these prices include worldwide shipping. I appreciate that many of you have most or all of our titles. Thank you! If you think there is someone who might be interested in this offer–consider it an Undertow starter pack–please do let them know.

This offer is not available through our website. Simply PayPal (U.S. funds) to undertowbooks@gmail.com, with your choice of titles. If amenable, please share this offer far and wide.

AVAILABLE TITLES

Aickman’s Heirs, edited by Simon Strantzas (Shirley Jackson Award Winner for Edited Anthology; World Fantasy Award Finalist)

Skein and Bone, by V.H. Leslie (World Fantasy Award Finalist)

Shadows and Tall Trees, Vol. 7 (Shirley Jackson Award Finalist)

Meet Me inThe Middle of The Air, by Eric Schaller (Starred Review in Publishers Weekly)

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2, edited by Kathe Koja

Almost Insentient, Almost Divine, by D.P. Watt

Singing With All My Skin and Bone, by Sunny Moraine

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3, edited by Simon Strantzas

Scratching the Surface, by Michael Kelly

I Will Surround You, by Conrad Williams

The Dream Operator, by Mike O’Driscoll

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4, edited by Helen Marshall

““““““““`

Many thanks for your continued support!

Best Wishes,

Michael and the Undertow team

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