And For Our Next Trick
Black Static #19 is now at the printers and will be mailing out to subscribers some time next week if all goes according to plan. You can read it straight away or save it up as a treat for Halloween. Click on the first link below to check out the cover and contents.
For this issue the Case Notes section will be an anthology special with reviews of thirteen volumes, which between them carry something like three hundred stories, and I found it a real challenge not to repeat myself when writing about them. In fact, I probably did repeat myself. Certainly when reading through the proof I realised that I use the phrase 'captures perfectly' an awful lot.
Stephen Jones: Home Is Where the Horror Is
Reviews of three monumental volumes edited by anthologist extraordinaire Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror (a celebration of the series' 20th anniversary, with Jones selecting a favourite story from each previous volume), The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #21 and the mosaic novel Zombie Apocalypse! We'll also have an interview with Stephen Jones and Andy has arranged a competition giving our readers an opportunity to snag copies of the books for themselves.
And Then What Happened?
Reviews of ten more anthologies. These are:-
Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio
Zombies: An Anthology of the Undead edited by Christopher Golden
The Bitten Word: All New Tales of Vampiric Horror edited by Ian Whates
Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead edited by Nancy Kilpatrick
The Sixth Black Book of Horror edited by Charles Black
Where the Heart Is edited by Gary Fry
Never Again edited by Allyson Bird and Joel Lane
Null Immortalis: Nemonymous Ten edited by Des Lewis
The Best Horror of the Year Volume Two edited by Ellen Datlow
Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
Of course, given the size of these books and the sheer number of stories involved, there wasn't space in the magazine to discuss every single piece of fiction. Apologies to any writers who missed out, but by way of small compensation I will post complete Tables of Contents on this blog over the next few days, so that readers will know who was included and in case they have a particular writer whose work they always look out for. And yes, you are right, that is an easy way for me to post another blog entry or two.
To complement the anthology special in the magazine, I'm going to be posting a lot of anthology based material to this blog throughout October. Yes folks, October is Anthology Month at TTA. I'm hoping to run an interview with at least one of the editors featured in the magazine, and to write some other stuff of relevance.
One thing I thought might be fun to do is a Desert Island Anthology feature, asking various editors of anthologies to tell us their favourite horror anthology (other than one of their own, of course), the one that they would choose to have with them if stranded on a desert island. Yeah, it's an old idea, but one that still has legs.
I'll be mailing various editors over the next few days and inviting them to contribute, but of course I don't have contact details for everybody, so if you've edited an anthology and would like to take part don't wait to be asked: feel free to contact me via whitenoise@ttapress.com What I'm looking for is something along the lines of:-
a) a short introduction (who you are, what you've edited)
b) your favourite horror anthology and a few sentences about why (no need to write an essay, though you can if you wish)
c) any current or near future projects you'd like mentioned, with links if relevant.
I'll post stuff to the website at the rate of one a day and in the order I receive it, though there might be a rash of entries at the end of the month. Closing date will be 31 October.
I've also set up a dedicated anthologies thread on Interaction for people to discuss the editors' choices, their own favourites and anthologies in general.
Right, let's crack to it.
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