Black Static

Black Static #58 is teetering on the edge of the abyss and will shortly be uploaded to the printers, with an early to mid-May mailing date. Andy will be along shortly to reveal the full contents, but in the meantime I'm here to reveal what books get reviewed in the Case Notes section of the magazine.

Here's what we've got for you:-

FOUR GRAPHIC NOVELS AND AN ART BOOK

Reviews of five illustrated books from Birmingham based Short, Scary Tales Publications - Night Screams for Mercy by Hannu Kesola and Jussi Piironenhe, Bullet Ballerina by Tom Piccirilli and Greg Chapman, Partners by Glenn Møane, Elias Martins and Russell Vincent Yu, Bullet & Justine: The End and the Beginning by Mauro Padovani, and The Art of Tomislav Tikulin.

DARK SHADOWS AND DIRTY CORNERS: RICHARD CHIZMAR

Reviews of Richard Chizmar's short story collection A Long December, and the novellas Darkness Whispers written in collaboration with Brian James Freeman, and Gwendy's Button Box written in collaboration with Stephen King, plus an interview with the writer, which also takes in his role as head honcho at Cemetery Dance Publications.

EURO-TREATS

Reviews of five short works by European writers - Black Tea and Other Tales and Imago Mortis by Samuel Marolla, The Horror at Gancio Rosso by Paul Di Filippo and Claudio Chillemi, Vessel and Solsvart by Berit Elligsen, and Ink in the Blood by Stéphanie Hochet.

That's thirteen titles reviewed this issue, two of them written by women, which takes our tally for the year so far to forty one titles reviewed and nine of them either written or edited by women (22%).

Last time I checked (and it's about time I checked again), the corresponding figures for books received was forty nine, sixteen of them with a female by-line (33%).

Though I managed to include nine books by non-Anglo creators, #58 is not the big "in-translation" special that I'd hoped for and hinted at a couple of months back on this blog, partly because I couldn't resist running a feature on Richard Chizmar but mostly because I couldn't persuade Andy to drop at least one of the stories and give me more time by putting the print deadline back a couple of weeks. I still have quite a few "in-translation" titles at the draft review stage however, so the idea may resurface at some point in the future.

Looking at the figures above, it seems that we need a slight course adjustment and so I aim to have the next issue (#59, due out in July) focus on the work of female writers, and to make it even more interesting/challenging, they'll be writers I've never reviewed before (for purposes of this exercise, chapbooks and stories in collections don't count).

Of course, my aim isn't always on target, and with deadlines looming and personal drama pending, I may just ditch the whole idea and run with whatever is available.