The Black Ink Chapbook Series is back!
THE BLACK INK CHAPBOOK SERIES IS BACK!
For those who were around for the first chapbook series, we’re doing things a little differently this time. Series 2 will consist of six books (Series 1 was four) and books will be released in two-book cycles. In keeping with the spirit of the first set, each pair will include a book by an established talent and one from a “new voice” in the genre.
The sets are as follows:
FIONA AND GRAMS by Gene O’Neill
THE REVEREND’S POWDER by Erik Williams
REVENGE FLICK! By James Newman
A FISTFUL OF ZOMBIES by David Greske
THE UNUSUAL EVENT OF A SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT BIG K’S TRUCK STOP AND FINE EATING EMPORIUM – A MONEY RUN TALE by Sam W. Anderson
THREESOME by Ray Garton
As the majority of books were purchased in sets last year, we’ll be putting the set up for pre-order first for a short period. Buying both books will save on shipping and the total cost of the books. It will also be the only way to guarantee matching numbers for future books in this series. The singles will go up to their regular price of $13 each when the books are in stock and ready to ship.
To give readers a little more flexibility insofar as which books they buy, we’re offering the hardcovers in sets of two instead of one set of six. This will allow for a more timely release of the hardcovers, and will allow discriminate readers more choice in which books to pick up. Look for the first hardcover set to go up for pre-order in the coming weeks.
We’re also kicking it up a notch in terms of the hardcovers’ design. The printed trade hardcovers are being replaced by fabric with foil stamping. Not only will the books be more durable, but they should be a bit more classy as well.
For those of you who bought the Series I set, please include your number in the NOTES section of your order.
Keep an eye on the blog for excerpts!
Digg
StumbleUpon
del.icio.us
Facebook
Yahoo! Buzz
Twitter
Google BookmarksLast Chance On Two ChiZine Publication Titles!
Only a few more days left to order these two ChiZine titles.
These two titles will be coming off the site soon and the limitation will be set, so if you’ve been on the fence, now is the time to reserve your copy before it’s to late.
IN THE MEAN TIME by Paul Tremblay (Limited Edition)
A history teacher begins his unorthodox senior course with clips from an ominous surveillance video, causing a student’s home life to deteriorate along with the lessons.
A girl with a second head that changes into different historical and fictional identities tries to find her father while figuring out how to handle Mom and the book club.
A blog documents society’s slow, unexplained, but inexorable end, or is it only a collection of pixel-sized paranoia?
A once-awkward teen holes up in a kiddie-themed amusement park after the end of the world, and schemes to take Cinderella’s Castle by force.
This collection by Paul G. Tremblay (author of The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland) features fifteen stories of fear and paranoia, stories of apocalypses both societal and personal, and stories of longing and coping.
“In the Mean Time is a miscellany of voices—witty, wise, weird, assured. These stories push at boundaries, not just within genre; they play alongside the uneasy undercurrents of lives we’d usually call ordinary. Stories to read and read again.”
—Helen Oyeyemi, author of The Opposite House and White is for Witching
“In the Mean Time is a formidable collection, as disquieting as it is beautiful. They shock and they gleam, these stories, and the moods they provoke linger powerfully in the imagination: the dread of those who see the trouble coming and the strange relief of those upon whom it has already fallen.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
“Rumor has it that the world will end in fire and ice, but then again, if Paul Tremblay is to be believed, it may conclude in preternaturally active plants, amusement parks, sudden brain aneurisms, and silence. In Mean Time, end of the world scenarios brush up against the traumas of more personal apocalypses. The resulting stories are as stressful and quietly traumatic as they are fluidly and lucidly written.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Last Days and Fugue State
HC-only material:
. original untitled story to be printed on the front and back covers
. original short story “Chance the Dick” (an experimental story that
re-imagines the first chapter of The Little Sleep)
. short story “The Dilky Never Landed” (weirdboiled short story that takes
place in Jeffrey Thomas‘s Punktown universe)
– short story “King Bee” (Tremblay’s first published short story,
originally published ten years ago)
PEOPLE LIVE STILL IN CASHTOWN CORNERS by Tony Burgess (Limited Edition)
“It is what it is. That’s her car out there and, well, that’s her right there.”
