We are OPEN for submissions to a new themed anthology!

Eibonvale Press is announcing a call for works for an anthology on the theme of Lighthouses, which is to be edited by Sophie Essex. At the Lighthouse is intended to be a fiction anthology which must feature a lighthouse, either physical, imaginary, or tangential, in each story. The definition of lighthouse is yours, but it must engage with the concept. Think associative/dissociative, think Ray Bradbury’s The Foghorn, think Pharos by Alice Thompson, think Woolf, think Moore, think VanderMeer, think the films of 1998, 2016 or 2019, think beckoning, think warning, think outside the bulb.

Download the guidelines here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/At the Lighthouse Submission Guidelines.pdf

We look forward to reading your work!

New Titles Released – Dabbling With Diabelli, La Ronde and The Neo-Decadent Cookbook.

Eibonvale has recently released three new titles, which are now available to order in both hardcover and paperback.

Dabbling With Diabelli by D F Lewis

Originally published in paperback with an extremely limited release, this book collects thirty of D F Lewis’s favourite short stories, all demonstrating his unique style at the intersection of genre, literature and outsider art.  Click here for more info: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_diabelli.htm

 

La Ronde by Colin Fisher

The latest book in the Eibonvale Chapbook Line.  There are few rivalries bitterer than that of siblings, and few more ferocious than that of art.

Sébastien and Gabrielle Laronde are the most exquisite expression of fin de siècle Avignon. Artists without compare, they exist in eternal competition vying for the supreme accolade – not the acclaim of their peers, but to be found worthy of their family and its mysterious legacy.

In prose as sumptuous and rich as any of the Laronde sculptures and paintings, the twins’ simmering resentments weave a sensuous spell about the Vaucluse artworld. Drawn into their orbit, a new muse brings Sébastien the promise of perfection; his prize lies within the shining stone, but whose craft can be its equal?

Click here for more info: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/chapbooks/Chap14_LaRonde.htm

The Neo-Decadent Cookbook edited by Brendan Connell and Justin Isis

A new anthology containing stories by Ross Scott-Buccleuch, David Rix, Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze, Jason Rolfe, Daniel Corrick, Brendan Connell, Colby Smith, Jessica Sequeira, Justin Isis, Quentin S. Crisp, Damian Murphy, Douglas Thompson, Ursula Pflug and Lawrence Burton.

Have you ever sautéed geometrical sex or eaten fate from the breasts of Minerva? Adjust your palate to the times with the Neo-Decadent Cookbook, the ONLY approved guide to the preparation of metaphysical concepts and other abstractions, alongside recipes likely to cause lasting changes to your internal organs. Editors Brendan Connell and Justin Isis have assembled a diverse list of contributors from around the world, each with their own stylistically novel take on culinary apotheosis. Fragments of fiction, poetry and instructional material will guide you towards a suitably delectable climax. TRUE UNDERSTANDING AND SCIENCE EXPLODE!

This book is currently available for pre-order and copies will be dispatched as soon as I have seen a physical proof copy.  Click here for more info: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_neo-decadent.htm

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.

 

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.

Sensorama – Call for Works Reminder

Just a reminder here that Eibonvale Press is currently calling for works for Allen Ashley’s anthology Sensorama – an anthology of slipstream stories based upon, celebrating and exploring the senses.

From the Guidelines:

“This will be an anthology of stories based upon, celebrating and exploring the senses. I am looking for short stories within the range 1000 to 6000 words which deal with the senses as an integral component of both plot and theme. I will expect stories to be broadly within the SF / Fantasy / Horror / Slipstream / Fabulist field. I will also consider more mainstream work which has some elements or references to the broad fantasy canon. I will expect to include stories that explore the traditional five senses of: Sight, Hearing, Touch, Smell and Taste. I will also consider work which explores other senses or quasi senses – e.g. the “sixth” sense of intuition or other qualities such as Extra-Sensory Perception, Precognitive Ability, etc.”

Reading period is 1 January 2014 to 30 April 2014.

Wordcount: 1000-6000

Payment: £10 plus hardcover copy

Please check here for more info and keep those submissions coming!: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm 

And in the meantime I now have to work out how to cover-illustrate the concept of 5 elements with a vague hint of possible other elements of quasi elements!

Rustblinded

The second review of our railway anthology ‘Rustblind and Silverbright’ appeared this week over at the SF Revu website.
Seasoned short story connoisseur Mario Guslandi says of the book:

“The stories, interwoven with insightful commentaries by editor David Rix, offer a variety of atmospheres and situations, making the book a compelling and satisfying mix of reading material. Obviously, not every tale is accomplished or memorable, but some are truly excellent…”

Mario singles certain of the stories out for particular mention, but we’ll let you click on the link yourself to find out who. One of the many fascinations of anthologies (speaking from some experience here!) is the way different readers and critics will warm to certain stories that others pass by.

Rustblind and Silverbright – Last Call for Boarding on Platform 1

Well – it’s just a fortnight to go until the gates close on the Rustblind and Silverbright anthology.  December 31st is the day I will blow my whistle on this one, the central locking will engage, the engines will drone into sleek electric life, and this book will start out on its strange journey . . .

Or to put it another way, the submission period will come to an end!

