World Fantasy Award-nominated author Simon Kurt Unsworth will be running a short course in writing horror and SF entitled “Ghosts and other Worlds”. It will run on four consecutive Tuesdays (7:00 – 9:00pm) from 23 October 2012 at One Voice, St Leonard House, St Leonard Gate, Lancaster LA1 1NN. The programme is as follows:

• 23 October – Introductions: meeting ghosts
• 30 October – Creating characters and creatures
• 6 November – Using place and environment
• 13 November – Trying to get published

Advance booking is required, and the cost is £7.50 per session. For further details or to book a space, please contact Simon at simonkurtunsworth [at] gmail [dot] com

Hersham Horror has published the second anthology in its PentAnth range, Siblings, edited by Stuart Hughes. It contains five new horror tales from Simon Kurt Unsworth, Sam Stone, Richard Farren Barber, Sara Jayne Townsend and Stuart Hughes.

“You can choose your friends, but not your family….”

The book is available on Amazon worldwide in Kindle and print versions.

There will be a launch event / signing for this book outside the dealers’ room at 12.00pm on Saturday 29 September 2012 at FantasyCon.

The latest issue of Postscripts is now available for pre-order from PS Publishing. This bumper anthology – Postscripts #28/29 – is entitled Exotic Gothic 4 and edited by guest editor Danel Olson. Olson explains:

“In 2006, I floated a concept I created called Exotic Gothic to over seventy publishers around the world. It was an experiment in growing neo-Gothic stories: to keep one or more traditional tropes of the old genre in each new story, but add much that’s culturally different, and set them all outside of their original birthlands of the UK, Germany, and France. Since then the series has had four volumes, the first three from Ash-Tree Press of Canada (which with regret was unable to produce the fourth due to unforeseen personal commitments and time constraints), and the current from England’s PS Publishing (whose name to carry the series was suggested by many of the writers within this all-new collection). Exotic Gothic 2 was a Shirley Jackson Award Finalist, and Exotic Gothic 3 a Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award Finalist. Many of the series’ harrowing and sensual tales now reappear the following year in Best Of.. and themed collections. PS presents an all-new Exotic Gothic 5 in 2013.”

The latest Exotic Gothic volume contains stories from twenty-five of today’s finest speculative fiction writers, including: Adam Nevill, Kaaron Warren, Reggie Oliver, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Steve Rasnic Tem, Terry Dowling, Anna Taborska and Stephen Volk.

For pre-order information see the PS Publishing site HERE

Stephen Jones is now seeking submissions for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 24. He will consider stories and novellas first published between January 2012 and December 2012 for the twenty-fourth annual edition of this multiple award-winning series, to be published by Robinson (UK) / Running Press (USA) in 2013.

Authors are asked to forward stories of exceptional quality published between these dates, whilst publishers are invited to send novels, collections, anthologies, magazines, art books, graphic adaptations, DVDs and anything else connected with the horror field which could be mentioned in the comprehensive overview of the year in horror. Publisher contact information will also be included in the list of useful addresses contained in the volume.

The deadline for receiving material is January 2013, and all material must be sent to the postal address provided in the guidelines detailed HERE.

Also, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 23 edited by Stephen Jones is now available for pre-order from Amazon. To be released in October 2012, it contains stories by Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Paul Kane, Joel Lane, Alison Littlewood, Mark Samuels, Peter Atkins, Thana Niveau, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Reggie Oliver, Steve Rasnic Tem, Joe R. Lansdale, Evangeline Walton and many others. The cover artwork is by Vincent Chong. Full details HERE

There are two interesting publications available for H.P. Lovecraft aficionados this month.

Cyaegha #6 (the Dutch / Flemish Special) is now available, featuring the work of Cornelis Alderlieste, Toren Atkinson, Eddy C. Bertin, Jaap Boekestein, Cardinal Cox, Marcel Orie and Tais Teng. The editor, Graeme Phillips, is seeking submissions to a non-themed issue. Submissions of art, poetry, fiction or non-fiction should be Lovecraft / Cthulhu Mythos-related. Please contact the editor at the email address given on the website HERE if you are interested in contributing, or would like to purchase a copy of the magazine.

The Lovecraft eZine #13 is also now available, containing five stories and one essay.  Ecstasy of the Gold is a brand new story by Stephen Mark Rainey.  Scale Hall is by Simon Kurt Unsworth, and The Dog Who Wished He’d Never Heard of Lovecraft by Anna Tambour. Rounding off the stories this month is The Ouroboros Apocrypha, a Thomas Ligotti-inspired tale by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, and Over the Hills by Victor Takac.  And if you’re a Ligotti fan, you’ll enjoy reading Brandon H. Bell’s essay, a reverent take on The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Details HERE

Here is a round up of recent Awards news:

The 2011 Bram Stoker Award winners and Vampire Novel of the Century Award winner have been announced by the Horror Writers’ Association HERE. BFS member Allyson Bird secures the Award of Superior Achievement in a First Novel for Isis Unbound (Dark Regions Press). Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend was presented with the one-off Vampire Novel of the Century Award.

Shortlisted works for the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award have been announced as follows:
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear (Gollancz)
The End Specialist by Drew Magary (Harper Voyager)
Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan)
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (Sandstone Press)
Rule 34 by Charles Stross (Orbit)
The Waters Rising by Sheri S.Tepper (Gollancz)

Several SFFH authors have been long-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2012, including Nina Allan, Robert Shearman, Simon Kurt Unsworth, David Rix and Dave Jeffery. Full details HERE.

The 2011 Aurealis Awards finalists have been announced. The full list of finalists can be found on the SFScope website HERE. The Aurealis Awards “recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers”.

Finally, the five judges for the 2012 Philip K. Dick Award have been named as Bruce Bethke, Sydney Duncan, Daryl Gregory, Bridget McKenna and Paul Witcover. See details HERE.

Mark C. Scioneaux and Robert S. Wilson, founders and co-editors of Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology, have teamed up with Jennifer M. Wilson to form Nightscape Press. Nightscape Press is a new horror press that will publish novels, novellas, and, occasionally, anthologies with a strong focus on variety and quality over quantity. Along with this focus will be a firm concentration on nurturing and promoting the author and their work. Nightscape Press will open to submissions on 2 April 2012 immediately following the World Horror Convention.

Their first planned title is World’s Collider, an apocalyptic anthology edited by Richard Salter.

“The Collision is the worst disaster in human history. So far…

In the near future, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes an enormous explosion, known as the Collision. The blast flattens a huge chunk of central Europe and punches a massive hole in the Earth’s surface. Over the next decade, unspeakable horrors pour from the rift: vicious creatures with a taste for human flesh, a terrible scream that drives all who hear it insane, a phantom entity that feeds on fear and paranoia, and a nightmare train from the pits of hell, to name but a few. This onslaught of terror causes the collapse of civilization and threatens to wipe humanity from the planet.

World’s Collider is a unique concept in short fiction, where all eighteen original stories are part of a common narrative, recounting the disaster and its aftermath. A novel by many voices, including Steven Savile, James Moran, Aaron Rosenberg, Trent Zelazny, Jonathan Green, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kelly Hale, Richard Wright, and a host of new talent.

Fifty million people died in the Collision. They were the lucky ones…”