Tor Nightfire Halloween Horror Sweepstake

Giveaway only open to residents of US and CA (excluding Quebec). Closes 9th October 2022.

I am VERY proud to be in both “Screams From the Dark” and “Dark Stars”.

Enter here.

Screams From The Dark

I love a good monster story, so am thrilled to be in Ellen Datlow’s new anthology with a story called “The Ghost of a Flea”.

Contributers list: Ian Rogers, Fran Wilde, Gemma Files, Daryl Gregory, Priya Sharma, Brian Hodge, Joyce Carol Oates, Indrapramit Das, Siobhan Carroll, Richard Kadrey, Norman Partridge, Garry Kilworth, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Chikodili Emelumadu, Glen Hirshberg, A. C. Wise, Stephen Graham Jones, Kaaron Warren, Livia Llewellyn, Carole Johnstone, Margo Lanagan, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, Cassandra Khaw, Laird Barron, Kristi DeMeester, Jeffrey Ford, and John Langan.

Find out more here.

2019 Shirley Jackson Awards

The awards are handed out annually to the works of horror, dark fantasy and psychological suspense that best exemplify the legacy of horror author Shirley Jackson. Due to Covid-19, this year’s ceremony was a virtual one rather than its normal venue at ReaderCon in Massachusetts, USA. I was delighted just to be listed in the novella category alongside an amazing list of writers and genuinely suprised to win.

Congratulations to everyone on the list.

Here are this year’s winners (listed in bold) and nominees:

NOVEL

• The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter (Two Dollar Radio)
• Curious Toys, Elizabeth Hand (Little, Brown and Co)
• Goodnight Stranger, Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row Books)
• Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (Gollancz)
• Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson (Ecco)
• Tinfoil Butterfly, Rachel Eve Moulton (MCD x FSG Originals)

 

NOVELLA

• “Ormeshadow,” Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
• Into Bones Like Oil, Kaaron Warren (Meerkat Press)
• “Late Returns,” Joe Hill (Full Throttle)
• “The Monster of Elenhaven,” Jennifer Giesbrecht (Tor.com)
• This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Gallery/Saga Press)

NOVELETTE

• Luminous Body, Brooke Warra (Dim Shores)
• Black Bequeathments, Simon Strantzas (Dim Shores)
• The Couvade, Joanna Koch (Demain Publishing)
• “Deeper, Darker Things,” Steve Dillon (Deeper, Darker Things and Other Oddities)
• Pwdre Ser, Kurt Fawver (Dim Shores)
• “Taproot,” M. R. Carey (Ten-Word Tragedies)

SHORT FICTION

• “Kali_Na,” Indrapramit Das (The Mythic Dream)
• “How to Become a Witch-Queen,” Theodora Goss (Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery)
• “The Truth About Josh Enloe,” Nick Straatmann (Parhelion)
• “The Well,” Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell (issue 55.1 of The Southern Review)
• “Whistle, My Lad, and I Will Come,” Gina Ochsner (The Pink Issue of Fairy Tale Review)

 

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

• Song for the Unraveling of the World, Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
• Collision: Stories, J. S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press, LLC)
• Every Human Love: Stories, Joanna Pearson (Acre Books)
• Homesick, Nino Cipri (Dzanc Books)
• Mouthful of Birds, Samanta Schweblin (Riverhead Books)
• Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud (Saga Press)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

• The Twisted Book of Shadows, edited by Christopher Golden & James A. Moore (Twisted Publishing)
• Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, edited by Ellen Datlow (Saga Press)
• The Mythic Dream, edited by Rivers Solomon (Saga Press)
• The Unquiet Dreamer: A Tribute to Harlan Ellison, edited by Preston Grassmann (PS Publishing)
• Wonderland: An Anthology of Works Inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane (Titan Books)

Ormeshadow Released

It’s finally the official release date of “Ormeshadow” from Tor.com. My huge thanks to the team there.

Becky Spratford kindly mentioned “Ormeshadow” on her Recent Horror Novellas for Librarians column on her website RA for All: Horror, the online of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror. She also featured me in a series she runs, RA for All: 31 Days of Horror – I am Day 8 of Why I Love Horror.

Becky is a Librarian in Illinois who trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through their local public library. She is an of the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2d edition (ALA Editions, 2012). She writes content for EBSCO’s NoveList database, reviews for Booklist, is a member of the Adult Reading Round Table Steering Committee, a 5 term Trustee for her local library, and am a proud member of The Horror Writers’ Association.

“Ormeshadow” is also reviewed by Ross Jeffrey over at Storgy.

Sharma’s prose in Ormeshadow is deep and rich, and at times, all consuming. It’s as if Sharma has created a storm on the page, contained it with words, sentences and paragraphs – you want to pull yourself away but it’s intoxicatingly, you are at her mercy and she doesn’t relent

Read full review here.

Cover Reveal for Ormeshadow

I’m very excited about the release of my first novella, “Ormeshadow”, by Tor later this year. They’ve allowed Bookish to reveal the cover. Do you want a look?

Ormeshadow

I am absolutely delighted that Tor will be publishing my novella, Ormeshadow, in 2019. My huge thanks to both consulting editor, Ellen Datlow, and the team at Tor for accepting this.

You can read more details about it  in the announcement on Tor.com.

Mad Hatters and March Hares cover art

Tor have revealed the cover art by Dave McKean for “Mad Hatters and March Hares”, which is out on 5th December 2017. I’m not sure if anybody out there actually reads this blog but I promise that I did NOT know who was doing the art when I blogged two days ago about the Folio edition of “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean.

This collection is edited by Ellen Datlow and readers can expect “An all original anthology of stories inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. ‘Alice’ has been read, enjoyed, and savored by generations of children and adults since its publication. It’s hallucinogenic, weird, imaginative and full of wordplay, mathematical puzzles, and political and social satire.”

Table of Contents

• “A Comfort, One Way” by Genevieve Valentine
• “Alis” by Stephen Graham Jones
• “All the King’s Men” by Jeffrey Ford
• “Conjoined” by Jane Yolen
• “Eating the Alice Cake” by Kaaron Warren
• “Gentle Alice” by Kris Dikeman
• “In Memory of a Summer’s Day” by Matthew Kressel
• “Lily-White & The Thief of Lesser Night” by C.S.E. Cooney
• “Mercury” by Priya Sharma
• “Moon, Memory, Muchness” by Katherine Vaz
• “My Own Invention” by Delia Sherman
• “Run, Rabbit” by Angela Slatter
• “Run, Rabbit, Run” by Jane Yolen
• “Sentence Like a Saturday”  by Seanan McGuire
• “Some Kind of Wonderland” by Richard Bowes
• “The Flame After the Candle” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “The Queen of Hats” by Ysabeau Wilce
• “Worrity, Worrity” by Andy Duncan

Mad Hatters and March Hares

Ellen Datlow has announced the table of contents for her Alice in Wonderland themed anthology Mad Hatters and March Hares, which will be out from Tor in 2017.

I am delighted to be included with “Mercury”.

ToC

Gentle Alice by Kris Dikeman (poem)
My Own Invention by Delia Sherman
Lily-White & The Thief of Lesser Night by C.S.E. Cooney
Conjoined by Jane Yolen
Mercury by Priya Sharma
Some Kind of Wonderland by Richard Bowes
Alis by Stephen Graham Jones
All the King’s Men by Jeffrey Ford
Run, Rabbit by Angela Slatter
In Memory of a Summer’s Day by Matthew Kressel
Sentence Like a Saturday by Seanan McGuire
Worrity, Worrity by Andy Duncan
Eating the Alice Cake by Kaaron Warren
The Queen of Hats by Ysabeau Wilce
A Comfort, One Way by Genevieve Valentine
The Flame After the Candle by Catherynne M. Valente
Moon, Memory, Muchness by Katherine Vaz
Run, Rabbit, Run by Jane Yolen (poem)

Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

 

I am delighted to be included in Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction with my short story “Fabulous Beasts”.

My thanks to Lethe Press editors A.M. Dellamonica and Steve Berman.

This story was originally aquired for Tor.com by Ellen Datlow.

“The latest volume in the acclaimed Heiresses of Russ series features stories that are anything but invisible: the women in these tales are not hiding and are not easily overlooked but rather are choosing the harder path, the more dangerous route, whether that leads to love or loss or adventure. Included in these pages are stories that have won a World Fantasy Award, a Tiptree Award, and a British Fantasy Award…but every one of these stories chosen by guest editor A.M. Dellamonica (herself an award-winning writer of queer speculative fiction) is emblematic of the new vitality to be found in lesbian-themed tales of wonder, the eerie, and the miraculous.”

From Lethe Press.

Table of Contents:

Grandmother Ley-neylit’s Cloth of Winds by Rose Lemberg
The Occidental Bride by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
The Devil Comes to the Midnight Café by A.C. Wise
And We Were Left Darkling  by Sarah Pinsker
A House of Her Own by Bo Balder
Love in the Time of Markov Processes by Megan Arkenberg
Where Monsters Dance by A. Merc Rustad
Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong
Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma
The Wollart Nymphs by Melissa Scott
The New Mother by Eugene Fischer
Eldritch Brown Houses by Claire Humphrey
The Tip of the Tongue by Felicia Davin
Where Can a Broken Glass Mend? by Sonya Taaffe
A Residence for Friendless Ladies by Alice Sola Kim
The Deepwater Bride by Tamsyn Muir
Doubt the Sun by Faith Mudge

 

Fantasycon by the Sea

Thank you to everyone I talked to at Fantasycon. It’s been a fantastic weekend. I’ve really enjoyed catching up with all the lovely people I know and meeting new ones too.

