Horror Zine highlights the art of Peter Coleborn! HERE
Peter designs, and in many cases creates the art, for all of the Alchemy Press’s books including Let Your Hinged Jaw Do The Talking!
Competition time!
We have five copies of Let Your Hinged Jaw Do the Talking by Tom Johnstone going free. All you need to do is answer these five simple questions. The answers can be found on this website:
Send your answers to us using this form.
The winners will be picked at random just after Halloween. Competition only open to UK addresses only (sorry).
Submissions Call for The Alchemy Press Book of the Unknown
Imagine a publication with stories set in the recognisable world – but with a shift in perspective, into the unknown. Perhaps even the unknowable. An unknown brimming with all things strange and weird … and a touch of horror. Think of stories you might have read in a magazine such as Unknown (later Unknown Worlds), edited by John W Campbell; in the pages of Fantastic, edited by Ted White; or watched in episodes of The Twilight Zone…
Think of writers such as Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Helen Marshall, Charles Beaumont, Peter Atkins, Connie Willis, Roger Zelazny, Howard Waldrop, Harlan Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Carroll… In which vein, The Alchemy Press proudly announces a call for submissions to a new forthcoming anthology: The Alchemy Press Book of the Unknown, edited by Peter…
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Launching at Fantasycon at the Jurys Inn, Birmingham on Saturday 25th September!
Q&A with Jenny Barber for Alchemy Press Book of Horrors #horror #fiction #alchemypress #anthology
Today it’s my pleasure to welcome Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards to talk about their new anthology The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors, the joys of editing, horror and short fiction!
Today sees the launch of your latest anthology The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors – what inspired you to choose the theme and what horrors can we look forward to seeing in it?
Peter: Besides the very general theme ‘horror’ the book has no theme. I feel that stories in themed anthologies, especially tightly themed ones, can become too similar. I enjoy variety. I enjoy coming across something unexpected. In this I mirror the views expressed by Mark Morris, editor of the wonderful New Fears series.
I use the word ‘horror’ as a wide catch-all net. What you will find between the covers is 25 well-written yarns that will hopefully chill you, or at the least make you…
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Bat biscuits are a thing in this house or have been today and yesterday. An assembly line process that can be messy.
Fortunately I have elves to clear up. (Well maybe make that one grumpy troll but we can’t be picky)
And the process in detail?
Why have I slaved in the kitchen for two mornings running you may ask?
Jan’s artisan Bat Biscuits are destined for The Alchemy Press Book of Horror launch at Fantasycon in Chester. The only way to get you hands on one of these fabulous goodies is to buy the even more fabulous book!
Taking up the ‘Edwards Q&A Challenge’ this week is horror writer and award winning film maker Dean Drinkel:
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR WRITING
Hi – I’m Dean. Primarily I am a horror writer but in 2016 I moved to France to write a historical film script called “The Tragedy Of The Duke Of Reichstadt” with the French writer, Romain Collier. The script won two awards at the Monaco International Film Festival. Right now I am writing a horror / historical script set at the Battle of Waterloo called “The Scum Of The Earth.” A collection of four novellas (Romain Collier, Jan Edwards, Phil Sloman and myself) I compiled / edited called “Into The Night Eternal: Tales Of French Folk Horror” has just been published electronically and very soon in paperback. I have my own small press (Demain Publishing) and currently I am editing a WW1 anthology called “The Darkest Battlefield” which will be released in November – there are then a number of smaller books we will be releasing through the ‘Short Sharp Shocks!’ and ‘Murder Mystery Mayhem’ series. Also – I have been commissioned to write two other horror films which I am, as we speak, plotting out and hopefully getting some sales in for a Christmas theme antho I previously put together for Nocturnicorn Press called “12 Dark Days: One Helluva Christmas”. Busy times! Continue reading “Dean M. Drinkel Takes the Edwards Q&A Challenge #horror #q&a #horror #deandrinkel”
TOC for The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors
There was an avalanche of stories submitted to The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors – especially in the final month of the submission’s window. To be honest, we didn’t expect to receive around 310 manuscripts seeking a home in this anthology. We were worried that we’d have too few submissions.
