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!

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)