Breathe, My Shadow Release

I finished my new Wraeththu novel, ‘Breathe, My Shadow’, just in time for its December release. It’s fortunate that our printers have such a fast turnaround (one to two days to generate electronic proofs after files are uploaded), because I did cut it really fine. But now it’s been uploaded, prepared and approved, and printed copies are on their way to me, so the book will be ready to go on the release date of 12^th December, when we’ll be holding our annual Immanion Press Yule party. The beautiful cover is by Ruby and features Meladriel, one of the main characters.

This book took me far longer to write than I’d anticipated. Part of this was down to the fact that Danielle Lainton and I have had to take on full responsibility for Megalithica Books, following its manager’s departure from Immanion Press early this year. I’ve had to do a lot more editing, even though Louise Coquio has come onboard as the senior editor for the non-fiction list. Danni and I completely revamped the Immanion Press web site this year, and also my personal web site, which took a lot of work and effort and time. On top of these extra duties, ‘Breathe, My Shadow’ insisted on complicating itself. Initially, it was to have been an extended version of ‘The Emptiness Next Door’, the story I wrote for the ‘Para Spectral’ anthology, but I didn’t think I’d extend it that much. I anticipated that it would be at most a longish novella. However, once I started writing, adding a couple of extra characters, the book took the bit between its teeth and galloped off with no intention of listening to my attempts to order it to slow down, or even stop! In theme, it’s closest to ‘The Moonshawl’, in that the characters investigate an historical mystery that manifests through paranormal events. But other than that, it’s a very different story. It’s set in Ferelithia – and those who are familiar with the Wraeththu Mythos will know that’s where Pellaz met Caeru before he was Tigron. To those who are unfamiliar with the lore, it’s a Wraeththu party town – rather like Ibiza used to be.  But while it’s a prosperous, hedonistic place, filled with tourists, few are aware of its dark history. Until the past begins to seep from the soil.

Louise was the main editor for the book, (Wendy Darling did a read through and offered feedback also), and read all the drafts – even a few chapters I’d send her now and again for feedback. Midway through the book she felt something was missing, and it was at her suggestion I added the character Ulien – a young har targeted by a malevolent har, or entity or ghost – whatever he is! I also gave the town itself a viewpoint – just a short page here and there. I didn’t intend for the story to stretch as much as it did. Other characters demanded to have more of a role – including Caeru himself (which is, I hope, rather a fan pleaser – Caeru having an adventure of his own rather being merely a supporting character of the Aralis dynasty). November arrived and I felt the book wasn’t anywhere near finished. To be honest, I started to panic, calmed only by Lou’s assurance all would be well, that the remaining work wasn’t as much as it seemed, and I’d have plenty of time to see to it. Then suddenly, it was done, all the dangling ends tied neatly. I was exhausted but happy – and most importantly, pleased with the result. So while ‘Breathe, My Shadow’ often felt horribly like a vampiric child, sucking all the life juice from me, it clearly thrived on the sustenance!

This book isn’t as grim as some of the Wraeththu Mythos I’ve written over the past couple of years. ‘Blood, the Phoenix and a Rose’ was gruesome in places and while the endings to the three novellas that comprised it weren’t relentlessly downbeat, they weren’t exactly cheery either. Similarly, some of the stories I’ve contributed to for various Mythos anthologies have been somewhat bleak – and wistful in tone. ‘Breathe, My Shadow’, while including its own grisly moments, has more of an upbeat denouement. I suppose the spirit of Ferelithia refused to be kept down for long. I didn’t want to find myself stuck in what seems to be the current trend of fantasy being numbingly miserable and brutal. Inspired by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who wrote and directed ‘The Endless’, (now one of my favourite movies), who said in one interview I watched that they prefer happy endings, I decided this book would finish well for every character involved… well, nearly every character. I also took inspiration from Cameron Crowe (fans of his will see why and how if they read this book), and the novelist Diane Setterfield, who always makes sure her readers know how every character ends up – even the future of the cat in ‘The Thirteenth Tale’! I really like that approach – it’s comfortably satisfying – and I hope other readers feel the same. (Her new novel ‘Once Upon a River’ is superb, by the way. Recommended.) While I doubt I’ll do this for every novel I write, I have for this one!

‘Breathe, My Shadow’ will be launched at the Yule Party, at The Shrewsbury Arms in Stafford on 12^th December. We’re also launching two other titles that day. First is another fiction work, a novella by Tanith Lee entitled ‘The Heart of the Moon’. This has been published only once before and it’s likely not many Tanith fans will have read it. The story is set in an alternate Ancient Greece and concerns a female warrior being sent to the mysterious Isle of the Moon to attend a religious festival. Intriguing and beautifully written – as all Tanith’s works are – the book also includes another Classics-inspired short story, ‘The Dry Season’, set in an alternate ancient Rome. Again, this piece has had low key prior publication – so hopefully the stories in this book will be like new works for many of Tanith’s fans. It has a cover and interior illustrations by Danielle Lainton – very sumptuous!

The third book we’re launching is a non-fiction title called ‘Psychic Protection’ by Bill Duvendack. A lot has been written on this subject before, but Bill brings a fresh new take to it. He begins by suggesting that if you think you’re under psychic attack, you’re probably not, and then explains what natural situations, conditions and illnesses might make you think you need to defend yourself psychically. Once all the obvious explanations are dealt with, he goes on to discuss the phenomenon of vampires in our society – not the blood-sucking kind of myth and fiction but emotional and psychic vampires who can leave people feeling drained, even ill. Bill gives advice on how to boost your defences against such types and to strengthen your inner resources generally. This is very helpful even for those who might be sceptical about the idea of needing psychic defence. Such attacks aren’t always the obvious, almost fictional idea, of someone sending out ‘evil’ thoughts deliberately, or – as in books and movies – causing supernatural events. An interesting read. (Cover by Danielle Lainton.)

As for next year, we have a lot of titles planned, which I’ll talk about in more depth after the New Year. I’m editing an anthology of weird landscape stories for NewCon Press, called ‘Shadow on the Hillside’. This will be released some time in 2020, and includes stories by such writers as Liz Williams, Freda Warrington, Sarah Singleton, Kari Sperring and Andrew Hook. I’ll be working on non-fiction projects for Immanion Press but hope to at least begin a new novel. I still have the next Ysobi story planned, which would take him to solve a mystery in Siberia! I started writing it a couple of years ago, but other projects intervened or took precedence. I just have to follow where my muse wants to go – and she can be capricious.

So that’s all for now. I wish you all a wondrous Yuletide and New Year!

 

A Quick Shot of Spring News

This is just a quick post, as I’m very busy at the moment, mainly working on web sites. More about that below.

I’ve finished writing the first draft of ‘Coming Forth by Day’, my book on Egyptian magic. It’s now gone to Louise Coquio for editing. I’m working through all the pathworkings and rituals in the book with Louise and friends, to see where they might need tweaking and changing. I’m planning, though, to release the book either in the summer or autumn, depending on how much needs doing to it, and how soon Ruby can let me have the illustrations she’s doing for the interior.

As an example of what the book includes, the picture above is of Anput from an ancient papyrus. She’s known as the consort/wife of Anubis. (Ruby will be providing her own rendition of this goddess). Anput’s an interesting, little-known Egyptian goddess, jackal headed like Anubis, but with a somewhat fiercer personality. She’s rather a mystery and some writers think she might be an earlier version of Anubis, rather than a separate entity. However, for the purposes of my book, I’ve given her a role of her own. I’ve had to devise ‘characters’ for the gods and goddesses in the book, so as to bring them to life and have relevance in our modern age. This is along the lines of how Andrew Collins and I explored the goddesses in our book ‘SHE: Primal Meetings with the Dark Goddess’.

I’ve decided that all the Immanion Press/Storm Constantine web sites and blogs need a drastic overhaul. My web site has been limply half-finished for years, mainly because the site builder my domain provider offered to users was really cumbersome and awkward to use. However, they’re now offering a new site builder, which is sleek and shiny, fairly easy to use and far far better in all respects. Danielle Lainton and I are currently putting the finishing touches to the revamped stormconstantine.co.uk and will next turn our attention to the Immanion Press web site. The one we have has been in situ for years and by modern standards is a bit out of date. Having seen what we were able to do with my own site, we’re eager to give Immanion Press a brush and polish now too.

I’ve also upgraded the Immanion Press wordpress page. While the free version is fine for this personal page of mine, since I only post occasional news, Danni and I thought the Immanion Press one really needs some work, especially a new, snazzy appearance. That’s on our list of revamps, which we’ll endeavour to work through as quickly as we can, so as not to become distracted too much from our other work.

The new stormconstantine.co.uk should be up for viewing within a week or so.

As far as other book news is concerned, I’ll be returning to my novel, ‘Breathe, My Shadow’ in May. I’ve got a couple of short stories to write too.

‘Coming Forth By Day’ and Other New Woks

Just a short update on works in progress, since I talked a lot about these projects in my last blog post and there’s not much to add yet except I’m working hard on them.

I’ve been concentrating on the non-fiction title, ‘Coming Forth By Day’, which is based upon a correspondence course in Egyptian Magic I ran some years ago. At first, I planned simply to convert the course material into a book, but soon realised some of it wasn’t really suitable for that and required feedback from a tutor. So I revamped it completely. At the moment, the book concentrates upon the Ennead, the ‘royal family’ of Heliopolis. These are the gods of the creation myth for that area – and it seems just about every area of Ancient Egypt had their own take on the gods, changing them considerably in some cases to local preferences. Anyway, the book explores the Ennead and its myths in depth, including both visualisations and rituals for each deity: Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys and Horus, as well as for the later generation’s offspring and consorts. The book also includes an overview of Egyptian magic and techniques. I’m about two thirds of the way through writing the chapters, and hope to bring the book out in the summer.

As there is so much material, I decided to break the project down into at least two volumes, maybe three. The second book will focus on gods and goddesses beyond the Heliopolitan dynasty of divine beings. I’ve not included any of the feline or leonine goddesses (except for Tefnut who’s intrinsic to the Ennead), as Louise Coquio and I will be writing a revised, expanded edition of ‘Bast and Sekhmet: Eyes of Ra’ once I’ve finished work on ‘Coming Forth by Day’.  ‘Bast and Sekhmet’ was first published in 1999, and as with the ‘Egyptian Birth Signs’ book I co-wrote with Graham Phillips about the same time, Louise and I now think that it’s time for a new edition. The original is 20 years old and needs a little reshaping to make it relevant to a modern audience. There have also been new discoveries in archaeology, which Lou and I feel should now be included. There’s information about some of the feline-related deities out there nowadays that wasn’t around when we wrote the original.

I’ve also been working on my new novel, ‘Breathe, my Shadow’, which is at around 160 pages. However, I want to finish off ‘Coming Forth By Day’ before really getting down to working on the fiction project. ‘Breathe, My Shadow’ is planned for a December release.

As for other Immanion Press books, two which are just about to be released, are ‘Lord of the Looking Glass’ by Fiona McGavin and ‘Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata and Other Uncollected Tales’ by Tanith Lee.  I spoke about these titles extensively in my last blog post so won’t repeat myself!  Danielle Lainton is currently at work on Fiona’s cover, so it’ll soon be ready for release. John Kaiine produced the cover art for ‘Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata’, and it also appears on his new Instagram page devoted to his artwork. There are some amazing and intriguing pieces of work on this, some of which he has prints of for sale. The link is https://www.instagram.com/johnkaiineartist/

For the non-fiction list we have ‘My First Book of Magic’ by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, illustrated by her son Carl Ashcroft, with a cover designed by Danielle Lainton, featuring one of Carl’s drawings. The book explores witchcraft and paganism for a young audience, and will undoubtedly appeal to pagan adults wishing to teach their offspring about the craft. And who better to teach them than Ms Ashcroft-Nowicki? She is a renowned author, practitioner and teacher of the occult sciences and was once a director of studies for The Servants of the Light, an esoteric order formed by W. E. Butler.  The book will be released under our Megalithica Books imprint in the summer.

We recently released through Megalithica Books a revised edition of ‘The Green Stone’ by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, which was responsible for initiating the psychic questing phenomenon in the UK in the 1980s. The book has been long out of print, and difficult to get hold of, with Graham receiving repeated enquiries from readers about if and when it might be available again. Late last year it came to light that not only were second hand copies selling for hundreds of pounds, but that some nefarious outfit had produced a pirate version  and was selling it at an inflated price, claiming it was the original. Graham and Martin had not sanctioned this, nor were they receiving any royalties for it. The bootleg version proved difficult to remove from online stores. Second hand book sellers were selling dog-eared copies for a fortune and a dodgy unlicensed publisher was trying to flog ‘new’ copies of the book, with prices often beyond the reach of an audience who desperately wanted to read it. So for all these reasons Graham and Martin decided they must re-release ‘The Green Stone’ themselves, at a fair price and with a wealth of new photographs (around 4 dozen) and a new introduction by Graham. When I first came to read through the book to copy edit it, I’d forgotten what a great story it is – a really exciting supernatural thriller, but which actually happened. A classic study of the paranormal and a riveting read.

That’s all for now. Back to the grindstone! More news soon.

New Books for 2019 and Other News

I have a lot planned for this coming year – 2019 is poised to be as busy as 2018 was.

First up – new books I’m working on.

I’m currently writing a Wraeththu novel called ‘Breathe, my Shadow’, which is based on ‘The Emptiness Next Door’ a short story I wrote for the ‘Paraspectral’ anthology last year. As can happen with a short, this piece wanted desperately to be longer. I had hoped to finish it in time for Yule 2018, but because I was so busy with other projects, I wasn’t able to meet that deadline. I’m not going to specify exactly when this year I hope to publish ‘Breathe’ but will get to work on it in earnest once I have a few important short stories out of the way. I’ve been researching a lot for this novel, some of which explores the lore of bees, honey and bee-keeping. This isn’t the main focus of the story but is still important as it’s an interest of one of the characters that has bearing on the plot.

Two of the stories I’m working on are for the next ‘Para’ anthology, which is ‘Para Mort’, a study of love and death in the world of Wraeththu. The idea for this theme grew from suggestions given to me by Mythos writers Martina Bellovičová and Maria Leel. I want to go for an outright Gothic feel for this one – doomed love, tragic desire and so on. I did specify in the brief I sent to the Mythos writers that the stories don’t have to be total downers – they can have upbeat endings. I’ve just finished the first draft of a tale called ‘The Shade of Q’orlenn’ but need to go back through it, adding in scene details and fleshing out some of the interactions between the characters. But that one’s almost there. I’ve a choice of two others to write for my second story for the anthology and haven’t yet made a decision about which to go with. The third piece I need to work on before turning to longer projects is my story for ‘Shadows on the Hillside’, the weird fiction anthology I’m editing for NewCon Press. I’ve an idea for that and have written a few pages. Research for this involves studying old maps and a particular kind of folklore, which I won’t reveal, as it would be a terrible spoiler for the story. I’ve also been looking into Middle English and the ancient meanings of some modern words.

One of the most interesting things I discovered yesterday is that English in the Middle Ages had a gender-neutral pronoun ‘hit’, but also that ‘he’ could be used instead. So I wasn’t so wrong about using ‘he’ for Wraeththu as some might claim! I’m not interested in the fuss around the politics of gender and pronouns, and in fact am uncomfortable with the way extremes of certain politics are infesting – and at worst stifling – creative media nowadays, but I am interested in presenting my androgynous characters as they are – beings who are both male and female, greater than the sum of their parts and endowed with faculties and abilities beyond human experience. I was writing about hara when I was a teenager, (and had met them in my imagination years prior to that), long before modern ideas about identity politics arose. I wrote from the heart, not trying to invest my fantasy world with any one agenda. Wraeththu are what they are – in the way they evolved in my imagination very early in my life. They owe more to mythology and folklore than anything else. And that’s the nearest I’ll get to talking about my personal opinions in a public place!

Anyway, back to book news after that little diversion. I aim to get ‘Para Mort’ out this year, probably with a Yule release and accompanying launch party, which is becoming traditional now. It’s down to whether the writers can get their work to me in time. I’ve already had one in from E. S. Wynn so maybe that will spur the others into action! ‘Shadows on the Hillside’ should also be released this year. I’m still waiting on a few stories to come in for that one.

