Title spotlight - "Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top" edited by Ekaterina Sedia

I cannot honestly say that circus is something that I very much enjoy. I have my share of circus shows in my childhood days, but after that period of time my interest in the matter decreased considerably. However, the same theme in fiction brought a very pleasant surprise last year in the form of Genevieve Valentine’s novel, “Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti”. Although reluctant at first due to my little attraction for the theme I was convinced by a couple of recommendations coming from trusted sources. And the reward was more than satisfying. I am not completely won over, I still have my reservations, but I am no longer as hesitant as before. That is the reason for my interest in the upcoming reprint anthology, “Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top”, edited by Ekaterina Sedia. Actually the main reason is the editor herself, because I do love and respect a lot the works published by Ekaterina Sedia so far. The second can be easily be the list of authors the editor put together and where I can find some very interesting names, such as the already mentioned Genevive Valentine, Felicity Dowker, Amanda Downum, the spectacular and extremely talented Cate Gardner, Andrew J. McKiernan who constantly grows in my eyes, Peter Straub and Jeff VanderMeer. With a very good cover artwork to match the interesting table of contents I am very curious to see what Ekaterina Sedia’s new anthology, “Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top” has to offer.

“Introduction”

“Something About a Death, Something About a Fire” by Peter Straub

“Smoke & Mirrors” by Amanda Downum

“Calliope: A Steam Romance” by Andrew J. McKiernan

“Welcome to the Greatest Show in the Universe” by Deborah Walker

“Vanishing Act” by E. Catherine Tobler

“Quin’s Shanghai Circus” by Jeff VanderMeer

“Scream Angel” by Douglas Smith

“The Vostrasovitch Clockwork Animal and Traveling Forest Show at the End of the World” by Jessica Reisman

“Study, for Solo Piano” by Genevieve Valentine

“Making My Entrance Again with My Usual Flair” by Ken Scholes

“The Quest” by Barry B. Longyear

“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson

“Courting the Queen of Sheba” by Amanda C. Davis

“Circus Circus” by Eric Witchey

“Phantasy Moste Grotesk” by Felicity Dowker

“Learning to Leave” by Christopher Barzak

“Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” by Neal Barrett Jr.

“The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue” by Holly Black

“Manipulating Paper Birds” by Cate Gardner

“Winter Quarters” by Howard Waldrop

2011 Australian Shadows Awards

The Australian Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2011 Australian Shadows Awards:

NOVEL – No award

Honorable mention: “The Broken Ones” by Stephen M. Irwin

LONG FICTION: “The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt” by Paul Haines (“The Last Days of Kali Yuga”)

Honorable mentions: “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living” by Deborah Biancotti (“Ishtar” edited by Amanda Pillar & K.V. Taylor)

“Sleeping and the Dead” by Cat Sparks (“Ishtar” edited by Amanda Pillar & K.V. Taylor)

“From the Teeth of Strange Children” by Lisa L. Hannett (“Bluegrass Symphony”)

COLLECTION: “Tales of Sin and Madness” by Brett McBean

Honorable mentions: “Bluegrass Symphony” by Lisa L. Hannett

“The Last Days of Kali Yuga” by Paul Haines

“Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies” by Lucy Sussex

“Apocrypha Sequence” (all four volumes) by Shane Jiraiya Cummings

EDITED: “Dead Red Heart” edited by Russell B. Farr

Honorable mentions: “More Scary Kisses” edited by Liz Grzyb

“Midnight Echo 6” edited by David Kernot, David Conyers & Jason Fischer

“The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror” edited by Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene

SHORT STORY: “Shovel-Man Joe” by Amanda J. Spedding (Shades of Sentience/available online here)

Honorable mentions: “Taking It for the Team” by Tracie McBride (Dead Red Heart)

“The Sea at Night” by Joanne Anderton (Dead Red Heart)

“The Wanderer in Darkness” by Andrew J. McKiernan (Midnight Echo 6)

“Out Hunting for Teeth” by Joanne Anderton (Midnight Echo 6)

Congratulations to all!

