This month we present a special “international” issue of our online magazine. Lavie Tidhar, editor of The Apex Book of World SF, guest edits this issue and brings us three excellent selections from around the globe. To round things out, Charles Tan interviews Malaysian author Tunku Halim and Lavie writes an editorial about the international genre scene.

Editorial: “A Celebration of World SF” by Lavie Tidhar

Interview: Tunku Halim by Charles Tan

Short Fiction: “After the Fire” by Aliette de Bodard Short Fiction: “Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys” by Nir Yaniv Short Fiction: “An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind” by Alexsandar Žiljak

Enjoy!

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online

Great new updates at http://www.horrorworld.org. Fiction by Conrad Williams, an Interview with Bentley Little, a chance to win 1 of 5 copies of GROUND ZERO by F. Paul Wilson and the last two weeks to add the Isis Widget to your site for a chance to win 1 of 20 signed copies.

This month we present a special “international” issue of our online magazine. Lavie Tidhar, editor of The Apex Book of World SF, guest edits this issue and brings us three excellent selections from around the globe. To round things out, Charles Tan interviews Malaysian author Tunku Halim and Lavie writes an editorial about the international genre scene.

Editorial: “A Celebration of World SF” by Lavie Tidhar

Interview: Tunku Halim by Charles Tan

Short Fiction: “After the Fire” by Aliette de Bodard Short Fiction: “Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys” by Nir Yaniv Short Fiction: “An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind” by Alexsandar Žiljak

Enjoy!

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online

reprinted, an original story, story notes, and an introduction by Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Available from WSFA Press here. Also, they have uncovered a few copies of older books like THE EDGES OF THINGS by Lewis Shiner, that they have added to their site. I know a number of our customers had this on our wish lists ages ago, so if you are still looking, grab one before they go.

2. Last year, I brought back Jeff VanderMeer's MINISTRY OF WHIMSY as an imprint of Wyrm Publishing. Our first book is LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD,  a flash fiction charity anthology for Proliteracy.org, and we're having a book launch at World Fantasy. Details about the party are available on Jeff's site. Jeff and Ann have assembled a wonderful assortment of talent for this anthology. Check out the details or order a copy here. If you'll be at World Fantasy, buy it now and pick it up there! You'll be supporting a great charity and picking up a very fun book.

3. Clarkesworld Magazine is up for the World Fantasy Award in the Special Award - Non-Professional category. Additionally, Catherynne M. Valente's CW story, "A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" is up for Best Short Story. Between this and the book launch, it's shaping up to be an exciting weekend. I hope to run into some of you there!

4. Clarkesworld Books will continue to take orders for $35 or more through the holiday season. If you don't have an order big enough to meet the minimum, just let me know. I can be flexible for the people on our list. By the way, we also have 10% off coupon running at the moment... enter the SAVE10 voucher code in our shopping cart to get it.

Take care,

  -Neil

Neil Clarke
Clarkesworld Books
www.clarkesworldbooks.com

Bloodletting Books, publishers of fine, collectible horror novels and novellas, will be publishing Nate Southard’s upcoming He Stepped Through as the third release in their novelette series.  The book is available for pre-order as both a 250 copy signed, limited edition paperback and a 52 copy signed hardback.

He Stepped Through tells the tale of crooked L.A. Detective Walker and others on both sides of the law as they investigate the words “He stepped through,” which start popping up all over Los Angeles.  A gunman speaks the words after shooting up a burger joint.  A gangbanger wakes at the scene of a slaughter to find the words scrawled across the wall in blood.  A beat cop finds herself drawn to words.  What do they mean? 

“It’s a Lovecraftian story at heart,” says Southard.  “I’m a huge fan of those ideas, that there’s this world just barely hidden by our own, and bringing some of those ideas into the present played a big part in writing He Stepped Through.  It’s an episode of The Shield where things go down a much weirder, much darker street.”

Nate Southard is the author of the books Just Like Hell and Broken Skin, as well as the graphic novels Drive, A Trip to Rundberg, and Brian Keene’s Fear, an adaptation of several Keene short stories.  You can learn more at www.natesouthard.com.

He Stepped Through sports a cover by Zach McCain.  The paperback lists for $15, and the hardback lists for $99.  Both editions are available for pre-order at Horror Mall. (http://www.horror-mall.com)

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Los Angeles, California • Cutting edge independent publisher Casperian Books released Kelland as the first of its fall slate. The dark and mysterious novel from first-time author Paul G. Bens, Jr., has garnered impressive advance buzz, with Karen L. Newman of Dark Discoveries Magazine comparing the author to the prolific Stephen King, and Kilian Melloy of Edge Magazine calling the novel “one of the most perplexing and rewarding novels you’re likely to read.” 
 
Mixing elements of mystery, horror and current events, Kelland tells the story of four remarkably different individuals: a pair of Vietnamese American brothers, a young boy devoted to God, and a mother recovering from a recent tragedy in her life.  Each character arrives at a turning point in their lives only to come face to face with an enigmatic stranger named Kelland, determined to unmask all of their secrets.  Sometimes violent and other times tender, Kelland is a mystery, a chameleon and an almost imperceptible presence whose effect upon their lives is fleeting, loving, devastating, and ultimately redemptive.
 
Known primarily for his short, dark fiction, Bens has seen his work published in print and electronic magazines as diverse as Cemetery Dance, Velvet Mafia: Dangerous Queer Fiction,  Outsider Ink, Chick Flicks, HeavyGlow, Twisted Tongue and Scared Naked.  Kelland is Bens' debut and is available in trade paperback at bookstores everywhere and directly from Casperian Books.

For more information, contact
Paul G. Bens, Jr.
Email:   whoiskelland@gmail.com
 
 
About Kelland: Two young boys rescued from the Viet Nam war. A couple drifting apart over the suicide of their only son. A devoutly Catholic child with the voice of an angel who is troubled by visions both sacred and profane. What links these seemingly disconnected people, and who is the mysterious Kelland, so determined to expose their hidden agony?  This is a story about how the past transmutes the present, how lies and dark secrets divide people from those who love them, and how the truth must be confronted before the damage done can be healed. It's a journey of sorrow, of mystery and of  redemption.   www.whoiskelland.com

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 About Paul G. Bens, Jr.:  Born in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, far too many years ago to be honest about, Paul G. Bens, Jr., has spent the majority of his adult life in the entertainment industry. As a Casting Associate, Bens worked for three years on the NBC hit series Night Court, as well as the short-lived series Walter & Emily, Good & Evil and Room for Two.  As a film and television Casting Director he was responsible for the principal casting of numerous low-budget feature, as well as the television series Ned & Stacey, Malcolm & Eddie, Likely Suspects and Murder in Small Town X.  Outside of casting, Bens has been many things: a film producer, a file clerk, an altar boy, a bartender (still makes killer martinis), a boy scout and, for a second-and-a-half, an actor.  Currently, he works in the new media division of an historic Hollywood film studio and lives in the Los Angeles.   www.paulbens.com

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 About Casperian Books: Based in Sacramento, California, Casperian Books is a limited liability company dedicated to publishing quality literary and genre fiction that the mainstream publishing houses often overlook.    www.casperianbooks.com

Atomic Fez Publications is the single best source of books that will be wildly popular in five years’ time.

The new force in publishing of stories sometimes dismissed as ‘cult’; Atomic Fez is dedicated to the creation of new edge fiction; encompassing categories such as horror, the supernatural, the mysterious and all forms of exciting popular fiction that defy easy categorisation. While seeming to be divergent in character, when you get right down to it all those different books are various ‘stories’. Who doesn’t like a good story, really? Atomic Fez selects the best ones for your enjoyment.

In the past, in order to find works written by ‘brave new voices’ (e.g.: Jack Kerouac, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, or D.H. Lawrence), one had to plunge into the depths of ‘cult’ or ‘underground’ literature. Now, those authors are seen either as giants of writing, sources of block-buster movie scripts, or both.

Increasingly today, youth programming, TV series and films are developed from works which have not yet entered the mainstream; having found the surprisingly universal appeal of Star Trek, The X‑Men, and The Lord of the Rings. Therefore, Atomic Fez Publishing is dedicated to launching the future stars in the field of horror, fantasy and the supernatural, because today's ‘cult’ writers are producing tomorrow's classic fiction. This has always been true, but more so now. What is now considered as having ‘a narrow, cult market appeal’ is tomorrow’s mainstream offering; ‘niche marketing’ is seen as the very foundation upon which to build toward ‘mass appeal’.

Many years ago — before the coming-of-age of The Beatles, the MP3, and the iPod — the story goes Duke Ellington said there are only two different kinds of music: ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Everything else used to describe various categories of musical styles can be helpful, but often isn’t accurate.

These days, the same thing applies. If you ask a band what sort of music they play, you’ll get a shopping list of influences. Here’s an actual description by eMusic about the music of the Dex Romweber Duo:

…continues to … put his idiosyncratic rock / roll / surf / country / pop / folk stamp on everything”.

It sounds like great stuff, but what part of the record store do you find that album in?

Finding new and different books in mainstream bookshops has been the much same struggle for some time now, new edge fiction being rarely of one specific genre or another. Even if there is a dominant type, it’s easily a misunderstood one like “horror” (which can be anything from Edgar Allen Poe, to Albert Camus, to any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s non-Holmes stories), or a category saddled with an all-encompassing term such as “mystery” — which is so imprecise it basically means there’s something which needs to be discovered by the end of the story — and any tale that doesn’t have that at its core doesn’t have much going for it already.

No one listens to only one variety of music, nor does anyone read any one style of book to the avoidance of others. Likewise, Atomic Fez was created to make available the books which are ‘good’, which are worth spending whatever time and money you have to read them, and which free you to dive-in without any pre-conceived notions of what they’ll be like before doing so. They are different from others, and from each other, but they are universally ‘good’.

The books available from Atomic Fez are not selected because they don’t fit specific markets, but despite the fact that other publishers may have declared them ‘tough to market’. This is, at its roots, a business after all; no one’s actively trying to make their job tougher that it already is. The best recommendation a book can get is probably “you gotta read this, it’s awesome! I’m not going to tell you anything more; just read it, okay?” The books Atomic Fez publishes will, hopefully, engender just such a reaction in you and others.

Atomic Fez Publications is the single best source of books which will be wildly popular in five years’ time.

NEW YORK, NY, August 25, 2009 — After record attendance at its recent Stoker Weekend in Burbank this past June, the Horror Writers Association announced today that it would be hosting a stand-alone convention every other year, beginning with a partnership with World Horror Convention in Brighton, England, in 2010 and an East Coast solo event in 2011. Panels, author signings, pitch sessions with publishers, networking opportunities, and the annual Bram Stoker Awards Banquet are just a few of the popular convention features that will be on tap when the venerable HWA brings its yearly gathering to the eastern half of the United States —its first time since 2006.

On the decision to step out on its own, HWA President Deborah LeBlanc says, “Due to the overwhelming, positive response we received at this year's Stoker Weekend, the HWA's Board has decided to take yet another step towards the organization's overall growth and development.

“LeBlanc goes on to say that the organization’s  “current plans are to hold a stand-alone Stoker event every other year, and for those events to occur on a rotating basis across North America from the West coast to the East coast, and in the Midwest. This every-other-year format is the perfect balance that will allow us to partner with other conventions, like WHC, in alternate years, while still maintaining individuality on par with HWA's rising visibility and status in the publishing industry. It will also allow members from various parts of the country easier access to organizational gatherings, while keeping an open door with the World Horror Convention, which allows options for gatherings with international members.”

THE HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION (HWA) is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it. HWA was formed in the late 1980’s with the help of many of the field’s greats, including Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, and Joe Lansdale. Today, with over 400 members around the globe, it is the oldest and most respected professional organization for the much-loved writers who have brought the reading public the most enjoyable sleepless nights of their lives.