What Was, and What Will Be
Usually I list the contents of the Case Notes section either before or just as the magazine is mailing out to subscribers, but I'm running a little late this time around and so we'll call this blog entry a #25 retrospective.
Drum roll, please maestro.
The contents of the Case Notes section of Black Static #25:-
Horror Down the Years
A feature on horror fiction that is set (mostly) in times past, beginning in the Roman era with Leon Jenner's Bricks and carrying right on up to the present day and beyond with The Joy of Technology from TTA's own Roy Gray, set in the year 2019.
In between these two bookends there are reviews of Roman Hell by Mark Mellon, Viking Dead by Toby Venables, King Death by Paul Finch, Revenants by Daniel Mills, The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, The Third Section by Jasper Kent, Acceptable Loss by Anne Perry, A Lust for Lead by Robert Davis, Isis Unbound by Allyson Bird, The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett, The German by Lee Thomas, O My Days by David Mathew and The Zombie Autopsies by Steve C. Schlozman.
The Chaos Theory of Everything: D. F. Lewis
And our featured author in #25 was D. F. Lewis, with reviews of the novella Weirdtongue, his first novel Nemonymous Night, and the latest anthology edited by Lewis, The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies. There's also an interview and a free to enter competition giving one lucky reader the chance to win copies of the novel, the anthology and all nine volumes of the critically acclaimed Nemonymous series.
That's fourteen pages of book reviews, with eighteen titles reviewed in all, two of them by women, taking our figures for the year so far to 22½ books by women out of a total of 80 reviewed.
As usual my reading seems to be running ahead of my reviewing, and so to clear some of the backlog I will, as happened last year, make the Case Notes section of #26 an all review issue, with no featured author.
Looking further ahead, February is Women in Horror Recognition month. For the February2012 Case Notes, I don't intend to repeat last year's all female issue, but I do want to have a woman writer as our featured author and any features will be female led (e.g. at the moment I have at least two serial killer novels by women authors, so that is one feature I'm considering), with a token male presence.
Finally, on Interaction I put forward the idea of reviewing magazines (click on third link below), and this seems to have been favourably received, and so I shall start to do so from the April 2012 issue. Any editor who is interested in having their publication reviewed in Black Static should contact me via whitenoise@ttapress.com (obviously, magazines for consideration should primarily publish horror, and yes, I will consider e-pubs). I only intend to review one title per issue, and that by prior arrangement rather than have people submitting copies of their magazine on the off chance that I'll pick it, so please don't send anything in unless you've agreed it with me first.
Regarding books, as ever, people are welcome to query me regarding the possibility of a review by writing to whitenoise@ttapress.com with the usual caveat that an expression of interest does not guarantee if or when a review will be done.
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