Midnight Echo, the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers’ Association, is seeking submissions for Issue 9 Mythical Horror (edited by G.N. Braun). Submissions are open from 1 October 2012 to 31 January 2013.

They are looking for “re-workings of myths and legends, brought into the modern world … the tale must have horror as a central theme.”

They state that although they seek to emphasise the work of Australian writers, they are open to international submissions too. Contributors do not need to be members of the AHWA. This is a paying publication.

For full submission information go HERE

In September 2011 Swan River Press published, to great acclaim, The Old Knowledge by Tartarus Press’ Rosalie Parker, and it quickly went out of print. Swan River Press is now accepting pre-orders for a second edition HERE

About the book:
‘This first collection of tales by Rosalie Parker contains eight stories that explore the uncanny in the modern world. As Glen Cavaliero observes in his introduction, “like all good stories of the preternatural, these in The Old Knowledge have a subversive effect.” In them, “the world of logical, predictable reality is seen to be at risk from rejected modes of knowledge which can thwart the materialist and victimise those innocents who stumble into another order of reality.”

In “The Rain”, Geraldine heads North for a holiday she hopes will provide a welcome break from her busy city life, only to suffer a complicated and enigmatic distortion of her usual world-view. The narrator of “In the Garden” strays into new pastures while explaining her theory of gardening (this story was chosen for inclusion in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21). In “Chanctonbury Ring”, the well-meaning protagonist, helping a lady in distress, gets rather more than he bargained for. The temporary schoolteacher in “The Supply-Teacher” elicits altruism from her class, whilst, in “The Old Knowledge”, a group of archaeologists called in to excavate a prehistoric round barrow have to negotiate local interventions. In “The Cook’s Story” a Gothic country house provides the setting for a modern tale of mystery.

Do not expect blood-and-guts, wraiths or revenants: these stories hold a different kind of terror. “Their unostentatious magic is of an insidious kind; and like the protagonist of the title story, is liable to exert itself in disconcerting ways.” ‘

Cover art is by Ray Russell.

On 1 August 2012 InkerMen Press publishes the long-awaited second collection from award-winning author D.F. Lewis. The Last Balcony collects a number of Lewis’ previously published (either in print or online) short stories, together with two novellas, The Apocryfan and Yesterfang. Cover art for the hardback book is by Tony Lovell. Lewis’ previous collection of short fiction was Weirdmonger – The Nemonicon (Prime Books 2003).

D.F. Lewis has had approximately one thousand five hundred short stories published in print from 1986 to 2000, some in hard-to-find outlets plus others in literary journals and professional book anthologies. The latter include three volumes of Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and five consecutive volumes of Year’s Best Horror Stories edited by Karl Edward Wagner. He received the British Fantasy Society Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1998.

For full details of The Last Balcony see the InkerMen Press website HERE

A D.F. Lewis novella Weirdtongue, is also available from Inkermen Press HERE

InkerMen Press is an independent publisher specializing in works of supernatural and alternative fiction, plays and poems.

Allen Ashley, judge of this year’s BFS Short Story Competition, sends this gentle reminder to anyone who has yet to enter:

“Thank you to everyone who has already sent me a story for consideration. I have my work cut out reading the stories already received and have booked out most of July to do so… but there is still time to send in an entry for this year’s Short Story Competition which offers fantastic, generous prizes to the winner and two runners-up. Full details are available HERE but, in brief, I want to see new, unpublished stories in the broad fantasy / science fiction / horror/ slipstream / fabulation genres. 5000 words strict maximum. One free entry for BFS members. £5 entry fee for non-members (or Paypal calculated equivalent for non-UK residents). Send your story as an attachment saved in Rich Text Format or Microsoft Word 2003. Not .docx format please, it upsets my computer!”

The competition closes at midnight British Summer Time on Saturday 30 June 2012, so don’t delay too long in sending your story to Allen. If you are sending from abroad, allow for time differences.

If you have any queries, or if your manuscript is ready to go, you can email Allen on shortstorycomp@britishfantasysociety.org

Don’t forget that the BFS Short Story Competition closes this month. Allen Ashley, judge of this year’s competition, sent this message:

“Now, I know that some people who enter competitions leave it till the last minute to get their entry in. I’m also sure that many of you are frantically writing and revising your entry to this year’s BFS Short Story Competition. So, this is just a gentle reminder to all you authors out there to make sure you do not miss the boat on this year’s competition. Entries close at midnight British Summer Time on Saturday 30 June 2012. Full details are available at the BFS website HERE.”

If you have any queries or if your manuscript is ready to go (as an attachment in Rich Text Format or MS Word 2003, but NOT doc.x) you can email Allen on shortstorycomp@britishfantasysociety.org

Tartarus Press will publish Tales of Love and Death by Robert Aickman on 28 May 2012. This collection contains a new Introduction by Michael Dirda, along with the stories ‘Growing Boys’, ‘Marriage’, ‘Le Miroir’, ‘Compulsory Games’, ‘Raising the Wind’, ‘Residents Only’ and ‘Wood’.