We read the stories as soon as possible after receiving them (but as indicated, January was a particularly busy month), maintaining a database of comments in order to narrow down to a shortlist.
Yet we managed it quickly – and then the shortlist itself needed to be pruned, and even so we couldn’t cut back to the original idea: an anthology containing a dozen stories. So we succumbed and settled on 25 stories. Without further ado, in alphabetical order (alphabetically by first name that is!), here’s what you’ll be reading in the latter part of 2018.
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The world is changing. Maybe this is so apt:
Greetings Gate, let’s Agitate. Look over your shoulder. Do you see the camera? Then dig that even as you read these words of sedition and denial you are being watched by the ever e-quisitive National Protection Agency. The National Protection Agency – omnipresent, omniscient and most ominous – which runs PanOptika, the spider at the centre of the Web.
PanOptika. What’s the slogan: watching out for the good guys by watching out for the bad guys. But what did that Roman word-slinger, Juvenal say? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: who watches the watchers?
So dig this to the extremity, cats and kittens: if we do nothing soon we must kneel, digitally-dutiful, before National Protection, and then there will be no chance to zig when the ChumBots say zag, or to beep when they say bop. Realise thou that PanOptika triumphant means we will not…
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In the light ( 🙂 ) of this week’s supermoon…
An extract from ‘Drawing Down the Moon’ – one of the creepy tales to be found in my collection Fables and Fabrications. (Available in paper and kindle formats)
***
…She breathed in ozone-laden moisture and remembered how she had stood on the hillside within the temple grounds on many such nights as for old enmity he held for her sisterhood.
Wilder elements always focused her psyche. This rite was something she had not anticipated acting out ever again, yet it was always there; waiting in the shadows for her to reach out and pluck it into the semi-light.
Kicking off her shoes she shed her coat, letting it slip free of her fingers. She unzipped her skirt and allowed it to drop around her ankles. I who have nothing, she crooned into the room’s silence, and smiled. In the old days men were crazed by the notion of spying on her order. In the old days the Sisters would have crazed any man known to risk that spying. She unbuttoned her blouse as she hummed the recent ballad, swaying her hips, taking her time, taunting. Any added emotion her audience brought to the rite was to be welcomed.
She stood tall in nothing but black chemise and composure. Long ago she would have been naked but temperature ruled against it. They would have their floor show soon enough. Let them leer, allow them anticipation.
Her lips moved, like a slow reader, not singing now but chanting. To herself first, and then more loudly as her conscious merged with the echoes of beyond. She called on the Keres, daughters of Nyx, on Mnemosyne and Bia and on Lethe, but most of all she called to Styx and to Hecate. She slipped into the ritual as a ripe and luscious strawberry slides into the rich, sweet, darkness of chocolate. She became the rite, the vessel, through which the tendrils wafting off the Veil strayed into this world.
Energised by her actions she moved to the fountain; stretching her arms toward the spigots, whirling three times in a twisted, fluid dance; aping the very water. She swayed beneath the liquid, allowing it to cascade around her neck and shoulders before throwing her head back to loose a wild ululation. She called once again upon Hecate and Styx to allow the soul departed a brief return.
From beyond the clouds she felt the pull of the moon. It called her and she called back, repeating her watery dance twice more. Then she dropped to the hard, cool floor; prostrating herself before her elementals, with arms outstretched.
Wind rattled the glass, reaching into the room and splaying the fountain’s water flow in its passing, rippling the voile curtains into horizontal.
Whilst this Thessalian woman worked her dark acts; diving into the world of shades and emerging with an act of full blown necromancy, just two pairs of eyes watched her, in thrall as the bodyguards, having washed the corpse had withdrawn; apparently not to be privy to any information the deceased might have.
