and here are the covers and listings for volume 2.
I am crazy excited about these books and can’t wait to see the finished covers!
2,1 Dawn of Demons Eric Scott
2,1 Shirtless in Antarctica Justin Brooks
2,1 The Girls from Humanji Adrian Tchaikovsky
2,1 The Sharks of Market Street Michael Ezell
2,1 The Weed Wife C Allegra Hawksmoor
2,1 Under the Green Witch Colin Sinclair
2,2 The Winter After Michael Nayak
2,2 Girls Day Out Bruce Lee Bond
2,2 Hope Street Dylan Fox
2,2 I was Here Anne Michaud
2,2 Savage Times Paul Starkey
2,2 The Thirteenth Hour Michael Trimmer
2,3 Bunker Buster Alec McQuay
2,3 Halcyon High Gita Ralleigh
2,3 The Dragons Maw Cheryl Morgan
2,3 The eternal quest of the girl with the corkscrew hair David Turnbull
2,3 The Unbroken Line Kim Bannerman
2,3 Were Stars to Burn Kara Lee
2,3 Vanquish N.O.A Rawle
Each of the ‘Girl’ books will be split into three loose sections as well as available with two cover options.
Here are the rough sketches from the artist for Vol 1 along with the contents, broken into sections but not yet an exact running order.
1,1 Antichristine James Bennett
1,1 Change of Address Rob Harkess
1,1 Coming Back Tracy Fahey
1,1 Skin James Oswald
1,1 The Borrowed Man James S Dorr
1,1 The End of the Garden Catherine Mann
1,1 The Ending Plague Andrew Reid
1,1 The Wife of Watsorous Nathan Lunt
1,2 A Sailor Girl Goes Ashore Margret Helgadottir
1,2 Blueprint for Redwings Ruth E J Booth
1,2 Demon Runner Dash Cooray
1,2 Little Daughter Dayna Ingram
1,2 Rolling in the Deep Cat Connor
1,2 Sophie and the Gate to Hell Carol Borden
1,2 The Glaciers Stone Alexander Danner
1,2 The Last Rushani Jonathan Ward
1,3 In the Absence John Perkins
1,3 Only So Far Adam Rodenberger
1,3 Saint Salima Alex Helm
1,3 Somebody to Play with Geraldine Clark Hellery
1,3 The Beast Within Christian D’Amico
1,3 Zompoc in Nashville K.A.Laity
1,3 All things Fall Chloe Yates
Drag is a broad concept; noir is a fairly narrow one. Drag can be a way of playing with gender or it can be a matter of survival. In the noir world, it can be almost anything: camouflage, deceit, truth — or a skin to be shed at will.
Otto Penzler has always been really strict in his idea of noir:
Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they’d be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let’s face it, they deserve it.
Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn’t find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I think noir ends up being a fairly bleak place — one where any bit of glamour or adopted power can be worth the gamble of discovery. It may even be worth flaunting it.
Can you tell who’s Dressed to Kill?
As RuPaul advises,”When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent.”
That’s what we want for DRAG NOIR: this is a call for stories where glamour meets grit, where everyone’s wearing a disguise (whether they know it or not) and knowing the players takes a lot more than simply reading the score cards. Maybe everyone’s got something to hide, but they’ve got something to reveal, too. Scratch the surface and explore what secrets lie beneath — it’s bound to cost someone…a lot.
Mercedes McCambridge in ‘A Touch of Evil’
An anthology is not a democracy; it’s a benevolent dictatorship. All editors have their tastes or quirks: if you want a clue to my sensibilities, check out my extensive bibliography and of course, read Weird Noir and Noir Carnival.
Stories should be:
Previously unpublished anywhere
Not submitted anywhere else
Length 3-8K
Formatted: Times New Roman, regular, 12 point; 1″ margins; 1 space after full stop; lines spaced 1.5; use paragraph formatting to indent first line not tabs; no header/footer
Identified with a title, your name (and pen name identified as such), working email address on the first page: file name should include your surname & the title
Submitted in RTF format via email to katelaity at gmail with your name, the story title and total word count included in the body of the email; make sure the Subject line includes “Submission: Drag Noir” + your name
Due by March 20, 2014.
We will ask for world-wide print & ebook rights for a year and pay £10 via Paypal plus a copy of the paperback. The fabulous Stephanie Johnson has been persuaded to create another fabulous cover image! We plan to launch the book in July 2014.
Nearly at the end of November and Fox and Fae just has a couple more minor processes to go through before we get it out to you at long last.
In the mean time the Second Fox Pocket ‘Shapeshifter’ has been released. It’s a dark little volume full of grim twisty tales. Grab it now at lulu!
