Pornokitsch

Our weirdest and most Western collection - out now!

A Town Called Pandemonium contains ten wholly original Western stories, all set in the same dilapidated boom town in the New Mexico Territory. The authors - a lunatic, talented bunch - plotted and schemed up the setting together, and then went wild in their individual stories. Some are very weird, some are very Western - but they're all absolutely brilliant.

Contents:

• "Grit" by Scott Andrews
• "Belle Deeds" by Chrysanthy Balis
• "4.52 to Pandemonium" by Archie Black
• "The Gathering of Sheaves" by Joseph D'Lacey
• "The Sad Tale of the Deakins Boys" by Will Hill
• "Raise the Beam High" by Jonathan Oliver
• "Red Hot Hate" by Den Patrick
• "Wish for a Gun" by Sam Sykes
• "Sleep in Fire" by Osgood Vance
• "Rhod the Killer" by Sam Wilson

Plus an introduction by your merry editorial crew of Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin.

A Town Called Pandemonium is wrapped up - figuratively and literally - with the art of Adam Hill. We've gushed about Adam's work at length, but, to us, he's the one who really wound up defining Pandemonium and creating the precise dramatic/bonkers and iconic-but-contemporary style that enfolds the ten stories into a single, cohesive whole. 

As of today, Town is out for the Kindle and as a paperback - the "Silver Dollar" edition. In January, we'll be publishing a numbered hardcover "Cafe de Paris" edition that has exclusive content. January also sees the publication of 1853, a chapbook that highlights some of the activities from the rest of the 'world' of Pandemonium in that same fateful year.

The paperback will be available at the launch tonight (The Royal George, 133 Charing Cross Road, from 6.30 pm) and, from tomorrow, you can find it at Blackwell's and from our website.

Later in 2013 we'll be bringing Will Hill's "The Sad Tale of the Deakins Boys" back as one of our lettered edition novelettes - again, with more exclusive material. The problem is with having ten fertile minds and only a single little world: the stories just keep on coming...

Come join us in the town of Pandemonium, where nothing is certain.

A Town Called Pandemonium

Kindle - US / Int'l

Kindle - UK

Paperback - "Silver Dollar" edition

Launch news nonwithstanding, we've been pretty quiet around here as of late. Between judging for The Kitschies and book-putting-together and general stuff, the blog's suffered. Sorry!

That said, Anne & I have managed to trespass on other folks' lawns:

• "On Invisible Cities" on the Tor Books Blog - a wrap-up from the urban fantasy event with Mark Charan Newton, Kate Griffin and Tom Pollock (in which I horribly misquote all three)
• "A Better Class of Tentacle" on SFX - a really fun interview with Alasdair Stuart, in which we got to talk about chili and The Kraken Rum and the secret future of publishing and Lauren Beukes (they're all connected)
• A slightly incoherent ramble about Westerns has also been sent off to the BFS Journal, which was satisfying (the Journal is still print-only and members-only, two things I don't... wholly agree with, but that's all neither here nor there and, like others, I am delighted to have my name inked upon the skynne of deade trees)

It was pretty cool to take part in all three. I think the SFX interview was probably the most enjoyable, as we didn't have to think about a 'voice' or a 'purpose' (or 'make sense' or 'be coherent'), and that's always a blast.

Anyway, guest-blogging is well and good and deeply flattering, but there's no place like home. Next week, actual blog posts!

Meanwhile, time for another book launch...

Thy Kingdom Come is out today. 

That said, there's only one way to get your copy - and that's at Blackwell's Charing Cross at tonight's launch party. (6.00 - 7.30 pm, 100 Charing Cross Road)

The book sold well through pre-orders. So well, in fact, that we had to stop taking them. There are two dozen copies unclaimed, and they're all coming along with us to the launch at Blackwell's tonight. 

If there are any remaining after tonight, they'll be on sale through Blackwell's and directly through our website.

Those savvy folks that went for the pre-orders early will be getting their books shortly - Mr. Morden will be signing them all while he's in London, and we'll be mailing them all out by the start of next week.

You can read more about the book and its remarkable journey on Mr. Morden's site. But it is a beauty, containing stunning, apocalyptic prose from Simon Morden, an introduction from Robert Jackson Bennett and artwork by Joey Hi-Fi.

This coming week sees two astounding book launches.

On Wednesday night, Simon Morden will be at Blackwell's Charing Cross for the release of Thy Kingdom Come. The print edition of this amazing book has been, in some ways, ten years in the making - you can read more about that on Mr. Morden's blog. Thanks to Joey Hi-Fi, it is a gorgeous book. And thanks to Mr. Morden and Robert Jackson Bennett, there's some brand new material. 

All the proceeds from Thy Kingdom Come go to the Red Cross. This was all Mr. Morden's idea and it is a pretty amazing one. 

The launch kicks off at 6 pm on Wednesday night at Blackwell's Charing Cross. There will be your traditional reading and Q&A, plus the (extremely limited) remaining copies of Thy Kingdom Come and lots of great Metrozone books for sale. You can hook up with other attendees on Facebook.

On Thursday night, things get a whole lot weirder. Will Hill, Scott K. Andrews, Den Patrick and Jonathan Oliver will all be at The Royal George (133 Charing Cross Road) from 6.30 pm to celebrate the release of A Town Called Pandemonium - Silver Dollar edition!

"Pandatown" is a shared-world Western with ten new stories from some of the finest (and most bonkers) minds in genre fiction. As well as the fearsome foursome above, contributors include Chrysanthy Balis, Sam Wilson, Joseph D'Lacey, Oz Vance, Archie Black and Sam Sykes. All art by the incredible Adam Hill.

There will be readings, huge hats, impressive boots and possibly some terrible drawls. It promises to be a fun evening - please let us know if you're coming so we can plan the space accordingly!

A Town Called Pandemonium is our first paperback! Due to circumstances outside of our control (that's fancy-talkin' for 'give me a beer and I'll whine all about it') the hardcover 'Cafe de Paris' edition has been delayed until January. Adam Hill's done a stunning cover for the paperback, which is one fine lookin' piece of readin' material. (I warned you about the drawl.)

Don't forget, a portion of all proceeds from A Town Called Pandemonium (in all its formats) goes to the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Horror and Fantasy writers contributing to a Western to benefit a Science Fiction award. It makes sense to us...

We hope to see you this week - twice!

Deadline for all submissions is 1 December.

For the most "progressive, intelligent and entertaining novels containing elements of the speculative or fantastic". 

Categories for Novel, Debut and Cover Art. 

£2,000 prize fun, plus iconic Tentacle trophies plus many bottles of delicious The Kraken Rum.

First UK publication in 2012. (For Cover Art - this is for the art, so the book itself can be a reprint, anthology, collection or new edition.)

Novel only. (Except for Cover Art, as noted above.)

Any questions - including "Where do I send my books?" - email [email protected].

And, again, the deadline is 1 December.

If there were three things we knew, back in the spring of 1993, they were this: 

1. There was a movie coming out in June.

2. It was called Jurassic Park.

3. It was about dinosaurs.

And then we learned a fourth thing: it was based on a book.

Naturally I got a copy and read it.

And it blew my mind.

Now I can talk about how mind-boggling the film was till the cows come home, but the film was an event because of the special effects. (You must remember how extraordinary it is the moment Sam Niell and Laura Dern gazed up at their first live dinosaur... and then Spielberg cut to the brachiosaurus, lovingly panning up its saurian length from its massive tree-trunk legs to its tiiiiiiiiny head, like a billion feet in the air? My mom still talks about the special effects in Star Wars with awe - how it made her feel to see them on the big-screen, not expecting or even understanding what they'd be like. That's kind of how I feel about the effects in Jurassic Park. Two hours changed forever what I expect from special effects.

We're big on gooey stewy dishes that can't be cooked the same way twice, and the king of those is chili. (Well, gumbo, really, but we're not from New Orleans and no matter how hard we try, we just can't do it properly. It may be the accent.) 

Today we've been up since the wee hours putting a batch of chili on the burble. It contains:

Cow (lots)
Peppers (red & yellow)
Beans (red kidney)
Tomatoes (chopped)
Onions (sweet)
Onions (conventional)
Mushrooms (shiitake)*
Beef stock
Coffee
Cider vinegar
Worcestershire sauce (Anne puts it on/in everything)
The Kraken Rum (naturally)
Chilis (birdseye)
Spices (everything within reach)

*Only less-than-ideal ingredient. Prefer oyster mushrooms. If this goes horribly wrong, I blame the 'shrooms.

We'll now torture it until mid-afternoon, letting it reduce, then re-gooing it with beer and stock. Eventually we'll be starving and the entire house will smell like spiced cow, and we'll dig in.

So today's CRITICAL QUESTION: what do you put in your chili?

Earlier this week we listed some of your favourite imaginary cities - today, we’re looking at the imagined ones.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. With a lot of help from the internet, we've started the ball rolling - but this is just scratching the surface.

Which are your favourite imagined cities? Please share them in the comments!

The discussion continues this Saturday at Foyles with Mark Charan Newton, Tom Pollock and Kate Griffin chatting about urban fantasy. Grab your tickets now!

Alexandria:
Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Arabesk series

Berlin:
Robert Harris’s Fatherland
Philip Kerr’s March Violets

Cape Town:
Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland
Mike Nicol’s Payback, Killer Country and Black Heart

Dublin:
James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Indianapolis:
Maurice Broaddus’ King Maker

Johannesburg:
Lily  Herne’s The Army of the Left (not out yet, but the rest of the Deadlands series is!)
Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City
Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva’s The Bang-Bang Club (non-fiction, but hey...)

The Kitschies' Invisible Cities event takes place this Saturday at Foyles, and, in advance of the event, we started thinking about the great imaginary cities of fiction (not, say, the imagined cities - which we'll leave until tomorrow's blog post).

We (Bex, Anne and Jared) came up with a few of our own favourites:

• Gotham 
• Vice City (Grand Theft Auto)
• City 17 (Half-Life)
• Unthank (Alasdair Gray's Lanark)
• Time City (Diana Wynne Jones's A Tale of Time City)
• Arkham (H.P. Lovecraft)
• Camorr (Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora)
• New Crobuzon (China Miéville's Perdido Street Station)
• Villiren (Mark Charan Newton's City of Ruin)

...and then turned it over to Twitter. Here's what the Internet had to say:

First up - just one week from today: Invisible Cities at Foyles. With Kate Griffin, Tom Pollock and Mark Charan Newton. Ms. Griffin's written a cracking guest post for London Calling to get the ball rolling. We can't wait for this event!

On the Pandemonium front, we're creeping closer and closer to our launch dates for Thy Kingdom Come and A Town Called Pandemonium. 1853 is wrapping up as well, and we're even - knock on wood - looking ahead to next year. (Plus, the first two reviews of Lost Souls have been great. Whew.)

Quickly rounding up the last month's reviews: