Fall2012catalogue.Pdf
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WHAT WHAT ChiZine Publications is willing to take Right now, we’re seeing strong and original risks. We’re looking for the unusual, the genre ideas, but too often they rely on interesting, the thought-provoking. We standard plots, the same settings, and look for writers who are also willing to take two-dimensional characters that serve the risks, who want to take dark genre fiction plot instead of having inner motivation. to a new place, who want to show readers These are “safe” stories—not particularly something they haven’t seen before. CZP challenging, and effortless to consume and W wants to startle, to astound, to share the digest. bliss of good writing with our readership. Because we’re a smaller outfit, we can take E PUBLISH AND What’s Dark Genre Fiction? some risks—find authors and manuscripts that are trying to move the genre forward. We say “dark genre fiction” because too much time is spent fighting over SF vs. Come With Us! horror vs. fantasy. If there’re dragons, it’s fantasy . CZP wants fiction that takes that next step forward. Horror that isn’t just gross or Unless they’re bio-engineered dragons, then going for a cheap scare, but fundamentally it’s SF . disturbing, instilling a sense of true dread. Fantasy that doesn’t necessarily need spells But a dragon apocalypse might be horror . or wizards to create a world far removed from ours, but that imbues the story with We want stories using speculative ele- an otherworldly sense by knocking tropes ments—magic, technology, insanity, gods, on their heads. Science fiction that isn’t just or insane-magic-technology-gods all in about space travel and gadgets, but about one—to show the dark side of human na- what it means to be human—or what it ture. The good guy can feel—and act on—an- means not to be. W ger, hatred, vengeance, just like the villain. Heroes don’t always win, conclusions don’t We want to give our readers characters we HY always wrap things up nicely, and sometimes genuinely care about. Stories that, if you things can take a turn that’s just plain weird removed the genre element, could still stand . even for the genre. on their own. Is Genre Fiction Standing Still? “New weird” and “slipstream” are labels that come to mind, but despite any kind Larger presses are sometimes forced to of moniker, above all, we’re out to publish play it safe: plots and stories we’ve seen well-written, character-driven stories. The before, because that’s what the public single most important quality we look for at seems to crave. Teenage vampire angst; CZP is resonance. multi-book sword and sorcery series; and spaceships, fleet admirals, and invading Bottom-line: If you like one CZP book, aliens. Sometimes it can feel like we’re all chances are, you’ll like them all. just reading the same stories, over and over, just in slightly different settings. —Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi, and the CZP staff WHAT THE . Don’t worry. This isn’t a printing error! CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS These are QR codes—a quick way to jump Toronto, Canada to the Web with your smartphone. chizinepub.com Get the app, point the camera, click, and go! [email protected] 3 CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS Bullettime Nick Mamatas Dark Fiction David Holbrook is a scrawny kid, the victim of bullies, and the neglected son of insane parents. David Holbrook is the Kallis Episkipos, a vicious murderer turned imprisoned leader of a death cult dedicated to Eris, the Hellenic goddess of discord. David Holbrook never killed anyone, and lives a lonely and luckless existence with his aging mother in a tumbledown New Jersey town. Caught between finger and trigger, David is given three chances to decide his fate as he is compelled to live and relive all his potential existences, guided only by the dark wisdom found in a bottle of cough syrup. From the author of the instant cult classic Move Under Ground comes a fantasy of blood, lust, destiny, school shootings, and the chance to change your future. 223 PAGES ISBN 978-1-926851-71-6 “Nick Mamatas is the anti-lobotomy: an icepick in USD $15.95/CAD $17.95 the eyeball that makes you smarter. Yeah, it hurts, 5 x 7.25 but I recommend the experience. This guy is good.” TRADE PAPERBACK/EBOOK —John Skipp, author of The Long Last Call August 15, 2012 “Mamatas is a powerfully acerbic writer.” —Boingboing.net “Genre fiction’s answer to De Lillo or Pynchon.” —Interzone NICK MAMATAS is the author of four and a half previous novels, including The Damned Highway with Brian Keene, and Sensation. He’s also an anthologist— recent titles include Haunted Legends, co-edited with Ellen Datlow, and The Future is Japanese, co-edited with Masumi Washington. Nick’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, New Haven Review, and the Canadian literary journal subTERRAIN, among many other periodicals and anthologies. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in California, but first he spent several years living in Jersey City, New Jersey. CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS 4 Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye Paul Tremblay Illustrated by Susanne Apgar Dark Fantasy Farm is the mega-conglomerate food supplier for City, populated with rabidly bureaucratic superiors, and sexually deviant tour guides dressed in chicken and duck suits. City is sprawling, technocratic, and rests hundreds of feet above the coastline on the creaking shoulders of a giant wooden pier. When the narrator’s single mother, whom he left behind in City, falls out of contact, he fears the worst: his mother is homeless and subsequently to be deported under City to the Pier. On his desperate search to find his mother, he encounters ecoterrorists wearing plush animal suits, City’s all-powerful Mayor who is infatuated with magic refrigerators and outlaw campaigns, and an over-sexed priest who may or may not have ESP, but who is most certainly his deadbeat dad. Whether rebelling against regimented and 352 PAGES ridiculous Farm life, exploring the consumer- ISBN 978-1-926851-69-3 obsessed world of City, experiencing the suffering of the homeless in Pier, or confronting the secrets USD $16.95/CAD $19.95 of his own childhood, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye’s 5 x 7.25 narrator is a hilarious, neurotic, and rage-filled Quixote searching for his mother, his own dignity, TRADE PAPERBACK/EBOOK and the meaning of humanity. August15, 2012 “Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye is fine, ribald work. There’s a futuristic wackiness and bitterness that reminds me of the best of George Saunders’s longer stories. It’s brutal and hilarious, and Tremblay’s narrator holds it all together with an ironic grimace.” —Stewart O’Nan, author of Emily Alone and Last Night at the Lobster PAUL TREMBLAY is also the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and the short story collection In The Mean Time. His essays and short fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Five Chapters.com, and Best American Fantasy 3. He is the co-editor of four anthologies including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan). Paul is currently on the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He fears many things, including the return of his banished uvula. SUSANNE APGAR was born in New Jersey and raised in Montreal. She studied Illustration and Design at Dawson College followed by Fine Arts at Concordia University. She generally works in oils and is currently freelancing in editorial, advertising, and book illustration. Her paintings are exhibited in galleries across Canada and the U.S. 5 CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS Janus John Park Science Fiction In the near future, Jon Grebbel arrives on the colony world of Janus, and finds himself mysteriously without memory of his life on Earth. It seems that the long journey from Earth has caused severe memory loss in many of Janus’s colonists. While Grebbel wants to start his new life, he also wants his memory back, and starts treatments to restore his past. But they only leave him angry and disturbed as he begins to doubt the glimpses of the past the treatments reveal. Grebbel meets Elinda, an earlier arrival, whose lover, Barbara, vanished and then was found lying in the woods, apparently brain-damaged. Elinda has also lost her memories of Earth, but unlike him she has abandoned the effort to recover them. Now their meeting brings each of them a glimpse of an experience they shared back on Earth. As their relationship deepens, doubts gather 270 PAGES about the world they live in and about ISBN 978-1-927469-10-1 themselves. Was what happened to Barbara more than an accident? Why are the memories that USD $15.95/CAD $18.95 begin to surface in Elinda and Jon so disturbing? 6 x 9 And are they even real? TRADE PAPERBACK/EBOOK Investigating Barbara’s fate and their own, the September 15, 2012 two find their love and their search for justice turning toward bitter self-discovery and revenge, even as they begin to uncover the darkness at the heart of their world. “In the tradition of Delany, Sturgeon, and Le Guin but taking his place among contemporary voices like Watts, Vonarburg, Schroeder, and Huff, John Park brings strength, intelligence, and grace of narrative to bear in this novel of relationship and estrangement.” —Candas Jane Dorsey JOHN PARK was born in Britain but moved to Canada in 1970 as a graduate student and has lived there ever since.