Tag: announcement

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Announcement: Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets B

Holmes and Watson are on the trail once again in our next Abaddon Classics title!

Following the commercial and critical success of 2014’s Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets anthology of Holmesian SFF original fiction, we are delighted that Holmes and Watson will once again be stepping out across time and space, in a new collection entitled Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets B.

Abaddon Books editor David Thomas Moore has invited back three of the creators from the first anthology – Jamie Wyman, Gini Koch and Glen Mehn – to revive their characters in thirty-thousand-word novellas, revisiting and exploring the worlds they created in more depth. Starting on June 23rd and pushing forward at two month intervals each novella will publish initially in eBook format with the collected physical edition planned for early 2016.

Speaking on the project Moore has said – actually what Moore said wasn’t entirely printable so went for a take two and got this – “Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets was a highlight of my young [ED: “young”] career, bringing together some amazing talents to produce some fantastic stories on a topic close to my heart. I’m ecstatic to be returning to the great detective’s rather untidy office (or caravan), and to see more of these wonderful worlds. The gritty, atmospheric carnival of Jamie’s ‘Hobohemia,’ the up-to-the-minute glitz of Gini’s ‘Single Ladies’ and the sweetly soulful counterculture scene of Glen’s ‘Half There/All There’ drew me relentlessly in, and they were all brilliant authors to work with.”

The collection will include the following works:

The Case of the Tattooed Bride, by Jamie Wyman, 23rd June 2015.

Winter, and the Soggiorno Brothers’ Traveling Wonder Show has  pulled into its berth in Peru, Indiana; Sanford “Crash” Haus, proprietor and genius, and his friend, surgeon and retired soldier Jim “Dandy” Walker, are looking forward to a quiet few months. But then the Show’s old manager, Professor Sylvestri, comes into town, his ward in tow, and happily, too, because the Strong Man and the Tattooed Lady have just announced their betrothal, and the good Professor happens to be a minister. Preparations for the happy day begin, but it seems violence and misfortune attend on them…

A Study in Starlets, by Gini Koch, 25th August 2015.

Sherlock Holmes and her new partner Dr. John Watson are settling in as roommates and consulting detectives in their new home in Los Angeles, when TV producers Joey Jackson and Tony Antonelli come to call. Their partner, Cliff Camden, has disappeared without a trace on the eve of filming for the new show. The LAPD aren’t interested and Watson has his own reasons for not getting involved, but Holmes takes the case. She’s just getting to grips with the case, amidst the grumbling crew, the neurotic actors and the low-level sleaze that permeates the city, when a fresh murder turns everything on its head…

Title to be announced, by Glen Mehn, 27th October 2015.

A third novella by Glen Mehn, based on his story “Half There/All There,” set in the drug-steeped, experimental world of Warhol’s Factory, will see Holmes and Watson exploring a mystery amidst the complex, emerging social, cultural and racial issues – and the fierce (and sometimes violent) changes – of the late ’sixties.

Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets B is the latest anthology collection in Abaddon Books new Abaddon Classics series, which takes inspiration from much loved and popular classic authors and creations to create new, mind-bending genre interpretations. The series will continue next year with Monstrous Little Voices: Five new stories from the fantastic world of Shakespeare, which will publish on April 23rd 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s passing.

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Genre does Shakespeare in a new themed anthology from Abaddon Books…

On this St. George’s Day in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Fifteen (and, probably, William Shakespeare’s birthday), Abaddon Books is delighted to announce Monstrous Little Voices: Five New Tales From Shakespeare’s World of Fantasy, a new anthology of fantasy fiction honouring the greatest storyteller in the English canon, to be published a year from now on 23rd April 2016, the four-hundredth anniversary of his death.

 Forget Arthur Conan Doyle and J. K. Rowling. Stuff the Brontë sisters and Ian Fleming. Ask someone to name the first British writer that comes to mind – the most influential, the most important to our national identity – and Will Shakespeare’ll come up four times out of five. Prolific, educated and populist, the Bard of Avon gave us bloody revenges and bumbling nurses that had the groundlings howling, and breathtaking poetry and sparkling wit that are still dissected and debated four centuries on. His legacy shapes our very language: he’s the reason we have forgone conclusions, household words, night owls and salad days.

Unquestionably, Shakespeare’s world is one of fantasy. Whether it’s overtly fantastic, as in the wizard Prospero in The Tempest or the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or subtler in its overtones, as in Friar Lawrence’s potions in Romeo and Juliet or the malign prophecies of the witches in MacBeth, the otherworldly hangs over Shakespeare’s heroes. Monstrous Little Voices will return to that world, telling new stories in and around the Bard’s works, from five incredible authors.

Asked about the project editor David Thomas Moore said, “Who loves the English tongue that loves not Will?/ Who writeth works of fancy that can say/ They ne’er turned to the Bard for writing’s muse/ Nor called on terms that Stratford’s Bard did say?/ Not I.” Then he stopped trying to write in iambic pentameter and added, “I more or less grew up in the theatre, and have always loved Shakespeare, both his writing and the gently magical world he wrote in – and, for all we know, believed he lived in. This is a tremendously exciting project.”

 Monstrous Little Voices will be Abaddon Books second collection in our Abaddon Classics series, which launched last year with the popular Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets anthology collection, which saw Holmes and Watson reimagined across time and space by a diverse group of bestselling and up-and-coming talents.

It is therefore with extra delight that we can confirm that we will be welcoming back two of the talents from Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets in the form of acclaimed fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky and Hugo fancast nominee Emma Newman! We’ll be revealing the final three authors in the coming months, but Abaddon fans can rest assured that we’ll be continuing our commitment to bringing you surprising new genre talent and established favourites…

Monstrous Little Voices: Five New Tales From Shakespeare’s World of Fantasy will publish in physical edition April 16th 2016, alongside DRM-free eBooks of the collection and individual stories.

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Open Submissions Month #3: The Announcement!

Hello hello!

So here it is! We’ve trolled you quite long enough; you’ve waited patiently through all my waffling, and now you’re going to find out (some) of the winners of the Open Subs Month!

(wait, what?)

Okay, yes, we’re holding a little something back. More on that below.

So this has been an amazing experience, as ever, with some top-notch submissions, some fantastic talent on show – it was particularly gratifying seeing some of the same names as last time, and seeing how they’ve changed and grown – and some really warm responses from feedback. Connecting to the genre writing community is one of the most rewarding parts of being a publisher, and this has been no exception.

It was, as I’ve said before, a fiercely competitive field, and a tight result, but in the end we decided – based on a long list of criteria – on three hugely exciting projects, adding some fantastic new and rising writers to our stable of talent. (As an added bonus, we’ve also spoken to some authors about holding back pitches to revisit later, or to pitch again; it was a rich crop!) We’re adding to one of our oldest and best-loved lines, and to one of our newer, unrulier babies. It’s a hell of a time to be alive.

So without further ado, here are our two successful “existing worlds” pitches:

Tomes of the Dead: The Lazarus Conundrum

Abaddon X tenth anniversary celebrations, and we’ll be making the announcement right there at the Abaddon X party. That’s due to happen on the evening on Wednesday 5th August this year, at an undisclosed location in London, and we’ll splash the series, novella and author’s names all over the place the very next morning.

So please give Paul and Cassandra a huge welcome and go and find them on the social medias!

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Announcement: Solaris Books to publish Europe in Autumn follow-up in 2015

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson was the slow burn hit of 2014, a timely SF thriller that got everyone – from US Ambassadors to online bloggers – talking. Set in a balkanised Europe, divided by political divisions, economic crises and pandemic illness, Europe in Autumn proved especially poignant for the year which saw Scottish and Catalan referendums, the UK lose its AAA credit rating and Greece hit by EU sanctioned austerity measures.

A dystopian espionage thriller that evoked the Cold War novels of John Le Carré and the nightmarish world of Franz Kafka, Europe in Autumn is a dazzling SF tale of what happens when a conspiracy theory threatens to unravel reality itself. Publishing to critical applause, featured highly across the board on the annual best-of list round-ups and currently shortlist nominated for the BSFA award for best novel, Europe in Autumn was a genre highlight for 2014, leaving fans of the book clamouring for a follow up.

It is with great delight that we can today announce the 2015 publication of the follow up title Europe at Midnight:

Europe is crumbling. The Xian Flu pandemic and ongoing economic crises have fractured the European Union, the borderless Continent of the Schengen Agreement is a distant memory, and new nations are springing up everywhere, some literally overnight.

For an intelligence officer like Jim, it’s a nightmare. Every week or so a friendly power spawns a new and unknown national entity which may or may not be friendly to England’s interests; it’s hard to keep on top of it all. But things are about to get worse for Jim. A stabbing on a London bus pitches him into a world where his intelligence service is preparing for war with another universe, and a man has come who may hold the key to unlocking the mystery…

Europe at Midnight, the second title in the Fractured Europe Sequence series by Dave Hutchinson from Solaris Book, will publish November 2015 in UK print and worldwide eBook, with a US physical print edition to follow later.

“The author’s authoritative prose, intimate knowledge of eastern Europe, and his fusion of Kafka with Len Deighton, combine to create a spellbinding novel of intrigue and paranoia.” – The Guardian

Dave Hutchinson was born in Sheffield in 1960. After reading American Studies at the University of Nottingham, he became a journalist. He’s the author of six collections of short stories and two novels, and his novella “The Push” was shortlisted for the 2010 BSFA award for short fiction. He has also edited two anthologies and co-edited a third. His short story ‘The Incredible Exploding Man’ featured in the first Solaris Rising anthology, and appeared in the 29th Year’s Best Science Fiction collection. He lives in north London with his wife and several cats.

Press enquires for Europe in Autumn and Europe at Midnight should be directed to Lydia Gittins at PublishingPress@rebellion.co.uk

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Write for Abaddon Books! Redux

Hey folks!

So, next year, Abaddon Books will have existed as an entity for ten years (the first book came out around a year later, in 2006, but we started being book people in 2005).

Ten years! Ten years. TEN YEARS! A lot can happen in ten years. Like me: I freaked out at the senior prom, joined the Army, went into business for myself and became a professional killer.

Wait, no; that’s the plot of the John Cusack vehicle Grosse Point Blank. I get confused sometimes.

Okay, so: I’ve been with Rebellion Publishing for a hair over five years, and it’s the best game in town. Big enough to swim at the deep end, small enough to do we want. Abaddon Books is a home for risk-taking, innovation and irreverence, and we’re immeasurably proud to have brought some of the best, brightest and most challenging new names onto the market.

And here we are doing it again! Our last subs month was a blast; the talent, passion and dedication shining through every page blew me away. The only drawback, in fact, was having to say ‘no’ to so many people who frankly deserved a shot, because so damned many of you were so good. And I’m pretty sure this is going to be even bigger. So go ahead and do it! Bleed and sweat on your keyboard and make my job twice as hard as last time. It’s all I want.

[turns on Netflix to look for Grosse Point Blank]

Man, that was a great movie.

Oh, wait, you’re still here.

So we’re looking for two things! Firstly, I would love to see a submission for a new 30,000-word novella set in one of our existing worlds, particularly The Afterblight Chronicles, Tomes of the Dead, Weird Space or Gods & Monsters. Pick up some our existing characters – I would love to see a “what happened next” for The Culled’s nameless hero and Kill or Cure’s Jasmine! – or bring a new character into the mix of any of our worlds.

Secondly, and more importantly, I’m looking for a new world! Find something we haven’t done. Hard SF, maybe, or a monster we haven’t done (werewolves? faeries?). Maybe something I haven’t thought of at all and therefore can’t give an example of! Again, I want a 30,000-word novella, which will kick start a new series in 2015.

You’ve got until mid-February. The doors open (metaphorically) at midnight on January 14th, 2015, and close at midnight on February 15th, 2015. Send us a 150-word “elevator pitch,” a 1000-word chapter-by-chapter breakdown, and a 2000-word sample, to submissions@rebellion.co.uk, by the deadline, and expect to hear from me… some point. When I get around to it. It can take a while (okay: you can start chasing me on the 1st March).

Do it.

What are you still doing here? Do it.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ADDENDUM! Abaddon is a Work For Hire imprint. That means that we buy your work off you outright, rather than the licensing-with-royalties deal you’re probably more aware of. The money’s a bit better up front, but you lose control once we buy it. This may not be for all people. If you want to understand more about the Work For Hire model, feel free to get in touch and ask some questions.

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Final Journal of the Plague Year author revealed

We are DELIGHTED to reveal that the incredibly talented Adrian Tchaikovsky will be the final author contributing to Journal of the Plague Year, the latest omnibus in the Afterblight Chronicles series. He joins fantastic new talent Malcolm Cross and C. B. Harvey.

The Cull swept the world in the early years of the twenty-first century, killing billions and ending civilisation as we know it. Only those fortunate to be blessed with the right blood were spared. In the latest instalment to the shared world of Afterblight Chronicles three fantastic authors lead us further into the apocalypse:

In Cross’ Orbital Decay astronaut Alvin Burrows watches helplessly as the world collapses, and the crew on board the Space Station are murdered one by one.

In Harvey’s Dead Kelly fugitive Kelly McGuire returns to the lawless city of Melbourne seeking revenge on his old gang mates.

In Tchaikovsky’s The Bloody Deluge (previously unpublished) biochemist Katy Lewkowitz and her friend Dr Emil Weber seek refuge from the deadly cult of the New Teutonic Order.

Journal of the Plague Year is an omnibus collection of three unique novellas; it will thrill, enthral and horrify you in equal measures.

Publishing Summer 2014.

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Chuck Wendig’s ‘Gods and Monsters’ series for Abaddon to continue with ‘Myth Breaker

Abaddon is very proud to announce the next title in the Gods and Monsters series, created by genre superstar author Chuck Wendig.

Gods and Monsters: Myth Breaker by Stephen Blackmoore will be the second novel in the series and will be published in December 2014.

Wendig imagined a brand new world for Abaddon Books last year, in which gods and goddesses are real and fight one another for mankind’s belief and devotion. But when one god drove all others out of Heaven, it was back to the bad old days of cults and sycophants, and the terrible retribution the gods visit on those who spite them. Gods and Monsters: Myth Breaker continues the story of humanity pitted against both the natural and the supernatural in a world of violence and faith.

Blackmore is the author of the urban fantasy novels City of the Lost and Dead Things and the 1930’s pulp novel Khan of Mars. His short stories have appeared in the magazines Needle, Plots With Guns, Spinetingler, Thrilling Detective and Shots, as well as the anthologies Deadly Treats, Don’t Read This Book and Uncage Me.

Chuck said: “Stephen Blackmoore is the exceedingly worthy heir to the Gods and Monsters throne, and unto him I bequeath my crown, my sword, my whiskey bottle (it’s empty, sorry), my robot butler, my monkey butler, and what’s left of the ragged cheesecloth that is my soul. COURAGE TO HIM.”

The first people the gods stopped talking to, back in the day, were the Chroniclers: people who were touched by the divine. Prophets and storytellers; Moses, Homer, Hesiod. Chroniclers don’t just tell the stories, they make people believe. And when the gods don’t keep up that connection, they go mad.

Growing up an orphan, Louie Fitzsimmons always had conversations with “invisible friends,” could see patterns in the world that no one else could see. He suffered bouts of mania and depression, but with a regimen of drugs and therapy he grew out of it as a teenager. When he was thirteen, he ran away from the orphanage and got in with organized crime as a drug runner, skimming the pharmaceuticals he sold to keep his visions at bay. Now, thirty-five years old and burnt out, Louie’s had enough. With access to the mob’s finances, he plans to go out in a big way.

Only he can’t. Things are conspiring against him: a broken down car, a missed flight. It’s bad enough being hunted by the mob, but the gods – kicked out of the Heavens, stuck on Earth without worshippers – need someone who can tell their stories, get the word out, and they aren’t letting him go. And there are new gods on the scene, gods of finance and technology, who want him too.

Caught between the mob and two sets of rival gods, Louie hatches a plan that will probably get him killed. If his powers can make the gods, there’s no reason he can’t break them…

The critics on Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits:

“The style is gonzo and rapid-fire, with bizarre imagery and flashes of violence and the grotesque.”
– Hellnotes.com

“The tone, the pacing, the characters, all of it, and honestly, this story is just plain fun. Dark, sometimes horribly creepy, but fun.”
– Fantasy Book Critic

“… full of stark realities dragged through gutter-filled dreams …
Even now I cannot seem to shake this novel free.”
– SF Signal