Guest post - Carole Lanham

“The Whisper Jar” is Carole Lanham’s debut collection of short stories, released last year on October, 31^st by Morrigan Books in electronic format. Today, “The Whisper Jar” is released in print as well and on this occasion I have the opportunity to host Carole Lanham as my guest for a post on the blog.

How to Save Your Secrets in Glass

by Carole Lanham

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could whisper something you regret into the mouth of a jam jar, screw on the lid, and put that dark bit of history behind you forever?  The stories in The Whisper Jar collection all have one thing in common – secrets.  Not the sorts of secrets that incite giggles though.  Dark, treacherous secrets, the kind that tangle you up the more you try to bury them.  No ear may be trusted with the likes of these unsavory slips in good judgment.  Only a jar with a very tight lid will do.

By my experience, few things have the power to shape our souls or twist our hearts more than the things we hide. Unexplained bumps in the night don’t scare me much.  The thought of being haunted by the ghost of a black deed, however, leaves me shaking in my boots.  One might assume then that I'm a woman with a guilty conscience, and rightly so.  We’ve all done or said things we wish we could take back.  The unsettling feeling that comes with keeping a secret is a universal one.  Needless to say, when it comes to regret, I much prefer the fictitious variety.

For the shear reason that it adds an extra level of squirminess to the mix, the characters in The Whisper Jar are all, by necessity, heartbreakingly young.  Don't expect Wisdom to come galloping up on a white horse to save the day.  Any and all Mistakes must be sorted out with sticky fingers, and Innocence quite often plays the villain.

Likewise, gardens, orphanages, and nurseries are particularly terrible, mysterious places.  More often than not, Bad Seeds win the day.  For the record, I don’t believe teenage girls are evil, although The Whisper Jar may seem to imply otherwise.  They do hold lethal sway over the boys who admire them.  That’s just the honest truth.  If one were to take undue advantage, the results could be devastating.  It could even result in the making of a secret and who knows where the suffering of a secret might lead...

Be forewarned, The Whisper Jar is not for people who are made uneasy by children who do sneaky and/or dreadful things.  Please avoid the book if you don’t find the idea of young boys building a museum dedicated to torture devices to be an absolute delight.  Likewise, an appreciation for the questionable charms of locked rooms, blood-sucking sisters, and dirty book clubs is highly advised.  If you’re on board with all of these, please do stop in at Amazon and buy the book.  Feel free also to steal its handy suggestion for safe secret storage.

The instructions are easy:  Simply pour out those olives that have been hiding behind the maraschino cherries in the back of the frig for some five or six months now and rinse thoroughly.  Next, take your clean Whisper Jar in hand and level your mouth over the opening.  Whisper the words softly and clearly into the glass, making certain to seal well after finishing as it's vitally important that nothing foul be allowed to escape.  If done correctly, you should be able to store all those horrible little nasties away and move forward with a lightened heart.  Now don't you feel so much better?

Beginners Tip:  To avoid shattering or snooping by family and friends, mind where you put your jar.

Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead…

The Whisper Jar by Carole Lanham

The first time my sister did it to me, I was twelve years old and it hurt like Hades, even though she said it wouldn’t. “Lie down, Gidion, and don’t move. I promise it’ll be okay.” She put her hand in the middle of my chest as if I would jump up and run. And I might have. I wanted to.

“Good God, your heart,” she said. Her eyelids fluttered in a way that told me she wasn’t so sure about this whole business either. When she pressed my wrist against her mouth, it jerked away all by itself. “Don’t be afraid now, Giddy.”

In this collection of award-winning short stories by Carole Lanham, a boy struggles to deal with his sister's murderous affections, a dangerous friendship forms around a love of books, a student learns more than she was ever meant to learn in school, and the door to a mysterious room unbolts to reveal a terrible truth.

Brian Hodge, author of Picking the Bones has said of The Whisper Jar, “Carole Lanham is made entirely out of awesome. The Whisper Jar is packed to the lid with dark magic and whimsy, while bearing an ominously old-fashioned touch that might make Edward Gorey feel right at home. It deserves to be ranked as a modern classic.”

