The Obligatory Blowing Of Horns

Voting for the British Fantasy Awards closes on 1^st March this year, and various other awards are gearing up to put together long- and short-lists. I hope to put out a few recommendations shortly, but in the meantime here’s a quick round-up of my own eligible work from 2016 (or as I like to call it, the Annual Obligatory Horn-Blowing)

Novels

I had two! The Feast Of All Souls and Devil’s Highway (although I’m painfully aware Devil’s Highway was only released in hardback in December and the paperback’s only just seeing daylight now.) Nonetheless, both are eligible works.

Stories

I only had three original tales published in 2016:

‘Wrath of the Deep’ in The Hyde Hotel

‘Between Angels and Insects’ in Tomorrow’s Cthulhu

‘And Ashes In Her Hair’ in Something Remains

That's all, unless anyone counts was my blog about Spectral Press as non-fiction – it seems to have ended up being read more than anything else I’ve done to date!

Right, that’s the horn-blowing out of the way… as you were. Happy Valentine's Day, and read good stuff.

Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Between Angels And Insects and The Hyde Hotel on Booked

Two nice things I completely forgot! In fairness, I did have a lot of nice things to talk about already on Friday.

The Booked podcast reviewed The Hyde Hotel in their latest issue. Each of the two reviewers discussing it had to pick three favourite stories - one picked my tale, 'Wrath Of The Deep', and the other picked Cate's contribution, 'The Coyote Corporation's Misplaced Song.'


Which was nice.

You can listen to the podcast here.

In other news, the Broken Eye Books anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories At The Dawn Of Posthumanity is now available to buy on ebook! Paperback and hardcover will now be released on 15th February, but you can preorder now. In includes my story 'Between Angels And Insects'. Here's a sample:

'I remembered logging into the computer that night and thinking how the odd the patterns flickering across the screen were. They were hypnotic. Hypnotic. And then: the hive. The rage. Find a target. Destroy it. Here is the target. Kill him. Kill him. Make him kill himself. Night after night, until he broke. And - 

And there are others. Not just me – others. So many others. We are many. The many and the One. We are the One. We are the hive. We are the avatar. We are Cthulhu. Dead but dreaming.'


Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories At The Dawn Of Posthumanity also includes stories by: Desirina Boskovich, Lynda Rucker, Samantha Henderson, Daria Patrie, Kaaron Warren, Richard Byers, Damien Angelica Walters, Spencer Leary, Joshua L. Hood, Jeff C. Carter, Matt Maxwell, Shannon Fay, Adam Heine, Mike Allen, Darrell Schweitzer, Cody Goodfellow, Bruce R. Cordell, Pete Rawlik, A.C. Wise, Robert Brockway, Nate Southard, Molly Tanzer, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Thomas M. Reid, Clinton J. Boomer, L.A. Knight, Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi, J.M. Rozanski.

Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity

My story 'Between Angels And Insects' will appear in Tomorrow's Cthulhu, a new anthology from Broken Eye Books. Edited by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski.

Super science. Madness. Transhumanism.

This is the dawn of posthumanity. Some things can’t be unlearned. 

Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more.

The human and inhuman are harder and harder to distinguish. Mankind is changing, whether it wants to or not, with brand new ways of thinking. What havoc is wreaked by those humans trying to harness and control their discoveries? As big science progresses and the very fundamentals of this universe are understood, what stories are being hushed up?

Of course, the Old Ones laugh at our laws, scientific and otherwise. 

These are transhumanist near-future science fiction tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. These are tales of more than merely cosmic dread. They exist in our world of the next couple years. This is the era of big science and—what is that? We’ll be right back. ​​

 

Contributors: Desirina Boskovich, Lynda Rucker, Samantha Henderson, Daria Patrie, Kaaron Warren, Richard Byers, Damien Angelica Walters, Spencer Leary, Joshua L. Hood, Jeff C. Carter, Simon Bestwick, Matt Maxwell, Shannon Fay, Adam Heine, Mike Allen, Darrell Schweitzer, Cody Goodfellow, Bruce R. Cordell, Pete Rawlik, A.C. Wise, Robert Brockway, Nate Southard, Molly Tanzer, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Thomas M. Reid, Clinton J. Boomer, L.A. Knight, Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi, J.M. Rozanski.

 

The ebook of Tomorrow's Cthulhu is available from 21st December 2015 (next week!) The hardcover and paperback are out on 21st January 2016. You can pre-order the book here.