Showing posts with label Hic Dragones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hic Dragones. Show all posts

Friday 13 June 2014

WIN 3 BOOKS! Wolf-Girls Competition (International Entry)

A fantastic new competition from Hic Dragones...



Enter now via the Rafflecopter widget below for a chance to win 3 wonderful paperbacks PLUS an exclusive WOLF-GIRLS tote bag!

Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lygogyny
edited by Hannah Kate



Feral, vicious, fierce and lost… the she-wolf is a strange creature of the night. Attractive to some; repulsive to others, she stalks the fringes of our world as though it were her prey. She is the baddest of girls, the fatalest of femmes – but she is also the excluded, the abject, the monster. The Wolf-Girls within these pages are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But they are also rejected and tortured, loving and loyal, avenging and triumphant. Some of them are even human…

Seventeen new tales of dark, snarling lycogyny by Nu Yang, Mary Borsellino, Lyn Lockwood, Mihaela Nicolescu, L. Lark, Jeanette Greaves, Kim Bannerman, Lynsey May, Hannah Kate, J. K. Coi, Rosie Garland, R. A. Martens, Beth Daley, Marie Cruz, Helen Cross, Andrew Quinton and Sarah Peacock.

In addition to this lycanthropic anthology, the prize also includes novels by two of the contributors: Kim Bannerman and Beth Daley!

The Tattooed Wolf
by K. Bannerman



Morris Caufield thought he’d seen it all…

Until the moment Dan Sullivan walked into his office. Dan needs a divorce lawyer he can trust, and he thinks Morris is the man for the job. The thing is, Dan wants Morris to represent his wife. Who tried to kill him. Twice. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dan expects Morris to buy some crazy story about werewolves…

As Dan reveals the truth about his life and his marriage, Morris listens to a captivating tale of lycanthropy, love and betrayal. It’s lunacy, he’s sure of that, but there’s something about Dan Sullivan that makes it all very easy to believe.

Blood and Water
by Beth Daley



Dora lives by the sea. Dora has always lived by the sea. But she won’t go into the water.

The last time Dora swam in the sea was the day of her mother’s funeral, the day she saw the mermaid. Now she’s an adult, a respectable married woman, and her little sister Lucie has come home from university with a horrible secret. Dora’s safe and dry life begins to fray, as she is torn between protecting her baby sister and facing up to a truth she has always known but never admitted. And the sea keeps calling her, reminding her of what she saw beneath the waves all those years ago… of what will be waiting for her if she dives in again.

Enter now!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Monday 9 June 2014

Coming Soon: New Digital Editions of Victorian Penny Dreadfuls

Serialized Victorian Gothic pulp fiction for the discerning modern reader!

Hic Dragones is pleased to announce a new series of eBook editions of Victorian penny bloods and penny dreadfuls. Digitally remastered and reserialized, these editions are intended to introduce modern readers to the thrills, shocks and cliffhangers of classic blood-curdling tales.

Penny dreadfuls have a significant place in the modern imagination and affections, but they are rarely read in the twenty-first century. And this is hardly surprising—with only a few exceptions, these texts can only be found in original publications or mechanically scanned copies. Until now!

The Digital Periodicals serials from Hic Dragones have been fully formatted (by a human being) to create searchable eBook texts with interactive tables of contents. For the first time since their original publication in the mid-nineteenth century, these texts will be sold as serials, with new instalments (comprising between 5-10 chapters) being released fortnightly. Readers can once again savour the anticipation of a new instalment, and enjoy these episodic stories as they were once intended.

Digital Periodicals launches on Friday 13th June 2014 with two of James Malcolm Rymer’s classic titles: VARNEY THE VAMPYRE; OR, THE FEAST OF BLOOD and VILEROY; OR, THE HORRORS OF ZINDORF CASTLE. Additional serials will be published in due course, with THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF VALENTINE VOX, THE VENTRILOQUIST coming out later in the month. As well as better-known titles, such as WAGNER THE WEHR-WOLF and THE STRING OF PEARLS (Sweeney Todd), Digital Periodicals will introduce readers to works that have unfairly fallen into obscurity: including, George Reynolds’ FAUST, Albert Coates’ SPRING-HEEL’D JACK and Pierce Egan’s WAT TYLER.

Penny dreadfuls were always meant to be pure, sensationalist entertainment, and the Digital Periodicals series is designed to inject the fun back into these under-read masterpieces of lurid, melodramatic, garish pleasure. Readers can subscribe to receive reminders about their favourite serials, and join in discussion about the stories on Twitter and Facebook

Let the feast of blood begin again…

For more information, or to sign up for the mailing list, please see the website or contact Hic Dragones via email. For academic and press enquiries, please contact Hannah Kate (series editor).

Friday 9 May 2014

True Crime: Fact, Fiction, Ideology (Manchester, 7 June 2014)



Registration is now open for True Crime: Fact, Fiction, Ideology, a one-day conference to be held at the Manchester Conference Centre on Saturday 7 June 2014. Registration information can be found on the conference website.

Programme

9.00-9.30 Registration

9.30-11.00 Panel 1: Depicting Taboo Crimes
Chair: Hannah Priest

Karen Oughton (Regents University London): Deliciously Deranged: Depicting the Raison d’être of Jeffrey Dahmer as a Celebrity Serial Killer

Jacquelyn Bent (University of Huddersfield): What Constitutes a ‘Taboo’?: Cultural, Societal and Legal Standards for the Identification of Taboo Acts Including Taboo Crime

David McWilliam (Lancaster University): Without Conscience: Re-opening Old Wounds to Pass the Empathy Test in Dave Cullen’s Columbine (2009)

11.00-11.30 Coffee

11.30-1.00 Panel 2: Generic Boundaries and Conventions
Chair: tbc

Carys Crossen (University of Manchester): Invoke Not Reason: Defining the Parameters of True Crime in the Case of Jack the Ripper

Charlotte Beyer (University of Gloucestershire): ‘Angel Makers’: Recent True Crime Stories of Baby Farming

Maysaa Jaber (University of Baghdad): Crime Culture of Monstrosity: The Cold War, Paranoia and the Psychopathy in Post-war Crime Fiction

Abby Bentham (University of Salford): Cold Blood, Warm Heart: Truman Capote and the Transformation of the Psychopath

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30 Keynote Lecture
Chair: David McWilliam

David Schmid (University at Buffalo, State University of New York): The Moors Murders and the “Truth” of True Crime

3.30-4.00 Coffee

4.00-5.30 Panel 3: Place, History, Communities
Chair: tbc

John David Jordan (Manchester Metropolitan University): Real Life Crimes, Council Estate Dramas and Proleaphobia: How ‘Socio-Chthonic Mythologies’ Serve the Neoliberal Welfare Agenda

Martyn Colebrook (Independent Scholar): ‘Do what you want, just don’t get caught doing it’ – Gordon Burn’s Happy Like Murderers

Het Phillips (University of Birmingham): ‘Digging Up Your Fiction’: Place, Intertext and the Raw Materials of History in Neil McKay’s True Crime Television

5.30 Conference Close

The registration fee for the day is £40, including refreshments and lunch. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website or email the organizers.

Wednesday 16 April 2014

OUT NOW: K Bannerman, The Tattooed Wolf (Hic Dragones, 2014)

A fantastic new novel, edited by yours truly...

http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/tattooed-wolf/


Caufield muttered as he slouched back in his seat and crossed his hands over his belly, smirking. “You’ve got my attention, Dan; I’ll humour you. Tell me, from the very beginning, how you got into this whole bloody mess.”

Morris Caufield thought he’d seen it all...

Until the moment Dan Sullivan walked into his office. Dan needs a divorce lawyer he can trust, and he thinks Morris is the man for the job. The thing is, Dan wants Morris to represent his wife. Who tried to kill him. Twice. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dan expects Morris to buy some crazy story about werewolves...

As Dan reveals the truth about his life and his marriage, Morris listens to a captivating tale of lycanthropy, love and betrayal. It’s lunacy, he’s sure of that, but there’s something about Dan Sullivan that makes it all very easy to believe.

Praise for The Tattooed Wolf:

“[K. Bannerman] displays unusual and sometimes uncomfortable characters, and I care about them all, the significant players and the extras. If you like reading stories about intriguing people, this story doesn’t disappoint... buy this book.”
- Joe Murphy, The Dragon Page

K Bannerman lives in a tiny house surrounded by forests on Vancouver Island, Canada, where she writes short stories, novels and plays. She is the author of four novels, including the historical murder mystery Bucket of Blood. Together with her partner-in-crime, Shawn Pigott, they run Fox&Bee Studio, where they have written, produced and directed over 100 short films.

For more information, please visit the publisher's website.

Sunday 16 February 2014

Win two amazing SIGNED books! (International entry allowed)

Another great competition from Hic Dragones... entry via the Rafflecopter widget below.

Enter now to win two SIGNED books:

The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland 


 A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight.

Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps... and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn’t cry – she meows and licks her paws.

When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste?

Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

Rosie Garland is an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in Goth band The March Violets through touring with the Subversive Stitch exhibition in the 90s, to her current incarnation as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, cabaret chanteuse, incomparable compere and electrifying poet. The Palace of Curiosities is her debut novel. Rosie's short story, 'Cut and Paste' is published in the Hic Dragones Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny anthology. 

Take a Bite by Nancy Schumann


Take a Bite is a non-fictional text discussing female vampires in folklore and Anglo-American Literature and how their characteristics changed through the ages.

Readers will find a concise introduction to female vampires in folklore of various regions; with specific focus on the Lilith and Lamia figures that later on feature prominently in art and literature and including an overview on the numerous superstitions and phenomena that gave rise to vampire belief around the world.

Further chapters deal with the representation of vampiresses in literature and how this changed through the eras; starting with early romantic works such as Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Keat’s Lamia where the vampires is a strong, independent woman who does not fit into the patriarchal society.

Dracula puts female vampires in an inferior position, as the count takes centre stage. The discussion of Dracula focuses on the character of Lucy Westenra as a woman misunderstood by many critics.

The works of Tanith Lee and Anne Rice also include very interesting female characters. Anne Rice’s male vampires have been discussed excessively but her vampiresses deserve much more attention than they have received so far.

The Vampire Diaries are conquering TV screens and with True Blood and Twilight vampires are all around us, but is there a vampire queen among them or are we all just lusting after Edward?

Nancy Schumann completed a master’s degree in English Literature at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Particular research interests were Gothic novels, detective stories and women’s studies. Her MA thesis was on female vampires through the ages. The topic combines feminism and Gothic novels with her personal interest in fanged fiends. This formed the basis to Take A Bite, now available in vamped up form for public consumption. Nancy's short story 'The Hostel' was published in the Hic Dragones Impossible Spaces anthology.

Enter the competition...

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Sunday 9 February 2014

My Favourite Fictional World... a guest post by Tracy Fahey and Laura Brown

As part of the Impossible Spaces blog tour currently being run by Hic Dragones, I've been inviting some of the authors onto my blog to talk about their favourite fictional worlds. So far, I've had guest posts from Douglas Thompson and Margrét Helgadóttir. Today I'm very pleased to welcome Laura Brown and Tracy Fahey to the blog.

A lover of all things strange and unusual, Laura Brown is a fantasy author and artist from Hampshire, England. A self-proclaimed Goth, geek, bookworm and bunny-rabbit, Laura has been writing and drawing ever since her fingers could manage a pen. She is also a writer for online magazine EGL Magazine (under the penname Blackavar), for which she writes lifestyle articles, music reviews and interviews. Since the summer of 2012, she has been writing fiction professionally, with her first short story, ‘Alone in the Dark’, being published in an eZine in July 2012, and ‘Candlelight’ appearing in print for the first time in October 2012. ‘Skin’ (her short story in Impossible Spaces is her third story in print.

So, Laura, what's your favourite fictional world?

This is a question not easily answered! I'm sure depending on what day of the week it could have been different (and my recent leisure activity has possible influenced my answer!). However, I'm going to be a bit of a cheat by choosing... the worlds of Kingdom Hearts.

You have may have noticed I've used the plural word, 'worlds'. Hehe, yes, I've cheated.

For those unfamiliar with it, Kingdom Hearts is a video game series that combines Disney and Square Enix's Final Fantasy characters and aesthetics - the short description could possibly be Disney meets Final Fantasy. The game series has been hugely popular, and brings a wonderful sense of nostalgia combined with a storyline that is sweet and heartening but not without its depths and dark side. The adventures take the player through various Disney-inspired worlds, such as Wonderland, Halloween Town, Agrabah, and even the Hundred Acre Woods. But the worlds I enjoy the most are the original ones created for the series.



They are beautiful - some are ethereal, or grand and Gothic structures, or mystical looking landscapes. Some are dark and mysterious, and others are sweet and cosy. Some even manage to appear cyberpunk. Creating already set worlds did not stop the creators of the game series from flourishing with their own creativity.



What is it in particular I like about these worlds? Well, despite their differences and individuality, all have a lovely dreamlike quality about them that particularly appeals to me. Fiction is a living dream state for me, taking me away from reality, and these worlds work in the same way (arguably more vividly, as they can be seen on the screen, although I have certainly never had trouble painting a landscape mentally). Combining the emotional aesthetic of the games' storylines with these surroundings that are beautifully crafted and lovingly presented (be they frightening places or comforting ones), that dreamy quality is what appeals to me so strongly. I enjoy looking at the tiny details, and find them very inspiring in my own work also. As a fantasy writer who spends much of her time in a dream-world, it would make sense that these fictional environments would appeal to me so much.

Thanks, Laura! And today's second guest... Tracy Fahey.

Tracy Fahey is a Gothic devotee whose research interests lie chiefly in Gothic domestic space and its various interactions and intersections with literature, art, design and folktales. She works as Head of Department of Fine Art at Limerick School of Art and Design. She also runs a fine art collaborative practice, Gothicise who have carried out a number of site-specific projects in Limerick, including ghostwalk/ghosttalk (2010), The Double Life of Catherine Street (2011) and A Haunting (2011). Tracy has published in the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies and the Gothic Studies Journal. She has given papers in New Zealand, California, Denmark, Scotland, Wales and England on a variety of topics including Irish castles, domestic Gothic, folklore and the Gothic, fairy-tale architecture, and werewolves.

So, Tracy, tell us about your favourite fictional world...

I started this piece still wondering which of all these fictional worlds I would choose. In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s velvety, sinister prose paints all kind of unlikely and glittering worlds, half-fairytale, half-nightmare, wholly sensual. I feel like I’ve lived through Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, attending enchanted classes in Greek culture, and lolling round ancestral homes soaked in gin and murder. But if I had to choose one fictional world which has haunted me since I first read about it, it has to be Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the supreme novel of dark domesticity.

Be warned. This is not a pleasant place. From the second chapter, the world shrinks to the size of one intimidating, watchful, sepulchral house. The opening sentence tells you everything you need to get your bearings in this universe:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
So. Not sane. Holding darkness within. And worst of all, the awful, casual reference to “whatever walked there”. From the beginning, the figure of Shirley Jackson stands to the side of the Victorian monstrosity that is Hill House, arms folded. You are warned. Last chance to get off the rollercoaster before it starts.



Ostensibly a story about a group of paranormal investigators, the novel is much, much more. The world of Hill House is a waking nightmare, a swelling undertow that pulls you in, and traps you within its dark walls. The interiors are designed to confuse and chill:
“It had an unbelievably faulty design which left it chillingly wrong in all dimensions, so the walls seemed always in one direction a fraction longer than the eye could endure, and in another direction a fraction less than the barest possible tolerable length...”
Hill House is sentient, that much is apparent from the first paragraph. But it is also malicious. It preys on the protagonist, timid Eleanor, freed at last from servitude to her bullying mother and unpleasant family who treat her with a calculated brutality. Eleanor is a non-person, a service provider, someone who has been almost painted out of existence. All she wants is to find her place in the world: “I never had anyone to care about... I want to be someplace where I belong.” When Hill House wraps itself around her, calling to her, knocking on her door, writing messages to her on its own walls, she is terrified, excited and ultimately seduced.

So come in. Visit. This is not a pleasant world. But I do guarantee that once you’re in, you’ll never forget the experience. Once you step into the world of Hill House it will grip you. Even when you come out of it and close the covers of the book, darkness will seem a little darker, noises heard in the night will be just a little more frightening.

Be warned. Now come in.

Laura Brown's story 'Skin' and Tracy Fahey's story 'Looking for Wildgoose Lodge' are among the short stories in Impossible Spaces - out now from Hic Dragones.

Saturday 9 November 2013

November eBook Bargains

To celebrate the release of Blood and Water, the fantastic debut novel by Beth Daley, my publisher is having an eBook sale! All other titles are just 99p for the whole of November.

If you haven't already, take this opportunity to get your hands on:

Impossible Spaces

http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/impossible-spaces/


Aimee and the Bear 

http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/aimee-and-the-bear/


Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny 



Variant Spelling

http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/variant-spelling/

 

OUT NOW: Blood and Water by Beth Daley (Hic Dragones, 2013)

Out now from Hic Dragones, the debut novel by Beth Daley: Blood and Water

Watch the trailer here:



Dora lives by the sea. Dora has always lived by the sea. But she won’t go into the water.

The last time Dora swam in the sea was the day of her mother’s funeral, the day she saw the mermaid. Now she’s an adult, a respectable married woman, and her little sister Lucie has come home from university with a horrible secret. Dora’s safe and dry life begins to fray, as she is torn between protecting her baby sister and facing up to a truth she has always known but never admitted. And the sea keeps calling her, reminding her of what she saw beneath the waves all those years ago… of what will be waiting for her if she dives in again.

http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/blood-and-water


Praise for Blood and Water:

A talented new author with a feel for details and how to make them count. Daley’s writing is a cumulation of neat touches that grab hold of you, persuade you to care, and drag you deep into a debut novel soaked in menace. Toby Stone

For more information, or to order a copy, please visit the publishers' website. Also available on Amazon.

Friday 1 November 2013

My Favourite Fictional World... a guest post by Margrét Helgadóttir

As part of the Impossible Spaces blog tour currently being organized by Hic Dragones, I'm inviting some of the writers onto the blog to talk about imagined worlds. I've asked each guest to name their favourite fictional world (a tricky question, I know, but a fun one). My first guest was Douglas Thompson. Today I welcome Margrét Helgadóttir.

Margrét Helgadóttir is an Icelandic-Norwegian writer who was born and lived parts of her childhood and youth in East and West Africa. Margrét started to submit fiction in English for publication in autumn 2012. So far she’s mainly written short stories and flash fiction, but she’s working on a couple of novellas and a collection as well. She loves to write dark, weird and quirky stories, often set in the future, mostly within the speculative genres, and often influenced by Nordic culture, climate and folklore. Margrét’s stories have so far appeared in magazines like Tuck Magazine, Luna Station Quarterly and Negative Suck, and she’s got stories in the 2013 anthologies Fox + Fae and Piracy. Her first story was one of the winners of Fox Spirit Books’ International Talk like a Pirate Day story competition in 2012.

So, Margrét, what's your favourite fictional world?

I had to think hard when Hannah sent me this question. I’ve been a dedicated bookworm since I learned to read as a little girl, and was drawn early on to the spectacular stories that took place in fictional fantasy worlds, be it fairy tales, folk tales or dark science fiction from outer space. I don’t have a favourite fictional world. I have several, created by great authors like Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, McCaffrey, Kafka, Murakami, Ende and Nordic authors like Jansson and Lindgren. Many other wonderful Nordic writers’ works are unfortunately not translated to English, and their amazing stories remain hidden from the world except for the few who can read the languages.

One of these writers is the Norwegian author, illustrator and cartoonist Thore Hansen. Seventy years old, Hansen has written and illustrated numerous lovely stories throughout his many years, like Enhjørninger gresser i skumringen [Unicorns grazing at dusk] and De flygende hvalers land [The land of the flying whales]. He’s also co-operated several times with another lovely Norwegian author: Tor Åge Bringsværd. Hansen has received many awards for his illustrations and books and he’s written in several genres, such as crime fiction, children books and fantasy. But from what I can gather, most of his work remains untranslated.


One of my favourite fictional worlds is a book series written and illustrated by Hansen. The series goes by the name Skogland, which translates to something like ‘Forest Land’. These books I visit again and again, and I never become tired of them. It’s one of my sorrows that these books haven’t been translated to English, because I think many people would enjoy these books.

The story starts with the grieving and lonely forest man-creature Gwan killing a dragon. In its nest he finds the little human boy Kaim, unconscious and wounded, and a golden dragon egg. Human bones lie scattered around the nest — probably Kaim’s family. Gwan, having no respect for humans, reluctantly takes care of the boy. And when the dragon egg hatches a little dragon and the boy defends it, the brusque and rugged forest man suddenly has two orphans to nurture. (Kaim’s family had escaped from slavery and run into the woods, wanting to travel to a legendary city in the north.) Gwan agrees to take the boy to the inn at the big crossroads in the deep woods, thinking someone going north would stop there and maybe take the boy with them. And so the tales of the human, the dragon and the forest man who share a camp fire begin.

Hansen’s beautiful writing about Skogland bears strong resemblance to the oral tales told around camp fires: legends, fables, folk tales. Skogland is a place of humour-filled tales and gruesome tales, and quiet tales told in hidden inns where all kinds meet in peace over good food and beer, sheltering from the harsh winter storms. And in between are Hansen’s gorgeous drawings.

He has created a world filled with strange animals, shadow people, elves, demons, humans and forest people. Some are evil, some are kind. But this is not the classical fantasy story about the battle between evil and good. This is a story about living side by side in peace and understanding, respect and tolerance, never enslaving each other. It’s an eco warrior tale about humans destroying the climate and the balance in the nature. It’s a story about ethics, morals and taking care of each other. The back of the collection says: “There is a world only a step to the left from our own world. It’s called Forest Land. It’s a world filled with hope, one thinks.” It’s one of my biggest wishes that these books will one day get the attention they deserve and be translated. I feel that Hansen’s underlying message in these books is something we all need to hear today.

Thank you, Hannah, for letting me spread the word about these books.

Margrét Helgadóttir's short story, 'Shadow', is one of twenty-one weird and dark tales in the Impossible Spaces anthology - out now from Hic Dragones.

Monday 21 October 2013

CFP: True Crime: Fact, Fiction, Ideology

Fact, Fiction, Ideology

6-7 June 2014
Manchester, UK

Keynote Lecture: David Schmid (University at Buffalo, SUNY), author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture: ‘The Moors Murders and the “Truth” of True Crime’

Call for Papers

As Mark Seltzer notes, ‘true crime is crime fact that looks like crime fiction’, a popular genre that is obsessed with real-life murder and extreme acts of criminal deviance. Emerging as a genre in magazines of the mid-twentieth century such as True Detective Magazine, and drawing on earlier discourses of confession, memoir and speculation, true crime first received attention as a form of literature with the publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966). It has since diversified into a variety of other media, from television series such as Neil McKay’s Appropriate Adult (2011) to Hollywood films about famous works of the genre, such as David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007). In recent horror-crime fiction and film, such as Adam Nevill’s Last Days (2012) and Scott Derrickson’s Sinister (2012), the act of writing and filming true crime is presented as ensnaring its creators in the gruesome worlds they seek to capture. While its adherence to orthodox law and order perspectives, typified by a tendency to present offenders as monstrous and evil, may seem to position true crime as a conservative genre, its fascination with the lives and minds of serial killers can sometimes lend it a transgressive quality.

True Crime: Fact, Fiction, Ideology is an interdisciplinary conference seeking to explore this genre in its myriad incarnations. Proposals are sought for 20 minute papers. Possible topics may include:
• True crime in popular culture
• Forensic psychology and criminology
• Prison narratives and memoirs
• True crime in fiction and metafiction
• The politics of true crime
• True crime and the law
• Theorizing true crime
• Serial killers and profiling
• Taboo crimes
• The ethics of true crime
• ‘Proto-true crime’ – early examples of the mode, predecessors and precedents

Please send 300-word abstracts to David McWilliam and Hannah Priest by 31st March 2014. All enquiries should also be sent to this address.

This conference is organized by Hic Dragones. For more information about the company and its work, please see the Hic Dragones website.

Blood and Water Launch Parties (Manchester and Leeds)

Blood and Water

The debut novel by Beth Daley


Release Date: 7th November 2013
Publisher: Hic Dragones
For more information, visit the publisher's website



Dora lives by the sea. Dora has always lived by the sea. But she won’t go into the water.

The last time Dora swam in the sea was the day of her mother’s funeral, the day she saw the mermaid. Now she’s an adult, a respectable married woman, and her little sister Lucie has come home from university with a horrible secret. Dora’s safe and dry life begins to fray, as she is torn between protecting her baby sister and facing up to a truth she has always known but never admitted. And the sea keeps calling her, reminding her of what she saw beneath the waves all those years ago… of what will be waiting for her if she dives in again.

Praise for Blood and Water:

A talented new author with a feel for details and how to make them count. Daley’s writing is a cumulation of neat touches that grab hold of you, persuade you to care, and drag you deep into a debut novel soaked in menace.
Toby Stone, author of Aimee and the Bear

Blood and Water Launch Parties

FREE EVENTS in Lancashire (Manchester) and Yorkshire (Leeds), our very own WAR OF THE ROSES! Join us for the launch of Blood and Water.

Thursday, 7 November 2013 from 19:00 to 21:00
Portico Library
57 Mosley St
Manchester M2 3HY
United Kingdom

Wine reception and readings by the author



Friday, 8 November 2013 from 18:00 to 20:00
The Maven
1-3 Call Lane
Leeds LS1 7DH
United Kingdom

Wednesday 9 October 2013

My Favourite Fictional World... a guest post by Douglas Thompson

As part of the Impossible Spaces blog tour currently being organized by Hic Dragones, I thought it would be nice to invite some of the writers onto the blog to talk about imagined worlds. I asked each guest to name their favourite fictional world (a tricky question, I know, but a fun one). Today I welcome my first guest, Douglas Thompson.

As well as numerous short stories in magazines and anthologies, Douglas Thompson is the author of seven novels: Ultrameta (2009) and Sylvow (2010) both from Eibonvale Press, Apoidea (2011) from The Exaggerated Press, Mechagnosis from Dog Horn (2012), Entanglement from Elsewhen Press (2012), and Volwys and Freasdal from Dog Horn and Acair Publishing respectively, due in late 2013/early 2014.

So, Douglas, what's your favourite fictional world?

That’s a tough one. It tends to send one’s brain off in sci fi directions I suppose, in which case I’d go for something by Ursula Le Guin for sure. Probably the two worlds she creates in The Dispossessed, one of the greatest books of the twentieth century in my opinion - not just in sci fi, but in literature generally. In the book there are two worlds described, a little like The Earth and The Moon. The first one is rich and basically Capitalist, but the second one has been settled by people who create an Anarchist society. Martin Bax, the editor of Ambit magazine told me to read it, which was weird because Ambit is a mainstream literary mag and I thought at that point I was a mainstream writer. But he told me I should write sci fi. I know the words of a visionary when I hear them, and genre boundaries and prejudice must die! Before I read the book I’d have thought the idea of an Anarchist society was some kind of joke... I’d heard that the Anarchist regiments in the Spanish Civil War were useless because nobody could agree who was giving orders! But one of the many, many extraordinary achievements of the book is that it meticulously demonstrates how an Anarchist society might actually work, and indeed ultimately be superior to either a Marxist or a free market model. It also demonstrates how censorship is most insidious of all in a supposedly free Capitalist society, because there the censorship becomes consensual and takes place inside everyone’s head even before they speak. What we call “political correctness” in its most extreme form, in America and Britain, is the
best example of this, and I think Le Guin foresaw this decades in advance. For instance, I suspect that my work has sometimes been rejected by American magazine editors for exactly this reason of political correctness. A little voice in their heads goes “Hey, might this offend someone?” and just to be on the safe side they turn it away with a lame excuse about plot or narrative to cover up their own fear. But I want to offend people. Indeed, it’s probably the only reason I write. At least in an oppressive Communist society, everyone could see the censorship and choose to keep their minds free, but when our minds themselves have become the censors, just where have we left to hide or to escape to?

I make it sound as if The Dispossessed is a dry political diatribe, but it is nothing of the sort. It is a hugely gripping and completely alive novel with deeply imagined characters and situations. It will make you laugh and cry. It is compassionate. Like all great sci fi, it is also a metaphor for own planet, which gives it at times an eerie déjà vu sort of feel, a magical mirror in which we see ourselves and what an exotic, beautiful and terrifying world we are living through.

To be a greatly entertaining writer in a book is one thing, but to also raise and answer big social and anthropological questions at the same time: this is what makes Ursula Le Guin one of the greatest thinkers and artists of our age. Incredible to relate, but I actually gave her a copy of my second novel Sylvow and to my astonishment she emailed me back in thanks a few weeks later... wouldn’t tell me what she thought of it though! Well, it’s enough just so speak to God once, isn’t it, and know she’s there and listening? Seriously, these things are uplifting... the realisation that your heroes are just people and that it might just be your turn one day if you can just stay humble, disbelieve your praise as much as the criticism, and keep on learning.

Douglas Thompson's short story, 'Multiplicity', is one of twenty-one weird and dark tales in the Impossible Spaces anthology - out now from Hic Dragones.

Thursday 1 August 2013

OUT NOW: Impossible Spaces (Hic Dragones, 2013)

edited by Hannah Kate


Blurb:

It doesn’t have to be this way…

Sometimes the rules can change. Sometimes things aren’t how they appear. Sometimes you can just slip through the cracks and end up… somewhere else. What else is there? Is there somewhere else, right beside you, if you could only reach out and touch it? Or is it waiting to reach out and touch you?

Don’t trust what you see. Don’t trust what you hear. Don’t trust what you remember. It isn’t what you think.

A new collection of twenty-one dark, unsettling and weird short stories that explore the spaces at the edge of possibility.

For more information about the book, please visit the publisher's website.

Contents:

Introduction by Hannah Kate
The Carrier by Daisy Black
Trading Flesh by Simon Bestwick
Etherotopia by Christos Callow Jr.
Mistfall by Jeanette Greaves
The Return of the Curse by Arpa Mukhopadhyay
I'd Lock it with a Zipper by Rachel Yelding
Nepenthes by Keris McDonald
Mindswitch by Chris Galvin Nguyen
Skin Laura Brown
Sharpened Senses by Richard Freeman
The Place of Revelation by Ramsey Campbell
Great Rates, Central Location by Hannah Kate
The Meat House by Maree Kimberley
The Voice Withn by Steven K. Beattie
Shadow by Margrét Helgadóttir
Unfamiliar by Almira Holmes
The Hostel by Nancy Schumann
New Town by Jessica George
Multiplicity by Douglas Thompson
Bruises by Tej Turner
Looking for Wildgoose Lodge by Tracy Fahey

Trailer:

Tuesday 16 July 2013

CFP: Ghosts, Gremlins and Jedi: Fantasy and Film in the Long 1980s

Manchester, United Kingdom
Friday 25th – Saturday 26th April 2014

Call for Papers


From sci-fi epic to swords and sorcery, from urban ghosts to time travel, fantasy dominated the cinema of the 1980s. Hand-in-hand with these wild flights of imagination came the rise of new technologies of spectatorship (particularly VHS and the home VCR) and dramatic political change in both the West and the East. This two-day conference aims to interrogate the place of fantasy in the history of the 1980s – its construction, context and legacy.

Abstracts are sought for 20-minute papers that consider any aspect of fantasy and film in the long 1980s (roughly understood as 1977-1992, though films that fall outside these dates may be considered). Topics may include, but are not limited to:

- Cinematography and special effects
- Soundtracks and music
- Gender and sexuality in fantasy
- The family in film
- Fantasy film in political and social contexts
- The end of the Cold War – fantasy in the run-up to 1989
- The video generation – technologies of viewing
- Spin-offs, tie-ins and novelizations
- Visions of the future
- Representations of technology
- Fantasy’s legacy – what came next?

Papers may consider individual films, or take a broader view of film and genre. Papers on non-Hollywood or non-Anglophone films are particularly welcome.

Please send abstracts (200-300 words) to Rob Shedwick by Tuesday 24th December 2013. Any enquiries should be sent to the same address.

This conference is organized by Hic Dragones. For more information about our work, and about past conferences, please visit the website.

Impossible Spaces Book Trailer

The video trailer for Impossible Spaces, published by Hic Dragones and edited by me! The music, written especially for the trailer, is by the awesome Digital Front.



The book is out on Friday July 19th. Check out the publishers’ website for more information.

Friday 5 July 2013

Giveaway: Two Books from MUP

The good people at Hic Dragones are giving away two titles from Manchester University Press. International entry welcome. Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.


Fred Botting, Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic
Horror isn’t what it used to be. Nor are its Gothic avatars. The meaning of monsters, vampires and ghosts has changed significantly over the last two hundred years, as have the mechanisms (from fiction to fantasmagoria, film and video games) through which they are produced and consumed. Limits of horror, moving from gothic to cybergothic, through technological modernity and across a range of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts, critically examines these changes and the questions they pose for understanding contemporary culture and subjectivity. Re-examining key concepts such as the uncanny, the sublime, terror, shock and abjection in terms of their bodily and technological implications, this book advances current critical and theoretical debates on Gothic horror to propose a new theory of cultural production based on an extensive discussion of Freud’s idea of the death drive. Limits of Horror will appeal to students and academics in Literature, Film, Media and Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory.

Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny
This study is of the uncanny; an important concept for contemporary thinking and debate across a range of disciplines and discourses, including literature, film, architecture, cultural studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis and queer theory. Much of this importance can be traced back to Freud's essay of 1919, "The Uncanny" (Das Unheimliche). Where he was perhaps the first to foreground the distinctive nature of the uncanny as a feeling of something not simply weird or mysterious but, more specifically, as something strangely familiar. As a concept and a feeling, however, the uncanny has a complex history going back to at least the Enlightenment. Royle offers a detailed historical account of the emergence of the uncanny, together with a series of close readings of different aspects of the topic. Following a major introductory historical and critical overview, there are chapters on the death drive, deja-vu, "silence, solitude and darkness", the fear of being buried alive, doubles, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy and madness, as well as more "applied" readings concerned, for example, with teaching, politics, film and religion.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Friday 24 May 2013

Win SIGNED copies of three amazing novels

Following on from their Twisted Tales of Cannibalism event in April, Hic Dragones has SIGNED copies of three fantastic novels to give away. Enter via Rafflecopter at the end of this post (international entry welcome).


Blonde on a Stick, by Conrad Williams
An extraordinary killer, the Four-Year-Old, has arrived in London, and is hell-bent on destruction. No sooner has PI Joel Sorrell been approached by the mysterious Kara Geenan, who is desperate to find her missing brother, than an attempt is made on his life. When Kara vanishes too, it becomes clear that this is no routine job. Something is casting a long, long shadow over the case, and Joel must travel north, to a past he was desperate to forget, in order to find out the truth. As those close to Joel are sucked into his nightmare, he knows he must track down the killer fast if he is to halt a grisly master plan - even if it means sacrificing his own life.

The Cannibal Spirit, by Harry Whitehead
George Hunt has a white father and a native mother. A shaman and chieftain among his people, the Kwagiulth, helplessly he has watched them die-from disease, warfare, alcohol, despair-as their world is besieged by the arrival of the twentieth century and the encroachments of the young country called Canada. Yet he is also an assistant to the famed anthropologist Franz Boas, and a collector of native artefacts for the white man's museums. He inhabits both worlds, looking in and looking out, at peace in neither. A bear of a man, he is imposing in body and intellect, yet prone to fits of wild rage. When his son dies of tuberculosis, and he insists on performing the funeral rites of his mother's people, George provokes the fury of the missionaries and the Indian Agents, and sets in motion a chain of events that forces him to defend what is most important to him; not only with blade and rifle in the remote fastness of the northern British Colombia coast, but also with his wits and precarious dignity in a Vancouver courtroom. Masterful, unforgettable, and utterly gripping, The Cannibal Spirit broods with nostalgia for a passing world and pounds with relentless tension. Based on the life of the real historical figure George Hunt, this astonishing evocation of the fog-wrapped forests of the northwest coast, and the heedless bustle of the arrival of modernity in the midst of an older, beleaguered way of life, tells the story of the grappling of two civilizations in the life of one man.

Habit, by Stephen McGeagh
Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job centre and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her ‘Uncle’ Ian, and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlour. After witnessing the violent death of one of the ‘punts’, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn’t understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below 7th Heaven, Michael’s life will never be the same again. Think Bret Easton Ellis. On a writing break in the north of England. And all he packed was Fight Club and some early Stephen King novels. Stephen McGeagh’s powerful debut will stay with you for a long time.

Enter the giveaway now...

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Tuesday 23 April 2013

Hic Dragones presents... A Night of Strange and Dark Fictions

as part of Prestwich Book Festival

Monday 27th May, 7.30pm
Prestwich British Legion (near Heaton Park tram station)
225 Bury Old Road
Prestwich M25 1JE

Tickets £6 (+ booking fee) in advance from the festival’s Eventbrite shop

Come and listen to some of the finest and strangest authors writing in the UK today. What do they have in common? They’ve all been published – at one stage or another – by North Manchester’s strangest publishing house, Hic Dragones. And they’re together in Prestwich for one night only.

Rosie Garland:
Manchester-based Rosie Garland has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in Goth band The March Violets to her well-loved stage persona Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins) is her debut novel.

Toby Stone:
Toby Stone is a Whitefield-based novelist who also teaches in North Manchester. Toby went to the same school as Batman (Christian Bale) and Benny Hill. As an adult, Toby has been a toy-seller, an Avon lady, double-glazing Salesman of the Week, a mortgage broker, a suspicious barman, a school governor and a bingo caller. Aimee and the Bear (Hic Dragones) is his first novel.

Also featuring readings from Hic Dragones anthology writers:

Simon Bestwick: acclaimed author of ‘modern masterpiece of horror’ The Faceless (Solaris)
Richard Freeman: writer and cryptozoologist
Jeanette Greaves: contributor to Wolf-Girls and Impossible Spaces
Nancy Schumann: author of Take a Bite, a history of female vampires in folklore and literature
Beth Daley: graduate of the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of Manchester
Daisy Black: writer, medievalist and heavy metal morris dancer

Your host for the evening will be Hannah Kate, ringmaster at the strange little circus that is Hic Dragones.

Plus… prizes to be won, a bookstall and a stall from Rock and Goth Plus


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Monday 22 April 2013

Call for Submissions: Hauntings: An Anthology

Short Story Submissions Wanted

A memory, a spectre, a feeling of regret, a sense of déjà vu, ghosts, machines, something you can’t quite put your finger on, a dark double, the long shadow of illness, your past, a nation’s past, your doppelgänger, a place, a song, a half-remembered rhyme, guilt, trauma, doubt, a shape at the corner of your eye, the future, the dead, the undead, the living, a grey cat, a black dog, a ticking clock, someone you used to know, someone you used to be.

We are all haunted.

Submissions wanted for a new anthology of short stories based around the theme of haunting.

What we want: Edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘haunting’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle. (And, please remember, we do not publish misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia or racism.)

Editor: Hannah Kate
Publisher: Hic Dragones

Word Count: 3000-7000
Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, story title and email address are included on the attachment. Email submissions to Hic Dragones. Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.

Submission Deadline: Thursday 31st October 2013

Payment: Contributor copy: 1 copy of paperback, eBook in ePub and/or mobi format; permanent 25% discount on paperback (resale permitted); 1 free eBook from our catalogue

For more information, see the publishers' website or email Hic Dragones

Important Information:
This is a non-paying market. Hic Dragones is currently a micro-press with plans to become a small press, and we acknowledge that this is not the market for everyone. We feel that what we offer – professional and thorough developmental editing and copy-editing, support and exposure (from IRL and virtual platforms) – will benefit emerging writers; however, we welcome submissions from more established writers (see previous anthologies). We value transparency and communication, so if you would like to know more about our business model, our background or our plans for the future, please email Hic Dragones or chat to us on Twitter or Facebook.