If you are a member of the BFS you should by now have received (or shortly be receiving) the latest BFS Journal (Autumn 2012). The Journal contains new fiction and poetry by: Christopher Golden, Gary Fry, Peter Crowther, Allen Ashley, Terry Grimwood and others. This issue also includes interviews with Nina Allan, Rhys Hughes, David A. Sutton and graphic artist Emma Vieceli (who also provides the amazing cover art for this issue of the Journal). Together with regular and one-off features by Mark Morris, Ramsey Campbell, Garry Kilworth (on crafting the short story) and Editorial Director of Gollancz Gillian Redfearn among others, this issue is jam-packed full of interesting content.

All BFS members receive the BFS Journal on a quarterly basis along with their other benefits of membership. If you haven’t yet joined the BFS but would like to do so to secure your copy of The Journal please go to the “join the BFS” page HERE

Peter Crowther and PS Publishing have acquired limited edition rights in a new dark novel, The Black,  by Mark Morris.  The agent was John Jarrold and the book will be published in 2014.

Mark is one of the best-known horror authors of the last twenty years.  His previous work includes the bestselling Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate and Fiddleback, as well as tie-in novels and non-fiction books on horror and film.  Here are his words about The Black:

“Kate Nolan is a successful magazine editor with a loving husband, James, and a five year old son, Max. Her life is wonderful, but one day she receives a phone call from James which changes everything. Clearly distressed, James tells Kate to meet him at midnight outside the beach café once owned by her long-dead grandmother in the seaside town of Seahaven, where they both grew up. A strange request, made even more sinister by the fact that in recent weeks Seahaven has become prey to a serial killer who is targeting the local children. Kate keeps the midnight appointment, but instead of finding her husband and son, she finds herself drawn into an ever-tightening web of past misdeeds and long-buried secrets. As hopes for her missing family fade, Kate becomes involved in a desperate race against time. Where are her husband and son? Have they become the latest victims of the serial killer, who calls himself Dominic and seems to know her intimately? And what has all this to do with Kate’s childhood terror of the impenetrable darkness known as ‘the black’?”

The British Fantasy Society is delighted to announce the Special Juries for the British Fantasy Awards. The awards will be presented at FantasyCon in Brighton in September 2012.

The Jury for the PS Publishing Independent Press Award:
Sandy Auden
Peter Crowther
Nicholas Royle
Peter Tennant
Darren Turpin

Sandy Auden is a freelance writer and photographer. Her work has appeared in SFX, Interzone, Locus and Supernatural magazines; a wide range of websites; and the occasional music video.

Peter and Nicky Crowther’s PS Publishing received the coveted annual BFS Award for Best Specialist/Small Press on seven occasions until, with a yearly output running to between 40 and fifty titles, Peter removed it from further consideration and instead contributes an annual financial prize to imprints with more modest schedules. We’re not sure whether those moist eyes when he presents the Award are due to parting with the prize of £250 or hankering for the days when he was putting out less than a book every week.

Nicholas Royle is a novelist and short story writer, a commissioning editor for contemporary fiction at Salt Publishing, and editor and publisher of chapbook specialist Nightjar Press.

Peter Tennant is the book reviewer and a contributing editor to Black Static magazine. He’s also the proofreader for Interzone and Crimewave.

Darren Turpin is the Marketing / Publicity / Digital / Webguy for UK-based independent genre fiction publisher Angry Robot, as well as the proprietor of their Robot Trading Company webstore. In the past he’s been a Waterstones bookseller, a book reviewer and serial blogger (The Alien Online, The UK SF Book News Network, The Genre Files), a freelance website content manager and a Big Publishing corporate wage slave. He lives in Manchester with his wife Jo and their cat, Hobbes.

The Jury for the Artist Award:
Guy Adams
Anne Sudworth
Christopher Teague

Guy Adams has written over twenty books, ranging from novels such as The World House and the Deadbeat series to novelisations of Hammer movies and more books about Sherlock Holmes than you could shake a Calabash pipe at. He is also the writer of the comic series The Engine, working with artist Jimmy Broxton.

Anne Sudworth is a British artist with paintings in many international collections. She has exhibited widely and has had two books on her work published.

Christopher Teague has been an independent publisher for over ten years and is still relatively sane. In that time, he has realised that folk do judge a book by its front cover.