Jeremy looks at the woman again. There’s a few flies dipping in and out of the back of her skull.
“What happened to her?”
I feel a little uncomfortable. I wasn’t really planning to lay it all out like this.
“Well, I hate to say this but I killed her.”
Jeremy nods slowly. He’s starting to take this in and I’m relieved.
“Don’t ask me why. Anything I say is just gonna sound ridiculous.”
I rub my hand in my hair. I want to appear frustrated.
“Things just got out of control.”
Bob Clark owns the Self Serve at Cashtown Corners. It’s the only business there and Bob is the only resident. He’s never been comfortable around other people. Until he starts to kill them. And murder, Bob soon discovers, is magic.
People Live Still at Cashtown Corners is Bob’s account of a tragedy we all thought was senseless.
VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN LETTERED TO SHIP NEXT WEEK! ONLY 26 DONE, AND VERY FEW LEFT!
VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN by Jeffrey Thomas (signed limited lettered hardcover edition)
In these eleven searing stories, Jeffrey Thomas (Blue War, Deadstock) takes us on another tour of the infamous far-future colony known as Punktown, its streets raging with violence and danger, its alleys stalked by aliens and mutants, its citizens struggling to retain their humanity, dignity, and sanity in the oppressive shadows of its soaring cold towers. Mixing mind-bending science fiction with bone-chilling horror, Thomas again demonstrates why his initial collection Punktown was met with wide acclaim.
“Punktown is one of the best examples of SF horror currently out there.” — Ellen Datlow, in Locus
“Punktown is searing and alien and anxious and rich, and it is humane, and it is moving. Jeffrey Thomas has done something wonderful.” — China Mieville
Innocents Lost Excerpt
As we’re down to your final copies of Innocents Lost by Michael McBride, I wanted to release an excerpt from this novel. There’s been quite the buzz about McBride’s latest. Check out what Horror Mall customers have been saying:
Posted by JASON PHILLIPS
I got to page 80 and put this book down twice. Why? Well it’s not because it was rubbish! In fact it is a great story that smacks you hard. This was very hard to read as a parent with children involved but Michael keeps you reading.
You follow two main characters who meet up in the book, one trying to find his daughter the other trying to find the person who took his daughter. This is a very clever book with a good twist.
This is a must for any McBride fan, hell it’s a must for any horror fan!
Posted by William C. Rasmussen
I simply do not understand why this book is not a sellout!? Innocents Lost by Michael McBride is an unbelievable tale! It’s a short novel that combines gut- and heart-wrenching scenes, a furious pace, and a dazzlingly clever, twisty plot! McBride’s story of gruesome child abductions perpetrated by a cold-blooded, relentless serial killer is quite simply a superb tale! It gets my highest recommendation!!
Posted by Geoff Guthrie
Innocent’s Lost is a story about child abduction, and at the beginning of the story an FBI agent who works on child abduction gets his little girl abducted on her birthday. The agent, Phil Preston, then falls apart and devotes every resource to find this child abductor in hopes of finding his little girl alive.
McBride weaves an interesting tale here; we have the child abductions, but we also have a mystery with a Native American Medicine Wheel and why does this relate to the story, and also why is this child abductor doing what he is doing, is there a story behind this? So it’s not a simple story. McBride weaves the tale into a mystery where Preston is putting together the pieces trying to figure out how to capture this child abductor. Also there are multiple twists to the story as well, and it’ll have you thinking.
This is an engaging horror story that runs like a thriller and keeps you turning the pages to find out what’s next. The story is not as bleak as one would think when it comes to child abduction because there are other parts to the story like the Medicine Wheel that keep you in wonder and interest. This was a solid novel by McBride, I enjoyed reading it, and I highly recommend it!
Innocents Lost–Excerpt From The Novel
22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming
Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge surveyed the site from the edge of the forest. The scene before him was beyond his worst nightmares. In his eleven years in law enforcement, he had been involved in some of the most ghastly cases in the Rocky Mountain region, most notably the Schoolhouse Slaughter in Pine Springs eight years ago. A disgruntled, bipolar teacher named Irving Jepperson had lined up his class of twelve sixth grade students at the front of the room and fired upon them at close range with a shotgun. Four of the children had managed to escape through the window while the custodian and another teacher subdued him. Eight eleven and twelve year-olds had been heaped on the floor at the foot of a chalkboard peppered with buckshot and spattered with blood, bone fragments, and gray matter when he arrived. There had been nothing left of their faces or upper torsos, leaving the parents to identify their children by their blood-soaked clothing and shoes. And somehow, even that carnage paled by comparison to the horror that unfolded before him now, perhaps not in sheer ferocity, but in the palpable evil that emanated from the clearing.
The amount of planning that had been invested into the creation of this tableau was staggering.
A ring of halogen lights encircled the wagon wheel design. They provided precious little illumination, and instead cast long shadows from the rock cairns and walls. More lights would have to be airlifted in with a supply of portable generators, but not until they had thoroughly scoured the ground for evidence. They couldn’t afford for the rotors of a chopper to blow away even a single footprint, and the nearest other suitable landing area was a mile and a half to the northeast. For now, the ERT crew was gathering whatever they could find and photographing even the smallest stone from every appreciable angle.
With such an elaborate setup, Dandridge knew they would only discover what the killer wanted them to find. This was no haphazard burial site. An inordinate amount of time and care had gone into designing something meant to be seen.
This promised to be the longest night of his life.
“You’re going to want to see this,” an evidence tech he recognized as Brad Stewart said from his left, where two large piles of stones had been removed from one of the cairns and stacked to either side of it, framing a maw of shadows.
Dandridge reluctantly approached, accepted the proffered flashlight from Stewart, and shined it into the hollow base of the cairn.
“At a guess,” Stewart said, “I’d wager she was killed roughly two years ago, but we’ll have to wait for the ME for a more official assessment.”
“She?”
“That’s our working assumption. She’s still too young and skeletally immature to tell definitively.”
Dandridge crouched and had to cover the lower portion of his face with his handkerchief to combat the stench.
A handful of flies buzzed lazily at the periphery of the light’s reach.
“For the love of God,” Deputy Miller said from behind him. There was a crashing sound in the underbrush, then a retching noise as Miller was absolved of his dinner.
Dandridge studied the recess with the flashlight. A fully-articulated skeleton had been posed to face the center of the medicine wheel. Its palms had been drawn together and placed against the left side of its skull, its head canted slightly toward them in a twisted mockery of a peacefully sleeping child. There was a depressed fracture slightly anterior to the coronal suture, from which a spider web of cracks expanded. And based upon the size of the bones and the presence of the epiphyseal growth plate lines, he estimated she couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Rusted lengths of barbed wire had been wound around and through the skeleton to hold the remains in place. Tangles of hair and tattered skin still adorned the barbs. Clumps of blackened flesh clung to the bones at random intervals, while the rest had turned the color of rust and were crusted with flaking scales of dried blood. Frayed tendons had retracted and pulled away from their moorings, where the gristle of muscle attachments reminded him of the nubs at the ends of gnawed drumsticks. The cartilaginous joints were ebon and rotted, yet somehow managed to hold the appendages together. Flies crawled on the dirt, which was slimy and lumpy with the foul dissolution of the tissues that had sloughed from the body as it decomposed.
“All of the teeth are still intact,” Dandridge said, sweeping the beam across the small face. “It shouldn’t take long to provide a positive ID from dental records.”
“If we’re right, it might be even easier than that,” Stewart said. “We were waiting for you before we watched the disks. There are tins buried halfway between the central and outer cairns, just like the professor said. We’re still carefully digging them out of the ground. So far, the samples we’ve loaded all confirm the presence of a video file in the neighborhood of half a gigabyte.”
“How long is that?”
“Depending upon resolution, somewhere between twenty and forty minutes.”
“And you haven’t watched them yet?”
“We took samples of the blood smears and dusted for prints, but no, we saved that honor just for you.”
Dandridge glanced at the remains one final time. He only hoped she hadn’t suffered too badly. His gut, however, insisted otherwise.
“We have the disk that corresponds with this cairn loaded and waiting on a laptop,” Stewart said. He paused. “Are you ready to do this?”
Dandridge nodded and rose to his feet. The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was watch that infernal disk. He already had a pretty good idea of what it contained.
Stewart nodded toward the nearest overhead light, which had been mounted in the upper reaches of one of those sickly pines. An evidence tech he hadn’t worked with before sat on a level portion of the twisted trunk, computer in his lap, a stack of tins in plastic evidence bags to his right. He looked up when Dandridge approached, quickly stood, and handed over the laptop. Dandridge sat on the tech’s former perch and the others gathered around to watch. The tech offered one of the bagged tins from the pile, upon which several numbers and letters had been scratched.
“We suspect the top number is the victim’s chronological order,” the tech said. “The numbers below it are the month and day. No year. And there’s still some debate, but I’m pretty sure the letters on the bottom line are abbreviations for vernal and autumnal equinox, and summer and winter solstice.”
“How do I make this thing play?” Dandridge asked.
“It’s already primed. You just have to double-click the file name.”
Ordinarily, this was where the tech would not-so-discreetly mock his inferior technical skills, but tonight, no one envied him the task at hand.
Dandridge did as he was instructed and the media player opened. After a moment, a gray rectangle with a control bar beneath it appeared.
He drew a deep breath to steady his nerves, aligned the cursor with the PLAY button, and tapped the mouse.
The video began to roll.
NEW JADE REVIEW AND IT IS ON SALE!
NEW JADE REVIEW:
http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/fantasy/jade/#more-14855
JADE by Gene O’Neill (signed limited trade softcover edition)
Jade, with her beautiful eyes is a wasteland defective, a quasimodo.
An advocate for other Cal Wild defectives, she soon runs afoul of the mysterious and ominous Aryan Colonists.
Soon after she experiences the high of first love and the low of gruesome death, eventually spiritually soaring above the sleaze, bigotry, and violence of the San D Ruins.
Introduction by Michael McBride.
AMAZING JOHN R. LITTLE SHORT STORY COLLECTION UP FOR PRE-ORDER!
LITTLE THINGS by John R. Little (trade paperback edition)
John R. Little has been publishing his unique brand of short stories for almost 30 years. Little Things is a retrospective of his career, containing his best work. The stories in this collection will make you feel a sense of wonder. Some will shock you, make you sad, bring laughter, scare you, and they will sear into your memory. The author is the winner of the Bram Stoker award and the Black Quill award for his book Miranda.
John R. Little is blessed with both amazing talent and a fantastic imagination. Always a treat to read. If you miss him, you’re missing something good. — Brian Keene, Bram Stoker-winning author of A Gathering of Crows.
John Little is one of those writers who the rest of us envy—he’s a visionary, with personal obsessions (time, love, even cruelty) that define his work while continually refreshing it. His stories are disturbing, uplifting, thought-provoking, exciting, melancholy, horrifying, and sweet… all at once. John’s one of the great magicians of modern genre literature, and we’re lucky to share this time frame with him. — Lisa Morton, Bram Stoker-winning author of The Lucid Dreaming
Forum Closure
While Horror Mall has seen a 20% increase in sales this year compared to the previous year, it seems that forum usage and contributions have decreased in that time, which tells me ultimately this isn’t what our growing customer base really wants or needs.
Forums across the internet, especially in this genre, have all seemed to really go south in the past few years. I contribute this decline to the forum being an outdated tool of communication.
As a business, we are much better using our blogs and twitter to communicate with our customers.
With that being said, the forums will be taken down on or around August 1st.
The core public communication network of Horror Mall and its shops is our dedicated blog system which can be found at: http://horrorgy.com. There you can get the latest news, view articles and excerpts and comment on any post we have there. In places, the comments are threaded like a message board for those of you who prefer the message board format.
As always, are dedicated support ticket system is located at http://www.horror-mall.com/help/. This is for support communication purposes and each shop has its own department along with a tech support, auction and billing (for all shops) department where customers can easily get their questions answered and issues dealt with in a timely manner.
I’d like to thank everyone on the forums for their past participation. A special thanks goes out to Scotty who has moderated them since their inception.
Please bookmark and watch our blog system regularly as we’ll be doing some very exciting things in the near future that will involve direct interaction with our customers and the horror community.
TWO NEW CENTIPEDE PRESS UP FOR PRE-ORDER!
DRAGONFLY by John Farris (signed limited hardcover)
According to John Farris himself, there is not a better-written book in his entire, extensive catalog than Dragonfly, his riveting southern Gothic suspense novel, complete with mysterious anti-heros, sinister doctors, heroic women in wheelchairs, and raging tropical storms.
With a perceptive introduction by Thomas Monteleone, an amazing cover by Swiss artist Gwabryel, and a bonus short story, this is a book that shows a master at the top of his form.
Limited to 200 copies, the book is bound in cloth with a printed front panel. The book also contains a bonus short story by Farris. Each copy is signed by John Farris.
THE NINTH CONFIGURATION by William Peter Blatty (signed limited hardcover)
Published in 1967, and then extensively revised and published again in 1978, The Ninth Configuration is a fascinating look at madness, philosophy, and the nature of religious belief, the second part of William Peter Blatty’s ‘Trilogy of Faith,’ which also comprises The Exorcist and Legion. Both Twinkle, Twinkle ‘Killer’ Kane and The Ninth Configuration have been out of print for decades, but now they see new light in a handsome edition which combines both novels, with an introduction by Mark Kermode and a brief afterword by Blatty. Heavily illustrated, with two photographs of the author and a gallery of old paperback and hardcover editions.
The hardcover edition is limited to just 200 copies and each one is signed by William Peter Blatty. Bound in cloth with a printed front panel by artist Elixio Flores. This is the definitive edition of this novel.
SIDESHOW BY WILLIAM OLLIE NOW AVAILABLE IN TRADE PAPERBACK
SIDESHOW by William Ollie (trade softcover edition)
The smoke ring rose, higher and higher, changing shape as it went, until it disappeared into a cloud that moments ago had looked like the caboose of a train, a cloud that now began to change, to mold and meld, to twist and turn and take on the shape of the thing that had entered it. This thing, this dark entity, hung frozen in the sky, calling those chosen few out from their houses, their bars and their factories, calling them forth to face what waited in that dark and foreboding night.
Justin Henry didn’t believe his friend had seen a Ferris wheel rise up from the ground like a runaway vine. But he followed Mickey Reardon out to the overgrown field at the edge of their little country community anyway.
Now two thirteen-year-old boys have seen something they shouldn’t have, witnessed something they couldn’t have, and neither of their lives will ever be the same again.
The carnival is in town, a very different kind of carnival this year.
One no one will be coming home from.
“With his second effort, William Ollie has made a quantum leap beyond the promise of his excellent debut novel The Damned, revealing to his readers a mysterious Ferris wheel and carnival recreating ominous feelings once produced by the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes; and a handling of viewpoints of two young boys every bit as deftly as the best of Stephen King. Chills and thrills abound in Hannibal Cobb’s Kansas City Carnival, a place of magic and mystery you won’t soon forget. Sideshow has my highest recommendation.”
- Gene O’Neil,
Author of Doc Good’s Traveling Show
YOU LIKE YOUR SANTA RED? BLOOD RED?
FESTIVE FEAR- GLOBAL EDITION (limited edition paperback)
The fear returns and this time it’s worldwide!
Anthology of original dark stories set around the Christmas period. Tales that will encourage you to check and recheck doors and windows are securely locked, that you know exactly what ingredients went into the punch before taking a sip, and evokes a heart murmur every time you hear Merry Christmas!
Christopher Conlon, Steve Cameron, Paul Kane, Tim Curran, B. Michael Radburn, Ellen Shaw & Wayne C Rogers, Scott Tyson, GNBraun, Matthew R. Davis, Adrian Chamberlin, Daniel I Russell, Alison J Littlewood, Lee Thompson, and Tom Piccirilli.