I’ll also be working on a new non-fiction book this year. Around 15 years ago, I wrote a correspondence course on Egyptian Magic, back when people were more inclined to get involved in correspondence courses. Once this trend tailed off in favour of other forms of learning, the course gathered dust in isolated chambers on my computer. It was only when someone mailed me a couple of years ago to enquire whether that course was still available that it was brought once more to my attention. I didn’t feel I wanted to run the course again, as it requires quite a lot of input from me, discussing the work with students, and reading and responding in depth to their coursework, for which I no longer have time. I offered to let the person have the course as one PDF at a very cut price, for them to work through how they wanted, but I couldn’t act as mentor for it anymore. The person concerned was happy with this, so I transformed all the separate modules into one document to send to them. As I was doing this, I realised the modules could actually be a book. A lot of the material would have to go, because it wouldn’t be suitable for a non-interactive project, but I could add new chapters to replace what I’d take out.

I’m writing this book under the very unimaginative ‘Egyptian Magic’ working title, but intend to come up with something more colourful for the finished work. It won’t be a quick project by any means, as I’m having to change the entire structure and come up with a lot of new pathworkings for it. A proportion of what was in the correspondence course was based on material in ‘Bast and Sekhmet: Eyes of Ra’ which I co-wrote with Louise Coquio in the late 90s. I don’t want to rehash that, or just focus upon feline deities, so there’s a lot to be written for it. At the moment, I’m looking into the creation myths of Ancient Egypt, and creating workings based upon them. That will be the starting point of the work, after an introductory section discussing the beliefs and practices of the Egyptians and how we can reinterpret them for a modern practice of magic. Again, I intend to get the book out this year, but as with the novel it depends on how much time I get to finish it.

Moving on from my own work, there are plans for several books by other writers. Since Taylor Ellwood parted company with the Megalithica Books imprint, releases have inevitably slowed down somewhat for this list. Even last year, when Taylor was still with us, Megalithica Books published only three titles that weren’t co-written by me. I do have books in the pipeline for the list, but in three cases am waiting for news from the respective writers with whom I’ve been talking over the past couple of months. I can say for definite that we’ll have a new book from Cornelia Benavidez, expanding her work on the legacy of Victor H Anderson, and there’s an exciting re-issue of a legendary work that’s currently in production. Only the fact that a contract with an individual connected with the original work has to be sorted out prevents me from talking more about this book. Sometimes, after a lengthy period of time, it’s difficult for people to get back in touch with those they might have worked with in the past. This is in the case in this situation but as soon as it’s OK to talk about this project the author and I will do so wholeheartedly!

On the fiction side, I’ll be publishing a book I’m delighted to have edited. This is ‘Lord of the Looking Glass’, the short stories of Fiona McGavin. Louise Coquio and I met Fiona way back when we were producing the magazine Visionary Tongue. Fiona provided two stories for us and another one for Jamie Spracklen when he took over custodianship of the magazine. Lou and I both loved Fiona’s stories – they were among the best we received. Later, once I started Immanion Press, I brought out the trilogy ‘A Dream and a Lie’ by Fiona, her first full-length works. In hindsight, I wish I’d published this book some years later, after I’d gained more experience as an editor and publisher. Fiona’s were among the first novels Immanion Press published. I’d do things a bit differently now, as I know more about what I’m doing!  It was only when I had to contact Fiona again concerning two of her stories, which I wanted to reprint in the Visionary Tongue anthology I edited for NewCon Press, that I asked whether she had enough stories for a book of her own. She did, and ‘Lord of the Looking Glass’ is the result. These are astounding stories. Fiona, like Tanith Lee, has the gift for taking genre tropes and turning them on their heads. She has a wonderful imagination. I never thought a zombie story could bring tears to my eyes – but ‘The Contraption’ did. Fiona tackles vampires, fairy abduction, ghosts, fairy tales, alternate realities, science fiction and post-apocalyptic worlds, but all in a way you won’t have read before and in a fluid, lyrical style.  I’m happy to report that her story ‘A Tale from the End of the World’ is included in an updated form, (it was always my favourite) as well as a sequel to it, ‘He May Grow Roots’. Fiona has intimated she might write a full-length novel set in the world of these two stories, which I really hope she does. I can’t wait to release ‘Lord of the Looking Glass’ – which should be in late spring – and ask any of you with genre blogs or review sites to help me get Fiona’s work out there. She is a marvellous writer and her work should be better known.  I hope to plan a kind of blog tour for her and am happy to send advance copies of the book’s PDF for review. Please mail me at editorial(at)Immanion-press(dot)com if you’re interested.

Other new fiction publications for 2019 include three more anthologies of Tanith Lee’s stories, which focus upon her uncollected works – stories that appeared briefly in magazines or on web sites and have not yet been included in a printed book. The first of these, ‘Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata and Other Tales’, is scheduled to appear in April, so that Tanith’s husband John Kaiine can promote it at this year’s Eastercon. John will also be creating the cover art for the book. For the majority of readers, most of these stories might as well be newly-written as they won’t have been seen before. Much thanks must go, as has become usual for Tanith collections, to Allison Rich, Tanith’s bibliographer, and also to Jeremy Brett and his staff at the Cushing Library and Archives in Texas, who will provide scans of these often difficult to source stories.

That’s about it for news now. The DVD of the film of one my favourite novels, The Little Stranger, is due to arrive today and tonight I intend to watch it with Lou and our respective males. I saw this at the cinema initially and was impressed with what the director did with it. It’s not very often adaptations are so satisfying!

 

 

 

New Books and Future Plans

It’s been a busy build up to the launch event for new Immanion Press/Megalithica Books publications in December. I’ve been preparing a number of books for a pre-Yule release, one of which is the much-anticipated SHE: Primal Meetings with the Dark Goddess I co-wrote with author and historian Andrew Collins.

Andy and I got to know one another in 1994, when we were both working on books connected with the Nephilim and the fallen angels. In my case, this was the Grigori trilogy (Stalking Tender Prey, Scenting Hallowed Blood and Stealing Sacred Fire). Andy was working on From the Ashes of Angels, which explored the same mythology from an historical and archaeological point of view.  Our mutual friend, Jamie Spracklen, introduced Andy and I to each other, and this resulted in Andy allowing me to use his research material for the Grigori books. We’ve been firm friends and occasional colleagues ever since.

 

I’m really excited about SHE, because it heralds a new direction for my non-fiction imprint, Megalithica Books. As I’m now running this imprint alone, I intend to venture into new territory with it, steering towards books that investigate the mythologies and beliefs that inspire magical traditions and offer new systems for readers to discover. I don’t want to have my own writing time curtailed too much, so I’ll most likely be producing fewer books for the list, but every one of them will be a work I’m personally interested in and intrigued by. I’m looking for books that explore (or create) rich and vivid magical systems, including pop culture systems that transform fictional characters and worlds into magical entities and environments.  I’m also seeking books on alternative spirituality, such as LHP, and entertaining studies on how to work with particular entities and deities. I’m after fresh approaches to practices such as meditation, pathworking and ritual, or which reveal personal experiences that are compelling and inspiring.  The key words are: imagination, creativity, depth and integrity. If anyone is interested in submitting to the list, please mail me at editorial(at)Immanion-press(dot)com.

 

Among the first of the new Megalithica Books titles was Zodiac of the Gods, which I released quite quietly a few months ago, under the author name of Eden Crane. This is a reimagining and retitling of a ‘popular’ book I wrote with Graham Phillips for a mainstream publisher’s New Age list back in the 90s – now it’s very much out of date, written in a style that doesn’t reflect modern culture. Last year, Graham and I revisited the text and changed it to fully represent life as it is today. We also renamed the book to more accurately describe its subject. The original was written for a ‘women’s magazine audience’ with a specific style and content to suit its target demographic at the time it was published. Neither of us want that original still to be available but… We had to bring the heavily revamped and revised version out under a joint pseudonym as the original is still available and the publishers concerned refuse to remove it from print or eBook, even given our strong case for this to be done and the fact it barely sells any copies. Big publishers simply don’t like giving books up nowadays – I assume because ‘just in case’, and because there are no overheads in keeping eBooks available. They weren’t interested in a new edition from us. I shall refrain from further comment as I’m sure anyone reading this will intuitively perceive how Graham and I feel about this situation! Zodiac of the Gods has a light-hearted aspect in that it explores the Dendera Zodiac as an alternative to Western Astrology. But in the new version, we’ve significantly expanded the second half of the book, which presents Egyptian magical workings for each month of the year and the deity, or neter, who presides over it. The book is fully illustrated in a completely different style to the original. It’s sad that the awkwardness about the old version meant we didn’t feel comfortable with doing a big splash release for this much better book under our own names, but now – at least – we want to share its origins.

 

Some examples of Danni’s illustrations for SHE
Babalon, Erzuli Danto and Hecate

SHE is the first new title that I can fully promote to launch the new look Megalithica Books. It explores 30 goddesses, some of whom are well-known in Pagan circles, such as Aphrodite, Lilith and Hecate, but others are more obscure but no less intriguing, such as Akhlys, Agrat bat Mahlat and The Cailleach. Even with the more ‘famous’ goddesses, we’ve delved into their roots to reveal their darker aspects – original facets that have, to some degree, been watered down or removed over time. To us, the original forms are far more fascinating and have more to teach us.  We asked friends to contribute a few articles and pathworkings to the book – Deborah Cartwright, Maggie Jennings, Richard Ward and Caroline Wise. SHE includes an essay about each goddess and also a visualisation to meet and interact with her. Not all of those included were goddesses to begin with but have been shaped into deities by Pagans over the years. Some were originally mythological figures – queens or sorceresses – while others were female spirits or entities who were demonised by patriarchal religions.  I enjoyed working on this book immensely and learned a lot while researching it.  There are illustrations to accompany every goddess, mostly by Danielle Lainton, although I helped out doing a few (there was so much work for one artist!) and we’ve also used one of Ruby’s Sekhmet pictures. The rest were adapted from vintage illustrations. The cover of the paperback features art by Brom, while the hardback has cover art by Danni.

The Collector’s Edition of SHE, limited to 99 hardback, numbered copies, includes a bonus section, investigating a further three goddesses: Lyssa, Melinoe and Kalma.

Andy and I, as well as Danni and a couple of the contributors who are able to come along, will be at the launch event on 13^th December at The Shrewsbury Arms in Stafford. We’ll give a short talk and readings, and books will be available for purchase, so guests can buy copies of the paperback or hardback and get them signed. Here’s a link to the Facebook page for it. https://www.facebook.com/events/257889301743853/

Our co-host, Maggie Jennings of Hart Magical Gifts, will have a table at the event, where a selection of her wares will be on sale. We’re also expecting another local indie publisher, Alchemy Press, to bring some of their books along for sale, including The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors, in which I have a story.

The other Megalithica Books title being launched at the event is Transpiration: Poetry and Storytelling as Our Spiritual Portals by Cornelia Benavidez, which has cover art by Peter Hollinghurst. The first half of the book is autobiographical and gives a fascinating glimpse of the author growing up in America in the 1960s and 1970s, her introduction to alternative spirituality and how it grew in the States during those decades. I was intrigued by Cornelia’s stories from her youth – such colourful characters and vivid memories both bitter and sweet. From an early age, she realised she was different, and it was only once she learned about Paganism, through a chance meeting with a witch woman in San Francisco, that she realised what she was – and could be. The second half of the book showcases Cornelia’s poetry – all inspired by her spiritual path. Some of the poems are perfect for ritual purposes – and could be used as invocations or a focus for meditation. The book is illustrated throughout with photos from Cornelia’s life – as fascinating as the text. As Cornelia lives in America, she can’t be with us in person for the launch, but her friend, author Neil Rushton, who wrote the back-cover text for the book, will be there to say a few words about the work and read a short poem of Cornelia’s choosing that she feels is relevant to SHE.

It’s strange how coincidences and connections align. Cornelia’s mentor was Victor H Anderson, who can be seen as an American equivalent of someone like Alex Saunders in the UK, in that he was a salient figure in the flowering and evolution of alternative spirituality in the 60s and 70s. Cornelia’s first book (also published by Megalithica Books) was a study of Victor and his work. Back in the 90s, Victor came upon Andy Collins’s book From the Ashes of Angels and told Cornelia that he felt this author was onto something important. He was a great admirer of Andy’s work. Cornelia had no idea of my connection with Andy when she was originally signed up by Megalithica Books. I didn’t actually ‘meet’ her until Victor H Anderson: an American Shaman came to me for layout and design. Then we discovered the connections between us. One of the epic poems in Transpiration is an adaptation of the Nephilim myth, which of course was examined in Andy’s From the Ashes of Angels and my Grigori trilogy. Now the three of us are sharing a book launch event. Such a shame Cornelia can’t be there in person, but I’m sure she will be in spirit!

Our latest Tanith Lee re-release will also be published on 13^th December. This is Vivia, one of Tanith’s grimmest fantasy novels. As I was editing it, I realised she was writing ‘grimdark’ before it was even a thing. An unsettling and menacing story, it will certainly appeal to all readers who like their fantasy unlit! As with all Tanith’s work, Vivia is written in a lyrical, literary style with lucid attention to detail in a richly-imagined world. The cover art is an evocative portrait of Vivia by John Kaiine.

I’ll also have the new editions of The Wraeththu Histories at the launch – The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, The Shades of Time and Memory and The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence. In the light of a remark that appeared below my Facebook post about the books, I want to make clear why I bring out these revisions. I don’t want anyone to think it’s a cold-hearted marketing ploy to get more money out of readers. The Wraeththu books are close to my heart, and I want them to be as error free as possible. The original versions of the Histories came out in the early 2000s, when Immanion Press was very new. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the mistakes and typing errors in the books, and always planned to bring out a new, corrected edition of this trilogy. It’s been over fifteen years since the first of these books was published, so I think the time is now right for me to do this. I also wanted the six volumes of the Wraeththu Chronicles and Histories to be published as a matching set of books. I re-released the Chronicles early this year and commissioned six new covers from Ruby to adorn both trilogies that all follow the same design – and beautiful they are too!

I don’t expect everyone who bought and loved the originals to ‘have’ to buy these new editions – the Histories are not that much different to the originals – but I do want new readers coming to the Mythos to have the best-crafted versions of the books I can provide. And – a selfish pleasure I can indulge because I’m a publisher – I want these books for myself too. 😊

Because of new responsibilities within Immanion Press, and the preparation of the two editions of SHE, as well as Transpiration and Vivia, I didn’t get time to finish my next fiction project this year – which is a novel based on the story I had in the Para Spectral Wraeththu anthology. I realised I need more time to develop the book to its full potential. It refused to be a shortish novella. So I’ll take up the reins of that again in the New Year. There are lots of other plans in the pipeline for the Immanion Press/Megalithica Books 2019 list, but I’ll talk more about that nearer to Yule. Thanks to everyone who’s been involved in helping produce the books that will be at the December launch and the readers who’ve preordered copies of the Collector’s Edition of SHE. As always, your invaluable support is much appreciated.

Dark Goddessess and Haunted Hara – September News

As usual, time has galloped away, and now it’s nearly a year since I posted on my blog. As an excuse, I have been writing regular Immanion Press blog posts to keep people up to date with book releases.

I’ve been very busy this year, mainly working on ‘SHE: Primal Meetings with the Dark Goddess’, which I’ve co-written with long-standing friend and colleague, Andrew Collins. We’ve also got contributions from Deborah Cartwright, Maggie Jennings, Richard Ward and Caroline Wise and the book is fully illustrated. I’ve created some imaginary landscapes, and Danielle Lainton has brought many of the goddesses to life with wonderful pictures, reinterpreting the ancient deities in a vivid and dramatic style.

‘SHE’ began life a few years ago now, when I was thinking about publishing some of the pathworkings and rituals that Andy and I have worked on together over the years. While I was collating all of this material, and during discussions with Andy, we realised we had another – and perhaps better – book on our hands. There’s a tendency within modern Paganism to reimagine certain ancient goddesses, usually by making them less dangerous or ferocious, over-writing their less comfortable aspects with the qualities of a benign, nurturing goddess. A prime example of this is The Morrigan, originally a figure of Celtic myth associated with war and the fate of kings, but now said by some to be a mother goddess. The historical evidence for this is scanty, circumstantial and open to interpretation, or rather the preferences of the individual. While we understand why people perform these ‘rebootings’, because the mother goddess to them is a very positive figure, we feel that it undermines the authentic nature of such entities. It hides or diminishes what they originally meant to people and why they were created to interact with a certain part of nature and life.

‘SHE’ investigates the primal versions of goddesses who are (or were originally) often thought of as ‘dark’. We can see no reason why such powerful entities, from whom we can learn a great deal about the human condition, should have their claws and teeth pulled and be presented as limpid maidens or smiling mothers. This – to us – seems like a form of female castration. These strong feminine archetypes deserve to retain their original meaning and powers. It doesn’t make them any less relevant to modern practitioners – in our opinion, quite the reverse. There are plenty of mother goddesses and pretty maidens out there for people who want them.

The book examines thirty goddesses, demonesses and females of myth – some of them quite well known, such as Hecate and Lilith, others more obscure such as Breksta and Akhlys.  They illustrate our fears and our secrets desires. They encapsulate how Nature was regarded as a wild and unpredictable force to be appeased by people of earlier times.

‘SHE’ includes an essay on each of these goddesses, accompanied by a vivid pathworking to meet them in visualisation. All of them have a ‘dark’ side to their nature, some darker than others. We hope that people who buy the book and perform the pathworkings will gain insight into their own inner lives. It’s been great fun – as well as an important learning experience – working on the book and I can’t wait for its release in December. We will be having a launch event for it in Stafford, co-hosted by Hart Magical Gifts, which is owned by Maggie Jennings, one of the contributors to the book.

The cover is by Brom and there’s a preview below – this is not the final version, as there is still work to be done on the text.

Here also are some tasters of the interior illustrations by Danielle Lainton – a goddess from the Preface and an illustration of Eris, the goddess of chaos and disorder. (Eris looks a little like Danni – I’m not sure if this is deliberate 😉 ):

‘SHE’s launch event will also be shared by ‘Vivia’, the latest of our Tanith Lee re-releases, originally published in 1995. As I’ve been copy-editing this book one thing struck me profoundly, even though I’ve read it before: Tanith was writing grimdark fantasy even before it existed as a genre. ‘Vivia’ is a dark and unsettling tale, which gets darker and grimmer as the story progresses. It starts with Vivia, the daughter of a barbaric, brutish lord, discovering something very weird in a deep, forgotten chamber, far below her father’s castle – an entity trapped in the rock. Is it a god, a demon or simply a peculiar sculpture? With her mother dead (carelessly murdered by her father), her nurse a far from mothering presence, and with no friends, Vivia escapes often to this dank, abandoned underworld, where her imagination takes over, especially concerning its possible supernatural resident. Could something be living down there, or is it only in her mind? When war and plague strike the kingdom simultaneously – described in as much graphic detail as any typical Game of Thrones fan could want – Vivia’s life inevitably has to change.

The golden prince Zulgaris who comes to the ravaged castle is hardly a rescuer – golden only in his physical appearance, he matches Vivia in darkness of nature. Their relationship is perverse, and Zulgaris encourages Vivia into habits and hungers she’s only just beginning to understand. This has no 50 Shades of … urgh sentiment or codswallop, if anyone reading this was starting to think that; ‘Vivia’ is gritty, brutal and uncompromising. I can’t say I particularly like any of the characters in the book, even the innocent victims, but by all the gods I believe in them. It presents humans at their very, most selfish worst: an incredibly realistic vision of a savage, unjust world in all its stinking, blood-soaked glory. And despite how you might wince at what goes on, you want to know more. It feels almost like a guilty pleasure. Just how can this story end?

Here’s a preview of the cover by John Kaiine:

I’m also working on a fiction project of my own at the moment – which I’m developing from ‘The Emptiness Next Door’, a story that appeared in the latest ‘Para Spectral’ Wraeththu Mythos anthology, I co-edited with Wendy Darling.

The tale was inspired by an old ghost story I read – I’ll write more about that nearer the book’s release – but I realised my adaptation of this was far more than a short story. Fortunately, I found a way to finish the piece as a novella, so it could be included in ‘Para Spectral’ but there’s a lot more I have to tell, which takes it far from the piece that originally inspired it.  The novel is set in Ferelithia, and in the longer version, includes a very minor character from ‘The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit’ in Karn, one of the musicians from Rue’s band. Rue, of course, (for those familiar with the Wraeththu Mythos) went on to much greater things as the first trilogy progressed and Ferelithia was left behind. This new story reveals how the settlement was originally set up – or rather a town was appropriated from the remaining human population – and how Wraeththu victory was ensured by dangerous dealings with weird entities of the landscape. Things got out of control but were contained. However, the seals are weakening, and a catalyst reawakens the past. Karn is now a respectable pillar of the community, holding a high position in public office. Few know about his earlier life, or where he rose from. In order to deal with the current threat, the past might have to be revealed and some hara have reasons for not wanting that to occur.

That’s the basic background, and against that I have the stories of the main characters, with their own secrets, desires, problems – and hauntings. I’m enjoying writing the story very much. I had intended to release it this year, but in order to do it justice I might need more time, so I’m not committing myself either way. If it’s ready to join ‘SHE’ and ‘Vivia’ for the December launch, great, but I’m not fretting that it might not be. It’ll be ready when it’s done. 😊

Ruby did a wonderful cover for ‘Para Spectral’ based on my story, and she’ll be doing something different for the full length novel. In the meantime, here’s a version of the ‘Para Spectral’ art, without any lettering on it. The character could be Leupardra, the vanished witch-pard, or Seladris, the unfortunate har now inhabiting a house in Ferelithia, haunted by the past and the legend of the Blue Leopard.

If anyone reading this post is interested in reviewing any of the books mentioned, I can send you a review PDF and hi res jpgs of the covers in November. Please mail me at editorial(at)immanion-press(dot)com

 

 

New Books and Plans for 2018

2017 has been a busy year for me. I was involved in a lot of book projects, all of which are now complete, and in the case of those due out next month, all uploaded to the printers and ready to go.

Immanion Press is holding a launch event on December 7^th in Stafford UK to celebrate the publication of six titles.

Two of the new releases are hardback limited Collectors’ Editions of the Grimoire Dehara series – Book Three Nahir Nuri, which I co-wrote with Taylor Ellwood, and also a reissue of the hardback of the first volume Kaimana, which came out in 2005. While the first volume’s text hasn’t been expanded or changed, (other than a few errors corrected), it does include several extra illustrations from artist Ruby, and one by the late Billie Walker-John, who did quite a few Wraeththu Mythos illustrations back in the 90s.

The new Grimoire Dehara book is also being released in paperback at the same time.

On the fiction side, we have ‘Dark Dance’ by Tanith Lee, the first in her Blood Opera Sequence, (long out of print), featuring an introduction and interior illustrations by me. The second volume, ‘Personal Darkness’ will be released in early 2018, and will feature an introduction and interior illustrations by Freda Warrington. The third book in the series, ‘Darkness, I’, will be published one to two months after the second volume, and will feature an introduction by Sarah Singleton. All three books will have cover art by John Kaiine.

I’ve written about the other two releases quite a lot already on this blog, but briefly they are ‘The Darkest Midnight in December: Ghost Stories for the Winter Season’ and ‘Songs to Earth and Sky: Stories of the Seasons’ – the latter being a Wraeththu Mythos anthology. ‘Darkest Midnight’ has cover art by Danielle Lainton and interior illustrations by me. The cover for ‘Songs to Earth and Sky’ is by Ruby and also includes interior illustrations by her. The full line up for these anthologies can be found on our web site www.immanion-press.com

So, now that all the projects are wrapped up, it’s time to think about what comes next. I have a few short stories to write for various anthologies, but hope to begin work on a novel in the New Year. I’m not taking on so much work next year, because 2017 gave me little time for my own work – at least not enough to embark upon a full-length novel. A non-fiction book about the ‘darker’ goddesses I was working on with Andy Collins has had to be temporarily shelved, as he too has been super busy with lots of projects, some of which involved lengthy foreign travel. His schedule for next year is also already filling up with trips abroad, so I can’t give a date for when we might be able to get back to our book. Hopefully we’ll be able to complete it at some point next year.

