My first collection of short stories, most of which were previously professionally published in magazines and anthologies here and in the United States, was set to be brought out by Midnight House. This project is now quite a few years old and, unable to contact John Pelan, the owner of Midnight House, and with its website down for the best part of a year now, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the book is not going to be brought out.
I had already turned down one alternative offer to publish this collection several years ago by Ex-Occidente. Since then, due to the delays from Midnight House, Johnny Mains, owner of Noose and Gibbet Press, has repeatedly urged me to let him publish it instead. Last night, recognising that my original arrangement with Midnight House appears to have died, I agreed. My collection will be published by Noose and Gibbet in the Spring/Summer of next year in hardback.
I am now going back to look over the stories which were originally to be in this collection and I will probably make a few alterations to the line up, probably substituting some newer ones.
I would like to thank Johnny for his kind offer and I look forward to working with him on this project, which I am confident at last will really happen.
Showing posts with label Midnight House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Midnight House. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Kicking the Flu Bug
Still suffering a bit, though I have continued to go to work for the past week. And went to last night's rehearsal for The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Thankfully the room where we do that was a lot warmer than last Thursday! We did the whole of Act 1, which is more or less me done, as I am only in one scene with my main character, Fleet, who gets murdered off stage shortly afterwards. I got a small additional part last night as body guard number one for Arturo Ui, but all I had to do was stand behind him with my arms folded after introducing the Actor character with the one line: "It's an actor, boss. Unarmed."
Need to get stuck into some more writing. Haven't done anything since Christmas. Must also look into what's happening with my long delayed collection from Midnight House, which seems no nearer being published, especially since the Midnight House site has been down for months now.
Currently reading Lee Child's thriller 61 Hours. I have a soft spot for his Jack Reacher novels.
Need to get stuck into some more writing. Haven't done anything since Christmas. Must also look into what's happening with my long delayed collection from Midnight House, which seems no nearer being published, especially since the Midnight House site has been down for months now.
Currently reading Lee Child's thriller 61 Hours. I have a soft spot for his Jack Reacher novels.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Into the Dark - novel
Now that I have finished what I think is the final rewrite on this novel I am left with the problem of what to do with it. Should I try sending it off to publishers, even though past experience has shown I can expect to wait up to 12 months or more for an answer, usually no thanks. Or go the quicker but, perhaps, ultimately less satisfying route of putting it online as another ebook, like Goblin Mire or Sendings - except I think this is a much better novel than either of them. It's a problem. The trouble with me is that I would much rather get on with whatever else I get stuck into writing next than go around trying to market what I have already finished, especially when it is so frustrating - and can sometimes impair my ability to get on with writing new stuff. It would be great if I had an agent to do all that for me, but getting an agent these days is, from what I can gather, even more difficult than getting a publisher. I suppose there is no need to make a hasty decision, I have still to finish either George and Glenda or Lucilla. And do a final rewrite on The Return.
One of the worst things about trying to get stuff published are the long delays. I have had a collection of short stories, The Lurkers in the Abyss, in the pipeline with Midnight House for years now, yet that seems little nearer actualling getting published than ever. I have had interest expressed in a second collection of my stories from a British small press publisher - a very good one, too - but the final decision over that seems to have come to a halt and months have gone by since I last had any emails about it.
The funny thing is that for a good few years I have been increasingly more convinced that the only printed collections/novels of mine to appear will be postumous. Call this a stupid, illogical conviction if you like, but it's been there a while - and is growing in validity as time goes by. It happens, though, and to much greater writers than me. Take Lovecraft for example.
Oh well, that's that bit of depression off my chest. Onwards and upwards!
One of the worst things about trying to get stuff published are the long delays. I have had a collection of short stories, The Lurkers in the Abyss, in the pipeline with Midnight House for years now, yet that seems little nearer actualling getting published than ever. I have had interest expressed in a second collection of my stories from a British small press publisher - a very good one, too - but the final decision over that seems to have come to a halt and months have gone by since I last had any emails about it.
The funny thing is that for a good few years I have been increasingly more convinced that the only printed collections/novels of mine to appear will be postumous. Call this a stupid, illogical conviction if you like, but it's been there a while - and is growing in validity as time goes by. It happens, though, and to much greater writers than me. Take Lovecraft for example.
Oh well, that's that bit of depression off my chest. Onwards and upwards!
Saturday, 17 April 2010
The Lurkers in the Abyss - publication update
Just received a circulated update from John and Kathy Pelan about the current state of their publishing company Midnight House/Darkside Press.
The important part of the message for me is this:
"Apologies! It’s been a rather ghastly year for us as I’ve had to sit out a no-compete agreement which has severely curtailed my abilities to earn a living in the mundane world, with a very significant negative impact on our book production. However, I’m back at work now and we expect to (finally) get the third Clifford D. Simak book to press in the next month or so. On the Midnight House side of things we have both Uel Key’s The Broken Fang and Richard Gamon’s The Strange Thirteen ready to go. Expect both by the end of summer.
More new books! This fall should see publication of David Riley’s Lurkers in the Abyss from Midnight House and the long awaited “Best of” William F. Temple from Darkside Press (along with the fourth Simak collection."
The full message reads thus:
"A Note from the Darkside
Apologies! It’s been a rather ghastly year for us as I’ve had to sit out a no-compete agreement which has severely curtailed my abilities to earn a living in the mundane world, with a very significant negative impact on our book production. However, I’m back at work now and we expect to (finally) get the third Clifford D. Simak book to press in the next month or so. On the Midnight House side of things we have both Uel Key’s The Broken Fang and Richard Gamon’s The Strange Thirteen ready to go. Expect both by the end of summer.
More new books! This fall should see publication of David Riley’s Lurkers in the Abyss from Midnight House and the long awaited “Best of” William F. Temple from Darkside Press (along with the fourth Simak collection.
As mentioned, this last year I was unable to work in my chosen field but there was a silver lining to this particular cloud… I was able to tackle a rather large number of projects, including Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle and Masters of the Weird Tale: Frank Belknap Long for Centipede Press. Both can be ordered from Jerad at www.centipedepress.com I’m just finishing up the introduction for The Hour of the Oxrun Dead by Charles L. Grant ad the book should be out in a couple of months. We’re hoping that I can finish Masters of the Weird Tale: Arthur J. Burks in time to have the book ready for World Fantasy Con. Certainly one of the biggest books I’ve ever worked on. It’s looking to come in at over 1200 pages with over sixty stories, most novelette length.
Do check out Altus Press for their edition of The Curse of the Harcourts by Chandler H. Whipple. This would have been a Midnight House book, but Matt beat me to it, and not wanting to see my research go for naught, he was nice enough to invite me to write the introduction. This episodic novel appeared in Dime Mystery Magazine in 1935 and has never been reprinted. It’s a historical supernatural gothic spanning 900 years amd three continents in the telling. A fabulous piece that would have fit in at Weird Tales and certainly stands comparison with works such as H. Warner Munn’s The Werewolf of Ponkert and Tales of the Werewolf Clan. The Curse of the Harcourts ought to be out in time for PulpFest. Altus Press has some other neat offerings including lost race novels, and pulp reprints. Among other volume, they’ve collected all five Dr. Death novels in two volumes and have embarked on a multi-volume set collecting all of the Secret Agent X novels. I consider both to be absolute “must haves”.
Later this year, Mythos Books will be issuing my story collection Darkness, My Old Friend with a stunning cover by Allen Koszowski and introduction by Ramsey Campbell. The collection is a retrospective of my first decade writing and the time elapsed between initially writing these pieces and the publication of the book has given me the opportunity to make little tweaks here and there and correct some errors that initially made it past the proofreaders and myself. The result of this extra work means that these are truly my preferred texts of the stories and hopefully all annoying typos have been fixed. Here’s what a couple of colleagues have had to say about the book:
“John Pelan is one of our most distinguished keepers of the flame. His richly varied work epitomizes everything that brought us all into the genres in the first place. In his oeuvre we find fearless imagination, hallucinatory vision, and a marvelously varied palette of verbal tropes that puts the essential music in the madness, that lilt that lifts us up into his vision. Mr. Nightmare strikes again!”
- Michael Shea (Multiple World Fantasy Award Winner)
Renowned author and editor John Pelan relishes the macabre and the transgressive. Darkness, My Old Friend is a gripping foray into the shadowy frontier of mysticism and dread. An assured storyteller, Pelan knows how to make you squirm like a worm on the hook." --Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence & Other Stories
Wow, that makes me want to buy a copy… ;-)
I’ve also launched my own imprint under the Ramble House umbrella… For years I’ve been trying to figure out how to produce smaller print runs of titles that would be obscure even by Midnight House standards and would still be affordable. I think we’ve done it with Dancing Tuatara Press. We have trade paperbacks ($20.00 retail with a full 40% discount) and there is a signed, limited hardcover at $45.00 and a trade hardcover at $35.00 (both are offered at 40% discount. Here are the titles available with direct links to the full descriptions. Retail customers can use their shopping cart function for all but the limiteds. If you want the signed limiteds, e-mail Fender or myself as those orders need to be processed manually. Dealers, for all states e-mail Fender directly to get the best possible rate, (wholesale orders have to be processed manually.) These are books that might have not quite fit with the type of material that you’ve come to expect from Midnight House, or were authors that perhaps didn’t have a broad enough appeal to merit a 500 copy print run (Mark Hansom, for example). There’s definitely going to be a focus on material from the weird menace pulps, with at least five collections by John H. Knox and at least three from Wyatt Blassingame. We’ve also reprinted Richard Goddard’s bizarre classic The Whistling Ancestors, which I recommend most highly. Goddard always promised a sequel, (which never materialized), so I’ve taken it upon myself to write it! The sequel will tie-in characters and locations from such diverse sources as the novels of Walter S. Masterman and Mark Hansom, “The Colossus of Ylourgne” by Clark Ashton Smith and feature Dr. Nikola, Mr. Chang, Dr. Death, and Dr. Yen-Sin teaming up with Caspar Pettifranc (from The Whistling Ancestors) to make the world a better place by killing off just about everybody. ;-) Keep watching our news page for more details.
Now here’s the links:
Beast or Man? – http://www.ramblehouse.com/beastorman2.htm
The Whistling Ancestors – http://www.ramblehouse.com/whistlingancestors.htm
The Shadow on the House – http://www.ramblehouse.com/shadowonthehouse.htm
Sorcerer’s Chessmen – http://www.ramblehouse.com/sorcererschessmen.htm
The Wizard of Berner’s Abbey – http://www.ramblehouse.com/wizard.htm
Coming Real Soon:
Walter S. Masterman – The Border Line
Arlton Eadie – The Trail of the Cloven Hoof
*Day Keene – The League of the Grateful Dead
John H. Knox – Reunion in Hell
Wyatt Blassingame – The Tongueless Horror
*What isn’t on the site yet is perhaps the most exciting series for mystery fans to come along in years: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps. Along with Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, and Harry Whittington Keene was one of the mainstays of the paperback original crime novel in the 1950s. However, he had developed his chops a decade earlier as one of the most prolific (and best) of the contributors to Dime Mystery, Detective Tales, and other magazines. During the decade of the 1940s there was at least one Day Keene novelette published in one of the mystery magazines every month. Most of these stories have never been reprinted and certainly no attempt has been made to collect them (until now). Day Keene in the Detective Pulps will run to over thirteen volumes and will be published in the same format as other Dancing Tuatara Press books, with one notable difference… The signed limiteds will feature a different guest introducer for each volume. Some of the biggest names in modern mystery fiction will be included. More information is available from me or e-mail Fender@RambleHouse.com
VERY IMPORTANT: NEW CONTACT INFORMATION
General E-mail: DarkMidHouse@Yahoo.com
Orders: DarkMidHouse@Yahoo.com
John: Jpelan13@Gmail.com
Please do not use the old e-mail addys, messages have a real good chance of not getting through. Until June, we’re up in the mountains of New Mexico with the tarantulas and skin walkers and have to rely on web-based e-mail.
Cheers,
John & Kathy"
The important part of the message for me is this:
"Apologies! It’s been a rather ghastly year for us as I’ve had to sit out a no-compete agreement which has severely curtailed my abilities to earn a living in the mundane world, with a very significant negative impact on our book production. However, I’m back at work now and we expect to (finally) get the third Clifford D. Simak book to press in the next month or so. On the Midnight House side of things we have both Uel Key’s The Broken Fang and Richard Gamon’s The Strange Thirteen ready to go. Expect both by the end of summer.
More new books! This fall should see publication of David Riley’s Lurkers in the Abyss from Midnight House and the long awaited “Best of” William F. Temple from Darkside Press (along with the fourth Simak collection."
The full message reads thus:
"A Note from the Darkside
Apologies! It’s been a rather ghastly year for us as I’ve had to sit out a no-compete agreement which has severely curtailed my abilities to earn a living in the mundane world, with a very significant negative impact on our book production. However, I’m back at work now and we expect to (finally) get the third Clifford D. Simak book to press in the next month or so. On the Midnight House side of things we have both Uel Key’s The Broken Fang and Richard Gamon’s The Strange Thirteen ready to go. Expect both by the end of summer.
More new books! This fall should see publication of David Riley’s Lurkers in the Abyss from Midnight House and the long awaited “Best of” William F. Temple from Darkside Press (along with the fourth Simak collection.
As mentioned, this last year I was unable to work in my chosen field but there was a silver lining to this particular cloud… I was able to tackle a rather large number of projects, including Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle and Masters of the Weird Tale: Frank Belknap Long for Centipede Press. Both can be ordered from Jerad at www.centipedepress.com I’m just finishing up the introduction for The Hour of the Oxrun Dead by Charles L. Grant ad the book should be out in a couple of months. We’re hoping that I can finish Masters of the Weird Tale: Arthur J. Burks in time to have the book ready for World Fantasy Con. Certainly one of the biggest books I’ve ever worked on. It’s looking to come in at over 1200 pages with over sixty stories, most novelette length.
Do check out Altus Press for their edition of The Curse of the Harcourts by Chandler H. Whipple. This would have been a Midnight House book, but Matt beat me to it, and not wanting to see my research go for naught, he was nice enough to invite me to write the introduction. This episodic novel appeared in Dime Mystery Magazine in 1935 and has never been reprinted. It’s a historical supernatural gothic spanning 900 years amd three continents in the telling. A fabulous piece that would have fit in at Weird Tales and certainly stands comparison with works such as H. Warner Munn’s The Werewolf of Ponkert and Tales of the Werewolf Clan. The Curse of the Harcourts ought to be out in time for PulpFest. Altus Press has some other neat offerings including lost race novels, and pulp reprints. Among other volume, they’ve collected all five Dr. Death novels in two volumes and have embarked on a multi-volume set collecting all of the Secret Agent X novels. I consider both to be absolute “must haves”.
Later this year, Mythos Books will be issuing my story collection Darkness, My Old Friend with a stunning cover by Allen Koszowski and introduction by Ramsey Campbell. The collection is a retrospective of my first decade writing and the time elapsed between initially writing these pieces and the publication of the book has given me the opportunity to make little tweaks here and there and correct some errors that initially made it past the proofreaders and myself. The result of this extra work means that these are truly my preferred texts of the stories and hopefully all annoying typos have been fixed. Here’s what a couple of colleagues have had to say about the book:
“John Pelan is one of our most distinguished keepers of the flame. His richly varied work epitomizes everything that brought us all into the genres in the first place. In his oeuvre we find fearless imagination, hallucinatory vision, and a marvelously varied palette of verbal tropes that puts the essential music in the madness, that lilt that lifts us up into his vision. Mr. Nightmare strikes again!”
- Michael Shea (Multiple World Fantasy Award Winner)
Renowned author and editor John Pelan relishes the macabre and the transgressive. Darkness, My Old Friend is a gripping foray into the shadowy frontier of mysticism and dread. An assured storyteller, Pelan knows how to make you squirm like a worm on the hook." --Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence & Other Stories
Wow, that makes me want to buy a copy… ;-)
I’ve also launched my own imprint under the Ramble House umbrella… For years I’ve been trying to figure out how to produce smaller print runs of titles that would be obscure even by Midnight House standards and would still be affordable. I think we’ve done it with Dancing Tuatara Press. We have trade paperbacks ($20.00 retail with a full 40% discount) and there is a signed, limited hardcover at $45.00 and a trade hardcover at $35.00 (both are offered at 40% discount. Here are the titles available with direct links to the full descriptions. Retail customers can use their shopping cart function for all but the limiteds. If you want the signed limiteds, e-mail Fender or myself as those orders need to be processed manually. Dealers, for all states e-mail Fender directly to get the best possible rate, (wholesale orders have to be processed manually.) These are books that might have not quite fit with the type of material that you’ve come to expect from Midnight House, or were authors that perhaps didn’t have a broad enough appeal to merit a 500 copy print run (Mark Hansom, for example). There’s definitely going to be a focus on material from the weird menace pulps, with at least five collections by John H. Knox and at least three from Wyatt Blassingame. We’ve also reprinted Richard Goddard’s bizarre classic The Whistling Ancestors, which I recommend most highly. Goddard always promised a sequel, (which never materialized), so I’ve taken it upon myself to write it! The sequel will tie-in characters and locations from such diverse sources as the novels of Walter S. Masterman and Mark Hansom, “The Colossus of Ylourgne” by Clark Ashton Smith and feature Dr. Nikola, Mr. Chang, Dr. Death, and Dr. Yen-Sin teaming up with Caspar Pettifranc (from The Whistling Ancestors) to make the world a better place by killing off just about everybody. ;-) Keep watching our news page for more details.
Now here’s the links:
Beast or Man? – http://www.ramblehouse.com/beastorman2.htm
The Whistling Ancestors – http://www.ramblehouse.com/whistlingancestors.htm
The Shadow on the House – http://www.ramblehouse.com/shadowonthehouse.htm
Sorcerer’s Chessmen – http://www.ramblehouse.com/sorcererschessmen.htm
The Wizard of Berner’s Abbey – http://www.ramblehouse.com/wizard.htm
Coming Real Soon:
Walter S. Masterman – The Border Line
Arlton Eadie – The Trail of the Cloven Hoof
*Day Keene – The League of the Grateful Dead
John H. Knox – Reunion in Hell
Wyatt Blassingame – The Tongueless Horror
*What isn’t on the site yet is perhaps the most exciting series for mystery fans to come along in years: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps. Along with Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, and Harry Whittington Keene was one of the mainstays of the paperback original crime novel in the 1950s. However, he had developed his chops a decade earlier as one of the most prolific (and best) of the contributors to Dime Mystery, Detective Tales, and other magazines. During the decade of the 1940s there was at least one Day Keene novelette published in one of the mystery magazines every month. Most of these stories have never been reprinted and certainly no attempt has been made to collect them (until now). Day Keene in the Detective Pulps will run to over thirteen volumes and will be published in the same format as other Dancing Tuatara Press books, with one notable difference… The signed limiteds will feature a different guest introducer for each volume. Some of the biggest names in modern mystery fiction will be included. More information is available from me or e-mail Fender@RambleHouse.com
VERY IMPORTANT: NEW CONTACT INFORMATION
General E-mail: DarkMidHouse@Yahoo.com
Orders: DarkMidHouse@Yahoo.com
John: Jpelan13@Gmail.com
Please do not use the old e-mail addys, messages have a real good chance of not getting through. Until June, we’re up in the mountains of New Mexico with the tarantulas and skin walkers and have to rely on web-based e-mail.
Cheers,
John & Kathy"
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