Sharma’s tales are at their strongest and most poignant when they concern love, be it consuming, denied, or realized late. Their magic is usually one surreal piece fitted tightly into a puzzle of normalcy, that often roars up by the end to reshape everything. Sharma leaves tantalizing clues throughout her stories that make the conclusions surprising yet satisfying. Fantasy fans who want their stories deep and intense will consider this a fabulous debut. Read full Publishers Weekly review.
“All the Fabulous Beasts” is now available directly from Undertow Publications now and to pre-order from Amazon UK (to ship on 1st May 2018).
Order from Amazon UK
Mike Kelly of Undertow Publications has been terrific to work with. One part of the process I’ve particularly enjoyed is helping him to pick the cover artwork for “All the Fabulous Beasts”.
Messages went back and forth between us as we scoured the internet, and both of us are very happy with the final choice for the trade paperback edition.
The artist is Hiroko Shiina, known as C7-Shiina, who is a graduate from Toyko Design Gakuin College.
Her intricate work is picked out in muted tones, painted in ink, acrylic, watercolours and sometimes coffee.
I love the detail of C7-Shiina’s art, which forces me to look again and again at the different elements within it. She repeats her dark themes of reduced anatomies, tattooed flesh, fetishism, of death and unfolding wings, opium poppies and transformation, the primordial forms of embryos and decorated foetal skulls, masked lovers and the black gloves of a killer.
My thanks to her.
https://www.facebook.com/C7artworks/
Mike Kelly at Undertow Publications has now released the cover for the hardback edition of my collection, “All the Fabulous Beasts”. It features the artwork by Jeffrey Alan Love which accompanied the story, “Fabulous Beasts” on Tor.com. The cover design is by Vince Haig.
Mike Kelly, editor at Undertow Publications, has released the table of contents for my collection, “All the Fabulous Beasts”.
He’s posted it on the collection’s Facebook page, where you can follow its progress.
Table of Contents
The Crow Palace
Rag and Bone
The Anatomist’s Mnemonic…
Egg
The Sunflower Seed Man
The Ballad of Boomtown
The Show
Pearls
The Absent Shade
Small Town Stories
Fish Skins
The Rising Tide
The Englishman
The Nature of Bees
A Son of The Sea
Fabulous Beasts
Mike Kelly, editor at Undertow Publications, has just released the cover art for the paperback edition of my collection, “All the Fabulous Beasts”.
The beautiful cover art is by C7 Hiroko Shiina and the design by Vince Haig.
To release a collection of my own stories, to have a book with my name on the cover, has been a long held dream of mine. Thanks to Mike and the other good people at Undertow (Vince Haig, Robert Freeman Wexley, Courtney Kelly and Carolyn McDonnell- Kelly) for making it happen.
“All the Fabulous Beasts” will be out in March 2018 in both hardback and paperback. If you’re interested in its progress, the book has its own Facebook page-
One great thing about visiting the dealers’ room at British Fantasy Con (FCon) is that it reminds me how passionate people are who dedicate their time and energy to the small press and how much people still love the printed page.
I’m proud to have had work in TTA Press– I love it because there’s nothing quite like it publishing short genre fiction in the UK. Andy Cox, the editor, has an eclectic eye for work and high production values. Interzone, Black Static and Crime Wave win awards, as do the stories that Andy chooses.
As a horror fan, Black Static has contained some amazing stories that have stayed with me, such as “White Rabbit” by Georgina Bruce (British Fantasy Award Winner in the short story category) , “Shark! Shark!” by Ray Cluley (BFA Winner short story) , “When the Moon Man Knocks” by Cate Gardner (BFA nominated), “Sunshine” by Nina Allan (BFA nominated), “Lullaby” by Steve Rasnic Tem, “Prespective” by Steve. J. Dines, just to name a few. It features work by a plethora of talent like Simon Bestwick, Stephen Bacon, Stephen Hardagon, Laura Mauro, Damien Angelica Walters, Kristi Demeester, Helen Marshall, Andrew Hook, Ralph Robert Moore, Gary McMahon, Stephen Graham Jones…
The 60th issue is now out and contains excellent work by Ray Cluley, Stephen Hargadon and Tim Lees. It also contains the tremendous “Skyshine (or Death by Scotland)” by Carole Johnstone. I become a fangirl after reading her BFA winning story “Signs of the Times”, which was also first published in Black Static. There was a real buzz around “Skyshine” at the conference and I read it when I got home. It’s early to start talking about next year’s awards but I think it would be criminal if this wasn’t nominated. It’s inventive, clever and wry. Oh, and new subscribers can get Issue 60 free by using “B60 FREE” as their Shopper Reference during the checkout.
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I read “The Beauty” by Aliya Whiteley, published by Unsung Stories last year. It was a stunning bit of work about men in a post-woman society, that manages to be both body horror and an exploration of gender roles. I wanted to buy everything on the stand at FCon. In fact, I was deeply put out to find Malcom Devlin’s debut collection, “You Will Grow Into Them”, was sold out by the time I got there. It’s already garnering praise – see James Lovegrove’s review in the Financial Times, no less.
Did I also mention their books are also extremely handsome?
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Daniele Serra won a British Fantasy Award this year for his artwork. I came home with a copy of “Five Feathered Tales” by Alison Littlewood, which Daniele illustrated. It truly is a thing of beauty and Alison’s stories are delicate and dark. Incidentally, I also bought her new novel “The Crow Garden” after I enjoyed “The Hidden People”.
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Black Shuck Books is a relatively new venture from Steve Shaw that launched an 
anthology at FCon called “The Dark Satanic Mills”. It’s the second in his annual collection showcasing British writers (plus an international one), containing original work by Cate Gardner, Charlotte Bond, Paul Finch, Andrew Freudenberg, Gary Fry, Carole Johnstone, Penny Jones, Gary McMahon, Marie O’Regan, John Llewellyn Probert and Angela Slatter. Steve also launched John Lllewellyn Probert’s collection “Made for the Dark”.
Black Shuck’s catalogue is interesting. I’m thinking of Black Shuck Shadows, micro-collections by Thana Niveau, Paul Kane and Joseph D’Lacey. “A Suggestion of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction by Women 1826-1897” is curated by the very knowledgeable Johnny Mains, who has scoured periodicals, archives and collections for work that hasn’t been republished since it was first released.
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Another launch that I attended was Titan Books’ New Fears, edited by Mark Morris. It’s a stellar line-up with writers like Ramsey Campbell, Nina Allan, Conrad Williams, A.K. Benedict, Alison Littlewood and Stephen Laws, to name a few.
For an alternative Halloween read, I’d suggest Simon Bestwick’s “The Feast of All Souls”, which pulls off the trick of being a haunted house story, a Victorian gothic novel, flirts with quantum physics and is a study of loss. Another recommendation would be Laura Mauro’s novella “Naming the Bones”. I’ve watched her career with interest as she’s a fine writer.
While at FCon I saw James Everington read from his novel “The Quarantined City”, in which the protagonist’s search for an author takes him deep into the man’s short stories. James Everington’s fiction is quiet and unsettling, having drawn very favorable attention from The Guardian reviewer Eric Brown. I have to mention Kit Power at this point too, who has a very different (set of) voices, all of them convincing, and who is the only person at the convention who could carry off a reading with a hammer in his hand. His collection will be out next year.
Undertow Publications are having a crazy Kindle sale on some of their titles. 99p on Amazon.co.uk and $1.23 am Amazon.com. Just follow the links.
I am delighted that Mike Kelly at Undertow Publications (“purveyors of the finest weird fiction and strange tales”) is publishing my short story anthology in March 2018.
You can find more details at Undertow Publications.
Beautiful books by Undertow:
