Astrologica update

Allen Ashley, editor of our forthcoming anthology Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac, reports:

“I can now confirm more acceptances for the anthology:

‘The Order of the Scales’ by Storm Constantine for the star sign of Libra

‘The White Bull Ranch’ by Christine Morgan for the star sign Taurus

‘Cookie’ by Jet McDonald for the star sign Scorpio

‘Ragged Claws’ by Joel Lane for the star sign Scorpio

A note on the authors:

Storm Constantine is a well-known and well-respected figure on the SF/ fantasy scene. She has written more than 20 novels plus several non-fiction books. She is best known for her successful Wraeththu series. In 2003 she launched Immanion Press.

Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility and divides her writing time among many genres. A cat-lady in training, her interests include history, mythology, superheroes, crafts, and cheesy disaster movies.

Jet McDonald is a writer, musician and storyteller with big hair. His first novel ‘Automatic Safe Dog’ was published by Eibonvale Press. He likes stories about things on wheels.

Joel Lane lives in Birmingham, England. His publications in the weird fiction genre include four short story collections, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes and Where Furnaces Burn – the latter a book of supernatural crime stories set in the West Midlands – as well as a novella, ‘The Witnesses Are Gone’.

I am also very close to selecting the stories to represent the star signs Aries and Gemini. I’m really excited about how the book is taking shape. If you’ve submitted a story and haven’t heard from me, please stay patient as I am getting in touch with everybody systematically. Often with good news!”

New novella due soon

"In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair" is the quirky story of a young woman imprison in a cage, who manages to escape ... but does she end up in a worse place?

The novella will be released in a week or two as an eBook, initially for the Kindle.

Astrologica update

Update from Allen Ashley, editor of our forthcoming anthology Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac –

“Two down, ten to go! I'm pleased to report that I have made my second formal acceptance for the anthology. The story is ‘Dark Matters’ by Megan Kerr and is for Sagittarius. Megan will be familiar to you as the winner of last year’s BFS Short Story Competition and is currently working on ‘The Artist and the Mathematician’, a literary slipstream novel for which she has received a Society of Authors Grant. This is a brilliant, bravura story and I'm really glad to have Megan on board. I will be announcing further acceptances very soon.”

Pulp Heroes 2: contributors announced

Editor Mike Chinn has now announced the contents for The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2:

• Cover art – Les Edwards
• Pandora’s Box – Chico Kidd
• The Flier – Bryn Fortey
• Griffon’s Gamble – Arch Whitehouse
• Night Hunter – Pauline E Dungate
• Meeting at the Silver Dollar – Marion Pitman
• The Monster of Gorgon – Ian Hunter
• Dragon’s Breath – Anne Nicholls
• The Law of Mars – Robert William Iveniuk
• The Penge Terror – William Meikle
• Ula and the Black Book of Leng – Andrew Coulthard
• The Sons of Crystal City – Martin Gately
• Kiss the Day Goodbye – Adrian Cole
• Do Not Go Gently – Stuart Young
• The Incarceration of Captain Nebula – Mike Resnik

Publication date and launch at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton.

Urban Mythic: contributors announced

Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber, illustrious editors of The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic, are delighted to announce the final line-up: and here they are, in alphabetical order. The final arrangement is yet to be determined. As publisher, I have to say: Wow!

James Brogden – The Smith of Hockley

Joyce Chng – Dragonform Witch

Zen Cho – Fish Bowl

Graham Edwards – A Night to Forget

Jaine Fenn – Not the Territory

Christopher Golden – Under Cover of Night

Kate Griffin – An Inspector Calls

Alison Littlewood – The Song of the City

Anne Nicholls – The Seeds of a Pomegranate

Jonathan Oliver – White Horse

Mike Resnick – The Wizard of West 34th street

Gaie Sebold – Underground

Adrian Tchaikovsky – Family Business

Ian Whates – Default Reactions

Selecting the stories

The submission period for our three anthologies is now over and the editors are busy selecting the stories they wish to include. Table of contents will be posted as soon as agreed. Watch this space.

Q&A: Kari Sperring

Today, KARI SPERRING answers questions set by the editors of The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders.

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write?

 I'm a mediaeval historian (specialising in Celts) by training and a writer by instinct – I started writing aged seven and I haven't stopped since. I love swashbucklers, ancient mysteries, things and people who are not what they seem, complex worlds and intrigue, which get into everything I write. As does water; I can't account for that, but most of what I write ends up with water as a key element.

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?

Oh, goodness, that's hard ... I don't know. Maybe the court of Louis XIII or Louis XIV: I'd love to meet the real d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis.

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

That sense that the past is still there, immanent in every stone and that we are all part of the flow of history.

What do you have coming out next?

I have a sequel to The Grass King's Concubine due from DAW, probably next year. It has no final title as yet, but the working title is Death and the Madwoman

[Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to find they’d been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian and as Kari Maund published six books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history, plus one on the background to favourite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She started writing fantasy in her teens, inspired by Tolkien, Dumas and Mallory. She is the author of two novels, Living with Ghosts (DAW 2009), which won the 2010 Sydney J Bounds Award, was shortlisted for the William L Crawford Award and made the Tiptree Award Honours’ List; and The Grass King’s Concubine (DAW 2012).] 

Astrologica update

Allen Ashley, editor of forthcoming Alchemy Press anthology Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac, writes:

“That’s it, folks, the submission window has firmly closed. Firstly, I want to say a big thank you to all the authors who made the effort to get to grips with this challenging theme and who submitted stories. As an editor: without you guys, I’m nothing! In my usual blithe manner, I simply threw the idea out there and I didn’t fully appreciate that my astrological theme was actually quite a bit trickier than your average anthology. So, thank you for all your submissions. I have read all but the most recent at least once and am onto second readings for several of the pieces. I have difficult choices to make for all the signs apart from Leo, which was snaffled up by Ralph Robert Moore way back in January. Often it’s going to come down to fine margins between one story and another for any given star sign. That’s one of the tricky parts of editing, of course. Expect to hear from me during May or June; possibly even later this month if I really get my finger out!”

Meanwhile, Mike Chinn (editor of Pulp Heroes 2) and Jan Edwards & Jenny Barber (Urban Mythic) are finalising their selections -- expect to hear details soon.

Q&A: Lynn Cochrane

It’s LYNN M COCHRANE’s turn to answer questions posed by the editors of Ancient Wonders.

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write?

Challenged to describe myself in three words, I answered, "Orange headed barrel".  Now you'll recognise me anywhere (oh, and it has worked!). To quote my Scottish grandmother, I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth, though I will admit to having both children and grandchildren.

I prefer to write words. They often turn up as poems but they also appear as stories, usually hovering in the intersection of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Sometimes, the poems have tunes attached. Maybe they should be called songs.

I'm a member of Yardley Baptist Church in Birmingham where I serve as Newsletter Editor and as a member of both the Worship Team and the Preaching Team – so perhaps you should add sermons to the list of things I write!

What inspired you to write “Ringfenced”?

A photo of a standing stone, somewhere in the north-east of England, which had a ray of blue light firing straight up from its tip. Things like that burn themselves into my memory.

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?

Ness of Brodgar. From there I could get to the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, possibly also Maes Howe and Skara Brae, all on Orkney. So many questions: Are they linked, other than by location? How are they linked? Were they all in use at the same time? How were they used? Would I be able to gain and give some answers?

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

Pass the trowel ... if only! I'm fascinated by the remnants in the ground (and anything still standing above ground) and by the puzzle of what such things and buildings were used for. I'd love to take part in archaeological explorations. Perhaps the big question is how someone from the 21st century would cope if they were dropped into the relevant point in time and space.

What do you have coming out next?

I'm always writing poems. It's almost as if they catch hold of my hands and won't let go until they've been attached to paper or the current electronic equivalent. I'm working on some short stories, a couple of which may well end up being rather longer – novellas or even novels; who knows? I also edit the showcase anthology for Cannon Hill Writers' Group, Salvo, and its new little sibling, Grapeshot.

[Lynn M Cochrane lives in the outskirts of Birmingham. She has been writing most of her life and has produced three collections of poems. She has had short stories published in convention publications and in Raw Edge, the West Midlands Arts publication. She is a member of Cannon Hill Writers’ Group, leading writing workshops from time to time.]

Q&A: Anne Nicholls

Today, under the Ancient Wonders spotlight is ANNE NICHOLLS.

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write?

I love a good story: thrills, adventures, heroism, the writing of wrongs.

What inspired you to write “Dragonsbridge”?

I wrote “Dragonsbridge” after I got back from a great little fantasy convention called Les Féeries du Bocage, held in a friendly village in rolling French countryside an hour south of Paris. We were sat next to Pierre Dubois, a famous TV presenter of all things to do with Arthurian romance, which was what I did my thesis on. And of course we were quite close to the forest of Brocéliande, which I looked up on Google Earth. Hmm, hidden valley, Celtic deities, portals to Otherworlds, and just desserts (and I don't just mean those fantastic lemon tarts you get in France!).

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?

If I could TARDIS into any specific place and time in history it would have to be the Library at Alexandria in time to get the scrolls out before the ravening religious nutters set fire to it. I so want to see the maps of Atlantis, talk to the scholars and curators (after all, the TARDIS has a translation and interpreting program) – and enjoy the weather after all this late, blasted snow! I could free a couple of slaves who'd be grateful as well as good cooks and go off and have wonderful lives of their own. And I'd just generally enjoy ancient academia – before coming back to now with a small but tasteful treasure trove.

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

Hmm, ancient landscapes and sites. Well, all landscapes (except urban ones) are ancient. It's the colour, the exoticism, the thought that so many different peoples have lived their individual lives shaped by the great cultural sweeps of history, climate and location, that's what appeals to me. What about Florence in the time of Lorenzo? Wouldn't you just love to see the procession he organised for his betrothal, him in his gold-bedecked armour, the courtiers in their jewelled robes, the musicians and the artists before Savanarola burned their pictures? The valleys of the Pueblo Indians when they were still alive? Tahiti before cargo cults? The great greenwood that carpeted the length and breadth of England as the last ice-age retreated? Charnwood Forest when it fringed a tropic sea?

What do you have coming out next?

I'm in the throes of finishing three short stories for Alchemy Press, and a couple of novels – one historical and one a fantasy, so I'm keeping busy. In fact, at times my life feels like a Heath Robinson contraption edited by Escher. Luckily I'm enjoying the ride.

[Anne Nicholls, has had ten books published in SF and the self-help fields. Her highly acclaimed novels Mindsail and The Brooch of Azure Midnight appeared under the name of Anne Gay. For four years she was the editor of LineOne's Science Fiction Zone, which had around 140,000 readers every month. She is currently working on a YA fantasy trilogy. Anne also features in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.]

Photo (c) Peter Coleborn