The Winter Hunt and A Saucerful of Secrets now available as ebooks

The Winter Hunt and Other Stories by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis, and A Saucerful of Secrets by Andrew Darlington are now also available as ebooks.

The Winter Hunt -
ebook:
amazon.co.uk £2.99
amazon.com     $4.27

A Saucerful of Secrets -
ebook:
amazon.co.uk £2.99
amazon.com     $4.30

Artwork: Joe Young

Artwork: Vincent Chong

The Winter Hunt by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis; A Saucerful of Secrets by Andrew Darlington published by Parallel Universe Publications

Parallel Universe is proud to announce the publication of two new outstanding collections of stories: The Winter Hunt and Other Stories by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis, and A Saucerful of Secrets by Andrew Darlington. Both are available in paperback, priced £8.99, and will be available as ebooks shortly. These mark the fourteenth and fifteenth books published by Parallel Universe.

The cover for The Winter Hunt is by Joe Young, while Vincent Chong did the artwork for A Saucerful of Secrets.

The Winter Hunt - Amazon.co.uk    Amazon.com

A Saucerful of Secrets - Amazon.co.uk   Amazon.com

Artwork: Joe Young

Artwork: Vincent Chong

Cover artwork for The Winter Hunt and Other Stories by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis

Artwork: Joe Young

Joe Young has now revealed the cover artwork he has done for Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis's collection, The Winter Hunt and Other Stories, which is soon to be published by Parallel Universe Publications, wonderfully illustrating the title story.

With an introduction by Paul Finch, this 250-page collection will include:

The Winter Hunt
Gabriel Restrained
Family Ties
Lullaby
The Woman on the Stairs
Never Go Back
Damp
Last Day
The Worst Part
City of Woes
Death Knock
Playmates
De Profundis
Puca Muc
Shadows in Paint

Kitchen Sink Gothic

Cover artwork: Joe Young

Many thanks to artist, Joe Young, for providing us with the cover artwork for Kitchen Sink Gothic. We will be contacting those who have submitted stories so far within the next seven days. And a reminder that we are still looking for stories for this anthology, which will be published by Parallel Universe Publications later this year.






Parallel Universe Publications is now accepting submissions, either original or reprints, for an anthology of stories inspired by the classic British cinema/theatre phenomenon known as kitchen sink drama. 

What Culture described it as: "A determination to examine the lives of the working and dispossessed classes in a non sentimental way...The movement began in the late 1950s and has survived to this day with the oeuvre of Ken Loach and films such as Nil By Mouth. Tackling thorny themes is a trademark of the Kitchen Sink drama. Abortion, divorce, homelessness, single motherhood, inter racial sex, poverty and homosexuality were all ripe topics to be examined. There was also the advent of The Angry Young Man – usually working class men railing against everyone and everything."

That fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, describes it as: "a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.
The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders.^[1]
In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist-type scenes of domestic life.<sup>[2]"

We look forward to tales of darkness and horror, of the supernatural and the weird within the overall framework of the social realism of the kitchen sink drama. 

Please send your submissions to rileybooks@ntlworld.com headed "Kitchen Sink Gothic" as an attachment in either doc or docx. We welcome either new stories or reprints. If a reprint please add details of previous publication. We have no firm maximum length though obviously the longer the story the better it will need to be to be accepted.

Payment will be £5 per thousand words and a contributor's copy of the book.</sup>

A Big Thank You to Joe Young

I would like to give a big thank you to Joe Young, without whom I would not have considered republishing Goblin Mire.

After my one and only fantasy novel was originally published by Renaissance eBooks several years ago, I was so discouraged with the appallingly bad cover they slapped on it and by the total lack of help I got from them in promoting the book, I took it off the market as soon as my contract with them allowed. There the novel would have stayed until, out of the blue, Joe Young contacted me. On his own initiative, equally appalled by the original cover, he had designed a new one. His encouragement led me to rewriting the novel, shedding 8 or 9 thousand words and, finally, getting it published again as a trade paperback and ebook with Joe's wraparound cover.

Thanks, Joe. However well (or not) the book does, I am glad that it's properly available again - and this time with the kind of cover I hope it deserves!

Two new titles to be available from Parallel Universe Publications this month

Two new titles will be available in paperback this month from Parallel Universe Publications: Charles Black's short story collection, Black Ceremonies, and David A. Riley's fantasy novel, Goblin Mire, which was originally published several years ago by Renaissance eBooks.

Cover by Paul Mudie

Cover by Joe Young

Black Ceremonies is168 pages and will cost £6.99 / $11.00 in the US / €9.00 in Europe

Goblin Mire is 318 pages and will cost £9.99 / $15.00 in the US / €12.50 in Europe

Goblin Mire cover

Joe Young has now completed the front and back covers and the spine of Goblin Mire, which will be published later this year. Other than some blurbs, etc., which I'll be adding later, this is the final version.

Goblin Mire has had a checkered history. It was first published by Renaissance eBooks, who gave it one of the worst covers I have ever seen. This was only ever published as an ebook, so its publication by Parallel Universe Publications will see it in hardback and paperback for the first time. I have also thoroughly revised it, shedding about 10,000 words. I intend to bring out an ebook version soon afterwards.


For a comparison, this was the original cover provided by Renaissance eBooks:

Goblin Mire - cover update

Artist Joe Young sent me an update on the artwork he's done for the cover of this fantasy novel:

This was the original:

Goblin Mire - new cover, etc

I've had my fantasy novel Goblin Mire available as an ebook through Renaissance eBooks for about four and a half years, but it has not done very well. Part of this, I am sure, is because of the awful amateurish cover which my publisher slapped on it.

On his own initiative Joe Young produced an alternative cover, which I believe is considerably better and which I am really pleased with. As a result, I have emailed Renaissance eBooks to cancel my contract with them, so I can go through the novel and revise it before making it available again, probably through Amazon, as an ebook and a POD paperback, using Joe's cover.

Hopefully this time it will have more success.

This is Joe's cover: