Johnny Mains is proud to announce that he has been appointed series editor for Salt‘s annual ‘Best British Horror’ series. It will all kick off next year with the first book.

Johnny will be posting a blog soon with an address to send all anthologies and single author collections to.

Anatomy of Death (in five sleazy pieces) is the third in the PentAnth series from Hersham Horror Books.

It collects together five stories that all have their roots in the gloriously lurid horror heyday of the 1970s, with contributions from Stephen Volk, Johnny Mains, John Llewellyn Probert, Stephen Bacon and Mark West.

The book is available in paperback from Amazon for £4.50 and as an ebook for £2.02.

More details can be found at the Hersham Horror website - http://silenthater.wix.com/hersham-horror-books - and there is a dedicated Facebook page for the anthology at http://www.facebook.com/pentanth3

Edited by Johnny Mains and with artwork by David Whitlam, The Burning Circus is an anthology for members of the British Fantasy Society.

Stories include:

Not a member? Sign up now to secure your copy! The Burning Circus will be sent out alongside the next edition of the BFS Journal.

Shadow Publishing will shortly release a new collection from Johnny Mains. Frightfully Cosy And Mild Stories For Nervous Types will be published in September 2012 in paperback format priced at £7.99. It has cover art by Richard Sampson and an Introduction from Stephen Volk.

About the book:
‘Not for the Squeamish! From the twisted mind of British Fantasy Award winner Johnny Mains comes 12 stories of death, betrayal, insanity and pregnancies…The collection includes five previously unpublished tales. From classic themes in his sequel to M. R. James’ A Warning to the Curious, in “Aldeburgh” to his wild take on traditional horror subject matter in the strange case of “The Were-Dwarf”, to the bleakly dark modern horror of “Cure”. This collection of extraordinary horror yarns will not disappoint genre fans who enjoy variety in the horror books they buy.’

“Johnny Mains not only carries a flame for the old horrors, but wants to cause a bit of a conflagration of his own. The most fitting result would be if the next generation of horror readers will look back with pleasure and affection at his tales as we did with the Pans and Fontanas of our ill-begotten youth” –Stephen Volk

Shadow Publishing have a special pre-publication offer – £1.50 off the retail price if ordered before the end of September. You can order using PayPal HERE

Pre-orders are now being taken for The Screaming Book of Horror, from Screaming Dreams, edited by Johnny Mains. Billed as “.. a horror anthology in the tradition of the anthologies we all grew up with”, it contains new stories by Alison Littlewood, Reggie Oliver, Anna Taborska, David A. Riley, Paul Finch, Rhys Hughes, Kate Farell, Craig Herbertson, John Llewellyn Probert, Steve Rasnic Tem, Christopher Fowler and others. It also includes previously unpublished stories by John Brunner, John Burke and Bernard Taylor. Cover art is by Steve Upham.

The anthology will be published in a jacketed hardcover edition, limited to 100 copies only. To pre-order, see the website HERE

Karōshi Books has published their first book, Glory and Splendour: Tales of the Weird by genre newcomer Alex Miles.

Karōshi Books is an imprint of Noose & Gibbet Publishing and is run by British Fantasy Award winner Johnny Mains, Peter Mark May of Hersham Horror Books and Cathy Hurren, a production editor at Routledge.

Glory and Splendour is available now as a Kindle download and will be published in paperback format in September.

The anthology Bite Sized Horror 2, edited by Johnny Mains, has been picked up for publication by Hersham Horror and will be published in 2013. This is, of course, the follow-up to Bite Sized Horror from Obverse Books. Bite Sized Horror 2 will feature all new stories by Alison Littlewood, Cate Gardener, Thana Niveau, Lynda E Rucker, Marie O’ Regan and Barbie Wilde.

Also, Frightfully Mild and Cosy Stories For Nervous Types, Johnny Mains’ second collection, will be published by David A. Sutton’s Shadow Publishing in Autumn 2012.

BITE SIZED HORROR – Edited by Johnny Mains, Obverse Books, p/b, £9.99, http://obversebooks.co.uk/

Reviewed by David Brzeski

As Johnny Mains points out in the introduction, this is not a Vampire anthology, just in case anyone believes the word “Bite” in the title is supposed to suggest that.

Rather, it’s a classic horror anthology in the vein of those edited by Mary Danby & Herbert Van Thal back in the ’60s & ’70s.

Editor Johnny Mains is well known for his love for those classic anthologies, so there could be no better choice to revive the form.

Indeed, the first tale, by Reggie Oliver, ‘Brighton Redemption’, would not be at all out of place in an old Pan Book of Horror Stories. Written very much in the style of the period in which the story is set (the 1880s), it’s an engaging variant on the traditional ghost story. Others have compared it to M.R. James. I fancy that I see a little of Henry James in there also.

In ‘The Between’, Paul Kane takes us, along with the seven occupants of a lift, on a very scary plunge into the Twilight Zone. I’ve always enjoyed stories that dump the characters into a nightmarish situation where they have little control & even less hope of surviving. This is a good example & gets my vote for best story of the collection.

In ‘His Pale Blue Eyes’, by David A. Riley, a couple face certain doom, unless their 10 year old daughter is willing to do whatever is necessary to rescue them. I am not a zombie fan as a rule, but Riley focuses on the human survivors, rather than the undead and one has to wonder in the end, just who are the monsters?

Marie O’Regan gives us a variation on an old idea, as a young couple’s car breaks down on a stormy night, miles away from anywhere & they have to take refuge for the night in a creepy old monastery. These situations never end well! Yes, it is a little clichéd, but it’s fun none the less.

Roger, in ‘The Rookery’, by Johnny Mains, is damaged. His youngest child died from meningitis, his marriage did not survive the trauma & his wife is trying to deny him access to his son. The ending is chilling, if inevitable & we are granted a disturbing look inside Roger’s head.

MacCreadle, the protaganist of ‘The Carbon Heart’, by Conrad Williams, is an ex-biker drifting through life. He meets a strange girl & agrees to help her find her father. Set in a Manchester made greyer by ash courtesy of a certain Icelandic volcano, MacCreadle gradually finds himself sucked into weirdness again. The first person rrative style of this story works very well. Think Raymond Chandler writing an old English Ghost story, & you’ll get the idea.

I’d not come across Conrad Williams before, but I will be sure to keep an eye out for more of his work.

So, there we have it. 6 stories, all very different, but combining to form a very satisfying anthology. I think Herbert Van Thal would be pleased.

Screaming Dreams and Noose & Gibbet are proud to announce a joint project, simply called The Year. It will be published in 2013 and be edited by Johnny Mains and Steve Upham. This will be an anthology which will showcase the very best writings in Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy. Fifty-two stories, one for each week of the year…

This project is now open for submissions and while we are mainly focused on new, original fiction, there will be three classic reprints from each genre from different periods in that particular field’s history.

As the budget for the publishers will be rather taxing, payment will be £10 and a copy of the finished book. Stories will have to be no more than 3,000 words in length. If you’re a horror writer but have always wanted to write a crime tale, give it a shot – if you’re a die-hard sci-fi scribe, why not jump into the land of orcs and magic talismans. What will NOT get into the book are mash-ups, emotive vampires and sadly there will be no room at the inn for zombies. Try and stay away from the drunk, emotionally scarred detective and steampunk shenanigans. TV and film related spin off stories will also be a no-go.

The deadline will be 1 July 2012 – this will give you enough time to think of a story, write it and send it in. In the subject box put your name, title of the story and its genre. You will be notified whether you are in the book by 1 September 2012. No multiple submissions allowed and the date for all authors to sign off their individual stories will be 1 February 2013 with the book being published at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton 31 October – 3 November 2013. Due to prohibitive postage costs in sending out contributor copies, story submissions will only be accepted from authors residing in the UK. Payment and contributor copies will be sent out the week of Monday 13 November 2013 unless authors are in attendance at the convention.

All submissions and enquiries to theyearanthology [at] gmail [dot] com

For full details see the dedicated website

At a glittering ceremony in Brighton on 2 October 2011 the following were announced as winners of the British Fantasy Awards 2011:

KARL EDWARD WAGNER SPECIAL AWARD: Terry Pratchett

BEST NOVEL: Demon Dance, Sam Stone (House of Murky Depths)

BEST NOVELLA: Humpty’s Bones, Simon Clark (Telos)

BEST SHORT STORY: “Fool’s Gold”, Sam Stone, from The Bitten Word, ed. Ian
Whates (NewCon Press)

BEST ANTHOLOGY: Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror
Stories, Johnny Mains (ed.) (Noose & Gibbet)

BEST COLLECTION: Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)

BEST NON-FICTION: Altered Visions: The Art of Vincent Chong (Telos)

BEST ARTIST: Vincent Chong

BEST COMIC/GRAPHIC NOVEL: At the Mountains of Madness: a Graphic Novel, Ian Culbard (Selfmadehero)

BEST MAGAZINE/PERIODICAL: Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)

BEST SMALL PRESS: Telos Publishing

BEST FILM: Inception

BEST TELEVISION: Sherlock

SYDNEY J. BOUNDS AWARD FOR BEST NEWCOMER: Robert Jackson Bennet, for Mr Shivers (Orbit)