Opening for a New anthology – Humanagerie, edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle

Eibonvale Press will be open for submissions for a new anthology edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle. “Humanagerie” will showcase both poetry and short fiction on the theme of animals. The book will not be about animals as such, but will instead be inspired by the characteristics that animals possess, and the points at which these intersect with – and manifest in – humanity. It will also be based on the strange and beautiful adjectives used to describe such traits, such as:

Aquiline – eagle

Chelonian – tortoise or turtle

Leporine – hare

Ostracine – oyster

Pieridine / Pierine – butterfly

Vespine – wasp / hornet

and many many more. You will find a much larger list in the guidelines.

We are interested in shifting states, in scenarios that explore duality, hybridity, and liminality. We are asking writers to consider how animalistic attributes might manifest in the human psyche – or vice versa. We want hints of scales, tails, fur and fins… gills, claws, paws and spines… glimpses of horns, tusks, teeth and tongues… stalking, slinking, slithering and stomping… roars, whimpers, howls and song. We want breath, heat, musk. We want landscapes ranging from urban wastelands to frozen tundra, from bedsits to coastlines, from suburbia to savannah – and the imagined worlds between. We want water and we want fish out of water. We want the visceral and the vulnerable, the slippery and the synaesthetic, emergence and extinction.

The submissions window will run from March 1st until May 31st 2018. The word limits are up to 60 lines for poetry and 4,000 words for fiction.

Download the guidelines here.

 

Rising Shadow Interview with Allen Ashley

Now available to order: Sensorama edited by Allen Ashley

Rising Shadow has just published an interview with Allen Ashley, talking about the new Sensorama anthology and the upcoming Planet Suite reissue.  Click here to read:

http://www.risingshadow.net/articles/476-an-interview-with-allen-ashley-about-sensorama-and-the-planet-suite

Sensorama Launch Event Details

The launch event for the anthology Sensorama edited by Allen Ashley has been confirmed as follows:

The launch will take place at the BFS Open Night on 6 March 2015, starting at 6PM.

The venue is: The Blacksmith & the Toffeemaker pub, St. John’s Street, London, UK.

Nearest tube station: Angel (Northern Line).

Nearest bus route: 153

We shall be offering some nice deals at the event, including discounts and a raffle of the bizarre sketch used in the centre part of the cover artwork.  So come along to the event, meet some of the authors, have a drink and toast this new anthology into the world.

New Eibonvale Press Title now Available and Launch Event

I am excited to announce the release of Eibonvale’s next title – Sensorama, a new anthology of slipstream stories on the theme of the senses, edited by Allen Ashley.  The book can be ordered now and will be available for dispatch from the beginning of March, when a launch event will be held in London – more details of which will follow. There’s no fancy stuff this time – just buy the book!  Or come to the launch event and raise a glass to all the senses.

Call for Submissions – SENSORAMA edited by Allen Ashley

Ok everyone – at last some press news! I have released a call for submissions for a new Eibonvale Press anthology, Sensorama edited by Allen Ashley – more info here! Submissions opening in the new year. This is a great subject for a book and fertile ground for writing, so I am very excited to see what people come up with!

Download the guidelines here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/Sensorama_guidelines_-_Eibonvale_Press.pdf

Regarding opening for other, more general submissions, I fear that due to extreme personal exhaustion and to wanting to preserve at least a little of my own writing capability, Eibonvale will probably not be opening to general submissions for a while yet.  Apologies to those who are interested, and I am not really happy at becoming something I always disliked in a press (a closed door) but please remember that this enterprise is still just me and my increasingly sparse free time so I really don’t have much choice about that for now.  I just ask you to bear with me there and know that it is something I really want to do and will get to as soon as I feel I have the space to deal with it and do you all justice.

 

Alison Littlewood in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24

Congratulations to Alison Littlewood, who has bagged not one but TWO places in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24, edited by Stephen Jones.  This includes a piece in Eibonvale’s anthology Where are we Going? edited by Allen Ashley and The Eyes of Water from Spectral Press.  As well as being bloody exciting news for Alison and for Allen Ashley no doubt, this is pretty exciting here as well, since it is still one of the first time the maverick Eibonvale has found its way into one of these ‘best-of’ anthologies.  Time to raise a little glass of something (maybe sloe gin?) in a vague but happy toast to lively and brilliant literature in general I think!

Oh and also <commercial> don’t forget that Where Are We Going? is currently available as part of the sale Eibonvale Press is running!  </commercial>  (Heheh – sorry for the nerdy humour!)

Some New Titles Coming Soon from Eibonvale Press

In spite of the on-going project to illustrate Tallest Stories, which has almost brought the press to a stand-still, there have been some new projects trickling in – waiting for me to turn my attention to them at that great moment when Tallest Stories is finally unleashed upon the world.  Some of these projects could be quite quick and some are already underway in the preliminary stages.  However, I trust that the big old echoing world out there will forgive me for keeping Tallest Stories as my priority for the moment!

Defeated Dogs – Quentin Crisp

I have wanted to publish something by Quentin ever since the press first launched.  We were both in the first Strange Tales anthology from Tartarus Press in 2001 and I remember his Cousin X vividly as one of the best stories in the book.  Here we present a retrospective collection and the stories presented here range from elegant philosophical improvisations to superbly crafted classic horror.

Miss Homicide Plays the Flute – Brendan Connell

Unpleasant Tales was one of our most popular titles, so we are very pleased to be working on a new short novel from the same author.  This is a bizarre and elegant mix of crime novel and the author’s signature razor-sharp modernist classicism (if that makes any sense?).  If everything goes according to plan, this will be Eibonvale’s first ever high-quality limited edition.

The Planet Suite – Allen Ashley

Allen is a British author with an eye for sharp and almost satirical literary sci-fi and a real ability to capture both the crazy old world of Britain and the simple humanity that is universal.  We have worked with him before as both an author (Once and Future Cities) and editor (Where Are We Going?), and now we will be producing a new expanded edition (and first hardcover edition) of his first novel.  Filled with the lively energy that often accompanies first novels, this is an extraordinary literary improvisation on the themes of science fiction, the human condition – and Holst’s most famous composition.

An Emporium of Automata – D. P. Watt

This is another reprint – a lightly expanded edition of the now OOP collection originally published by Ex Occidente Press.  These are weird tales with a massive dash of the historical – and the result has a nice blend of a historian’s eye for detail and a masterful sense of passion and phantasmagoria.

Songs for the Lost – Alexander Zelenyj

Experiments at 3 Billion A.M. is one of my personal favourite books in the Eibonvale catalogue.  Alex Zelenyj writes with a haunting and haunted style that is simultaneously deeply rooted in classic horror / SF themes and also moving beyond them into something touching and literary, with an emotion and humanity that both genres all-too-often fail to reach.  Songs for the Lost will be a new collection of stories, slimmer and more concise than the massive Experiments, all revolving around the wispy concept of music.