British Fantasy Awards 2020 Shortlist

The BFA 2020 shortlist has now been announced and I am delighted to be on there with “Ormeshadow”. One of the joys of attending Cons and getting to know the writing community online is that I am as delighted to see friends and people I know on the list. Congratulations to everyone.

Whatever the outcome I am always grateful to Ellen Datlow and the good people at Tor.

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)

• The Bone Ships – RJ Barker (Orbit)
• The Migration – Helen Marshall (Titan)
• The Poison Song – Jen Williams (Headline)
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E Harrow (Orbit)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)

• The Institute – Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Migration – Helen Marshall (Titan)
• Mistletoe – Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)
• The Plague Stones – James Brogden (Titan)
• The Reddening – Adam Nevill (Ritual Limited)
• The Twisted Ones – T. Kingfisher (Titan)

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J Bounds Award)

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, for The Water Dancer (Penguin)
• Alix E Harrow, for The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Orbit)
• Penny Jones, for Suffer Little Children (Black Shuck Books)
• Tamsyn Muir, for Gideon the Ninth (Tordotcom)
• Nina Oram, for The Joining (Luna Press)

Best Novella

• The Ascent to Godhood – Neon Yang (Tordotcom)
• Butcher’s Table – Nathan Ballingrud (Gallery / Saga Press)
• The Deep – Rivers Solomon (Gallery / Saga Press)
• Ormeshadow – Priya Sharma (Tordotcom)
• Ragged Alice – Gareth L Powell (Tordotcom)
• The Survival of Molly Southbourne – Tade Thompson (Tordotcom)

Best Short Fiction

• Dendrochronology – Penny Jones (Hersham Horror)
• I Say, I Say, I Say – Robert Shearman (The Shadow Booth)
• The Pain-Eater’s Daughter – Laura Mauro (Undertow)
• Tomorrow, When I Was Young – Julie Travis (Eibonvale Press)

Best Anthology

• A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, ed. Jennifer Brozek (Pulse Publishing)
• The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage)
• New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction for People of Color, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
• Once Upon a Parsec: The Book of Alien Fairy Tales, ed. David Gullen (NewCon)
• Wonderland, ed. Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane (Titan)
• The Woods, ed. Phil Sloman (Hersham Horror)

Best Collection

• The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams – Maura McHugh (NewCon)
• Growing Things – Paul Tremblay (Titan)
• This House of Wounds – Georgina Bruce (Undertow)
• Of Wars, And Memories, And Starlight – Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)
• Sing Your Sadness Deep – Laura Mauro (Undertow)

Best Non-Fiction

• Coffinmaker’s Blues: Collected Writings on Terror – Stephen Volk (PS Publishing)
• The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games – Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (New York University Press)
• The Full Lid – Alasdair Stuart
• Joanna Russ (Modern Masters of SF) – Gwyneth Jones (University of Illinois Press)
• Notes from the Borderland – Lynda E Rucker, for Black Static (TTA Press)
• The Pleasant Profession of Robert E Heinlein – Farah Mendlesohn (Unbound)

Best Independent Press

• Aqueduct Press
• Black Shuck Books
• Luna Press 
• NewCon Press
• Rebellion Publishing
• Undertow Publications

Best Magazine / Periodical

• Black Static
• The Dark
• F&SF
• Fiyah
• Gingernuts of Horror
• Shoreline of Infinity

Best Audio

• Breaking the Glass Slipper
• PodCastle
• PseudoPod
• Speculative Spaces

Best Comic / Graphic Novel

• 2000AD, ed. Matt Smith (Rebellion)
• Basketful of Heads #1 – Joe Hill (DC)
• B.P.R.D. The Devil You Know, Vol. 3: Ragna Rok – Mike Mignola, Scott Allie, Laurence Campbell et al. (Dark Horse)
• DCeased #1-6 – Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudiano et al. (DC)
• DIE – Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Hans (Image)
• The Ozone Diary – Pentti Otsamo & Tero Mielonen (Luna Press)

Best Artist

• Ben Baldwin
• Vince Haig
• Jackie Morris
• David Rix

Best Film / Television Production

• Game of Thrones: The Long Night – David Benioff & DB Weiss (HBO / Sky Atlantic)
• Us – Jordan Peele (Monkeypaw Productions et al.)
• Watchmen: It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice – Damon Lindelof (HBO / Sky Atlantic)
• The Witcher: Rare Species – Haily Hall (Netflix)

Undertow Publications at The Last Bookstore, LA

The Last Bookstore, California’s largest used and new book and record store, is now stocking titles by Undertow Publications.

If you want to know more about the shop watch this Award-winning 11 minute documentary by director Chad Howitt on owner Josh Spencer.

Undertow Publications is a celebrated independent press in Canada dedicated to publishing original and unique genre fiction of exceptional literary merit. Since 2009 they’ve been publishing anthologies, collections, and novellas in hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook formats. Their books have won the Shirley Jackson Award; the British Fantasy Award; and been nominated for the World Fantasy Award.

I’m not impartial, having been published by Undertow Publications, but I am a reader before I am a writer and I love what they do. Below are the beautiful books you can currently get from The Last Bookstore.

Support two terrific endeavours by shopping instore at 453 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90013 or online.

Eating the Fantastic with Scott Edelman

Scott Edelman has a stellar and varied career as a writer. He’s worked in comics (for DC and Marvel), for TV (Hanna-Barbera and Tales from the Darkside), magazines (SCI FI Magazine and Rampage), as well as releasing numerous short story collections.  He is a multiple Stoker Award finalist, Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and Lamda Literary Award finalist.

Scott’s been a Con goer for years and interviews people while having dinner with them for his Eating the Fantastic Podcast. This year he’s continued this with virtual meals and we shared a dish of Pappadelle.

I made my favourite dish by Yotam Ottolenghi- Pappadelle with rose harissa, black olives, and capers.

You can listen to the interview here.

Edited By

In dozens of anthologies published over the last thirty years, the words “edited by” have been followed by a singularly reassuring name: Ellen Datlow. For countless readers (and writers), Datlow’s name has served as a virtual guarantee of quality. Each of her many anthologies, whatever its specific nature, reflects a high degree of taste, intelligence, and professional judgment. As Gary K. Wolfe notes in his excellent introduction, her work has received “an almost unprecedented string of honors.” Honors and awards are fine, of course, but it’s the stories that ultimately matter. And Datlow has ushered more good stories into the world than any editor in living memory. The book you are currently holding stands as a testament to that fact.

Edited By is a thoroughgoing attempt to reflect both the quality and infinite variety of the fiction she has championed in the course of her career. The stories gathered here come from all over the literary map. There are SF, fantasy, and horror stories, often in unique combinations. There are household names among the contributors, such as Neil Gaiman, whose screenplay/story “Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture)” is a chilling account of eater and eaten, predator and prey. There are newer, lesser known figures as well, among them Nathan Ballingrud, whose “Monsters of Heaven” is an achingly beautiful story of grief, loss, and strange encounters. And there are many award-winning writers included, among them Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Lucius Shepard, Ted Chiang, and Jeffrey Ford, to name just a few. Their contributions are among the many highlights of this book.

From publisher Subterranean Press.

 

Edited By is now out in hardback. It can be bought directly from Subterranean Press, Amazon UK, Amazon US, your local bookshop, among others.

I am delighted to be included in such a special book. “The Crow Palace” was first published in Ellen Datlow’s Black Feather: Dark Avian Tales in 2017.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Gary K. Wolfe (not signing), Home by the Sea by Pat Cadigan, The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson, The Bedroom Light by Jeffrey Ford, The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven by Laird Barron, The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma, Some Strange Desire by Ian McDonald, The Lepidopterist by Lucius Shepard, Bird Count by Jane Yolen, Anamorphosis by Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Hortlak by Kelly Link, In the Month of Athyr by Elizabeth Hand,Precious by Nalo Hopkinson, Daniel’s Theory About Dolls by Stephen Graham Jones, The Mysteries by Livia Llewellyn, Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg, The Office of Doom by Richard Bowes, Black Nightgown by K. W. Jeter, A Delicate Architecture Catherynne M. Valente, The Goosle by Margo Lanagan, Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture) by Neil Gaiman, Teratisms by Kathe Koja, The Monsters of Heaven by Nathan Ballingrud, That Old School Tie by Jack Womack, Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates by Pat Murphy, Overlooking by Carol Emshwille, Sonny Liston Takes the Fall by Elizabeth Bear, Technicolor by John Langan, The Sawing Boys by Howard Waldrop, Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix, Seventy-Two Letters by Ted Chiang, Interview with Ellen Datlow by Gwenda Bond