Postscripts to Darkness

Aug 21 2013

Press

More love from the tastemakers

(Cover design subject to change.)

For such an early incarnation of our press, Postscripts to Darkness Volume 2 sure is The Little Issue that Could. We already boasted about how Chris Willard’s “What a Picture Doesn’t Say” was selected for Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, while Ranylt Richildis’s “Long After the Greeks” earned an honourable mention. Now we learn that Daniel Lalonde’s “St. Gertrude’s Boys’ Choir” found its way onto Ellen Datlow’s long-list for The Best Horror of the Year Volume 5. We could not be happier for Danny, erstwhile contributor and current PstD designer. Three PstD 2 tales given such accolades? We blush.

We’re also delighted that several other PstD contributors earned a spot on Datlow’s venerable list for work that appeared in other publications last year. Helen Marshall, Stephen McQuiggan, and Ralph Robert Moore earned a nod, as did two yet-to-be-named Volume 5 contributors (they know who they are). Our poetry editor, Dominik Parisien, got a nod, as well. Good show, folks. Enjoy rubbing elbows with Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Stephen King, and Joe Hill.

Lastly, warm congrats to friends of PstD and canny editors Amal El-Mohtar (Goblin Fruit) and Michael Kelly (Shadows & Tall Trees), who first published work that Datlow will include in The Best Horror of the Year Volume 5. Thanks for bringing such lovely lays to light.

Aug 15 2013

Interviews

An interview with Gemma Files

Gemma Files won an International Horror Guild Award for “The Emperor’s Old Bones.”

The following interview with Gemma Files, award-winning author of the Hexslinger Trilogy, first appeared in PstD Volume 3. She and contributing editor James K. Moran spoke about horror movies, sexuality, fear, and Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” theory.

JKM: How would you introduce yourself?

GF: Gemma Files began as a film reviewer, and now writes the sort of things she’d like to see at the movies. Overwhelmingly, these narratives are dark in slant, ranging over a spectrum that includes everything from classic M.R. Jamesian ghost stories and nihilistic body horror to what may or may not be the only current queer-positive Weird Western novel series featuring random black magic and bloodthirsty Aztec gods.[i] Critics have called my work both poetic and pornographic, which I’m fine with.

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Aug 10 2013

Reviews

Review: Shadows & Tall Trees 5

A new review by Sean Moreland

Do you enjoy fiction that creates an atmosphere of terror and wonder through subtle, suggestive, and insidious means? Do you believe that horror and dark fantastic fiction can (and should, and perhaps even must) rise above pulp stereotypes and genre conventions, finding ways to unsettle readers through psychological acuity and literary finesse? Are you interested in short stories that will get under your skin, invade your dreams and waking thoughts, and give you glimpses of strange worlds inseparably interwoven with our own? If you answered yes to any of these questions and you have not yet acquired all available issues of Michael Kelly’s literary journal Shadows & Tall Trees (S&TT), then you have done yourself a great disservice.

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Aug 04 2013

Reviews

Review: The Conjuring

A new review by Murray Leeder

From time to time, we’ll post film and book reviews by and for aficionados of horror and the weird. Our friend Murray Leeder’s review of The Conjuring, now playing, is our inaugural entry. Enjoy, and stay tuned. — Sean Moreland

James Wan’s The Conjuring (2013), it’s now whispered, will become the most profitable horror film of all time. It’s nice to see cinematic horror in such a healthy condition, but it’s a mixed blessing that this unexceptional film should benefit so strongly. On one hand The Conjuring should be praised for its commitment to a slow, tension-building setup, strong acting and an overall sense of craft and care. On the other, it’s marred by derivative storytelling, a disappointing third act and an almost infantile reliance on Manichean categories of good and evil.

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Jul 16 2013

Events

A midsummer night’s scream at Black Squirrel Books

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Illustration by Dominic Bercier







Join us for some unsettling literary fun, odd prizes, and refreshments, and support both Ottawa’s finest purveyor of uncanny fiction and Ottawa’s finest indie book-and-tea shop, Black Squirrel Books! Located at 508 Bank Street, Black Squirrel becomes our domain at 7pm, no cover. Our editors will be on hand, and there’ll be readings from some fantastic local writers, including Aurora nominee Matt Moore, and Lydia Peever and Kate Heartfield, both of whom have stories in Volume 4, coming this October. All three volumes of Postscripts to Darkness will be available for purchase at a special rate — and there’s a whole bookstore to roam, as well. Come join us!