We’ve also released our first Vulpes publication, ‘The Lost Second Book of Giganti’ which is available from amazon for an absolute bargain price. There are also a few of the hand leather bound limited editions available over at Spacewitch. We will be able to show you the gorgeous cover going on those very soon.
We also wanted to draw attention to a submission call over at Spectral Press. Spectral create gorgeous books that are a joy to own and read and we thought this one might be right up your street as writers and readers. After all, who can resist Industrial Horror!
‘You know how chance remarks made by someone often spark off ideas? This is just such a case. Over the weekend, horror writer extraordinaire Adam Nevill posited the idea of industrial horror, which set off a chain-reaction in the sparking brain matter of Simon Marshall-Jones and, after his twitching, writhing body had stilled, he proclaimed that he was going to put together and publish an anthology of such stories. ‘ Read more over at the Spectral site.
A quick update as we fall inexorably towards November.
It is our plan to get three titles out this November. The first ever Vulpes publication, a translation of Giganti’s 1608 manual on fencing is due on the 15th. In addition both the second volume of Bushy Tales ‘Tales of the Fox and Fae’ and the second Fox Pocket ‘Shapeshifters’ are due out next month.
It’s going to be a busy few weeks at Fox HQ and all being well by the end of November we will be feeling a bit like this.
Yesterday was international talk like a pirate day and I said on twitter i’d explain the story of what happened last year and how it lead to pockets.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin.
On last years international talk like a pirate day we launched a flash fiction competition for stories about pirates. The three winners would be posted on the site (you can find them under ‘books/free fiction’) and would receive a prize, a book if I recall correctly.
So that was simple enough but after a little while it seemed a shame to have such good stories just on the site and especially as the close running fourth story would never be seen. I talked it over with my copy editor and we decided a small volume of flash fiction might be fun. We could get in some additional stories and put it out cheap and call it Piracy’. It would have no restrictions of interpretation or genre other than the title. Also while we are at it, if we are going to do a pocket book like that why not do a bunch of them, on different loose subjects, that’ll be fun right?
And so it went. So you see a bunch of people going ‘arr’ on the internet is how we got to Fox Pockets. By next international talk like a pirate day almost all of them will have been released so we shall perhaps do another competition to celebrate.
The long anticipated Tales of Eve is now available from Amazon, Wizards Tower and Spacewitch, all our usual avenues.
Edited by Mhairi Simpson Eve sets out to explore what women really want and what they will do to get it.
Weird Science, Stepford Wives, that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer… Genre fiction abounds with tales of men creating (or attempting to create) the perfect woman.
Now it’s the woman’s turn. But being female, she’s flexible. She doesn’t just want to create the perfect man. She wants the perfect companion, be it man, beast or washing machine.
Fox Spirit is pleased to announce that we have arranged to hold a celebration WEIRD NOIR CARNIVAL at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany. For those unfamiliar with it, Bouchercon is a moveable feast celebrating the very finest in crime and mystery writing. Consider it the Woodstock for writers in the genre. It runs from the 19th to the 22nd of September in Albany, NY. Guests of honour include Sue Grafton, Anne Perry, Tess Gerritsen and many many more big names (and small!).
Friday afternoon at 1:30 PM we will be holding the “WEIRD NOIR CARNIVAL” with readings, promotional items and some giveaways! Join editor K. A. Laity, and authors Jan Kozlowski and Chris L. Irvin (and maybe some surprise guests!) for the fun and get weird, get noir.
Follow Bouchercon on Facebook — and if you haven’t already done so, drop by our Fox Spirit page and give us a like!
I’m finally losing it. I’ve spent so long searching for clues
Jo Jo the Dog Faced boy and the bearded lady
that I’m starting to make things up in my head. Why did it
have to happen? I think for the millionth time, tears pricking
at the corner of my eyes. I hurry back to my cold apartment,
where I dig into my coat pocket to find the keys. My fingers
rub against a scrap of paper and I pull it out. The paper
is thick and brown, the letters gilded: Invite to the Feast of
Fools. There’s no address. It’ll be some stupid street act, I
think, stuffing the paper back into my pocket and drawing
out the keys.
I sleep badly, disturbed by strange sounds. Someone outside
must be having a party. The noises seem to seep into the
room. They slide about the walls, scuttling into my ears and
around my brain.
I wake feeling fuzzy and dry-mouthed – the hint of a
hangover – and with a nagging thought: what if there was
something more to that grey figure? What if she was trying
to tell me something… about Stella? Come on, Tom, I scold
myself. She was just some crazy peddler.
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