Limited to 350 copies, Tales of Love and Death is a sewn hardback priced at £32.50/$50 including p&p. It joins Tartarus’ other Aickman volumes We Are for the Dark (with Elizabeth Jane Howard), Dark Entries, Powers of Darkness, Sub Rosa and Cold Hand in Mine.

Full details at the Tartarus website HERE

Shiny Shorts is looking for volunteers to help review short fiction for its website. If you love short fiction -  whether it’s flash, short stories, novellas; podcasts, print or online magazines; anthologies or collections; horror, SF, fantasy or crime; new releases or old favourites – we want to hear from you.  Most review copies are in electronic format – PDF/mobi/websites so ability to read those formats is a bonus.

If you’re interested, drop Jenny Barber an email at: jennyb [at] majorarcana [dot] demon [dot] co [dot] uk

Award-winning writer and editor Allen Ashley will be running a short story writing workshop on Saturday 19 May 2012 From 2pm to 5pm. The venue is Trinity-at-Bowes, Palmerston Road, London N22 8RA.

This is your chance to improve your short stories with a specialist in the field. It’s a practical workshop for all short story writers, whether beginners or published writers.

Topics covered: Getting Started; Generating Ideas; Beginnings; Middles; Endings; Useful Writing Exercises; Practical Tips; Avoiding Pitfalls; Preparing Your Work for Submission; and other subjects, in what will be a thoroughly practical session with guaranteed personal feedback from the tutor.

Fee for the workshop is £20. Booking is essential. Please email allenashley-writer@hotmail.co.uk to book your place.

A Glimpse of the Numinous is Jeff Gardiner‘s first collection, available in hardback and paperback from Eibonvale Press, with cover art by David Rix.

“A girl born with a number for a name, destined to become a new messiah – a seagull who becomes a household pet and national celebrity – flashing patterns of light as a key to your darkest fears – an impoverished family with a murderous secret.

In these fourteen stories of this his first collection, Jeff Gardiner shows a startling range of styles and imagination, from visceral horror to lyrical literary prose. Keen psychological insight is allied to a shrewd knowledge of ancient myth and mysticism. Gardiner’s recurring interest is in religion and spirituality and the strange traces these almost outlawed strangers have left on modern urban life. His characters are often dangerous and unreasonable, their actions unpredictable, a far cry from the rational universe we like to think we share. Look again at your world and let Gardiner show the glimpses you’ve been missing of the doors that beckon you to other ways of seeing. The ominous, the luminous… the numinous.”

Full details from the Eibonvale Press website HERE

RED / SNOW / LET ME COME IN by Christine Sutton, Self-published, kindle, 99c/77p each, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christine-Sutton-Author/268355646518429

Reviewed by David Brzeski

The self-published kindle author is a contentious area at best. It’s true that the boom in self-publishing on Amazon has led to an awful lot of unedited, badly proofed and just plain badly written rubbish flooding the market. There are exceptions though.

In these three short stories, Christine Sutton has attempted to bring some classic fables and fairy tales bang up to date for a modern horror audience.

Unusually, the author chooses to have the core events of several well known fairy tales happen to one character- Kayla Burkheart. Kayla has had a difficult life. Her father abandoned her, her mother blames her and treats her like dirt. Her life spiralled into a nightmare of drugs and booze. It was while in rehab that she met her fiancé, David and their mutual love had saved them both.

In ‘Red’, Kayla now has a job at a car dealership and all she had to do was deliver a classic car across five States undamaged. If she managed this, she’d collect almost $10,000 to go towards her wedding and new life. The only trouble was, she was being pursued!

In ‘Snow’, Kayla finds out that her mother is hiding a dark secret and it doesn’t bode well for Kayla’s future. Luckily for Kayla, she befriends a family of seven little people, who want to help.

In ‘Let Me Come In’, Kayla and David are married and Kayla is eight months pregnant, but her evil mother is still bent on her death. How can they protect their house when the wolves are bent on getting in?

Christine Sutton even manages to squeeze in a few extra fairy tale references along the way, beyond those made obvious by the titles. Don’t be fooled though, these stories are no happy romps for pre-schoolers. The claws rip, the fangs bite, the blood flows and not everyone lives happily ever after.

In truth, there are few surprises in these stories, for the same reason that the audiences of the movie blockbuster, ‘Titanic’, knew the ship was going to sink at the end. Despite this, they are very entertaining, well-written and left me wishing there were more tales of Kayla and David to come.

The problem would be that, to do much more with these characters, the author would probably have to drop the direct fairy tale adaptations concept, as it might be too limiting. This is likely the reason why no more Kayla stories are currently planned.

If I’m honest, I’m not generally that keen on buying individual short stories and would have preferred a collection. Hopefully, sometime in the future, we’ll see such a collection and maybe some longer works by this talented writer.