Jul 08 2013

Anthology Contents

Volume 4 contributors

Illustration by Teresa Tunaley

It masked the should-have-been scents of everyday life. In that neighbourhood, there was no nutty aroma of rice cooking, no thorny musk of incense drifting from the temples, no herbaceous fragrance of fresh vegetables pulled out of the earth emanating from the large open warehouse doors of the green grocer. Yet, every day at ground zero I passed an eerie abandoned building bearing a political slogan about how precious life is, and I always felt bad for the little restaurant next to it. The usual warmth of lunchtime cooking should have been drifting in a breeze of sizzling meat, yet there was only a strange smell of something terrible and sinister—a smell that killed all the other smells.

From “Market Street Smell,” by Graeme Lottering

Here’s what you’ll find in Volume 4, coming this October:

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Jul 01 2013

Updates

Remodelling

Luke Spooner’s illustration for “Pushers” will appear in Volume 4.

Well, a bittersweet day. Our submission window for Volume 5 closed last night, and as we rustle through the 220+ stories we received for that issue, we say goodbye to a brimming inbox. For now. (We’ll call for Volume 6 submissions some time in early 2014.)

Lots on the go: Volume 4 is currently in production, for an early October launch – watch this space for a full Table of Contents and a teaser or two in coming weeks. Final content for Volume 5 is being nailed down over the course of July. And our site is about to undergo some improvements; you may notice a few hiccups over the next few weeks, so bear with us. And stay tuned.

Jun 13 2013

Press

Recognition is sweet

Our cup runneth over: Postscripts to Darkness has been honoured four times over by ChiZine Publications‘ Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. First, Christopher Willard’s “What a Picture Doesn’t Say” made the Table of Contents as one of the best tales of 2012, which appeared in PstD Volume 2. Our founding editor, Sean Moreland, earned an honourable mention for “Unrah, Late of Old Vegas,” which appeared in The Peter F. Yacht Club. Our poetry editor, Dominik Parisien (whose work is sweeping the anthologies this year) has two poems in the Table of Contents and three honourable mentions. And our newest story editor, Ranylt Richildis, earned an honourable mention for “Long After the Greeks,” published in PstD Volume 2 before she joined our staff. Congratulations everyone, and much gratitude to ChiZine Publications and Imaginarium 2013‘s editors for the love.

Treat yourself to a copy of Imaginarium 2013 when it’s released next month; these collections have become an annual event in speculative fiction, and dearly prized by readers and writers alike.

Jun 01 2013

Events

Ottawa small press bookfair

We’ll be staffing a table at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair again this year, Saturday June 15 from noon to 5pm at the Jack Purcell Centre off Elgin Street (Room 203). Admission is free and the place, as always, will be stuffed with novels, chapbooks, comics, literary mags, and more writers than we know what to do with. It’s inspiring, so do stop by. This year we’re sharing a space with author Lydia Peever, whose darkling trove of fiction will be on hand, as well.

Apr 01 2013

Events

Volume 3 launches: Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto

Ottawa

On Friday, April 5, 2013, from 7-9 pm, we launch Volume 3 with a party at Ottawa’s incomparable Avant-Garde Bar. The event will feature readings from some of our disturbingly gifted authors, displays of work by our uncannily imaginative illustrators, and a horror trivia challenge with awful prizes to be won…not to mention great drinks, food, and conversation. Come get your creep on, meet the editors, and support Ottawa’s premier anthology of the weird!

Kingston

On Wednesday, April 10, at 9:30 pm, join us at the Pilot House for the Kingston launch of Volume 3. Our revel will collide once again with that creative collection of multimedia oddities, the Wednesday Night Filmmakers. Editor Sean Moreland and designer Danny Lalonde will MC and provide teasers about what to expect from Volume 4, coming October 2013. Around 10pm we’ll have short readings by some of PstD’s darkly gifted contributors and the night won’t be over until the regular WNFM crew screens some twisted cinema. Most importantly, the bar will be tended, as always, by that eerily charming boy next-door, James Greatrex, one of this issue’s purveyors of nerve-gnawing art.

Toronto

On Saturday, April 27, at 5 pm at the Augusta House in the Kensington Market, join us for our first Toronto event. We’ve got some fearsome literary fun in store for those of you who can make it out to drink, dine, and drench yourselves in the macabre musings of some fine fictional talents! Featured readers will include Toronto-area legends of dark fantasy and horror, Shirley Jackson nominees Gemma Files and Michael Kelly. We’ll be displaying some of the striking visual art contained in this issue, and some of our artists will be on hand to discuss – and sign – their work. Also on hand will be editor Sean Moreland and other members of the PstD crew. We’ll talk about the project, provide teasers about what to expect from Volume 4, and hand out some oddball prizes to those of you brave enough to answer some of our esoteric queries about horror lore.

psssst…..dear darkness….are you there?