After a long break and a lifeless inbox, we’re open for submissions again. We’re reading for Volume 6 and will accept your stories until May 31, 2014. Be sure to read our updated submission guidelines — a few key things have changed.
Postscripts to Darkness
psssst…..dear darkness….are you there?
An Interview with Peter Atkins and Glen Hirshberg
Glen Hirshberg (L) and Peter Atkins (R) founded the Rolling Darkness Revue in 2004.
Fresh from the PstD vault! The following is excerpted from a transcribed interview with Glen Hirshberg and Peter Atkins, conducted by Sean Moreland and James Greatrex on October 24, 2010. Atkins and Hirshberg had just performed as the Rolling Darkness Revue at the Mayfair Theatre the night before, as part of that year’s Ottawa International Writer’s Festival. This interview originally appeared in our inaugural issue, Postscripts to Darkness Volume 1. We owe a great deal to these gentlemen for the inspiration. Read more about how the Rolling Darkness Revue helped ignite our project.
Peter Atkins was part of Clive Barker’s The Dog Company in 1970s Liverpool. He is an actor, composer, and novelist, and is perhaps best known for his work as a screenwriter. Credits include the Hellraiser and Wishmaster series. He has twice been nominated for a British Fantasy Award. Glen Hirshberg is author of The Snowman’s Children (2002) and The Two Sams (2003). His latest novel, Motherless Child, is due out spring 2014. His work has earned him a Shirley Jackson Award, several International Horror Guild awards, and has been nominated twice for a World Fantasy Award. Hirshberg and Atkins founded the Rolling Darkness Revue in 2004.
An Interview with Amal El-Mohtar
Rhysling winner Amal El-Mohtar is the author of the acclaimed “The Honey Month.”
Our poetry editor, Dominik Parisien, chatted with author Amal El-Mohtar for our first issue, way back in 2011, about faery, uncanny beauty, the fantastic, and the Middle East. We are very pleased to make this one available online at long last.
Amal El-Mohtar is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of 28 different honeys, and co-editor of Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly devoted to fantastical poetry. Amal has won two Rhysling awards, and her short story, “The Green Book,” was nominated for a Nebula. Her work has appeared in Apex, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Mythic Delirium, and a host of anthologies.
An Interview with Michael Cisco
Michael Cisco won an International Horror Guild Award for “The Divinity Student.”
Shortly after NecronomiCon 2013, Founding Editor Sean Moreland chatted at length with author and professor Michael Cisco about Kafka, Tolkien, Poe, Lovecraft and Deleuze, among other things. Strap yourselves in.
Michael Cisco is one of the most innovative and influential creators of dark fantastic fiction writing today. His novel The Divinity Student (1999) won the International Horror Guild Award for best first novel, and his novel The Great Lover (2011) was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, and was named Best Weird Novel of 2011 by the Weird Fiction Review. His short fiction has appeared in collections including The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Leviathan III and IV, and Album Zutique, while a selection from his novella The Genius of Assassins was included in the compendium The Weird. Cisco is also a professor of English literature and a translator. He lives in New York City.
Our Review Process
We often get asked (as all publishers do) how we clear the lists of untold hundreds of submissions. Our review process is fairly standard because it’s simple and efficient; many editors reading this will nod heads in recognition. Simple as it is, however, it’s still a tournament of favourites, champions, bated breaths, clenched fists, wins, and losses. A great candidate inevitably goes down. So it goes.
An Interview with Lee Thomas
Lee Thomas won Lambda Awards for “The German” and “The Dust of Wonderland”
The following interview with Lee Thomas first appeared in PstD Volume 2. Contributing editor James K. Moran chatted about conventions, zombies, and queer horror with Thomas in 2011.
Lee Thomas knows monsters, whether they’re in the closet or out. The Austin author has been transfixed by monsters since he was a child watching Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. In one iconic scene, the monster turns from a doorway to face the viewer — the effect on Thomas was visceral. He wanted to write so he could recreate a similar shocking effect. Thomas wrote for fun while growing up near Seattle, but it wasn’t until 2000 that he tried publishing his work. A public relations consultant in New York City, he joined a science fiction writing class taught by Terry Bisson. Bisson encouraged him to submit his stories to prospective markets. The aspiring author sent out six pieces. Four were accepted. Thomas claims he had beginner’s luck.
Volume 4 Launch: Toronto
Hayden Trenholm reading for Tony Burgess
The official launch of Postscripts to Darkness Volume 4 in Ottawa (October 8) went very well indeed. Matt Moore and ChiSeries were phenom hosts, the readings were memorable, and we sold out of the new issue (fortunately we have more back at the ranch). Contributors Lydia Peever and Kate Heartfield were in fine form as they read their respective Volume 4 tales, Matt Moore teased the crowd with a great reading of John F.D. Taff’s “The Night Moves,” and Hayden Trenholm of Bundoran Press (fresh off his Aurora win for Blood and Water) mesmerized the room with his take on Tony Burgess’s “Soft Shell Story.” Volume 4 was also on offer at Can-Con, Ottawa’s annual spec fic convention (October 4-6), and the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair (October 12), so it’s been around town quite a bit this past week.
Now it’s Toronto’s turn. Join us at the ROUND Venue, 152A Augusta Avenue, on Friday, October 25, at 6:30pm, and grab your copy in person. PstD friend Michael Kelly of Shadows & Tall Trees will be on hand to read, as well as three Volume 4 contributors: Albert Choi, Laura deHaan and Graeme Lottering. We hope to see you there, and we promise to bring extra copies to the event this time.
Interview with PstD 4 Contributor Kate Heartfield
The Fulcrum gave some space to the talented Kate Heartfield, fiction writer and journalist whose short story, “Six Aspects of Cath Baduma,” is featured in Postscripts to Darkness Volume 4. A nice gift indeed for all involved on the eve of the issue’s unofficial proto-launch at Ottawa’s 2013 Can-Con. From Heartfield’s tale of warrior goddesses: The rest of us got better-looking when Cath gave us our powers. Well, better isn’t quite the word. The hues of our skin were just slightly off anything found in nature. Our eyes were just a little too big for our faces. The wind that blew our hair blew for no one else. That kind of thing. But the Washer looked like a woman, an ugly woman. She was pale, her eyes dark pits behind lank hair. She went naked above the waist in all weather, her dugs puckered in the cold, her long skirt dark with water and mould.
Volume 4 Launch: Ottawa
Behold the cover of Postscripts to Darkness Volume 4, illustrated by Dutch artist Tais Teng. We’re madly in love with it, and eager to unveil our latest collection on October 8th. Volume 4 is our largest issue by far, featuring 17 weird tales, 17 weird illustrations, poetry by Helen Marshall, and an interview with Tony Burgess, of Pontypool fame. Read our full list of contributors here.
Our launch coincides with ChiZine’s ongoing Chiaroscuro Reading Series, hosted by Matt Moore. This Chi/Scripts mashup is taking place on Tuesday, October 8th at Maxwell’s Bistro and Club (340 Elgin Street, Ottawa). You’ll find us upstairs with books, authors, illustrators, and other sundry talents, at 8pm. Order up a drink, some hors d’oeuvres, and settle in for a night of readings by Lydia Peever, Kate Heartfield, and a surprise guest.
If you can’t make it to Maxwell’s on the 8th, or need a sneak peek ahead of launch, we’ll also be attending Can-Con in Ottawa, Canada’s spec/fic conference, the weekend of October 4th to 6th. You can find us in the vendor’s room with preview copies of Volume 4 hot off the presses, and earlier issues as well. Our founding editor, Sean Moreland, will be speaking on a variety of panels, too. Hope to see you there.
