The latest This Is Horror event, on Saturday 22 September 2012, will celebrate the launch of their second chapbook in the Premium Chapbook Series – Thin Men with Yellow Faces by Gary McMahon and Simon Bestwick. The launch event – involving Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Simon Bestwick and Conrad Williams – takes place at MadLab in Manchester from 6:30pm and will run through to approximately 8:15pm. Award-winning author Jasper Bark will host the event.

Tickets are available for just £3. Copies of both the first chapbook, Joe & Me by David Moody, and Thin Men with Yellow Faces by McMahon and Bestwick, will be available for the special price of £4 in Manchester for one night only. More information on the This Is Horror website HERE

The fall 2012 line-up of Pandemonium Fiction titles has been released, and includes a weird Western anthology, new collectible novelettes and the anniversary edition of Simon Morden’s apocalyptic debut.

Pandemonium will be publishing a luxury re-issue of Thy Kingdom Come, the debut novel by Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Simon Morden. Featuring twenty interconnected tales of a nuclear apocalypse, this limited edition features a new introduction and afterword by the author, an introduction by Edgar-winning Robert Jackson Bennett and art by the amazing Joey HiFi. Thy Kingdom Come will be released as a signed and numbered limited edition. All profits from the sales of this book (due in November) will go to the Red Cross.

A Town Called Pandemonium is a shared world Western featuring some of the top authors in genre fiction. The tales all take place in a burned out mining town in the New Mexico territory. Scott Andrews, Will Hill, Archie Black, Jonathan Oliver, Joseph D’Lacey and Den Patrick are joined by US authors Sam Sykes, Chrysanthy Balis and Osgood Vance and South Africa’s Sam Wilson. The anthology is llustrated by Adam Hill. As with previous Pandemonium anthologies, A Town Called Pandemonium will be released as a numbered limited edition and a Kindle ebook (for one year only!). Release date is November.

Jonathan Green is joined by debut authors Marc Aplin and Laura Graham in 1853, the chapbook companion to Town. The authors explore the rest of the shared world with stories set in the same fateful year. 1853 collects three short tales of monsters human and inhuman. This ebook will also be released in November.

The Pandemonium Novelettes series of lettered-edition paperbacks continues with Archie Black‘s Uncle Smoke. Originally published in Stories of the Smoke, Black has extended her whirlwind tour of London’s secret history with several new neighbourhoods. To be released in December in print only, limited to 26 signed and lettered copies.

Finally, the tradition of Stocking Stuffers continues, with a new collection of darkly fantastic tales for the holiday season. Cover by Sarah Anne Langton. Ebook only to be released in December.

This Is Horror will be launching its new Premium Chapbooks Series during an evening with authors David Moody, Joseph D’Lacey and Simon Bestwick, with host Jasper Bark. The event will take place on Friday 22 June 2012 in The Writer’s Room, Milburn House at the University of Warwick from 7pm to 9pm. Tickets are free – simply e-mail Michael [at] ThisIsHorror [dot] co [dot] uk to book your place.

Subscriptions to the Premium Chapbooks Series are now available. For information please visit the This Is Horror website HERE

This Is Horror has announced a new venture – the This Is Horror Premium Chapbook Series. These chapbooks will showcase stories from some of the very best names in genre today and will be released every quarter. The line-up for the first year is as follows:

David Moody, author of the best-selling Autumn and Hater series, is first up with Joe & Me. This is scheduled to be released at the start of June and will be followed by a very special launch event (details to follow).

Next is a collaboration between Gary McMahon, author of This Is Horror’s Novel of The Year – The Concrete Grove, and Simon Bestwick, author of The Faceless. Their story, Thin Men with Yellow Faces will be released in Autumn 2012.

The next chapbook will be The Fox by award-winning author, Conrad Williams. His accolades include the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2010, the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel 2007 and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella 2008. The Fox will be released in Winter 2012/13.

To round-off the year will be a title from Joseph D’Lacey, leader of the eco-horror revolution and British Fantasy Award winner for Best Newcomer 2009. His as yet untitled chapbook will be released in Spring 2013.

Pre-orders and prices for both David Moody’s Joe & Me and a yearly subscription to the This Is Horror Premium Chapbook Series will be announced shortly.

The first 200 yearly subscribers will be entered into a prize draw to win a free subscription to the This Is Horror Premium Chapbook Series the following year running from Summer 2013 – Spring 2014. Each premium chapbook will have a limited run of no more than 500 copies. See the This Is Horror website for more information.

Spectral Press, publishers of limited edition signed and numbered single story supernatural chapbooks, are introducing a line of occasional novellas – Spectral Visions. The first will be The Respectable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry, to be published in April 2012. It is intended that there will be several versions of each novella – a hardback, paperback and ebook version.

More information can be found HERE

KING DEATH by Paul Finch, Spectral Press, chapbook (subscription only series) http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/

Reviewed by David Brzeski

Paul Finch got his start in the writing game by writing for TV.

This is no surprise, as he has a wonderfully visual style. This historical fantasy tale would fit in perfectly well on one of those classic “story with a twist” anthology shows that were once a staple on British TV.

He writes very engagingly, using the terminology of the period (there’s a glossary at the back, if you need it).

Rodric is, frankly, a bit of a scumbag…. a man, who finding himself lucky enough to be immune to the great plague, shows no pity for the afflicted, but simply exploits the situation for personal gain.

He is a scavenger & a conman.

The reader knows full well that Rodric is going to come to a sticky end, but it’s how he gets there that is the meat of the story. It would do the reader no service to be told in advance just how Rodric manages todig himself a hole he can’t get out of, but it is delightfully apt.

This limited to 100 copies publication is part of a subscription only chapbook series & is sadly out of print, but you can subscribe to further publications in the series.

THE JOY OF TECHNOLOGY by Roy Gray. Pendragon Press £3.00

Reviewed by Tom Crouch

The preface says that if you are offended by explicit sex scenes, don’t read this novella. I have to say, I didn’t think that these scenes were all that explicit. In fact, they were quite coy, using allusions to organs and the act itself.

The story is mostly set in a sex club in a future Germany, soon filled with British soccer fans getting off on the on-stage antics of the strippers, featuring dildos and artificial vaginas. The story is about the desensitisation of feelings, particularly those of a coming of age teenager. Gray conveys this effectively enough, but deals with it a little too quickly at the end – he could’ve taken longer to get into the boy’s head and his feelings for the girl also on the coach trip. The writing is competent although a bit clunky. A stronger editorial hand would have made a better flowing story. The editor/publisher also forgot to correct punctuation throughout, which does disservice to the writer and his story.

THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM by R.B. Russell. Nightjar Press £3.00

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Publisher and editor Ray Russell is a man of taste, devoted to elegant fiction with a penchant for dark, ghostly and supernatural stories. As a writer he’s the author of two short story collections (Putting the Pieces in Place and  Literary Remains)  and of  the  novella “Bloody Baudelaire”.

Russell’s writing style is consistent with the refined nature of his literary choices.  Subtlety and ability to gently disquiet and unnerve the reader, wrapped in a classy polished wording, are the main characteristics of his fictional output.

“The Beautiful Room”, a twelve-page booklet from Nightjar Press, is no exception.  The plot is quite simple. A couple, just relocated abroad, and looking for an apartment to rent, inspect a  house which immediately takes the woman’s fancy because of a gorgeous bedroom. The man, however, doesn’t share his mate’s enthusiasm and, in just a few sentences, Russell contrives to depict how the relationship has its uneasy moments and a slight undercurrent of  resentments and recriminations.

The discovery that a flock of birds is trapped within the room’s walls will lead to unexpected developments ending up in an ambiguous  Aickmanesque fashion apt to leave behind an unsettling sense of  foreboding.