From the pen of K.A. Laity the genius behind Con-Eire comes the first in a series of uncannily accurate short audio pieces by your very own Aunty and Mr Fox.
Some of you actually asked for this, I hope you are ashamed of yourselves!
Enjoy… and do check out the rest of the youtube channel where these will be going up along with other bits n bobs.
Dublin 2019 World Con will be full of floof! It even includes a performance by the Fox Spirit Skulk Players!
CON-EIRE
A love letter to the people who do the thankless work behind the scenes at SFF cons everywhere!
It’s three days before the start of ConEIRE, the best Irish-themed science fiction and fantasy con in the tri-state area, when a phone call sets the entire Convention Committee into panic mode. Is Big Name Writer going to pull out at the last minute? What does Very Famous Artist have to do with that decision? And what do the fairies have to say about all this? Follow the hilarious mishaps as the committee members work desperately to salvage months of planning and hard work, all of which are about to be undone by a well-known prima donna.
Content warning: may include discussions of suicide and self-harm, mental illness and ableism, eating disorders.
Mental health used well can drive a story, create believable motives for characters and even greater awareness amongst the audience. However, these issues are not always treated sensitively or realistically. This panel will explore examples of mental health issues in genre fiction and consider their implications and accuracy.
There is loads of FREE content for you to enjoy on our website.
At the moment the front page has a sampler of the opening pages of each of our summer releases.
You can buy Fearless Genre Warriors for £0.00 in our ebook store and get a substantial collection of short stories from our first few years of publishing.
We have music! Yes actual properly recorded songs, how many publishers give you that?
Lots of short stories are published on our free fiction page for you to download and enjoy and there are more in the skulk members area if you ‘join the skulk‘ below. The members area also gives you discounts in the eshop and other goodies.
There is even a bit of video up all for your enjoyment and all it costs is a few moments of your time.
After all that, there is of course the blog, full of great content from guest posts and Hugo nominee Alasdair Stuart’s ‘Not the Fox News’.
Indulge. Download the stories to take away and read at leisure. Tell your friends and send them over if they are looking for something new to read. The House of Fox has you covered.
Fox Spirit is Seven! How did that happen?!
Did you know there’s an ebook store right here? And that you can use coupon code ‘skulkis7‘ to celebrate our 7th birthday with 25% off throughout June!! What are you waiting for?
It’s a milestone that makes you thoughtful. Shakespeare talked about the ‘seven ages’ of human life in his ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech. The first is birth which he describes as
At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Fox Spirit managed to avoid that unpleasantry: it was born with a song in its heart, a laugh in its mouth and a pub on its mind — the Nun & Dragon. It was meant to be a one off, but here we are seven years later! Which in Bill’s words means:
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
I suppose we can see a little bit of that: hands up skulk members who would rather be writing/drawing/plotting than creeping to our jobs and other duties? Yes, you can put your hands down now. We itch to have the luxury of time, but there are always new responsibilities. In the mean time we can remember that we are yet young and have so many ways to grow.
What will the next anniversary bring? More books? More multimedia efforts? Games? Skulk Island? World Domination?
Time alone will tell — but the skulk has ambitions, you can bet your floof on that. All kudos to our fearless leader Adele!
I have an old rhyme in my head lately, so forgive the title. Still, did you know we have our own ebook store now? Sporting almost all of our titles?
There are some exceptions.
Our HEMA titles under the Vulpes line; the Giganti, Alfieri and Docciolini do not lend themselves to e-versions.
Our poetry titles, Multiverse by Jan Siegel, And the Fox Crows by V.C. Linde and The Velocity of Constant by Hardeep Sangha, likewise make such a feature of the formatting we decided to offer them in paperback only.
Of course the FS Books of Monsters, touring the world continent by continent to explore the darkest lurking terrors, are designed as coffee table books and will only be released as paperbacks.
Beyond that we have a few titles left to get caught up with:
Respectable Horror, Starfang vols 2&3, the last five fox pockets, and You Left Your Biscuit Behind, will all be joining the site soon, along with our new releases.
Check it out, there isn’t a single book over £3.99, we will be doing some value bundles for £9 coming online in due course and if you Join the Skulk at the bottom of this site you can claim 10% of every basket.
And if that isn’t enough! Our Buy Stuff page has links to other amazing small presses, art and merchandise by some of the artists we have worked with, quick links to find our books on Amazon and more.
The best thing about our own estore, is even more of the money you spend goes to the authors you love!
Well 2019 is well upon us and as you may have noticed our first title is out. I am very excited to release our first collection of fully furry stories, and I hope we have done justice to the genre and the community. I grew up on Wind in the Willow and Redwall so to be able to venture into furry tales for an adult audience is a great source of personal joy.
Of course I am just as excited about the rest of the years releases for all sorts of reasons. I thought we would give you some idea of what’s coming.
Up very shortly we have Pseudopod Tapes 2, the second volume of Alasdair Stuart’s outro essays. If you aren’t familiar with the show you should be and you can also find Alasdair here providing our Not the Fox News.
Graham Wynd has a collection of deliciousness in ‘Love is a Grift’ and Jonathan Ward’s Caleuche is also due out this year.
We have a set of three collections by Anne Michaud, the sequel to Hobgoblin’s Herald, Eater of Names by Andrew Aston and Like Wheels for Wings by Ren Warom amongst other things, including the second part of our tour of American Monsters.
We have just launched our own ebook store so you can buy direct in mobi and epub. You can get links to our books on amazon, other small presses we recommend and art over on our buy links too.
On top of an exciting set of publications we have also replaced the old newsletter with two new formats. A Foxy Bulletin for those interested in writing for us, which offers a quick break down of new releases and some of the thinking that went into our choices. We also invite you to join the Skulk and be part of our foxy family, getting your paws on exclusives!
I have been watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and I have been watching book twitter argue up a storm, helped by inflammatory comments by a newspaper blogger.
The implication has been that Marie Kondo is telling people to get rid of their books, to only keep a few and that this is monstrous. This was not my interpretation.
Firstly though, I have not in fact read the book, I just put the show on as soothing background. I then attacked my own clothing hoard and about halved it. I feel better for that. I was hanging on to a lot of stuff that I never expect to slim back into, largely because being size 12 is no longer an ambition. I am 41 and more concerned with my blood pressure being acceptable than my size. I put some things that I love but that are too small for me away safely, I also got rid of some stuff that honestly if i do ever fit them again I don’t expect to want to wear. It makes me happy.
I have no intention of going through my books. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that we don’t have a room big enough for all the books to be in at the same time. The other is that books inherently bring me joy. I don’t bring books into the house that I find upsetting or offensive and outside of those instances books are a thing of joy to me.
Marie Kondo keeps around 30 books in her home. She does not suggest this is the right number for you. In fact what I enjoyed about the show is at no point does she tell people they have too much of a specific thing (although some of the couples bicker about that).
There were two episodes that dealt with books in a significant way to my mind. One was a widow who obviously needed help giving herself permission to get rid of all her husbands cowboy paperbacks. There was a huge bookcase taken over by these books that were clearly just making her feel bad and she had no interest in reading them. Marie gently ‘woke’ all the books (I understand this comes from her background with Shinto). I thought that was a lovely thing and if I ever get around to reorganising all my books I will take a few moments to wake them. Why not. She then essentially gave her client the ok to get rid of all the debris of a life she was no longer living.
The other episode Marie visited a lovely couple where both guys were writers of various sorts. Although they didn’t have nearly enough books for my taste to begin with, they were hanging on to old text books and things they weren’t really attached to any more and they let some go. One of them actually had a much harder time letting go of every piece of paper he had ever written on.
So all in all, I think there has been a lot of excited outrage at something that hasn’t been said and may not be what is actually intended. So what does that say about us? Why would the idea of getting rid of books be so abhorrent. Lots of people get rid of books. I have been book fairy to many a village and school event and charity shop, and my home is still over run. I am pretty sure at this point there aren’t many left I don’t want, that don’t for whatever reason spark joy. It would be a huge job to accept getting rid of three more books.
The shared horror at the KonMarie suggestion of actually addressing the books we have made me wonder, what are we pushing back against? Why does book twitter care so much about what other people do with their books.
As someone said, this is not the firemen from 451 bursting into your home to destroy the written word, it’s an elfin Japanese lady telling you very gently, through her translator, that your books should bring you joy. To be honest, that is a message I am on board with.
It’s Christmas Eve, so we are just going to remind you what has been covered so far this month.
December 1st – We gave a quick run down of some of the Fox Spirit titles available that we would define as winter reading.
December 2nd – Sarah Daniels gave us short reviews of five beautiful children’s books for Christmas.
December 3rd – Anna Thomas does short reviews of her five favourites by Japanese Writers, read in 2018
December 4th – Adrian Reynolds reviews The Motion of Light in Water
December 5th – We check out Children of Artifice and it’s author Danie Ware as they get the spotlight on a new writing blog.
December 6th – Michelle Fry does five favourites in brief including the Fabulous Juliet McKenna.
December 7th – Penny Jones reviews Priya Sharma’s new collection of horror shorts.
December 8th – Five top December reads in brief from Lynn E. O’Connacht.
December 9th – Penny Jones returns to take a look at Tracy Fahey’s latest collection.
December 10th – Highlights James Bennett, regular skulk member and author of the Ben Garston series.
December 11th – Fave Five Anthologies by Jenny Barber, who has edited some of ours.
December 12th – Carol Goodwin reviews The Enclave by Anne Charnock
December 13th – S. Naomi Scott takes a look at Fox Spirit title Emily Nation by Alec McQuay
December 14th – Carol Goodwin reviews a collection of short Shadow of the Apt tales by the lovely Adrian Tchaikovsky
December 15th – Kim Bannerman reviews Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms, by Eugenia Bone
December 16th – Carol Goodwin reviews Jan Edwards’ Defender, book two of Hive Mind
December 17th – Jenny Barber reviews Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
December 18th – Review by S. Naomi Scott of Kindred by Octavia Butler
December 19th – Penny Jones looks at Laura Mauro’s Naming the Bones
December 20th – Spotlight on K. Bannerman with Damien Seaman
December 21st – Part one of Penny Jones’ examination of tradition.
December 22nd – Part two of Penny Jones’ examination of traditions
December 23rd – Part three of Penny Jones’ examination of traditions
And on CHRISTMAS DAY we have a fabulous short story by K.A. Laity so pop by and read Soot.
Just a reminder that for every post not written by Aunty Fox, we are donating £5 to http://www.booktrust.org/ to help give some kids a happier new year, so thank you to everyone who took part in this years Christmas Countdown.
We hope those of you visiting the blog found something new to enjoy too.
Today we turn the spotlight on another skulk member and sometime werewolf, Kim Bannerman.
Kim was recently interviewed over at Damien Seaman’s writing blog, it’s a good in depth interview and well worth a read.
There is also an in depth review of Kim’s latest novel, an Austen inspired tentacle romance, ‘Love & Lovecraft‘.
Here at Fox Spirit we have adored Kim since our pre publishing days when we reviewed ‘The Tattooed Wolf’. So treat yourself to one of K. Bannerman’s titles this Christmas for something a little less ordinary.
Even the Skulk are not immune. In Kettutalo we must lay in provisions and asses our assets to survive the long winter.
What this means is we will not be reopening submissions for fiction during 2019 and in all probability 2020. We have lots of great books coming, next year in particular is a busy one so please don’t worry, there are many many books to come, including several planned titles for a new non fiction line.
We are closing submissions so we can get caught up, take stock and plan properly moving into the future. A stronger, better, though perhaps less prolific Fox Spirit is coming.
We are sorry we will not be able to take on any more wonderful books for a while, it is always hard to turn down projects that we want to do, but right now we need to take a moment, refocus and ensure the long term future of Fox Spirit Books and the Skulk.
Vulpes and FoxGloves are not affected and we are not cancelling any existing plans, including the launch of thee Darwin’s Fox non fiction line.
As for what to read in the meantime, we have over 70 titles out, many of them available as ebooks on kindle, and in January we will be making ebooks available right here on the website. We may even do some bundles.
There will be foxy merch by agreement with certain artists and we will continue to promote the many wonderful artists and authors we work with. There will be sequels and series and a few new titles we have already said yes to. There will be blog series and newsletters and plenty of alternative fox.
We are going to have a very busy couple of years, we just won’t be opening to submissions during them.
Thank you to everyone who has worked with us and supported us, we hope you will continue this journey with us.
Always your Aunty Fox.
