The 2012 James White Award annual short story competition is now open. The James White Award was instituted to honour the memory of one of Ireland’s most successful science fiction authors, James White. The short story competition is open to non-professional writers, with the winner chosen by a panel of judges made up of professional authors and editors. The judges for this year’s competition are novellists Aliette de Bodard and Ian McDonald and the Interzone editors.

Stories entered into the competition must be original and previously unpublished. Entry is free. The prize for winning this year’s James White Award is £300 plus publication in Interzone, the leading UK science fiction magazine from TTA Press. There will also be a runners-up prize of £100. The closing date for receipt of entries is 16 December 2012. The winner / runner-up will be presented with their awards at the BSFA Awards ceremony at Eastercon 2013.

For further information see the website HERE

These are exciting times for author Ken Liu. First, a new baby. His wife gave birth to their second child a few days before his short story, The Paper Menagerie, won the 2011 Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Now, the story has also won the 2012 Hugo award at the World Science Fiction Convention. Then, a story he translated from an original in Chinese won the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Award, short fiction category. The judges described Chen Qiufan’s The Fish of Lijiang as “brilliant,” “original,” and “a lovely and devastating story, beautifully written and translated.” “In the tradition of the best SF, it offers a convincing extrapolation of the economic and consequent social changes that China has undergone in the past 30 years.”

So it’s great news that Ken will have a story and a translated story in the next two issues of Britain’s premier science fiction magazine, Interzone. The first of these will mark his debut in the magazine. The second will mark Chen Qiufan’s debut. Ken’s story The Message has a father and daughter trying to repair their relationship as they explore an ancient alien ruin. The mystery they solve is both personal and universal.

The Flower of Shazui, the story Ken translated for Interzone and another from Chen Qiufan, is a near-future high-tech thriller set among the migrants that both powered China’s economic growth and became its victim. In this callous, greed corrupted milieu, men and women break the law as they struggle to do the right thing.

Interzone #242, containing Ken’s story, will be released mid-September. Chen Qiufan’s The Flower of Shazui will be in the November issue and constitutes a first for Interzone. The magazine has featured translated stories, eg from Serbian, in the past but a Chinese original is a new one for TTA Press.

Ken Liu was born in Lanzhou, China, and now lives in the United States. He writes speculative fiction and poetry and also translates Chinese fiction into English. He and his wife, artist Lisa Tang Liu, are collaborating on a novel; an epic fantasy set on an island world inspired by East Asian history. Ken’s fiction has appeared in SF magazines: F&SF, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, along with several collections. Aside from his Nebula Award he has been nominated for the Hugo and Sturgeon Awards, and several of his stories have been featured in various Year’s Best anthologies.

TTA Press has announced its new line of novellas. They state: “Novellas are a natural extension to what we already do. We’ll be publishing high quality stories of the kind we publish in our magazines, they’ll just be much longer, short novels rather than short stories. They will be in the 20 – 40,000 word range, published as B Format paperbacks of between 96 and 224 pages, with wraparound covers.”

The first five novellas are by authors very closely associated with TTA. These are:
Eyepennies by Mike O’Driscoll
Spin by Nina Allan
Cold Turkey by Carole Johnstone
The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery
Country Dark by James Cooper

Each novella will be available to buy singly or as part of a cheaper subscription. Until the publication of TTA Novella No. 1, the first five novellas are available for just £25 with free worldwide postage.

Full details from the website HERE

There was no Black Static published in June 2012. Issue 29 will instead become the July-August issue and mail out at the same time as Interzone issue 241. The magazines will continue on that schedule, sharing the same dateline and mailings. This makes much more sense after the recent Royal Mail changes. They are both due out this week.

TTA Press have taken this opportunity to make a couple of design changes too. Black Static magazine will lose 36mm off its height and 30mm off its width, which will allow printing of more pages (issue 29 will be 96 pages instead of the usual 64). There is the very real prospect of increasing to 128 pages in the future. The new size will use a thicker uncoated paper and a thicker cover, which will be laminated. So it’ll have a spine. The point size of the fiction will be slightly bigger. This will all add up to a better reading and handling experience, and a format that better suits the content.

Baph Tripp, soon to have a his story Chodpa published in Black Static #29 (July 2012), was originally Louis Tripp who starred in the Canadian movies The Gate and Gate II: Trespassers, aka Gate II: Return to the Nightmare, in 1987 and 1990 respectively. He is now a musician creating underground industrial music as x.a.o.s in Australia, but will become a new author this summer when his first published fiction appears in Black Static. His story Chodpa is “a dark, unsettling meditation on alienation, blighted hope, and the uselessness of human consciousness. And insects.”

For new authors, an appearance in Black Static brings international recognition in horror and dark fantasy fiction, but Baph has had plenty of experience of that from an early age. Baph has a convoluted history in terms of names, locations and artforms. He was born Louis Tripp, and raised in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and was a movie star in his early teens playing the role of Terry in the 1980s cult horror films The Gate and Gate II. At age 20, he changed his name to Twelve Twenty and as 12:20 he created confrontational, experimental music and engaged in the type of performance art activities that, on occasion, resulted in his involvement with the humane society and the police. At 30, the by then somewhat notorious 12:20 became Baph Tripp and began to create underground industrial music as x.a.o.s with releases in 2001, 2007 and 2009. He now lives in New South Wales, Australia.

He wrote the 8,100 word short story Chodpa in 2011 but spent time on extensive editing and re-writes before submitting it for publication in April 2012. Its acceptance for Black Static has fuelled his ambition to write more dark fiction.

A couple of horror-centred websites have published “Where is Louis Tripp?” articles in the last few years  …

Interzone issue 240 – marking the completion of Interzone‘s thirtieth year of publication – is out now.

Contents include fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bourne, Ray Cluley, Vylar Kaftan and Tracie Welser; an interview with Nancy Kress (by Maureen Kincaid Speller); together with the usual mix of up-to-the-minute news and reviews.

Cover art is by Ben Baldwin.

For further information and purchase details visit the TTA Press website HERE

You can now try an issue of Black Static free, or you can pay for it – you decide. TTA Press have reset the price for Black Static Issue 19 (October 2010) on Smashwords so that you can get it for free or select a price you consider worthwhile. Try it, and if you feel it’s worth it, download it again and pay then. They trust you!

The free issue contains a mammoth book reviews section from Peter Tennant, an interview with Stephen Jones, and fiction from Steve Rasnic Tem, Ray Cluley, Joel Lane, Simon Clark and Lavie Tidhar.

Click here to try it for free now!

Issue 28 of award-winning horror/dark fiction magazine Black Static is now available, containing new fiction by Carole Johnstone, Jon Ingold, Priya Sharma, Joel Lane and Daniel Kaysen, along with the usual mix of news, comment and reviews.

For full information see the TTA Press website HERE

Priya Sharma is a new author with several short stories to her name who is delighted that her latest story will appear in the April issue of Britain’s premier horror fiction magazine, Black Static, from TTA Press. An appearance there brings international recognition in horror and dark fantasy fiction.

Priya’s inspiration for her story, The Ballad of Boomtown, stemmed from reading about Ireland’s problem of empty and semi-occupied housing estates following the demise of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. She explores the effects of recession and clashes between modern times and Ireland’s ancient past for a woman left alone in a decaying estate while obsessing over the tragedy that caused her lover to desert her.

Priya is a GP who spends most of her spare time writing. She is making her name internationally via short stories but a historical fantasy novel set in Wales is her newest project. Two of Priya’s stories will be reprinted in ‘Year’s Best’ collections where her name will appear alongside the likes of Stephen King and Tim Powers.

Black Static 28 will be in newsagents, and some bookshops, from mid-April. So, with that issue, Priya joins Black Static authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Alison Littlewood and Christopher Fowler, along with others like Conrad Williams and Justina Robson who began their writing careers in its pages or in the pages of its predecessor, The Third Alternative.

Interzone #239, from TTA Press, features the second of Ben Baldwin’s tarot-based covers, The Tower, and contains stories as follows:

Twember by Steve Rasnic Tem, illustrated by Dave Senecal
Lips and Teeth by Jon Wallace, illustrated by Richard Wagner
Tangerine, Nectarine, Clementine, Apocalypse by Suzanne Palmer, illustrated by Richard Wagner
Bound in Place by Jacob A. Boyd, illustrated by Ben Baldwin
Railriders by Matthew Cook, illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe
One-Way Ticket by Nigel Brown, illustrated by Mark Pexton

Also includes: Book Zone, Ansible Link (news and obituaries) by David Langford, Mutant Popcorn (film reviews) by Nick Lowe, Laser Fodder (DVD/Blu-ray reviews) by Tony Lee, and its latest Readers’ Poll.