Parallel Universe Publication's Book Launch at FantasyCon by the Sea

Paul Lewis and Steve Lockley signing The Winter Hunt and Other Stories

Artist Jim Pitts with two of his recently published illustrations

Adrian Cole and Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso

Editor Steve Jones and artist Jim Pitts

Our full line-up

Friday, 7 October 2016

David Ludford's A Place of Skulls and other tales now available in paperback

David Ludford's short story collection, A Place of Skulls and other tales, is now available to order online.
Twelve tales of grisly horror, all of which were previously published in Schlock! magazine:
A Place of Skulls
Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
Almost Human
Bonestaff
Bridesmaids
Dummies
Heretics, Neophytes and Nemesis
Killings Clowns
Skinnybones
Sleepwalker
The Box
The Burning Tree.

amazon.co.uk £8.99
amazon.com $11.99

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

A Place of Skulls and other tales by David Ludford

We are pleased to announce that David Ludford's collection of stories A Place of Skulls and other tales will be available to order within the next few days, followed by an ebook version a few days later.
This book includes twelve stories that were originally published in Schlock! magazine:
A Place of Skulls
Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
Almost Human
Bonestaff
Bridesmaids
Dummies
Heretics, Neophytes and Nemesis
Killing Clowns
Skinnybones
Sleepwalker
The Box
The Burning Tree

Wednesday, 21 September 2016

FantasyCon by the Sea

Most of the packing for FantasyCon by the Sea has been done, especially the parcels of books that are now in the car.
Parallel Universe has a dealers table at the convention in the Victoria Room. We also have a book launch arranged for Saturday between 11 and 12 noon in the Harbourlights Restaurant where, not only will there be wine, fruit juice and nibbles available, courtesy of PUP, but some of our writers and artists will be ready to sign their books: Adrian Cole (Tough Guys), Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso (Haunted Grave), Paul Lewis and Steve Lockley (The Winter Hunt and Other Stories), Jim Pitts (frontispiece for Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb and the cover for Tough Guys).
PUP also has two adverts in the convention programme, a full page for PUP in general and a half page advertising our book launch.
We look forward to meeting old friends and new.

Monday, 12 September 2016

Black Static advert

The latest advert for Parallel Universe Publications appeared this month in the current issue of Black Static (issue 54). This will soon be followed by two adverts in FantasyCon by the Sea's official programme, a half page advert for our Book Launch on Saturday the 24th (11 pm) and a full page advert for PUP in general.

Sunday, 11 September 2016

Our next anthology

Parallel Universe Publications will be announcing details of our next anthology, together with writers' guidelines, in the near future.

Our last anthology was Kitchen Sink Gothic, which was published last August and featured 17 writers:

Coined in the 1950s, Kitchen Sink described British films, plays and novels frequently set in the North of England, which showed working class life in a gritty, no-nonsense, “warts and all” style, sometimes referred to as social realism. It became popular after the playwright John Osborne wrote Look Back In Anger, simultaneously helping to create the Angry Young Men movement. Films included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Entertainer, A Taste of Honey, The L-Shaped Room and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. TV dramas included Coronation Street and East Enders. In recent years TV dramas that could rightly be described as kitchen sink gothic include Being Human, with its cast of working class vampires, werewolves and ghosts, and the zombie drama In the Flesh, with its northern working class, down to earth setting. In this anthology you will find stories that cover a wide range of Kitchen Sink Gothic, from the darkly humorous to the weirdly strange and occasionally horrific.

Order Direct  from us

trade paperback: 
amazon.co.uk   £8.99
amazon.com  $11.99

ebook:
amazon.co.uk  £2.99
amazon.com  $3.05

Kitchen Sink Gothic includes:

1964 by Franklin Marsh
Derek Edge and the Sun-Spots by Andrew Darlington
Daddy Giggles by Stephen Bacon
Black Sheep by Gary Fry
Jamal Comes Home by Benedict J. Jones
Waiting by Kate Farrell
Lilly Finds a Place to Stay by Charles Black
The Mutant's Cry by David A. Sutton
The Sanitation Solution by Walter Gascoigne
Up and Out of Here by Mark Patrick Lynch
Late Shift by Adrian Cole
The Great Estate by Shaun Avery
Nine Tenths by Jay Eales
Envelopes by Craig Herbertson
Tunnel Vision by Tim Major
Life is Prescious M. J. Wesolowski
Canvey Island Baby by David Turnbull

Tuesday, 6 September 2016

Last batch of books for FantasyCon by the Sea arrived today

Arriving in good time, the last batch of books for FantasyCon by the Sea were delivered today.
Adverts all booked and paid for, book launch organised, and the dealer's table booked and paid for too. Now all we need to is get there for Thursday the 22nd.
Looking forward to meeting some of our authors who'll be at FantasyCon, including Adrian Cole, Paul Lewis, Steve Lockley, and Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso, as well as my old friend, the artist Jim Pitts, who did the cover for Adrian Cole's Tough Guys and a splendid frontispiece for Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb.

Friday, 2 September 2016

A Place of Skulls and other tales by David Ludford

The next book from Parallel Universe Publications will be a collection of twelve short stories from David Ludford, A Place of Skulls and other tales, all of which were previously published in Schlock! magazine.
More details soon.

Second ad placed in FantasyCon Programme

Parallel Universe Publications have now placed a second ad in the FantasyCon by the Sea programme, this time advertising our important book launch on the Saturday.
We already have a full-page ad.

Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Poster for FantasyCon by the Sea

This is a copy of the poster we'll be using to advertise our books at FantasyCon by the Sea in September.

Monday, 29 August 2016

Dedicated facebook page for Book Launch at FantasyCon by the Sea

Parallel Universe Publications now has a dedicated facebook page for its book launch on the 24th September at FantasyCon by the Sea. Check it out here.

Saturday, 27 August 2016

Fantasycon (23-25 September, 2016 - Scarborough) - We'll be there!

Parallel Universe Publications will not only be holding a book launch at Fantasycon but will have a table in the Dealers Room where all our books will be available at a special one-time-only Fantasycon price of £8.00 each. Fantasycon will be held at the Grand Hotel, Scarborough between the 23rd and 25th September this year.

Books to be launched will be Adrian Cole's Tough Guys, Paul Lewis and Steve Lockley's The Winter Hunt, A Saucerful of Secrets by Andrew Darlington, Andrew Jennings' Into the Dark, and Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso's Haunted Grave. It will also be your first opportunity to buy Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb.

 

 

Wednesday, 3 August 2016

Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso's Haunted Grave now available as an ebook

Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso's short story collection, Haunted Grave and Other Stories is now available as an ebook.

ebook:
amazon.co.uk £2.99
amazon.com $4.30

Tuesday, 2 August 2016

Haunted Grave by Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso now published

Haunted Grave and Other Stories: Eight Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction from the African Continent has now been published by Parallel Universe Publications.

Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso is an MA graduate of Creative Writing, Swansea University Wales. His short stories, poems and non-fiction have appeared in a couple of journals, anthologies and magazines such as Emanation: Foray into Forever, Africa Roar Anthology, Open Road Review, Criterion Journal, ANA Review, Ground's Ear Anthology, Future Lovecraft, African Eyeball, Miracle e-zine, Episteme Journal, Texts on SAVVY Journal. He has been shortlisted in IdeasTap Inspires: Writers' Centre Norwich Writing competition, Ghana Poetry Prize, and Quickfox Poetry Competition.

amazon.co.uk £8.99
amazon.com $11.99

Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso

Inside front cover advert for Parallel Universe Publications in Fear magazine

There's a great full page ad for Parallel Universe Publications on the inside front cover of the new Fear magazine.

