Sledgelit 2018

Sledgelit is a great day out. It’s the winter-sibling of Edgelit, both events that celebrate horror, fantasy, crime and science-fiction. There are workshops, panels, interviews and books launches. I am looking forward to getting a copy of “New Music for Old Rituals”, Tracy Fahey’s new collection.

This year the guests of honour are:

BSFA Award winner and Arthur C Clarke award nominee DAVE HUTCHINSON
Acclaimed, multi-award winning horror author MARK MORRIS
Bestselling author of The Girl With All The Gifts and The Boy On The Bridge, MR CAREY

I am on a panel! Argh!

14:30
Short Sharp Shocks: Short Fiction in Horror
Alex Davis (Chair), Laura Mauro, Gary McMahon, Mark Morris, Priya Sharma

Saturday 24th November, 10am-6pm at QUAD, Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, Derby, DE1 3AS

See here for  details including a full schedule.

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018

I am very proud to be included  in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 with “The Crow Palace”.  This story originally appeared in Black Feathers, a horror of avian anthology, edited by Ellen Datlow.

Buy from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon .com, Barnes & Noble

ToC:

“Sunflower Junction,” Simon Avery (Black Static #57)
“Swift to Chase,” Laird Barron (Adam’s Ladder: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction)
“Fallow,” Ashley Blooms (Shimmer #37)
“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” Aliette de Bodard (Exclusive for The House of Binding Thorns preorders/Uncanny #17)
“On Highway 18,” Rebecca Campbell (F&SF 9-10/17)
“Witch Hazel,” Jeffrey Ford (Haunted Nights, eds. Ellen Datlow & Lisa Morton)
“The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet,” Robin Furth (F&SF 7-8/17)
“Little Digs,” Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #20)
“The Thule Stowaway,” Maria Dahvana Headley (Uncanny #14)
“The Eyes Are White and Quiet,” Carole Johnstone (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)
Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com)
“Don’t Turn on the Lights,” Cassandra Khaw (Nightmare #61)
“The Dinosaur Tourist,” Caitlín R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #139)
“Survival Strategies,” Helen Marshall (Black Static #60)
“Red Bark and Ambergris,” Kate Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #232)
“Skins Smooth as Plantain, Hearts Soft as Mango,” Ian Muneshwar (The Dark #27)
“Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying,” M. Rickert (Shadows & Tall Trees, ed. Michael Kelly)
“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™,” Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex #99)
“Graverobbing Negress Seeks Employment,” Eden Royce (Fiyah #2)
“Moon Blood-Red, Tide Turning,” Mark Samuels (Terror Tales of Cornwall, ed. Paul Finch)
“The Crow Palace,” Priya Sharma (Black Feathers, ed. Ellen Datlow)
“The Swimming Pool Party,” Robert Shearman (Shadows & Tall Trees 7, ed. Michael Kelly)
“The Little Mermaid, in Passing,” Angela Slatter (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol.22, #1)
“Secret Keeper,” Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Nightmare #61)
“The Long Fade into Evening Steve,” Steve Rasnic Tem (Darker Companions, eds. Scott David Aniolowski & Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.)
“Moon and Memory and Muchness,” Katherine Vaz (Mad Hatters and March Hares, ed. Ellen Datlow)
“Exceeding Bitter,” Kaaron Warren (Evil Is a Matter of Perspective, eds Adrian Collins & Mike Myers)
“Succulents,” Conrad Williams (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)
“The Lamentation of Their Women,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 8.24.17)

Locus Review by John Langan

John Langan’s review of my collection, All the Fabulous Beasts, and At the Mercy of Beasts by Ed Kurtz is now up on the Locus website.

Read the full thing here.

Priya Sharma’s stories are indeed fabulous beasts, chimeras composed of the fantastic and deeply human, bound together by sinewy sentences, their strange hearts richly alive. The chorus of their animal mouths announces the arrival of a major voice.

John Langan

News From Nowhere

Thanks to News From Nowhere, Bold Street, Liverpool for restocking copies of “All the Fabulous Beasts”.

Shallow Creek

Think The Twilight Zone, Tales of The Unexpected and Creepshow all rolled into one. Does that make your flesh tingle, my little withered umbilical cord? I hope it does, I really do.

The quiet town of Shallow Creek has a long history of ghost stories and tales of the macabre. Every few generations this strangeness crawls out from the dark places of the quaint settlement’s imagination, seeping into our own reality. We are living through uncertain times now. Let the Creek lure you quietly to the safe place…

Shallow Creek is an anthology of new horror stories and strange fiction with a sting in its barbed tail, edited by Tomek Dzido of STORGY Books. It collects together twenty brand new unsettling stories that draw upon the ethereal landscape of quiet towns just short of the outskirts of infinity for inspiration. Some of the stories within this tome explore the realms of the supernatural, whilst others are firmly rooted in gritty realism, but they all engage the reader with terror in abundance.

Shallow Creek is an anthology of dark, strange fiction by Storgy,  an online literary short story magazine founded in 2013 by Tomek Dzido and Anthony Self that aims to inspire artistic collaboration and provide opportunities for creative minds to meet.

Storgy ran a competition earlier this year, calling out to all horror enthusiasts to contribute towards the Shallow Creek anthology. Eachwere given a specific character, location and a map to explore the town – Arkady Asylum, where the patients may not be as mad as the people supervising…a fairground with more than a fun-house to keep the punters entertained…but there’s so much more to discover, and when you read the anthology you may find a certain character in one short story popping up in another. The competition was judged by Naomi Booth.

Storgy are looking to raised funds to help Shallow Creek’s production via a  Kickstarter campaign. Follow the link for more details of the project, including the contributing writers and artists, and to see the goodies that are up for grabs.

 

Things to come in 2019

The Great Orme, Llandudno, Wales, UK. 

Watch this space.