More Chapbook Reviews – Alexander Zelenyj’s Animals of the Exodus and Jeremy Schliewe’s The Lighthouse on Rising Shadow!

Thank you very much to Rising Shadow for these lovely reviews of Alexander Zelenyj’s Animals of the Exodus and Jeremy Schliewe’s The Lighthouse!

New Chapbook Reviews!

We’re very happy to share four fantastic reviews of four Eibonvale Press chapbooks, courtesy of the prolific Adam Groves of the Bedlam Files!

The Uneasy – Andrew Hook

The Man Who Murdered His Muse – James Champagne

Tomorrow, When I Was Young – Julie Travis

Third Instar – David Gullen

Eibonvale During Corona Days

Even though most of what I do is just, well, me working quietly at home, Eibonvale Press is experiencing some issues due to the Coronavirus. The printer/distributor for the vast majority of my books is currently in a state of extreme chaos after the pandemic hit just as they were upgrading their systems. The result has been glitches and errors left right and centre, as well as a considerable slow-down processing orders, new titles and all the many problems that have cropped up. Still – hard to criticise anyone who is struggling to keep going through all this.

 

The best one yet was when one book physically wouldn’t allow me to upload a cover file yet somehow went through the system anyway and is now sitting there plaintively pleading for approval for global distribution. What would happen if I let that out into the world, minus cover, I have no idea! Haven’t heard a peep from the support folks about it yet either.

 

In addition, the postage has become very shaky, especially international – again, no surprise at all under the circumstances and all credit to those who are keeping it going. But while the occasional loss is normal enough, I think I have replaced more missing or severely delayed books in the past couple of months than I normally would in years! It’s starting to get expensive!

 

There are other subtler things as well, such as the increased difficulty of me simply getting to the post office while it’s open … and even the fact that I currently have no easy access to newspapers for packing larger boxes!

 

All this to say, please bear with any creaking and groaning from deliveries and other stuff for a while. The vast majority of orders and tasks are still working just fine – and any issues, just contact me and I’ll sort them.

Also, new titles are on the way through the system and will be available very soon now.  Stand by for more news!

Animals of the Exodus

Announcing the official release of our next Chapbook – Animals of the Exodus by Alexander Zelenyj. This small book collects four stories on the theme of refuges for the broken, the damaged – people hit hard by the darkness of humanity. As always, Zelenyj’s writing comes with a deep emotional wallop and sophistication.

This is one of our largest chapbooks to date, at 70 pages. I’m still going to include it in our choose your own bundle deals, however – unless anything goes drastically wrong – so you can order it now either like that or by itself.

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/chapbooks/Chap12_Animals.htm

Five New Chapbooks – and Bundle Deals!

Well, this is a big one. No less than five new chapbooks have been added to the Eibonvale website and should now be available to order – failing teething troubles because I am pretty whacked right now, in all honesty! These will be dispatched as soon as I have seen the physical copies of them, but they are available to order now.

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/chapbooks.html

We have:

Family Matters by Gaurav Monga – a set of miniatures laced with quiet absurdism and melancholy.

Third Instar by David Gullen – a vivid, evocative and ultimately dreamlike fantasy novella. One of the first times Eibonvale has ventured into this area of literature.

The Uneasy by Andrew Hook – a poignant and erotic story of a British expatriate and her increasingly surreal quest for sexual fulfilment.

The Man Who Murdered His Muse by James Champagne – a dark and sharp horror story about the art of writing, twisted intellectualism, mainstream success and the sometimes highly warped relationships people can have with their creative muse

Some Pink Star by Sophie Essex – Eibonvale’s first ever collection entirely of poetry, a very sharp and experimental book that explores the correlation between sex and violence, the willingness of either and both.

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/chapbooks.html

I have also vastly expanded the Eibonvale chapbook bundle deals, so you can now buy any three, four or five titles with a nice discount. So lets have a chapbook fest! I could use a fest. Yes – definitely time to celebrate the tiny books!

The Once and Future Moon Open for Submissions

The latest anthology edited by Allen Ashley, The Once and Future Moon, is now open for submissions!

This will be an anthology of stories set on / dealing with the abiding influence of the Moon.

You can take a literal or non-literal approach.

The “Once” aspect will deal with how older cultures / earlier civilisations / people in history saw the Moon, considered and reflected upon the Moon. Think Verne, Wells, Godwin. Think mythology. Think the Sumerians. Think the Ancient Greeks. Think beliefs held by vanished cultures. These stories do not have to be factually, scientifically accurate; the Moon element could be seen as poetic, figurative, imaginative, etc. These stories will likely form one-third of the book. Possibly half.

For “Future”, I am looking at both the liveable near-future (e.g. up to 50 years’ time)and slightly further ahead as well. I want stories grounded in how we will live on / adapt to / use the Moon in the near and further future. What issues might we face –some of which have yet to be even thought of by NASA?

I will also look at stories about how the Moon will affect our lives going forward. Will it be the site of the next war? Will it be the focal point of a conflict between science and religious forces (consider how the Moon is central to many religious practices)? What happens if the Moon starts to move closer to us or to move further away? What if the Moon was badly damaged or destroyed? What if the Moon acquired a companion?

You can find the full guidelines here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

 

 

Two Great Mentions

Over on Vector, Rosanne Rabinowitz’s collection Resonance and Revolt has been listed as one of the best books of 2018. Am delighted – and congratulations Rosanne!

“Shorter fiction is often an incubator of thought experiments and this proves to be the case with Rosanne Rabinowitz’s first collection, Resonance and Revolt (Eibonvale Press). These stories span historical European settings, contemporary Britain and the near future. The collection is thematically linked around the concepts of resistance and Lynda Rucker discusses in her introduction how Rabinowitz’s evocative prose gifts the reader with a sense of history and also a present that feels layered by the lives of those now past.”

Grab the book here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_resonance.htm

Also, a really nice review of our recent poetry/fiction anthology Humanagerie edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley has been penned by Sarah James on The Poetry Shed.

 

“As I read, tucked up at home in my own fake-fur blanket, I find myself noting ‘beautiful’ and/or ‘wow’ by every poem and story. The flow between each piece also feels both natural – linking in terms of tone, theme, style – yet highlights other elements in contrast. Tension-building tales with foreign or imaginary settings, for example, are placed alongside quiet wondrous poems of the everyday and faster moving, louder-sounding rhythms.”

 

Grab the book here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_humanagerie.htm

Thanks to both of these reviewers.  And as always, if you have a blog or website and are interested in receiving review copies of any Eibonvale titles, please just drop me an email.

Only Two Days Left to Ever Get Your Hands on a Copy of Zelenyj’s Test Tube Babies.

Just a reminder! There are only a few days left to EVER get your hands on a copy of Alexander Zelenyj‘s A Test Tube Family, which we are offering as a free extra with the hardcover edition of his collection Blacker Against the Deep Dark. I shall be closing the offer at the end of the 13th January.

 

Click here to grab one: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_deepdark.htm

 

Also, I have both titles in my hands now – first copies. Blacker Against the Deep Dark has turned out nicely dramatic, in spite of my sailing close to the wind with some very dark colours. And Test Tube Family has turned out a very nice and faintly modernist little volume. There will only ever be as many copies of this as there are people who order by the end of this weekend.

Zelenyj’s Blacker Against the Deep Dark is Available – Order Now to get a Not-For-Sale Chapbook

Alexander Zelenyj’s large collection Blacker Against the Deep Dark is now available to order. This is a chance for the press to dive again into the deeper places of genre fiction, as well as what happens when they blend and combine. Emotionally sophisticated, harrowing and searingly powerful stories.

From a man having a conversation with the shadow of a human being blasted into a wall by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, to a pastor giving shelter to the most bizarre individual to ever walk the Earth; from a secret group at war with the physical manifestations of disease that have run rampant for ages, to a pair of detectives trying to solve the mystery of a deadly otherworldly drug that legend says holds the power to open the gates to Paradise. These, and other dark and weird tales…

These stories play out like an R-rated Twilight Zone; grittily thrusting life’s toughest questions at readers with unabashed confrontation, and in the strangest of places.
Ahlissa Eichhorn, FANGORIA

To celebrate the launch, we have a special offer.  Order the hardcover edition before January 13th and get a copy of Zelenyj’s exclusive chapbook mini-collection A Test Tube Family. We will only be printing enough copies of this to cover these initial orders, so this will remain a very rare book. All hardcover orders placed before that date will receive a copy.

Call For Works for a New Anthology – The Once and Future Moon

Merry Christmas everybody!  It’s Christmas day and I am releasing a new call for works – mostly because this is the first day in a while when I’ve actually had a bit of time.  🙂

The Once and Future Moon brings back Eibonvale’s familiar and long-time partner Allen Ashley with a new themed anthology – you can probably guess which theme from the title.  Such celestial fiction, and even off-planet fiction, is relatively unusual for the press, so this will be an interesting addition to the catalogue – a slipstream take on what must be one of the ultimate themes.

Submissions open on 1st February – please don’t send anything yet – and publication will be in 2019.  You can find the full guidelines here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm