Israeli author Nir Yaniv’s debut English-language collection has been released by Keith Brooke’s Infinity Plus imprint.

The Love Machine & Other Contraptions is available in Kindle and paperback formats.

Yaniv is a film-maker, musician and author based in Tel Aviv. With World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar he co-wrote 2009 novel, The Tel Aviv Dossier. It has been described by SFCrowsnest as “the most enjoyably bizarre novel I’ve read,” and was called a “neo-Gnostic apocalypse narrative for the iPod generation” by The Jewish Quarterly.

Yaniv’s stories have appeared widely in Israel, where he is considered one of the most prominent of the new wave of genre writers. His writing is often humorous, and tackles a wide variety of subjects and literary approaches. In English, his stories have previously appeared in Weird Tales, Apex Magazine, Chizine and elsewhere, and they have been translated into German, Portuguese and Polish.

The Love Machine collects Yaniv’s previously published stories as well as many new stories never published in English. Some have been translated by Lavie Tidhar, who also provides an introduction, and well as by the author himself.

Yaniv’s work has been called “hypnotic, surreal and prophetic” by World Fantasy Award winning editor Ann VanderMeer, and as “fantastic, wonderful [and] weird” by Strange Horizons.

On November 17th the controversial horror-comedy anthology Blackout will launch at Thought Bubble comic festival in Leeds. This 32-page, full-colour anthology is packed with unrequited romance, booze, death-by-misadventure, necrophilia, cannibalism and suicide, and that’s just the first story!

Satirical anthology Blackout is created by Starburst Magazine columnist P M Buchan, The Big Bang creator Jack Fallows and Kerrang! illustrator Phillip Marsden, with guest contributions by Andrew Waugh (Dodgem Logic), Mike Barnes (Cornelius Blow) and Harley Poe frontman Joe Whiteford.

Buchan, Fallows and Marsden met while working together at Travelling Man in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, bonding over their black humour, shared love of independent comics and an inability to show restraint at the bar. Collectively they’ve had comic-strips serialised in the NME, Starburst and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine.

Guest contributor Andrew Waugh has had strips published in Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic, Solipsistic Pop and ink + PAPER, while star guest Joe Whiteford is the frontman for notorious horror-folk-punk band Harley Poe. Joe was signed to a Christian punk label as a teenager, but that was clearly a relationship doomed to failure. Harley Poe’s last album was called Satan, Sex and No Regrets.

Speaking of the anthology, P M Buchan said: “Have you ever had one drink too many and woken up the next day to find that everybody hates you for something you don’t remember doing? Have you ever cried yourself to sleep over somebody that hasn’t even noticed that you exist? Do you feel like everything you touch is doomed to failure, leading towards a futile and inevitable death? If the answer is yes to any of these questions then we created Blackout with you in mind.”

For further information please contact phillip.buchan@starburstmagazine.com

The folks at Spectral Press have announced the final contents for their first Christmas annual, The 13 Ghosts of Christmas.

The stories are:

An Odd Number at Table by John Costello

Concerning Events at Leinster Gardens  by Jan Edwards

Carnacki: A Cold Christmas in Chelsea by William Meikle

A Taste of Almonds by Raven Dane

Where the Stones Lie by Richard Farren Barber

All that is Living by Nicholas Martin

And May All your Christmases by Thana Niveau

Now and Then by Martin Roberts

December by Paul Finch

Ritualism by Gary McMahon

We Are a Shadow by Neil Williams

The Green Clearing by John Forth

Lost Soldiers by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Publisher’s Acknowledgements – Simon Marshall-Jones

BONUS

Whitstable novella preview (May 2013) by Stephen Volk

This issue is edited by Mark Howard Jones and includes fiction and poetry from Allen Ashley, Cathy Bryant, Terry Grimwood, Adam Kuplowsky, Bob Lock, Matt Merritt, Brian M Milton, D E Oprava and Douglas Thompson.

And, for every single purchase (£4.50 / $8.50 inc p+p) or new subscription (£16.00 / $32.00 inc p+p) they will throw in a signed copy of Mark Howard Jones’ book ‘The Garden of Doubt on the Island of Shadows’

More info can be found HERE. Paypal accepted to seinundwerden@gmail.com. Any other queries to same address.

Shadow Publishing is offering discounts on its titles for the Christmas season. Phantoms of Venice is discounted from £20.00 to £15.99. The Satyr’s Head: Tales of Terror, normal price £5.99 is now £4.50. The Female of the Species And Other Terror Tales by Richard Davis is down from £7.99 to £6.50, as is Frightfully Cosy And Mild Stories For Nervous Types by Johnny Mains. The offers end 31st December 2012 but order soon to ensure delivery before Christmas. Postage costs extra. Go to the website and click on the Special Offers page or click HERE

These offers are also available if you wish to pay by cheque in the UK. Contact Shadow Publishing for further details.

Starburst Magazine columnist P M Buchan and manga artist Karen Yumi Lusted will release the first issue of their Gothic-Horror series La Belle Dame Sans Merci at Thought Bubble in Leeds on Saturday 17th November.

Based on the poem of the same name by John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a four-part series that drags The Beautiful Lady out of the forest and screaming into the modern world.

Writer P M Buchan has had comics serialised in Starburst Magazine and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. He is also a columnist for Panel Nine’s INFINITY, and has written for Rue Morgue magazine online and Lionsgate’s Fright Club e-magazine. His short stories have been published in The Bleed magazine and his short horror films have screened at festivals around the UK.

Artist Karen Yumi Lusted is the creator of Final Blossom and Tommi C. and the Cat Burglar. She collaborated with P M Buchan in Non Repro’s J-Cult anthology, and Karen’s art appeared in 1000 Ideas by 100 Manga Artists. In 2008 she won the 16+ premade art prize at the Manga Shakespeare / Sweatdrop MCM Expo art competition. Karen currently lives and teaches English in Japan.

With a cover coloured by Kate Brown (Fish + Chocolate, Freakangels), pin-ups by Kate Ashwin (Widdershins) and Kate Holden (Fan Dan Go), a back-up essay about the feminism of Keats by Bad Reputation blog editor Miranda Brennan, additional lettering and design by Mike Stock (Afterlife Inc., Dead Roots) and a downloadable soundtrack composed by Brendan Ratliff (aka Syphus) this is a haunting story that you can’t afford to miss.

Speaking of the new series, P M Buchan said: “So many modern stories draw from the same well of inspiration, but I’ve always felt that the Romantics had more to say about love and loss than anybody that followed them. Nothing fascinates me so much as the femme fatale, and there is no femme fatale in the history of English literature more beloved than La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

David Hine (The Darkness, Detective Comics, Storm Dogs) had this to say after reading an advance preview: “P M Buchan’s loose interpretation of Keats’s poem is as enigmatic and disturbing as the source material. Opening with a deceptively familiar domestic scene, Karen Yumi Lusted conspires with Buchan to subvert the reader’s expectations with a ‘cute’ manga drawing style that makes the subsequent revelations even more shocking. Like all the best horror, La Belle Dame Sans Merci compels me to keep looking no matter how much I may want to turn away. I’ll be back for the next chapter.”

David & Lin Riley have revived Parallel Universe Publications to bring us a new collection of Craig Herbertson‘s work. The Heaven Maker & Other Gruesome Tales is a 254-page hard backed book and will be launched in Edinburgh on the 15th November, priced £20.

The book has a foreword by Janis Mackay and an introduction by Craig. The full list of contents is:

Timeless Love (originally published in Filthy Creations #2)
Synchronicity (originally published in The Third Black Book of Horror)
The Glowing Goblins (originally published in Auguries #16)
New Teacher (originally published in The Seventh Black Book of Horror)
The Janus Door
The Heaven Maker (originally published in The 29th Pan Book of Horror Stories)
The Waiting Game (originally published in Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories)
The Art of Confiscation
Gertrude
Not Waving
Spanish Suite (originally published in The Sixth Black Book of Horror)
The Anninglay Sundial
Soup (originally published in The Fourth Black Book of Horror)
A Game of Billiards (originally published in Tales from the Smoking Room)
The Navigator (originally published in Big Vault Advent Calendar 2011)
The Tasting
Steel Works
Liebniz’s Last Puzzle (originally published in The Fifth Black Book of Horror)
Big Cup, Wee Cup
Gifts (originally published in Big Vault Advent Calendar 2011)

Copies will become available shortly through rileybooks.co.uk

Queries about buying copiers of the book should be sent either to rileybooks@ntlworld.com or to Riley Books, 130 Union Road, Oswaldtwistle, Accrington, Lancashire, BB5 3DR, UK.

Angry Robot is delighted to announce that, due to the immense popularity of Paul S. Kemp‘s The Hammer and the Blade - the first in his Tales of Egil and Nix series of sword and sorcery fantasy adventure novels – we have signed Paul up to write a third book starring our favourite tomb robbers.

Tentatively titled A Conversation in Blood, the book is scheduled for Summer 2014. To sate readers’ appetites for more great sword and sorcery action, the second in the series, A Discourse in Steel, will be published in June of next year.

Paul S. Kemp said: “I don’t know about you, but my pink parts are all tingly! Wait, is that too much information? Uh, sorry. So, anyway, continuing my relationship with the metallic overlords? Check. Writing more stories in the sword and sorcery sub-genre I love? Double check. The long and short of it? I’m smiling. Hugely. I’ve had so much fun writing about Egil and Nix, and have had such positive feedback from readers who’ve had a blast, too, that I’m just delighted to have the opportunity to write more of their adventures. Huzzah!”

Angry Robot Editor Lee Harris added: “The Hammer and the Blade has proven to be one of our most popular titles of 2012, so it was an easy decision to ask Paul to write more in that world. Sword and Sorcery is alive and well and living in Paul S Kemp’s brilliant Tales of Egil and Nixseries.”

Find out more about Paul S. Kemp, who also writes for the Star Wars and Forgotten Realms universes, at his website: www.paulskemp.com and follow him on Twitter @PaulSKemp.

David Riley has a new collection of  four long stories and a novelette out from Hazardous Press in the States.

His Own Mad Demons, Dark Tales from David A. Riley is available as a paperback and an ebook. It includes:

The Worst of all Possible Places (Houses on the Borderland, BFS, edited by David A. Sutton)
Lock In (The Black Book of Horror, edited by Charles Black)
Their Own Mad Demons (The Fifth Black Book of Horror, edited by Charles Black)
The Fragile Mask on his Face (Dark Discoveries #15, edited by James Beach)
The True Spirit (Back from the Dead, edited by Johnny Mains)

Print copies are available via Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. In the US it’s $9.99 and £6.23 in the UK (with free shipping).

The ebook version is available via Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, £3.21/$5.14.

Spectral Press have today revealed the cover art by Ben Baldwin for Stephen Volk’s new novella and tribute to Peter Cushing, Whitstable.

More information on the book can be found at the Spectral Press website HERE