There will also be a new ‘Para’ anthology – ‘Para Spectral’ – and I’ve already had some stories in for that. These are Wraeththu ghost stories – as most of my readers will know, I’m a passionate fan of ghost stories!

I’ll be reading submissions for another weird fiction anthology I’m editing, to be published through NewCon Press, but the publication date won’t be until 2019 – so at least I can take my time with it. Titled ‘Shadows on the Hillside’, this collection will focus upon weird landscapes, including urban landscapes.

But mainly I want to get back to writing a novel – and I haven’t made up my mind which idea to go with. I really want to finish two books I started, and they are very different. The first is a story I began around 15 years ago, concerning an author whose characters begin to leak into reality, and who discovers that some of her fans have set up a sinister cult inspired by her work. The problem I have with it is that I’d have to rethink some of the ideas, because the internet and social media are far more prominent and sophisticated now than when I began to story. I’m not sure it’d work in quite the same way now – similar to how my 1999 novel, ‘Thin Air’, wouldn’t work as a post-millennial piece: ‘Jay looked everything up on the internet’.  In the original, she had to resort to solving the mystery of the story by driving round the country, interviewing people who would talk to her and resorting to the use of phone books to find them. Nowadays, most of what she uncovers would take only a short Google search. So ‘Thin Air’ is officially an historical novel!

The second idea is another Wraeththu story – a sort of follow on from ‘The Moonshawl’, but involving a different supernatural mystery for harish sleuth Ysobi to solve. I’ve written a fair bit of it, but am conscious I’ve not completed a full-length work outside the Wraeththu mythos for quite some time, so maybe the other idea should come first. But I suppose, it’s down to whether I can engage with that story again and rediscover its heart.

Thanks to everyone who helped with this year’s works in one way or another: Danielle Lainton, Louise Coquio, Debbie Cartwright, Yvan Cartwright, Graham Phillips, Ian Whates, John Kaiine, Jamie Spracklen, Donna Bond, Nerine Dorman, E. S. Wynn, Wendy Darling, Fiona Lane, Suzanne Gabriel, and all those who contributed stories to ‘The Darkest Midnight in December’ and ‘Visionary Tongue’.

The Harvest of Smoketide

Smoketide is the Wraeththu equivalent of the autumn equinox, which is upon us! It’s been such a busy year – and I’m horrified to find it’s now in its last quarter. I took on a lot of work but fortunately most of the projects are either finished or nearing completion. Only a couple have been shuffled into next year.

The Wraeththu seasonal anthology ‘Songs to Earth and Sky’, featuring stories by me and a few other writers is on track to be published on 14^th December – the deharan festival of Adkaya. I’m in the process of organising a launch event for it, in collaboration with local businesswoman Maggie Jennings, who runs ‘Hart’s Magical Gifts’, a New Age/Witchcraft shop in Stafford.  More details of that when the event has been fully organised.

I’ve written three stories for this collection. The first one, ‘A Message in Ashes’ focuses on the festival of Rosatide on 1^st February. This is traditionally a time of reawakening, of the first stirrings of spring. But what came to me for this piece isn’t simply about the turning of the year. As I began writing it, and more so as the story developed, I found myself thinking about how much us humans are prey to disease and conditions, and we are terrified of them, but for a species who is less prey to these horrors, when they do strike, they will be triply terrifying – if not more so. ‘A Message in Ashes’ is told by a narrator who witnesses a har born without the full protection a harish form should provide against disease. It’s not a miserable tale, but inevitably has its poignant moments. Primarily, it’s about learning, coming of age, growing up – in the sense of undergoing inner realisations rather than physical changes.

The second story ‘The Old Fierce Pull of Blood’ revolves around the festival of Reaptide –more commonly known as Lughnasadh or Lammas, on 1^st August. I’ve always found this time of year to be wonderfully spooky – the weeks when ghosts might walk at mid-day. As I was writing it, I came across a usefully inspirational film on this subject on Netflix. It’s now called ‘Trauma’ (and you can also buy the DVD under that name, which I subsequently did), but its original title was ‘Lavender’.  It’s not particularly gory, nor particularly horrifying, but it is creepy and atmospheric. A photographer is drawn to take pictures of an old house, which she doesn’t realise has some historical attachment to her. The story goes on from there, and while it doesn’t offer anything radically new to the haunted house genre, it is a pleasurable watch for fans of ghost stories. But some aspects lifted it above the run of the mill norm. The thing that appealed to me most was the landscape of high summer, how the ghosts there walk at mid-day, in full light, often unseen, and that sunlight can be no less scary than darkness. I watched the film 3 times while writing the story to get into that ambience – the slant of light across a field, with the shadow of trees reaching out like hands; a hazy horizon beneath the sun; the heavy branches of trees weighed down with their foliage, the somehow pregnant stillness and a sense of imminence – something waiting to happen in the hot, breathless day. That was the feeling I sought to put into my story.

My tale is also inspired by an old house known as Guy’s Cliffe in Warwickshire, and the landscape around it. The place is well worth a visit. For a long time, the ruin of the house was off-limits, privately-owned and inaccessible, but in recent years it came into the hands of the Freemasons of Warwickshire, to whom it was donated. Now, it’s open to the public and you can book a tour around the house and land. Not much of the house remains, but the Masons have a couple of temple rooms in the old chapel, which is still intact. Parts of the remaining building have been converted into function rooms that can be hired for events. The old mill to the estate is now a restaurant called The Saxon Mill, (and an excellent one at that). The mill wheel still turns in a shadowed chamber, and wooden decking now allows visitors to sit right at, if not over, the lake side, to catch glimpses of Guy’s Cliffe through the trees. The lake is technically a river, but is wide at that point, with a thundering weir behind the inn. In summertime, the huge ancient trees are lush, their foliage hiding most of the old house. Nearby, across a crop field, lies a weird old church with a pyramid-topped spire. There are several tales about the house and its environs that I won’t go into here, but when I was writing ‘The Old Fierce Pull of Blood’ I was transported back there continually. The story involves a young har who goes to work at a large garden nursery specialising in roses for medicine and magic, which has developed from the ruins of an old rural estate. The land is haunted, of course, and as Reaptide draws near, the ghosts wax strong. The present begins to mirror the past, with weird and dramatic consequences, and a mysterious ‘guiser’ troupe set up camp in the field by the river – masked mummers, who might not be what they seem. Verdiferel, the dehar of Reaptide, can be tricksy and cruel, or he can be kind and benevolent. It depends which mask he wears, and the har who catches sight of the dehar at this time of year is responsible for shaping the mask – often without knowing it.

The final story is a sequel to ‘The Old Fierce Pull of Blood’, and is named ‘Solarisel’s Covenant.’ This is set many years after the Reaptide piece, at Adkaya. This mini-festival lies two weeks before the winter solstice, when the dehar Solarisel gives birth to the pearl that will hatch at Natalia into the infant sun-dehar, Elisin. Isoldis, the protagonist of the Reaptide story, is en route to a growers’ assembly some distance from home, and as the snow falls in the build up to Natalia, he comes across a secret at an old coaching inn. He’s never been there in his life, yet it appears the staff know him – he’s told he’d been a guest there only a couple of night before. Isoldis thinks at first the guest must have been a har who looks like him, then events unfold during the night that reveal a different reason, if not a different reality.

The other stories I’ve had in so far for the collection are two from Nerine Dorman (The Dreamstone for Bloomtide, the spring equinox, and ‘Isangxa’s Gift’ for Cuttingtide, the summer solstice.) These stories are set in South Africa, so deviate from the typical seasonal trappings found in northern climes. I like the way this expands the mythos into new territories. Nerine has come up with some colourful, new, indigenous dehara too. E. S. Wynn has written a story based around Shadetide, known to us as Halloween, which involves a har taking on the persona of Lachrymide, the dehar of this season, to combat a threat to his tribe. Fiona Lane’s contribution is set at the winter solstice festival of Natalia, when a disruption in the cycle of the seasons calls for a hienama to take radical, magical action. Fiona always writes with a witty touch, and this story doesn’t fail to deliver that, but it’s also immensely poignant and touching – it literally brought tears to my eyes when I read through it. Two further stories are due for delivery in the very near future to complete the book. Cover art will be by Ruby.

The second book from Immanion Press due to be published on 14^th December is ‘The Darkest Midnight in December’, ghost stories for Christmas. This is a traditional English sub-genre of the ghost story and you’ll find many collections of such tales on Amazon. The original idea was that this book would follow in the foot-steps of ‘Dark in the Day’, the weird fiction anthology we published to showcase the work of creative writing students at Staffs University, along with established authors. As it turned out, I didn’t get any stories from existing students at the university, but went ahead with the project (since I’d formally announced it), and asked for stories from writer friends and colleagues, so I’d have enough to fill a book. I was surprised that young or aspiring writers don’t leap at the chance to be published in a ‘proper book’, with comparatively little effort on their part, so that it might aid their chances of publication once they’ve finished their studies. I know I’d have been really grateful to be offered something like that when I was starting my career. But I guess times have changed… Anyway, contributors to the anthology include Rosie Garland, Wendy Darling, Louise Coquio, Hannah Kate, Nerine Dorman, Rhys Hughes, J. E. Bryant, Fiona McGavin, Jessica Gilling, Misha Herwin, Adele Marie Park and Fiona Lane. As you can see from that list, I asked several of the Wraeththu Mythos writers to submit, and I’m grateful they obliged me! Cover art will be by Danielle Lainton.

As for the third book in the Dehara magical series, ‘Grimoire Dehara: Nahir Nuri’, the plan is to bring it out this year – it all depends on how much time Taylor and I get to finish it. We’re about a third of the way through and will do our best! The book will be illustrated by Ruby and have a cover by her to match the previous two paperbacks. There will also be a hardback limited edition of the title.

The two books that have been shuffled into 2018 are ‘She Demon’, my collaboration with Andy Collins, which is a collection of path-workings with various faces of the dark goddess, and ‘Para Spectral’, the fifth of the Wraeththu Mythos ‘Para’ anthologies. Time has been an obstacle with both these books. Andy has been swamped with work, and I’ve had a lot on my plate with the other books I’ve been working on. As for ‘Para Spectral’, some of the prospective authors have been writing stories for other Immanion Press books I’ve mentioned previously, (along with all their other work), so it made sense to move this title forward to give everyone much more time.

That’s all the news on my work for now. I have tentative plans to start a new novel next year, but will have to see how time and other projects go!

 

 

 

New Books for 2017 and Beyond

Every time I start a new blog post, it always seems as if I have to begin with ‘sorry for not having posted for ages’, or something similar. I’m not the best of people with social media and blogging. I know what good things they are in many respects, especially for the self-employed, and extra-especially for writers. ‘Get yourself out there more!’ I’m told, by informed friends and acquaintances who use the internet to its limit to promote their work. ‘I will,’ I answer, (usually just to shut them up). I don’t mean it, of course. Is it because I’m lazy, or too busy, or simply feel distaste for this voracious medium? Maybe a bit of all three. I’m certainly not the type to share intimate details of my life with strangers online, or even people I know vaguely. Close friends will get to hear news over the phone, and that’s where it’ll stay. Sometimes I’ll post pictures of my friends and I on Facebook when we’re visiting a site of interest. The only other personal thing I’ll post is pictures of and anecdotes about my cats. (A little disappointing how they always get a ton – literally a ton – more ‘likes’ than posts about writing, whether that’s my writing or someone else’s.) Otherwise, to me, Facebook is for work.

I had a submission the other day, whose accompanying mail began by explaining in great detail the social media success of the writer, how they were such a booming youtuber and so on. Eventually, this mail said, (and here I’m exaggerating just because I can), ‘Oh yeah, and they just wrote this novel.’ My first instinct was to reply with a succinct profanity, but then I let it simmer for a few days and replied, along the lines of: the work is more important than the social media popularity of the author. Unfortunately, the work, when I got to it, was dull, derivative and not any great shakes style-wise. Pass! However, I was so tempted to end my rejection email with, ‘This one isn’t for me, but I guarantee the author will find great success elsewhere.’ I know a lot of (perhaps more sensible) editors and publishers will take one look at all those thousands of ‘youtube’ hits and think to themselves, ‘magnificent, look at all that potential self-promotion’. And quite honestly, they’ll be right. No matter how mediocre the work, if thousands of people are into your blog, there’s a good chance they’ll buy the book you write. I’m old-fashioned and curmudgeonly, I know, but I find that depressing. Does success really have to depend so heavily nowadays on social media and the fleeting popularity you can get on there – often for sod all? For people who share my distaste, I recommend the Charlie Brooker ‘Black Mirror’ episode (series 3 on Netflix), ‘Nosedive’. That to me says it all.

Anyway, onto more cheerful subjects. One of the reasons I’ve not posted is, as I’ve stated honestly (honest) above, is that I’ve just been really busy. For some reason, I took it on myself to produce six books this year – books that will involve my own work, not just other people’s. Five of those titles are through my own Immanion Press, and one is through Ian Whates’ NewCon Press. First off, I’ll talk about the latter. A mockup of the cover (which might be slightly different eventually) is below:

Back in the 1990s, Louise Coquio and I ran a small press fiction magazine called ‘Visionary Tongue’. I suspect that the majority of people who read my blog and look at my posts on Facebook already know about this venture, and perhaps even contributed to it. But for those who don’t, the thing that set VT apart from other little magazines was that we recruited a team of successful, established writers to act as editors and mentors for new authors. Each accepted contributor got to work with a ‘pro name’, who passed on tips and advice about the stories, as well as a thorough edit. No-one had done that before. Lou and I didn’t realise what a huge job this would turn out to be, and as other commitments mounted up, we realised we hadn’t got the time to continue running the magazine. We passed custodianship to Jamie Spracklen, who kept it running for around a dozen more issues. Some of our contributors went on to have strong writing careers – such as Liz Williams, Justina Robson and Tim Lebbon. When Ian asked me last year if I’d ever published a collection of VT stories as a book and, if not, he’d happily do one, I said yes at once. But… tracking down authors proved impossible in some cases, and even with the help of Jamie and his co-editor Donna Bond, I’ve not managed to trace them all. Ultimately, Ian and I have decided to publish the stories and poems of these ‘missings’ in the book, with the disclaimer that we searched as much as we could, and free copies of the book will be waiting to be handed to ‘missings’ should they ever come across it. Another time-consumer was translating all the stories into electronic versions, since the files for many of the older issues have been lost, as were some of the magazines themselves. Some stories had to be scanned and then carefully edited, which is always a long job. Still, the book is shaping up now and is all but done. I’ve used illustrations that artist Ruby did for the original magazine throughout. The cover too is by Ruby, an adaptation of cover art she did for issue 20. This book is due to be published in September through NewCon Press.

Projects 2, 3 and 4 are Wraeththu-related. Not all of them might appear this year – that depends on contributors. First off, there’s ‘Para Spectral’, a collection of supernatural stories set in the Wraeththu mythos. Whenever Wendy and I start a new ‘Para’ anthology, I always want to get it out the same year. This never happens. The books always take longer than I’d thought – but this is generally down to contributors being so busy and needing extra time to finish submissions. Wendy and I usually write two stories each to go in the ‘Para’ books, so that’s more time I need to find.

The next Wraeththu book is ‘Songs to Earth and Sky’, which revolves around the Deharan Wheel of the Year. This is a reimagining of the familiar Pagan cycle of the seasons, with its eight festivals – several of which survived into the Christian era as Christmas, Easter and so on. The Wheel of the Year in the mythos is known as Arotohar, and each has one – or in some cases two – dehara (or gods) connected with them. I invited a few authors to contribute to the collection, which I’ve long wanted to write. I knew this would be a huge job to do alone, (as I have plans for its interior, as well as simply writing stories), so I chose a few writers to help with the work! Each selected a seasonal festival to base their story around. At the moment, I have two stories to write myself for this anthology but it might end up being three. The proposed (and most desired) release date for this book is December 2017. I want to try and bring it out on the day of Adkaya, which is a few weeks before the winter solstice, a ‘sub-festival’, when the dehar Solarisel delivers the pearl of the sun-harling Elisin, which hatches at the solstice. This seems a propitious time to release the book, so I hope we can keep to the deadline! I’ve just finished writing a story based on Rosatide (or Imbolc), which is currently entitled ‘A Message in Ashes’. This title might change. I’m really pleased with this piece, and again (as with a couple of my recent mythos stories) I’ve been drawn to a harish community out in the wilderness, who are very much in touch with nature. My dream world, obviously. This story took on a life of its own once I began writing it, and has some poignant, if not tragic, moments. I really enjoyed writing it.