It has been a long sub period I know – ever since June wasn’t it?  But it’s part of the Eibonvale way to take things slowly, to make sure things have time to build and mature.  Personally, I have been having great fun, both reading the stories you have sent and also allowing my own train-love to kick into a higher gear for a while.  After all – I now have an excuse.  It is ‘literary research’!  And I doubt I would ever have managed quite so much railway photography and research if it wasn’t for this book.  And talking of reading, I think I have been pretty lucky with submissions so far.  Maybe it is because I set a closely defined theme but so far nearly all of them have been at least good stories and nicely focussed on the subject.  That makes choosing all the more challenging, but I aim to read through the final submissions and finally make up my mind in the first weeks of 2013.

But now, with just a fortnight to go until departure time, there is time for just one last reminder.  This is a last call for train-related stories.  Not for anoraks and trainspotters, but for anyone with an awareness of the place trains play in the human psyche.  This great archetype of journeying and coming together – of the fundamental human need to explore and move.  Of what has to be the noblest yet most down to earth form of travel we have invented yet.  So, any eccentric and unusual, ludicrous and experimental, tormented or demented train-related stories of horror, sf, bizarro, slipstream . . . send em over to Eibonvale Press! It’s already shaping into a cracking book but there’s always room for more . . .

Guidelines: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

First Stories Accepted for Rustblind and Silverbright – The Eibonvale Press Slipstream Railway Anthology

Well, the most exciting news at the moment is that I have recently sent out acceptances for the first round of stories for the anthology Rustblind and Silverbright. Seven great pieces have now set up the tone of the book nicely.

Allen Ashley and Douglas Thompson are starting to seem like Eibonvale family – but hey, what can I do about that when they keep turning out such great writing? For Rustblind and Silverbright, we have Allen Ashley’s On the Level and Douglas Thompson’s Sunday Relatives. Allen has produced a delicate ‘coming of age’ story and that means a beautiful British kind of nostalgia, affection and melancholy and just the faintest touch of SF, while Douglas provides a quiet philosophical and surreal musing on psychiatry and model railways.

Andrew Hook’s Tetsudo Fan is set in the swish world of Japanese train lovers, who go nuts over the Shinkansen rather than gleaming old steam engines or British diesel. This is a story that catches a good dose of the Japanese weird, which is very welcome and something very close to my own Japanophile heart.

Meanwhile, David McGroarty has produced an excellent sparsely written urban horror story set on the Isle of Dogs and spanning nearly 30 years as first the Docklands Light Railway and then the Olympics change the world beyond recognition.

A very short sharp miniature by Stephen Fowler, somewhere between poem, flash fiction and factoid snippets, provides a good illustration of the deeply varied collection I hope to put together in terms of both size and content.

Rhys Hughes’ Von Ryan’s Daughter’s Express takes us down a brief branch line into his unique world of dark humour and impossible goings on, this time set in the depths of Ireland and concerning the construction of a very odd railway and a moving pub . . .

And finally for the moment, there is R. D. Hodkinson’s extremely sharp and thoroughly bizarre Wi-Fi Enabled Bakerloo Sunset – the tale of a man calling himself Archduke Soupy van Brilliantine who finds himself at a deserted Marylebone tube station with no memories whatsoever . . .

I still have plenty more stories to mull over, so don’t panic if you haven’t heard from me yet. And of course, keep those submissions coming in! There’s still time to produce something since the deadline is the end of the year.  Full guidelines are here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

Call for Works for a New Eibonvale Anthology – Rustblind and Silverbright – Railway Slipstream and Horror

Eibonvale Press is issuing a call for submissions for an anthology of stories connected to the railway.  The concept is pretty open but the book aims to gather a collection of works revolving around the railway with a modern and innovative aesthetic ranging from horror to surrealism and beyond.  Rustblind and Silverbright will be published in 2013 and the full guidelines can be doanloaded here: PDF / RTF

Edit: Please ensure you use the dedicated email address to send in stories rather than any of the general ones I use for the press or personally. If not, there is a certain risk that I will lose track of the submission in my ridiculously complicated email archive! I try my best – but hey, it’s possible! Thanks folks!

From the guidelines:

“I hereby make confession under oath that I, David Rix of Eibonvale Press, am a train addict.  I know too well the slightly puzzled look that comes into people’s eyes when I start getting too enthusiastic on that subject, but hey, just think about this a moment!  Can you think of a better way to watch the world go past?  Relaxed in a window seat as you pull slowly out of the city, then start flying through the countryside.  It is a time of enforced shut-down, in spite of this age of laptops and wireless internet.  It is almost meditational – a time of peace and solitude when nothing should be demanded of you – ideally one of the few times of quiet in our hectic modern lives.  Trains occupy a special place in the human psyche, the twin threads of the rails forging ahead from place to place, the ultimate symbol of travel and connection and all the hopes, fantasies, fears, reasons, romance and excitement that come with that.  There must surely be no archetype of travel greater than the train.

. . . It covers travel and journeying – the unusual and hidden environments of the railway (those hidden and inaccessible places that you see from the train and nowhere else but can never reach) – the self-contained world of the train carriage.  It covers everything from massive long-distance journeys and high-speed / bullet trains to local services and half-asleep branch lines to commuter trains to underground metros to trams to tourist / miniature trains to funiculars and other things.  Not to mention toy trains and model railways, virtual railways and of course the infinite more surreal and fantastical possibilities, which are pretty much limitless.”

(Photography by David Rix)