Interzone

By Roy Gray

TTA publish enough original short stories per year to make them one of Britain's biggest publishers of new short fiction. By the end of 2010 TTA will have published 75 new short stories in Interzone, Black Static and Crimewave along with the 20 winning short stories from the Campaign for Real Fear. So, National Short Story Day on December 21 is something TTA should celebrate.

Peter Tennant, our much respected expert on the horror fiction scene, writes all the book reviews in the Case Notes section of Black Static Magazine. In his recent column Peter covered 13 anthologies, which held 288 short stories between them. Pete couldn't discuss every story, as space did not permit, but he managed to review each anthology and interview anthologist of note, Stephen Jones, editor of 3 of the 13.

For Short Story Day, on 21 December, we will post this set of Pete's reviews and the interview on the TTA Press website (link below, which will go live on 21 December), where Pete also blogs about horror fiction, reviewing and related subjects. After that, or even before, you can read the statistics from these anthologies - story totals, gender breakdowns, duplicate stories and/or authors, etc (see link below).

Why not listen to a Short Story?

TTA also post short stories in Audio MP3 format on their Transmissions From Beyond website (see podcast link above). These can be downloaded for free from there or iTunes etc. Pete Bullock, its editor, will post a story from Black Static #6 of August 2008, 'Viva Las Vegas' by Ray Cluley and read by Richard Kellum on 21 December for Short Story Day. As Pete lives in Charlotte, NC, his December 21 starts 5 hours later that GMT.

TTA also have 2 short fiction Advent Calendars on their website this year. One of these links to a different short story (1500 word limit) or poem online each day, in a repeat of a similar process last year. Just click on any link above to find the latest, and then check out the previous entries.

The other is with a horror bias, containing twenty five short seasonal stories by Peter Tennant and a cover illustration by artist David Gentry. This is presented as a free PDF, which you can download now by clicking the link below. There's a story for each day, but no peeking ahead.