Monday, 1 August 2016

Just published by PUP: Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb

During his lifetime Irvin S. Cobb was one of the most celebrated writers in American literature, though nowadays he is almost forgotten, apart perhaps from his Lovecraft connection. Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was born in Paducah, Kentucky on the 23rd June, 1876. His father, unable to cope with the death of his own father, succumbed to alcoholism when Cobb was only sixteen. As a result, Cobb’s education came to an end and he started work, first on the Paducah Daily News, then the Louisville Evening Post. By 1904 Cobb’s career in journalism was doing so well that he moved to New York, where he would go on to spend the rest of his life, starting work at the Evening Sun, though it wasn’t long before an assignment to cover the Russian-Japanese peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire so impressed Joseph Pulitzer that he offered Cobb a job at the New York World, where he became the highest-paid staff reporter in the United States. In 1911 Cobb moved to the Saturday Evening Post. Three years later he was asked to cover the Great War. Amongst the many stories he wrote while there were the exploits of the Harlem Hellfighters, a unit of black American soldiers who had gone on to earn distinction for their courage and discipline, which Cobb celebrated in his book The Glory of the Coming. Besides his prolific work as a journalist, Cobb’s fame largely came from his humorous stories, which were published in the leading magazines of his day, and collected in numerous books during his lifetime. But, though he was best known as a humourist, he did have a darker side, exemplified by the tales collected in this volume. Two of the most famous succeeded in catching the attention of H. P. Lovecraft. It is claimed that Fishhead influenced Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. And there is certainly no doubt that Lovecraft was favourably impressed with this tale. In his groundbreaking essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft wrote: “Fishhead, an early achievement, is banefully effective in its portrayal of unnatural affinities between a hybrid idiot and the strange fish of an isolated lake…” The Unbroken Chain gave Lovecraft the key idea behind The Rats in the Walls, though in all other respects the two tales are totally different. Besides writing and journalism, Cobb’s career extended to Hollywood, where legendary director, John Ford, made two films based on his books: Judge Priest (1934) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953). Other films included Peck’s Bad Boy (1921), starring Jackie Coogan, and The Woman Accused (1933), with a young Cary Grant. Cobb also did a stint at acting himself, appearing in ten movies altogether, including Pepper, Everybody’s Old Man (1936), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) and Hawaii Calls (1938). It’s a sign of the prominence he had achieved that in 1935 he was invited to host the 7th Academy Awards. Other than the tales that inspired Lovecraft, Cobb also wrote some brilliantly dark stories that culminate in a kind of sadistic irony. They are some of the finest conte cruel ever written. Amongst the best of these is the final story in this collection: Faith, Hope, and Charity, whose protagonists, as is often the case in Cobb’s stories, struggle against fates that are not only pre-ordained but are horrendously appropriate! It must be added his hapless victims are far from blameless. What fates await them under Cobb’s pen have most definitely been brought upon them by themselves! Through most of the tales there is a wry sense of humour, so wry, in fact, that it never detracts from the impact at the end; indeed, it often adds to and embellishes it! I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I did and share with me the conviction that it is high time they were revived.

The book includes a frontispiece drawn by Jim Pitts and an Introduction by Linden Riley.

Contents are:

Fishhead
The Escape of Mr. Trimm
The Gallowsmith
Mr. Lobel's Apoplexy
The Unbroken Chain
The Second Coming of the First Husband
Masterpiece
January Thaw
Cabbages and Kings
We Can't All Be Thoroughbreds
Queer Creek
Ace, Deuce, Ten Spot, Joker
Balm of Gilead
Faith, Hope, and Charity

trade paperback:
Amazon.co.uk  £8.99
Amazon.com  $11.99

Monday, 25 July 2016

Parallel Universe places ad in Black Static, Fear magazine and the FantasyCon Programme

Advert in the horrorzine

Parallel Universe Publications has embarked on an advertising campaign to raise its profile. The first of these was in the horrorzine for Adrian Cole's Tough Guys.

We have now arranged for an ad to go in the inaugural issue of the revived magazine Fear, edited by John Gilbert. This will be followed by a half-page ad in Black Static (issue #54). 

Advert in Fear magazine

Advert in Black Static

As well as a book launch at FantasyCon we are also placing a full-page, full-colour ad in the convention programme.

Friday, 8 July 2016

Into the Dark - free kindle download Sunday the 10th July

For one day only the kindle version of Andrew Jennings' horror novel Into the Dark will be free.

All we would ask is that if you do download it to write a honest review afterwards, however brief.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Our copies of Tough Guys have arrived

Our copies of Tough Guys by Adrian Cole arrived by courier yesterday, including extra copies ordered for the launch at Fantasycon in Scarborough later this year. Really pleased with the brilliant Jim Pitts wraparound cover. The book includes an in-depth introduction by David A. Sutton.

Wednesday, 6 July 2016

Advert for Tough Guys by Adrian Cole

Friday, 1 July 2016

Haunted Grave and Other Stories by Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso

Coming soon from Parallel Universe Publications is a collection of horror, fantasy and science fiction stories set in Africa by Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso, Haunted Grave and Other Stories.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

Reviewers welcome

If you are a book reviewer, either on your own blog or on a website or in a magazine, and would like to take a look at any of our books, please contact us on paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk

Just quote which book(s) you are interested in and say whether you would prefer an e-version, pdf or print copy.

Monday, 27 June 2016

Our bookshelf of books

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A Place of Skulls and other tales

Trade paperback #8.99

Haunted Grave and Other Stories

Trade paperback £8.99 Kindle £2.99

Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb

Trade paperback £8.99

Into the Dark

Trade paperback £8.99 Kindle £2.99

Tough Guys

Trade paperback £8.99 Kindle £2.99

Other Visions of Heaven and Hell

Trade paperback £8.99 Kindle £2.99

A Saucerful of Secrets

Trade paperback £8.99 Kindle £2.99

The Winter Hunt and Other Stories