The Jury for the Non-Fiction Award:
Djibril al-Ayad
Roz Kaveney
Adam Roberts

Djibril al-Ayad is the editor of The Future Fire, a social-political speculative fiction magazine and review, as well as a writer and academic historian (under different pseudonyms).

Roz Kaveney is a poet, novelist, critic and activist resident in London.

Adam Roberts is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London; and the author of a dozen science fiction novels and various pieces of SF and Fantasy criticism.

BY WIZARD OAK by Peter Crowther. Earthling Publications $40

Reviewed by Jay Eales

It is Hallowe’en in Magellan Bend. It is their time, and they are coming. Again. Don’t you remember? Something wicked definitely this way comes. And when it gets here, you want to be anywhere but. It’s Roald Dahl’s The Witches if it had been penned by Ray Bradbury. This is a novella filled to brimming with appetite; whether it’s the desire to get your own way, a good meal or an impressive bowel movement. It’s all the same.

Crowther writes personably about them all, whether describing the howling grief for a lost child or marking territory with a hitched skirt, a scuffed arse and a jet of steaming yellow piss. This is no literary dinner party with china service and eleven kinds of soup spoon. This is down-home cooking, pass the cornbread and mind your elbows. Dip your bread in the gravy and wipe the chicken grease down your pants. And I know which dinner table I’d rather sit at.

What’s going on? What do they want? How can they be stopped? In his introduction, Rick Hautala takes great pains not to give away, well, anything about the story. But he does a damn fine job at cheerleading you into reading it anyway. I’m going to take a leaf from his book, shut the hell up, and just tell you to read it. In fact, don’t just read it. Devour it.

Tickets are still available for the BFS event at Ilkley Literature Festival on Wednesday 12 October from 7:30pm – 9:00pm.

Ramsey Campbell, Mark Morris and Peter Crowther will take part in a reading, panel discussion and book signing at the event at Ilkley Playhouse, Weston Road, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

Tickets cost £6 (£4 concessions) and can be purchased from the festival website.

Gray Friar Press announces its latest anthology, Terror Tales of the Lake District, edited by Paul Finch.

“The Lake District — land of mountains and megaliths, night-black lakes and fathomless woods filled with spectral mist …

The eerie entity on Striding Edge
The living corpse of Croglin
The demented clown of Muncaster
The winged horror of Langdale
The drowned bride of Windermere
The hairy brute of Beetham
The nightmares on Burnmoor

Chilling tales by Ramsey Campbell, Adam Nevill, Simon Clark, Peter Crowther, Reggie Oliver, Gary McMahon and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre.

This wild, mountainous region in northwest England is famous for its towering crags, deep woods and majestic lakes. It is still one of the most popular holiday destinations in the whole of the UK, particularly for climbers, hikers, campers and yachtsmen. But some corners of it are extremely remote and even now in the 21st century remain wreathed in rural mystery and spooky superstition.

This brand new anthology, edited by master of chills, Paul Finch, contains ten works of original horror fiction all set in England’s haunting Lake District, and three classic reprints. It also features numerous anecdotal tales concerning true incidents of Lakeland terror which will ensure you’ll never regard that scenic part of the world in the same innocent light again.”

Darkness Falling: Forever Twilight, Book 1 by Peter Crowther

“Something has happened in Jesman’s Bend – a predawn flash of unearthly light has cut off their middle-American everyville from the outside world.

When four employees of local radio station KMRT investigate, they find the town mysteriously depopulated, apparently in the middle of regular routines. Familiar folk reappear shortly afterward, all wearing concealing sunglasses and gloves and driven by malignant alien motives.

Little do they realise the phenomenon isn’t unique to Jesman’s Bend, but has affected the entire world… ”

And:-

Debris: The Veiled Worlds by Jo Anderton

“Tanyana is among the highest ranking in her far-future society. She is a skilled pionner, able to use a mixture of ritual and innate talent to manipulate the particles that hold all matter together. But an accident brings her life crashing down around her ears. She is cast low, little more than a garbage collector. But who did this to her, and for what sinister purpose?

Her quest will take her to parts of the city she never knew existed, and open the door to a world she could never have imagined”

Full details from the Angry Robot webstore