Just a reminder that both our latest titles are now available to order in the normal way on the Eibonvale website. With the promotion period closed, I have now launched standard order buttons for both these titles. Click either picture here to be taken to the book’s page.
You can look forward to our next promotion for our next new title (Quentin S Crisp’s Defeated Dogs) being announced in a week or so, with some very special extras!
Just a quick shout out about a new anthology open for submissions. Allen Ashley, who produced our own book Where Are We Going?, is back with a new project for Alchemy Press – The Alchemy Press Book of Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac.
http://alchemypress.blogspot.co.uk/p/astrologica.html
From the guidelines:
‘I am looking for stories about the signs of the Zodiac, the characteristics associated with those signs and/or people born under them. I will also consider stories involving the mythical characters and creatures of the astrological signs, perhaps their history and origin, perhaps their present and future state. Note: I am not saying that one has to believe in the paraphernalia associated with modern astrology; but authors should seek to use some of this as inspiration and underpinning of their narratives.’
You can read the guidelines on the Alchemy Press blog: http://alchemypress.blogspot.co.uk/p/astrologica.html
Well I suppose a mad-ass book demands a mad-ass review, and Anita Dalton at the ‘I Read Odd Books’ blog has taken an unusual approach in sharing with the world her admiration of (not to say astonishment at) Jet McDonald’s extraordinary debut novel of corporate absurdity and pet furniture ‘Automatic Safe Dog’.
Dazzled and delighted by Jet’s prose and wildfire imagination, Anita has resorted to quoting and analysing extensive tracts of text, culminating in this glowing conclusion:
“I get lots of books sent my way and I have come across a lot of extremely talented writers. I think McDonald’s writing is very near genius… this book was a revelation. A murder mystery, a farce, a romance, a sketch of a lunatic world, a glimpse of an uncaring and venal societal and the way that small venal sins can become mortal sins if we let them go on too long. This is a long book, coming in at 270 pages. McDonald got me hooked despite the animal cruelty and he kept me reading. I devoured this book in three days because the hilarity and silliness thrilled me as I waited for the other shoe to drop. I can’t remember the last time a new book from an author unknown to me proved to be the sort of read I simply could not put down until finished. Highly recommended.”
Our thanks go to Anita for her in-depth analysis and praise.
Yet another excellent review has just hurtled in like a Russian Meteor shower: David S Atkinson, writing in Pank Magazine, has written glowingly of the diverse delights of Jeff Gardiner’s debut collection ‘A Glimpse Of The Numinous’, admiring the lucid ways in which Jeff brings his characters towards startling confrontations with the weird and ineffable. He concludes by saying:
“…What’s not to like? Well-written strangeness is always a quick way to my heart. Stories that don’t give me any choice but to keep reading have an advantage on me as well. Given all that, there was no way I wasn’t going to be fond of Jeff Gardiner’s A Glimpse of the Numinous. It’s a collection that people really should reach for.”
Thanks to David S Atkinson and Pank Mag. Go check out their website and read the review in full.
It’s like waiting for buses! (oops, I mean trains, David, sorry!) We have news of three new reviews that have suddenly come in at once, two of Jeff Gardiner’s ‘A Glimpse Of The Numinous’ and the other one a late tackle on Nina Allan’s ‘The Silver Wind’.
First up, A J Kirkby writing at The Short Review has spoken glowingly of the merits of Jeff’s prose:
“…A Glimpse of the Numinous is Gardiner’s unheimlich manoeuvre on our expectations. A rapid shock to our systems, a release from our reading constraints. A flapping gull to our faces. A screamingly bright light shone into our eyes. A body deconstructed. Gardiner’s stories are “clues” to a deeper life, a stranger truth, a scarier reality. They are stories about dysfunctional sexual and familial relationships, about masturbation and transformation, about death, about religion, about the ominous. It’s about shifting us out of our comfort zones as readers… A Glimpse of the Numinous is far from an easy read, but it is a rewarding one, and, more importantly, an eye-opening one. Reading is a form of escapism, and in Gardiner’s fiction, we escape to places we’d never imagine journeying to.”
Then we have Adam Groves over at the Fright.com website who also applauds the book in these terms:
“The fourteen stories contained in this collection, the first by Jeff Gardiner, are notable for their considerable range. No two are alike, yet all are distinguished by beautifully evocative writing and a staunch commitment to originality. I can honestly say that, in a most unusual occurrence, nearly all the tales in A GLIMPSE OF THE NUMINOUS are defiantly unique, if not downright bizarre…”
Then Adam also reviews Nina Allan’s ‘The Silver Wind’, a book perhaps not so Horror-orientated as his usual fare but which he obviously finds highly engaging:
“There’s never been a time travel account like THE SILVER WIND. It’s ostensibly a collection of five stories (three of them previously published) that all have definite links. This to say that several characters recur in varying guises and time frames, with a mysterious watch turning up in each tale and causing all sorts of odd disruptions. Yet what ultimately makes these stories sing is the author’s unerringly observant, character-driven writing style…”
Thanks to Adam and Andy both for these excellent reviews, which we would encourage you to read in full at their respective websites, thus supporting the contribution each make to the small press scene on both side of the Atlantic.
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