Thanks again to everyone who voted for Fabulous Beasts, which won the 2016 British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. To be included alongside writers whose work I have read and admire, some of whom are friends, is a real honour. Thanks to The British Fantasy Society and to the jurors.

Thanks, thanks and thanks again to Ellen Datlow, to Tor.com and to Jeffrey Alan Love for his gorgeous artwork.

I’ve been very fortunate to receive great kindness and encouragement from many quarters but in particular from Paula Guran, Andy Cox, Mike Kelly, Nina Allan, and Dev Agarwal.

Thank you to my mum, dad and brother, Ravi, for a house filled with stories in all their forms- Hardy, Hitchcock, Ganesha, Shiva, DC and Marvel. To Michelle Noble for a lifetime of long walks and gothic conversations.

And thank you to Mark Greenwood, my partner, for eveything.

I’ve had some lovely, lovely emails today. Thank you  xxx

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award): Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Macmillan)

Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Harper Voyager)
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Macmillan)
Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
Guns of the Dawn, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
The Iron Ghost, Jen Williams (Headline)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award) : Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Orbit UK)
The Silence, Tim Lebbon (Titan)
A Cold Silence, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher)
Lost Girl, Adam Nevill (Pan)
The Death House, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Best Novella: The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn, Usman T. Malik (Tor.com)

Witches of Lytchford, Paul Cornell (Tor.com)
The Bureau of Them, Cate Gardner (Spectral)
Albion Fay, Mark Morris (Spectral)
Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Best Short Fiction :“Fabulous Beasts”, Priya Sharma (Tor.com 7/27/15 )

“When the Moon Man Knocks”, Cate Gardner (Black Static 10-11/15)
Strange Creation, Frances Kay (Tenebris Nyxies)
“The Blue Room”, V.H. Leslie (Skein and Bone)
“Dirt Land”, Ralph Robert Moore (Black Static 11-12/15)
“Hippocampus”, Adam Nevill (Terror Tales of the Ocean)

Best Collection Ghost Summer: Stories, Tananarive Due (Prime)

Probably Monsters, Ray Cluley (ChiZine)
The Stars Seem So Far Away, Margrét Helgadóttir (Fox Spirit)
Monsters, Paul Kane (The Alchemy Press)
Scar City, Joel Lane (Eibonvale)
Skein and Bone, V.H. Leslie (Undertow)

Best Anthology: The Doll Collection, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)

African Monsters, Margrét Helgadóttir & Jo Thomas, eds. (Fox Spirit)
Best British Horror 2015, Johnny Mains, ed. (Salt)
The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories, Mark Morris, ed. (Spectral)
Aickman’s Heirs, Simon Strantzas, ed. (Undertow)

Best Independent Press: Angry Robot (Marc Gascoigne)

The Alchemy Press (Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards)
Fox Spirit (Adele Wearing)
Newcon (Ian Whates)

Best Non-Fiction :Letters to Tiptree, Alexandra Pierce & Alisa Krasnostein, ed. (Twelfth Planet)

Fantasy-Faction, Marc Aplin & Jennie Ivins, eds. (Fantasy-Faction)
The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History, Stephen Jones, ed. (Applause Theater & Cinema)
Ginger Nuts of Horror, Jim McLeod, ed. (gingernutsofhorror.com)
Matrilines, Kari Sperring (Strange Horizons)
King for a Year, Mark West, ed. (kingreviews2015.blogspot.com)

Best Magazine / Periodical: Beneath Ceasless Skies

Black Static
Holdfast Magazine
Interzone

Best Artist : Julie Dillon

Ben Baldwin
Vincent Chong
Evelinn Enoksen
Sarah Anne Langton
Jeffrey Alan Love

Best Comic / Graphic Novel :Bitch Planet (#2-5), Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, Robert Wilson IV & Cris Peter (Image)

Red Sonja (#14-18), Gail Simone & Walter Geovani (Dynamite)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
Saga (#25-32), Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image)
Ms. Marvel, Vol 2: Generation Why, G. Willow Wilson, Jacob Wyatt & Adrian Alphona (Marvel)

Best Film/Television Production: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Inside No. 9: The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge
Jessica Jones: “AKA WWJD?”
Mad Max: Fury Road
Midwinter of the Spirit
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award):Zen Cho for Sorcerer to the Crown (Macmillan)

Becky Chambers for The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Hodder & Stoughton)
Peter Newman for The Vagrant (HarperVoyager)
Steven Poore for The Heir to the North (Kristell Ink)
Marc Turner for When the Heavens Fall (Titan)

Winners were chosen by jury, except for the special award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award) which is chosen by the BFS committee.