The final book related to Wraeththu is the third volume of the ‘Grimoire Dehara’ series I’m writing with Taylor Ellwood. The Deharan magical system is based upon the fictional system in my Wraeththu books, which we’ve expanded into a pop culture magic system. As there was over ten years between book one and two, Taylor and I both feel we need to bring the third one out as soon as possible after the second. This will be the volume that focuses upon ‘Nahir Nuri’, the third tier of the system. We’ve endeavoured to keep these books of interest and use to practitioners who aren’t familiar with Wraeththu, but are intrigued by its androgynous nature in a magical sense. The book will again be fully illustrated by Ruby and me, and will be out in the final quarter of 2017 – all being well.

After these titles, we have ‘The Darkest Midnight in December’, which is a book of traditional Christmas ghost stories. Again, I’m not sure if this will be out this year or the next, but will endeavour to make it this year.

The next book I’ll talk about is currently entitled ‘Brides of Blood and Shadow’, although I’m desperately trying to come up with a different word to ‘Brides’, which has a good ring and rhythm to it, but it’s not what I want to convey about the book. This is a book of pathworkings with what are known as ‘dark goddesses’ – not the motherly types, or love goddesses, or goddesses of hearth and home. These will include deities such as Hecate, Ereshkigal and The Morrigan. Andy Collins and I will write the actual pathworkings together, although I’m doing all the accompanying essays, explaining the symbolism of each goddess. Caroline Wise is writing a guest article for it. Again, I don’t have a firm release date for this. Researching each goddess is taking me some time, (as we’re including some quite obscures ones), along with all the other projects I’m working on simultaneously.

It’s strange but I’m finding it most effective to spread my work out over my working week on these books. I’ll do a chapter of the Dehara, then work on one of the short stories, then write essays on a couple of goddesses. It might be an illusion, but I feel I’m making more progress this way.  Of course, with some books I’m having to wait on the work of others so can’t do much about that. This is good, though, because it means I can concentrate fully on the other books (and stories) and hopefully have them finished by the time I have enough material to put the anthologies together.

So that’s about it for current projects. If anyone would like to submit to ‘Para Spectral’ or ‘The Darkest Midnight in December’, please let me know and I can send details. Mail to editorial(at)Immanion-press(dot)com

 

Oh Rose, who dares to name thee?

2016 has been a productive year for me, with a lot of work going on behind the scenes for both Immanion Press and its non-fiction imprint, Megalithica Books. I’ve written quite a few short stories, released the ‘Dark in the Day’ weird fiction anthology (edited by Paul Houghton and me), as well as ‘Grimoire Dehara: Ulani’, (written by Taylor Ellwood and me). I have lots of plans for the future.

Yesterday was publication day for my new Wraeththu Mythos book, ‘Blood, the Phoenix and a Rose’. It’s also having a simultaneous release in e-book. The latter will be on sale at the end of the month in a Kindle promotion. This book, a trilogy of connected novellas, began life as a collection of all the Wraeththu stories I’d begun over the years and had never finished. However, it changed course almost immediately as, once I began work upon the first story ‘Song of the Cannibals’, I knew I had something bigger than a short on my hands. It became a layered tale that folds back on itself, a narrative delivered by three different characters. While each story focuses on a different part of their shared history, there are some overlaps, which are subject to personal interpretation on the part of the narrator. That kind of thing really interests me.

The story begins around 20 years after the fall of Fulminir, the stronghold of the Varr leader, Ponclast. I’ve always been intrigued by that dark fortress and what happened there. Part of its history I didn’t know myself until recently, when it opened its doors to me in a creative sense. When, as a young author, I first wrote about the Varrs, I wanted to ensure they appeared brutal, almost unharish, and was extremely heavy-handed with certain details of that, as I didn’t have the experience and skill to make it chilling in a more subtle way. Wendy Darling, my editor, spoke to me recently about Ponclast’s unspeakable murder of his son Gahrazel, in ‘The Bewitchments of Love and Hate’ and how it related to the new work. The repulsiveness of the method Ponclast employed is almost worthy of ‘Game of Thrones’ for nauseating ghastliness. Looking back, I wouldn’t write the scene in precisely that way now. It closed certain doors upon that aspect of the mythos and its characters. Then I realised that ‘Bewitchments’ was told from the character Swift’s perspective – and first person narrators can be unreliable – plus the fact that he learned of Gahrazel’s death in a vision. I haven’t challenged what Swift reported; it’s simply not commented upon, not least because the characters in the new book wouldn’t have access to that information.  Some of the original narrative may be true, some of it not. Perhaps all true or all untrue. Or else even Gahrazel’s perception of his death – or his ghost’s perception – is skewed. I’ll leave it open for now.

There is one particular, distressing scene in ‘Blood, the Phoenix and a Rose’ that when told from two perspectives offer a different story. Both, in fact, are true, but subject to personal filtering. Fascinating stuff to write about.

When I first came up with the character of Ponclast, he was a rather one-dimensional, ouana-prevalent baddie, but as time has gone on, and through different novels and stories, he’s become a more rounded individual. Not a kind and fluffy type by any means, but not a stereotypical evil overlord either. His origin story, ‘Pro Lucror’, which appeared in the Mythos anthology ‘Paragenesis’, provides some insight into why and how he turned out the way he did. In ‘Shades of Time and Memory’ and ‘The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence’, from the second Wraeththu trilogy, he changes considerably, and perhaps goes part way to a kind of redemption. My colleague, Taylor Ellwood, who works with me on the Deharan magic system, felt that Ponclast should be part of the second book in the ‘Grimoire Dehara’ series. His complex character takes the role of an underworld deity in the system. I’ve come to realise that Ponclast has captivated quite a lot of people over the years, who are interested in his character development. Quite an achievement for a har who was initially supposed to be little more than a bit part player. ‘Grimoire Dehara: Ulani’ came out earlier this year. As well as adding depth and detail to Ponclast’s character, it also includes other mythos-expanding aspects that may be of interest to readers of the Wraeththu books, as well as practitioners of magic.

Now for next year’s plans… Some of them are at the developmental stage, when they might or might not happen, so I can’t give too many details. But I can mention the ‘Visionary Tongue’ anthology I’ll be compiling, which has been commissioned by Ian Whates for his NewCon Press, and is earmarked for an autumn release next year, to coincide with Fantasycon. ‘Visionary Tongue’ was a magazine edited by Louise Coquio and me about 20 years ago. Writers who went on to be quite famous names contributed stories to it, such as Liz Williams, Justina Robson and Tim Lebbon. After issue 16, Louise and I handed the caretaking of the magazine to Jamie Spracklen, as we no longer had the time to devote to it, nor the personnel to help us. Jamie has produced about 10 more issues since and is helping me, along with one of his editors, Donna Bond, to compile the anthology. I’ll be getting in touch with writers over the coming couple of months. Some I’ve already contacted and have received permission for reprints.

Taylor and I will be working on ‘Grimoire Dehara: Nahir Nuri’, which we intend to publish around autumn time too. This will appear, like the second volume, in a limited edition hardback, a paperback and e-book. As with the other books, this expands upon the pop culture magic system based on the Wraeththu Mythos.

I will begin work on a new novel, or series of stories, but I’ve yet to decide exactly what. There is also another non-fiction title I want to write. More details in the New Year when things are more certain.

Thank you to everyone who’s supported my work over the past year. I hope those of you who read ‘Blood, the Phoenix and a Rose’ will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Here’s to exciting new projects for next year! May all of you have an exceptional Yuletide.