Open The Whisper Jar with great care. You might just find your own secrets hidden in there.

Available May 31 from Morrigan Books at Amazon.com & https://www.createspace.com/3662961

Carole Lanham is the author of 24 short stories and one novella.  The Whisper Jar is her first full length book.  She lives in the St. Louis area with her wonderful, supportive family and a very large collection of aprons.  If interested, please visit her at carolelanham.com, horrohomemaker.com, Facebook, or Goodreads.

2012 Ion Hobana Awards

On May, 26^th at the Calderon Cultural Center in Bucharet in the organization of Romanian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy and the Bucharest Writers Association the “Ion Hobana” National Colloquy was held. This is the third edition of the colloquy and with this occasion the “Ion Hobana” Awards were presented. The winners of the 2012 “Ion Hobana” Awards are:

The best 2011 SF book: “DemNet” (DemNet) by Dan Doboș (Media Tech) & “The Seagulls Island” (Insula Pescărușilor) by Mircea Liviu Goga (Eagle)

and Gheorghe Săsărman – for Opera Omnia

Congratulations to the winners!

Title spotlight - "The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2011" edited by Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene

After an excellent first volume of Australian year’s best fantasy and horror published in 2011 Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, the editors of this new series of speculative fiction released by TiconderogaPublications, have put together the final line-up for the second volume of “The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror”. If last year the collection gathered 33 stories this year Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene’s anthology offer to the readers 32 short stories and poems first published in 2011 in Australia and New Zealand. The first edition of “The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror” was a wonderful opportunity for me to discover new talented writers and enjoy the works of some of my older acquaintances, although the later were not numerous. But thanks to this collection the number of authors I am delighted to meet again through their fiction has significantly increased and this year I am eagerly waiting to savor their works again. Deborah Biancotti’s collection containing the story selected for 2011 year’s best was one of the best books I read this year, Lisa L. Hannett, Angela Slatter and Kaaron Warren are names already present in my personal library and will certainly prompt me to buy their future works, while Felicity Dowker, Kirstyn McDermott, Andrew J. McKiernan, Paul Haines, David Conyers and Pete Kempshall were nothing but pleasant surprises in my first experiences with their writings. As you can see I have plenty of reasons, but also a consistent curiosity, to await with great interest the release of Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene’s “The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011” in July.

“Briar Day” by Peter M. Ball (Moonlight Tuber)

“Europe After The Rain” by Lee Battersby (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)

“Bad Power” by Deborah Biancotti (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)

“The Head in the Goatskin Bag” by Jenny Blackford (Kaleidotrope)

“Thin Air” by Simon Brown (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Winds Of Nzambi” by David Conyers & David Kernot (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)

“More Matter, Less Art” by Stephen Dedman (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)

“The Hall of Lost Footsteps” by Sara Douglass & Angela Slatter (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Berries & Incense” by Felicity Dowker (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Dark Me, Night You” by Terry Dowling (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)

“Hunting Rufus” by Jason Fischer (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)

“Letters Of Love From The Once And Newly Dead” by Christopher Green (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)

“The Past Is A Bridge Best Left Burnt” by Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)

“Forever, Miss Tapekwa County” by Lisa L. Hannett (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)

“At The Top Of The Stairs” by Richard Harland (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)

“Face To Face” by John Harwood (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)

“Someone Else To Play With” by Pete Kempshall (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)

“Heaven” by Jo Langdon (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)

“The Soul of the Machine” by Maxine McArthur (Winds of Change, CSFG)

“The Wishwriter's Wife” by Ian McHugh (Daily Science Fiction)

“Love Death” by Andrew J. McKiernan (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)

“Frostbitten” by Kirstyn McDermott (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Wolf Night” by Margaret Mahy (The Wilful Eye - Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)

“Interview with the Jiangshi” by Anne Mok (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Wraiths” by Jason Nahrung (Winds of Change, CSFG)

“Reading Coffee” by Anthony Panegyres (Overland, OL Society)

“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)

“Love In the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas” by Angela Rega (Crossed Genres, CGP)

“The Coffin-Maker's Daughter” by Angela Slatter (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)

“Thief of Lives” by Lucy Sussex (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)

“The Kite” by Kyla Ward (The Land of Bad Dreams, P'rea Press)

“All You Can Do Is Breathe” by Kaaron Warren (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

Cover art - "Avempartha" by Michael J. Sullivan (French edition)

I talked very often in praising words about Michael J. Sullivan, Marc Simonetti and the French publisher Bragelonne and its imprint Milady. Well, a little less about Michael J. Sullivan and his wonderful “The Riyria Revelations”, from which I still need to read “Wintertide” and “Percepliquis” and finally put the review of “The Emerald Storm” on paper. Therefore, in an attempt to avoid becoming tiresome in my praise for the above mentioned, I’ll let the cover artwork made by Marc Simonetti for the French edition of Michael J. Sullivan’s “Avempartha” (La Tour Elfique) due to be release by Milady on 22^nd of June speak for itself.

Romanian speculative fiction - "Beyond the Night. 12 Faces of the Gothic" edited by Oliviu Crâznic

On the Romanian literature scene speculative fiction is seen rather as the poor relative than anything else. And going further deep horror fiction can barely receive the falling crumbs from the table. I am not aware of a Romanian author that can be defined in the full sense as a horror writer. The most recent attempt within the Romanian horror fiction was made by Oliviu Crâznic with the gothic novel “…and at the end remained the nightmare”, which was well received by the local speculative fiction community, but that is a pretty isolated event. This summer the Romanian speculative fiction scene in general and the horror genre in particular will be enriched with a new volume, an anthology of gothic fiction edited by Oliviu Crâznic, “Beyond the Night. 12 Faces of the Gothic” (Dincolo de noapte. 12 Fețe al goticului). The anthology gathers some of the heavy names of the Romanian speculative fiction, such as Liviu Radu, Dan Doboș or Florin Pîtea, but also new and emerging talents of the same scene. “Beyond the Night. 12 Faces of the Gothic” is due to be released by Millennium Press on June, 2^nd at the National Book Fair Bookfest in the presence of the authors.

A doomed private detective on the trail of a serial killer, a communist assignment with occult motivations, time travelers in Jack the Ripper’s era, the victims of the charms and the consequences of resorting to witchcraft, American guests at a Romanian ancient cemetery, a medieval monk making a shocking discovery, a brother and a sister pushed towards crime and sin, a village haunted by wolves and legends, a she-devil surprised by the end of the world, a priest kidnapped by two mysterious men and forced to heal the wounds of a chained young woman, an avenger challenging a dubious corporation, a house in which ghosts are prisoners and victims… on the short, 12 FACES OF THE GOTHIC.

“The editor’s word: An epic with an expected (I hope!) end” (Cuvîntul editorului: O epopeee cu final (sper!) aşteptat) by Oliviu Crâznic

“Washed by the virgins’ blood” (Spălaţi de sîngele fecioarelor) by Ştefana Czeller

“The builders of churches” (Ziditorii de biserici) by George Lazăr

“Different shades of darkness” (Diferite nuanţe de beznă) by Liviu Radu

“Quicksilver” (Argint Viu) by Narcisa Stoica

“Violet” (Violet) by Dan Doboș

“The haunted deep” (Văgăuna bîntuită) by Florin Pîtea

“The brothers of Saint-Yves” (Fraţii de Saint-Yves) by Raluca Băceanu

“Under the night’s veil” (Sub vălul nopţii) by Cătălina Fometici

“Devil’s children” (Copiii Diavolului) by Laura Sorin

“The Charron Palace’s cellars” (Pivniţele Palatului Charron) by Oliviu Crâznic

“The hour of death” (Ora morţii) by Ana-Maria Negrilă

“The Redemption” (Ispăşirea) by Ciprian Mitoceanu

I am looking forward to grab a copy of this anthology and see what Romanian horror can produce.