Cin saw Jeno.
Cin saw her boy.
Their heads were almost touching. She saw them both look at her, and whisper to each other.
Betrayal? Was he also a man? Mid-rite she could not permit her own wants to intrude. She could not, would not, see her boy intimate with the man who killed so lightly.
The storm cut off as though a switch had been flicked. Where there had been only cloud, a harsh moonlight slotted across the untidy shagginess of blasted borders and winter lawns, glinting off the door panes and onto the woman who waited for its touch.
Cinthia swept off her eye patch to expose a puckered depression. Deliberately, elegantly, she came up to full height with arms up and rigid fingers splayed wide. She flexed each digit, clawing at the shaft of light, emitting a litany of noise from deep in her throat.
Listeners could not discern words in either Greek or English, but there was an unmistakable cadence placed on the edges of those notes that shredded nerves as surely as cat-claws down velvet curtains.
The moon’s colour changed, starting on one side and creeping across its face, growing deeper and larger than its silvery persona. It had taken on a reddish hue, hanging low, resting on the jagged horizon of surrounding rooftops; a fecund and brooding night bird waiting to drop on its prey.
Excellent review for Something Remains over at Rising Shadow .net
One of the most frequently asked questions from people who first see my Fables and Fabrications collection is ‘why the cat?’ Continue reading “So Why the Cat?”
Older Fantasycon goers amongst us will remember the annual Fcon report that appeared in the BFS Newsletter/Bulletin/Prism following Fantasycon each year.
Good words from Des Lewis for Threadbare – more reviews from Something Remains on Des’s review page
When walking to the High Street I sometimes (health allowing) make a slight detour through the church yard. It is a beautifully peaceful place whatever the season.
Something Remains
The hugely talented writer Joel Lane, best known for his dark fantasy, died far too young in 2013. He left behind him scattered notes for a myriad of stories that he’d never gotten around to writing, and it occurred to Pauline Dungate that a suitable memorial to him might be a charity anthology in which other writers used Joel’s notes as the basis for new, preferably Joel-esque stories.
I was highly honored when The Alchemy Press’s Peter Coleborn asked me to be a contributor to the anthology, and even more so when my story was accepted.
The book is not a slender tome; the e-ARC I’ve seen weighs in at a hefty 374 pages, though of course that may not be the final printed tally. All profits go to the charity Diabetes UK.
Something Remains is going to be launched at this year’s Fantasycon (23-25 September 2016), in Scarborough…
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TOC for upcoming anthology ’13 Signs’
Edited by Dean Drinkel
Published by Nocturnicorn Books
(due out end of July 2016)
I have been searching for several of my early publication credits, which I was certain lurked in the dark recesses of the house somewhere, for months – years – decades! Continue reading “Old Publications”
An excellent review for Fables and Fabrications on Murder Mayhem and More.
“Compact chronicles, seemingly distilling the detail and energy from an entire novel into a condensed, compelling form … (Edwards) expertly blends matter-of-fact everyday reality with far-fetched and fanciful notions that somehow seem entirely credible.”
The fabulous Crime and SF news and reviews site Murder Mayhem and More is running a giveaway on Facebook for a Fables and Fabrications extract as below! *Note – you need to go to this Murder Mayhem and More page to enter!
*Competition***Like&Share*
FABLES & FABRICATIONS by Jan Edwards is out this week. To celebrate its publication, we have an exclusive prize-draw competition to #win an#ebook edition of ‘Midnight Twilight’ – one of the 14 tales of mystery, mirth and the macabre included in this anthology.
Who is the distant figure who drives his sled across the arctic snowscape in the midnight hour? Is he man or myth? Find out in the bitter chill of isolation in ‘Midnight Twilight’
Like and/or Share the post over at the Murder Mayhem and More page and you’ll be in with a chance to win.
In Fables & Fabrications, Jan Edwards leads us through a world where nothing is as it seems, from the arctic wastes of Norway to a fun-filled evening at the fair. Shape changers, ancient spirits and crafty cats all play their crucial parts in stories that unsettle and disturb the reader’s perception.
Chosen from Jan’s back catalogue of horror and dark fantasy, these stories are collected here for the first time in one volume, enhanced by a sprinkling of verse. ‘Midnight Twilight’ is just one of these tales – and it’s one you could win…
This is a worldwide draw. Competition closes midnight 6 May 2016.
Good luck! Come back and check on May 7th and 8th to see if you’ve won.
Being Mayday it seems the perfect time to mention ‘Mayday Comes Askew’, just one of the fourteen stories included in Fables & Fabrications. Continue reading “Mayday Fables”
7 days to launch of Fables and Fabrications and what else does this fab collection have in store for you wonderful book-buying people? Continue reading “One Week To Wait!”
‘Damnation Seize My Soul’ , another tale appearing in Fables and Fabrications, is all about Pirates – or is it…
True, it was intended to be a straight pirate tale, but somehow it got tangled up with the age-old idea of a Universal Hero being washed through the eons on the twin currents of revenge and justice, making Mercedeys Benks a pirate with a twist.
Super review for Fables & Fabrications over at the Horror Novel Reviews site!
Fables and Fabrications is available HERE in paper and e format!
Just one month to go before the online (Facebook) launch of Fables & Fabrications! 5th May is the date to remember!
To join us for an evening of giveaway comps and chat sign up HERE !
Date for print-copy-in-you-hand launch to come!
The very first paper copy of Fables and Fabrications has reached my sticky mitts!
Continue reading “Fables and Fabrications prelim copy has arrived!”
A fabby 5* review for Leinster Gardens over in Goodreads from Tina Rath!
“The title story, Concerning the Events in Leinster Gardens, based on the reality of the false façade of 24 Leinster Gardens … sets the tone. Does Archie get his come-uppance from whatever is waiting for him in that house which isn’t a house? or is he a victim too? Or is the story all another hallucination of a mind broken by war that ends with the light from a tunnel that is indeed the headlights of an approaching train? Like many of the stories in this collection you will want to read it again, and perhaps find a wholly different interpretation.”
Full review HERE
The TOC for Winter Tales from Fox Spirit books has been released – which contains my short story ‘Shaman Red’
See full TOC HERE
Today is all about guest blogging over at Jenny Barber’s page!
Jan Edwards is a woman of many talents – writer, editor, publisher, bookseller, Reiki master, tarot reader, quilter, motorbike chick, Britain’s first female master locksmith, gardener, cook, potter and sculptor…
So, first let’s talk about Jan the writer. When did you first start writing and what genres draw you.
It always sounds like such a cliché to say I have always written, for as long as I can remember, but I suspect this is quite true with the majority of writers. I amused the family no end by talking in the third person for a week or more when I was around seven years old, because I wanted to see what I would sound like as a book and at secondary school I filled many school notebooks with fiction (mostly during lesson times). I wrote primarily for myself for years and only really started thinking about writing for publication in…
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Today I am interviewed by Nancy Hansen on her Writing at Home blog HERE
Alchemy Press titles on special offer!
We have reduced the prices of some of our limited edition titles so now is the time to buy the book you’ve been meaning to. For details of the lower prices click on the book title and scroll down the page and take advantage of the PayPal button….
Merry-Go-Round and Other Words by Bryn Forty — collects the best from the author’s oeuvre, from his first horror story publication to stories appearing here for the first time. The contents range from across the horror and science fiction fields, with a bit between.Merry-Go-Round also includes his heart-felt poetry. This limited edition hardcover comes with a moving tribute by Johnny Mains and an extra, brand new story. An essential collection.
Invent-10n by Rod Rees — Greetings Gate, let’s Agitate. Look over your shoulder. Do you see the camera? Then dig that even as you read these words of sedition and denial you are being…
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Alchemy Press article in Writing Magazine
The Alchemy Press received a nice little write-up in the September issue of Writing Magazine — on page 93 in the news section. The piece was accompanied by a few cover reproductions; we certainly do publish some lovely books!
Evocations review!
Evocations by James Brogden
The Alchemy Press (ebook), 2015
266 Pages
I was given a free copy by the publisher in exchange for a review.
BLURB
It can be boring waiting to become a ghost. New York has alligators in the sewers, but did you know that Birmingham has man-eating octopuses in its canals. What sacrifices were they prepared to offer to build the railway? What was it that crashed into the Land Rover’s front bumper? How can she escape from captivity, from a room high in a tower block? What is it that his the non-existent hand touches? Discover these chilling horrors and more.
OPENING SENTENCE
The doctors who amputated Alex’s left arm below the elbow told him he would suffer phantom pains as the nerve endings in the stump tried to keep telling his brain that something was very wrong down there (THE…
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Monsters review
Monsters by Paul Kane
The Alchemy Press (ebook), 2015
318 Pages
I was given a free copy by the publisher in exchange for a review.
BLURB
Be afraid. Be incredibly afraid…because the Monsters are here! One man starts to suffer from a strange affliction, as another seeks knowledge of the future – with dire consequences. A young boy gets more than he bargained for when he receives a unique Christmas present, while a lonely man battles creatures that live in the darkness. And as a rescue expedition finds strange animals in the jungle, one man’s wife returns from the grave to be with him once more… Vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, this collection from the imagination of award-winning and bestselling author Paul Kane has them all! Including the first reprint of ‘Dracula in Love’ in over a decade, the original short story the movie Weeping Woman was…
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Edgelit launch for Monsters and Evocations saturday 11th July
This is a (relatively) brief reminder of this weekend’s activities. We will be attending Edge Lit 4 (in the Quad in the centre of Derby) selling books and launching two new titles. Not only that, The Alchemy Press is proudly sponsoring the panel “Looking Back – How Much History Does Fantasy Fiction Need?” with Stephen Deas in the chair alongside panellists Joanne Harris, Tom Lloyd, Freda Warrington and Angus Watson. This panel starts at 11.30 am in Cinema 2.
Tickets for Edge Lit are almost gone so if you want to attend visit their website now.
In the afternoon – at 3.15 in the Green Room – we are launching two new collections: Monsters by Paul Kane and Evocations by James Brogden.
New York has alligators in its sewers; Birmingham has man-eating Octopuses in its canals. What sacrifices were offered in order to build the railway? Held captive in a…
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Monsters Book Launch with free dvd offer!
The Weeping Woman is a short film based on the story by Paul Kane. It just so happens that this tale features in Monsters, the new collection from Paul, due to be launched at next month’s Edge-Lit 4. Monsters will be available as a large-format paperback, with an introduction by Nicholas Vince and fantastic cover art by Clive Barker. Plus…
We will also launch a very limited hardcover version of Monsters — signed and numbered and limited to just 30 copies. As an added incentive, each hardcover comes with a free DVD of The Weeping Woman film., directed by Mark Steensland.
Any copies not sold at Edge Lit will be made available via this website. If you are interested keep an eye on these pages.
David A Sutton on writing.
How long have you been writing and how did you get started?
Although I’ve never earned a living professionally as a writer, I have been a writer for around 47 years. Phew. I began writing poetry and satirical pieces, the latter for a small press alternative magazine called Outside which I edited with two friends. I printed the ’zine on an old, hand-cranked Rex Rotary duplicating machine. It lasted two issues, as it was difficult to sell on the streets of Birmingham in 1966! And as a genre editor I’ve been at it almost as long – I began my fiction review fanzine Shadow in 1968.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing, and does it come in useful for your stories?
When I’m not writing I’m usually rambling – not always in the inebriated sort of way! I’m a member of Birmingham Ramblers and we…
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Jan Edwards 
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