FantasyCon 2012 is delighted to announce that New York Times best-selling author Brent Weeks has been added to its exciting line-up of guests. Brent is the author of “The Night Angel Trilogy”, featuring master assassin Durzo Blint, who practices his fatal art in a world of dangerous politics, strange magics and sudden death. The first volume in the series, The Way of Shadows, was published in 2008 and was quickly followed by Shadow’s Edge and Beyond the Shadows.

Perfect Shadow is a prequel novella in the same series, while the first book in the author’s new “Lightbringer” series, The Black Prism, launched in August 2010. It will be followed by The Blinding Knife, which will be published by Orbit in time for this year’s FantasyCon, which is being held in the historic seaside town of Brighton, East Sussex, over the weekend of 27 – 30 September 2012.

Brent joins the other Author Guest of Honour, legendary Texas “Mojo Story Writer” Joe R. Lansdale, Special Editor Guest Mary Danby and Master of Ceremonies Tim Lebbon.

With memberships fast approaching 200, if you have not joined up yet, do so now! All you have to do is go to the “How to Join” page on the website HERE. Full details of the convention are available on the website HERE

Stumar Press are delighted to open their doors to unsolicited submissions for an ongoing horror anthology series Ten Terrors. Each volume in the series will contain ten horror stories from established and emerging writers in the horror genre. The first volume (Winter 2012) will feature Graham Joyce, Mark Morris and eight other writers. Volume two (Spring 2013) will feature Tim Lebbon and nine other writers.

There’s no theme – other than the story needs to be a horror one. By horror, they mean the full breadth of the genre from gentle ghost stories to nasty pieces full of blood, guts and gore. The horror can deal with the psychological or the supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal.

Check out the guidelines HERE for more details.

Hammer Books have announced further publications for 2012. After initially publishing several novelisations of their classic films by authors such as Shaun Hutson, Peter Curtis, Francis Cottam and Guy Adams, they then obtained the rights to reprint three classic Graham Masterton novels.

They are now branching out further, with books including: Jeanette Winterson’s original novel based on the true story of the Pendle Witches trial of 1612 which will be published in February; a new novelisation of Hammer’s cult classic Vampire Circus by Mark Morris due in March; Tim Lebbon‘s new novel Coldbrook also due in March; and Helen Dunmore’s original ghost story The Greatcoat, about “the power of the past to imprint itself on the present, until the present is possessed by the past”, to be published in April. Further books will be announced soon.

Full details HERE

At the same time many of their films are set to be restored for release onto Blu-Ray. More than 30 films are involved, with several to include new or extended scenes that were cut from the original. One of these is Terence Fisher‘s Dracula, which will incorporate a recently-discovered extended death scene considered too gruesome for cinema release in 1958. Other titles involved include Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, The Mummy, and Frankenstein Created Woman.

See the full BBC story HERE

‘The Century’s Best Horror Fiction in two hardcover volumes, edited by John Pelan.

Featuring Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Charles Beaumont, Jack Ketchum, Gary Brandner, Dennis Etchison, Michael Bishop, Ramsey Campbell, David Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, Poppy Z. Brite, Lucy Taylor, Stephen Laws, Brian Hodge, Glen Hirshberg, Tim Lebbon, W.W. Jacobs, H.G. Wells, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman, Theodore Sturgeon, David A. Riley, Joel Lane, Fritz Lieber, Ian Watson and many others!

Cemetery Dance Publications commissioned a spectacular two-volume anthology project under the editorship of noted author and historian of the horror genre, John Pelan.

John selected one story published during each year of the 20th Century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year — all 100 stories were then collected in this amazing two volume set to be published as The Century’s Best Horror Fiction.

The ground rules were simple: Only one selection per author. Only one selection per year.

Two huge volumes, one hundred authors, one hundred classic stories, more than 700,000 words of fiction — history in the making!’

Pre-orders now being taken at the Cemetery Dance WEBSITE

New York Times best-selling horror and fantasy writer Tim Lebbon has been announced as Master of Ceremonies for the 2012 British FantasyCon in Brighton.

Award-winning horror/crime writer Joe R. Lansdale is the first Guest of Honour to be announced, with editor/ anthologist Mary Danby – best known as editor of The Fontana Book of  Horror Stories from 1970 to 1984 – as Special Editor Guest.

Further guests to be announced shortly. Full details at the FantasyCon website

ECHO CITY by Tim Lebbon. Orbit £7.99

Reviewed by Pauline Morgan

A mark of a good writer is to drop the reader straight into an alien landscape and for them to instantly feel at home there. Tim Lebbon does this splendidly in Echo City.

The city of the title has gradually been built up over thousands of years with the old, phantom haunted parts in layers beneath the feet of the inhabitants. It is surrounded by a highly toxic desert. Peer has been banished to an area called Skulk, for sedition. When a man walks in from across the desert she realises he is important. With the help of her friend, Penler, she knows she has to take the stranger into Echo City to find the Baker. Nadielle is the last in the line of Bakers, women who create genetically modified monsters in womb vats. Nadielle is also aware that the mistake a Baker created hundreds of years ago will arise from the depths and destroy the city. The two events are not coincidence.

As Peer collects unexpected allies, the world solidifies around the reader. The plotting is complex, the action intense and the result is a very fine book.

“Floorboards creek, windows rattle, the wind whistles through the eaves – are you alone in the house? Are you sure?!”

The follow up to Solaris’ 2010 critically-acclaimed End of the Line underground railway horror anthology, House of Fear brings the haunted house out of tired cliché and back into the mainstream with 19 short stories from some of the finest writers working in the genre.

Editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of stories from Joe R. Lansdale, Sarah Pinborough, Lisa Tuttle, Christopher Priest, Adam L. G. Nevill, Nicholas Royle, Chaz Brenchley, Christopher Fowler, Gary Kilworth, Weston Ochse, Eric Brown, Tim Lebbon, Nina Allan, Stephen Volk, Paul Meloy and more.

And on Tuesday 27 September 2011, something scary will be haunting Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London! The writers and editors of the upcoming House of Fear anthology of haunted house stories will be celebrating its launch and would like you to join them.

Details from Foyles’ website

If you didn’t attend Fantasycon 2008 and you’re wondering what you missed out on, take a peek at the comments of some of last year’s attendees. When we say you missed out on the fantasy event of the year, don’t take our word for it. See what Peter Crowther and Christopher Golden and James Barclay and others had to say.

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