One of the pleasures of being a semi-professional (i.e. very occasionally I manage to persuade people to pay me) author is being sent copies of the anthologies I've made some small contribution to. These days it'll typically be an e-book, but sometimes a physical dead-tree-derived copy will arrive. Wahey!
(This, no doubt, pales into insignificance compared to being a professional author, which would mean being sent boxes of books, yours and other people's, as well as money, drugs and naked dancers, on top of being bought Michelin-starred meals, holidays, cars, and granted freedom from disease, boredom and ennui. And eternal youth. Jealous? Me? Never.)
A red-letter day occurred earlier this month when one shelf on my Billy bookcase (80cm wide, not 60cm, I'll have you know) became insufficient to hold all the volumes which include my name somewhere on the table of contents. So, I thought it may be useful to show you some of the great items that have materialised through my letterbox.
So that you can go out and buy them yourselves. Not as an exercise in narcissism. Just to be clear.
BSFA's fourth Fission anthology, published in July, included my story 'Formula 719: A Cure Ennui'. This was written as a black comedy, but in reading the excellent introduction this appears to have been missed by the editors entirely. Having said that, on re-reading it, the humour was so black and bleak as to have been effectively redacted. Still one of my favourite stories, though.
Triangulation's 'Hospitium', their annual themed anthology, was also published back in July. It's got my story, 'Charabanc', which started life as a tale of
black shuck, but relegated him to sleeping on a bus.
Legiron's 'Monster' is, as the name suggests, a monster anthology which missed Halloween, despite the pumpkins on the cover, coming out on Guy Fawkes Night, but probably during the day. Not that there's a Guy Fawkes Day. My Dartmoor-set 'Too Few Surnames' will also be performed on the London stage (as in, read with feeling) sometime in 2025 by Liminal Tales. The book seems to have been given a five-star rating on Goodreads by the author first listed in the description. Just saying... I'm sure it fully deserves it.
PS Publishing's 'Shadowplays' took so long to come out - my story 'The Charmed' was accepted in February 2023 - I was beginning to wonder if it ever would. This was the one I blogged about Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores describing as "unsavoury and unpleasant with a disturbing ending". Buy the book and decide for yourself.
Lastly, but very not least, the wonderful polymath Donna Scott (who, having included me in five Best of British Science Fictions (resting, not dead!), I regard as a quiet champion for my work) has republished - but not reprinted - my previously podcast 'The Trouble with Vacations' in Slab's 'Laughs in Space'. Hear it there, but please read it here.
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My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.
Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.
2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
Twenty-four slipstream stories. Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).
