Fox Blog

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World Book Day

It’s world book day today. All over the place kids are going to school dressed as their favourite characters. Aunty Fox has even loaned out her tail for the event. World Book Day makes me think of sitting in the space under my bunk bed (behind the inbuilt cupboards) with a lamp and a book as a kid, or reading a novel inside a science text book when I was supposed to be revising. It makes me think of the table of indie books I had the honour of manning at NineWorlds last year. Most importantly it makes me think of stories and the pleasure they bring.

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There are people who believe that fiction must try to be improving to have value. I disagree. I think we cannot help but be improved and enriched by the sharing of stories, so in fiction writers should be trying to tell the best story they can. What we are trying to do at Fox Spirit is share some of the stories that capture our imagination, that enrich us, with everyone out there.

So this world book day eat cake for breakfast, read something you enjoy and tell someone about a book you love!

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Awards Season

Awards season has well and truly started and we hope you will forgive us a moment of vanity as we ask for your support.

Our own Joan De La Haye (Shadows, Requiem in E Sharp, Oasis, Burning) is up for an award in the South African Indies for ‘Burning’. We couldn’t be prouder and if you had a moment to support that would be very wonderful of you. Voting is open now.

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Also at the moment the British Fantasy Society are taking suggestions for their shortlist. We were surprised and delighted to be shortlisted for Best Anthology and Best Small Press last year and if you like what we are doing we would be really pleased* to have your nomination this year.

* massive understatement.

You can check out when our books were published here.

***Bouchercon Voters: Eligible crime releases include
ANTHOLOGY: Drag Noir ed. K. A. Laity
COLLECTION: Extricate/Throw the Bones by Graham Wynd
NOVEL: White Rabbit by K. A. Laity
SHORT STORIES:

Any/all of the DRAG NOIR stories
“Headless in Bury.” Missing Monarchs: Fox Pockets Anthology
“Smallbany.” Short story. Free promotional story for Drag Noir from Fox Spirit Books

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J. Damask series cover reveals

A little while ago we published the third in J Damask’s ‘Xan Ju’ series ‘Heart of Fire’ with this stunning cover by S.L. Johnson

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We are delighted to say that we subesquently obtained the rights for the previous two novels and will be re releasing them shortly and S.L. Johnson has returned to give them a wonderful look as a series!

Obsidian Moon Obsidian EyewebWe love these striking covers with their nod to Warhol and look forward to bringing you the books this spring.

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Winter Tales – Submission Call

Frost pierces through everything. Your bones ache in the icy wind. Harsh winter storms rage and the sun is leaving, not to return for many months. Winter seems to never end. There is however beauty and magic. The snow covered pine trees reaching for the sky, the green northern lights dancing over the mountains, the wolf packs howling at the moon, and the snow crystals glinting like stars in the pale moonlight. When the temperatures drop, people and creatures gather around the camp fires to share warmth, friendship and tales, to chase away the frost and try to ignore the terrifying creatures lurking in the darkness.

We are now collecting winter tales, to drive away the grim winter and bring you the wonders and magic of the season. Fox Spirit Books will publish the Winter Tales anthology in the beginning of 2016. The anthology will be edited by Margrét Helgadóttir. We want unusual and elegant speculative fiction stories with full plot and strong characters. We are seeking diversity. The stories can be light with a touch of romance or humour, or dark and terrifying. Stories about creatures, monsters, animals and shapeshifters are welcome. The stories can be within speculative subgenres such as the weird, fables or folkloric, magical realism, adventure, dystopian, cyberpunk, mystery or fantastic, but we ask that the stories take place on Earth and have the winter as frame. Poetry is welcome. We are not looking for nonfiction or fanfiction. We are not looking for satire, erotica, paranormal romance, splatter or overly gory stories.

Submission details

Submission deadline: June 15th 2015. Response will be given by end of October 2015 at the latest. The manuscript must be written in English. Stories should be 1500 words up to 7500 words. Any stories below or above this will not be considered, with the exception of poems which should be no longer than 30 lines. In this instance we are not accepting graphic stories for submission. No multiple submissions, simultaneous submissions, or reprints. We do not want stories that have appeared on your blog or other public websites for this anthology E-mail your submission to narjegerredaktor at gmail dot com. Put SUBMISSION WINTER TALES as the subject of your email. The submission email must contain your real name, your writing name if different, the title and word amount of your submission, and a 100 words bio. There is no need for a submission letter other than this.

Document title should have the story name and your name or initials for easy identification. Documents must be in .docx or .doc (word), or .rtf (rich text) formats. The story document itself needs your name and email at the top, then the title of the story and the name you want it publishing under followed by the text of the story. Please format your document according to the guidelines on the submissions page at Fox Spirit Books.

Payment and rights Fox Spirit is a small independent press and at present we can only offer a token payment of £10 for stories with a copy of the print book and a copy of the ebook. We are looking for twelve months exclusivity from the submission deadline and details of rights are on the Fox Spirit submissions page (https://www.foxspirit.co.uk/sample-page/submissions). If you have any questions, send email to: narjegerredaktor at gmail dot com

Happy writing!

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Monday Methods : Alec McQuay

Alec’s book ‘Emily Nation’ is officially released in paperback TODAY! Post apolcayptic Cornwall, an alcoholic assassin, a mysterious benefactor…

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Now here is Alec with a Monday Method for you all.
Monday methods!

I thought I’d start by summing up my writing environment in one neat little picture. In the background you can see what I like to call organised chaos, but what everyone else at work thinks of as an unholy mess. They’d probably be right, and if I had to submit a metaphorical picture of the inside of my brain, a big heap of bits of paper, probably teetering on the verge of falling over and crushing me to death, would about do it. I’m not the organised kind in anything that I do. You want a wedding planned for next June amidst the softly swaying trees of rural Pembrokeshire? Nope, can’t help you. Oh, the shit just hit the fan, the doves are attacking the guests, the priest is stuck at the bottom of a well, the venue (a busy roundabout) is on fire and you have to get married within the hour or you’ll turn back into an ornamental bedside lamp? Well hold on to your fucking petticoats,  you’ve come to the right place…

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I’ve got a full time job, two kids, three cats, a dog and more hobbies than I can shake a stick at, and I still find the time to write. That doesn’t make me special though, if you ever find yourself at a convention (try Edge Lit in Derby, tis a good ‘un) you’ll find out this is quite close to the norm. We all have our ways of getting it done, and this is mine. It’s all about controlling my environment, and the way I do that is really simple. I stay up really late when everyone else is sleeping, pour myself a huge brew the colour of Black Beard’s shaded parts, crank up the tunes to FUCK YOU, EARDRUMS! type levels and get typing. A lot of people can’t write to music; personally I find it’s best to avoid anything you’d normally sing along to, avoid rap as the music is heavily dependent on the words and, for preference, opt for a band with a vocalist whose indecipherable singing you can’t understand anyway. Keeps the distractions to a minimum, but you can still stop to shred an air-guitar solo every now and then. That’s a given. There’s no-one around, I can’t hear anything that I didn’t put there to be heard and the whole world is kept at arm’s length while I try and turn the internal chaos into something resembling a story.

Sometimes it actually works.

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Fox Bites, First Bite

We had our first ‘open mic’ reading event at Leicester’s Cafe Malveen last Saturday and I think we are calling that a success! The Cafe turned over enough in coffee and cake to invite us back and six local authors read for five minutes from six very different books.

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Fox Bites isn’t aimed at just Fox Spirit writers, it’s aimed at all the local writers who want to practice reading or try a piece on a live audience, a nice friendly audience of people who love books.

It ran smoothly with three readings, a five minute coffee break and three more readings. The readings were all well delivered and warmly received and in between there was a pleasant babble of conversation, people catching up with each other and meeting other local writers/readers.

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We will be providing the footage of the readings to the readers for distribution on their own sites. We’ve also put together a facebook group where we will post details of readers and their stories each month.

If you would like to be at the next Leicester Fox Bites or would like to bring Fox Bites to your city please contact me at adele@ foxspirit.co.uk for information.

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Monday Methods : Phil Thorogood

The Most Important Tool

In the past year, I have been a rider of dragons, a war-weary veteran, a brilliant but slightly psychotic rogue, and a genetically-enhanced post-human killing machine. Before you back away slowly, keeping eye contact and trying not to make any sudden movements, I’ll let you in on a secret – you’ve probably been some of those too. At the very least, I guarantee that you’ll not have been yourself at some point in this past year.

What I’m talking about is a writer’s most important tool; not a word processor, as some of you might answer that question. Not a notepad constantly on their person, nor passion, or even an editor (sorry editors), though they are all admittedly important in their own rights. The tool I’m talking about is super compact, totally mobile and (hardly ever) runs out of power. I am, of course, talking about the potential of the human mind, or more specifically, imagination, one of the most underrated gifts we are all given.

from 'How to Train your Dragon'
from ‘How to Train your Dragon’

Now, some of you will claim not to have an imagination, or that someone you know doesn’t own one. I put to you that that claim is false. What happens when you think of what to have for dinner tonight? When you plan an outing to the zoo with your friends or family? While you’re reading a good book? Imagination happens. Whether you actively realise it or not, all the time you are imagining things, and it is this gift that a writer makes use of the most.

As a writer, we imagine what would happen to X if they chose not to Y, as everyone else would expect them to. We wonder how the world would be different if historical events hadn’t occurred. Not only this, but we rely utterly on imagination even after the story has been written – when a reader picks it up, we count on their imagination to conjure up the action that we have penned, and they trust us to lead their thoughts into the realm of fiction.

So join me, now, in petitioning the government to make this day World Imagination Appreciation Day! …or just take a moment every now and then to acknowledge the gift that we are all given, either’s good.

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The Stars Seem So Far Away

This Valentines Day we are delighted to offer something much better than chocolates or flowers. A new shiny book!

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‘Margret Helgadottir’s kinetic prose immerses the reader in a future woven from the threads of Nordic history, studded with jewels pillaged from our mythic past.’
– Damien Walter, Columnist for The Guardian
‘Finely observed, beautifully written; Margret Helgadottir’s stories have the chill brightness of new myth. She is a writer to watch.’
– Adam Roberts
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Foxy Friday: Kathryn ‘Kit’ Marlowe

Top Five Medieval(ish) Movies

The Lion in Winter

What’s not to love? Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, Nigel Terry, Timothy Dalton, and the debut of Anthony Hopkins, a real medieval castle and a whole lot of family drama – and not just any family! Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women to ever live, going toe-to-toe with her second husband Henry II over which of their sons will become king. Bonus: the poignant evocation of the overlooked middle child, Geoffrey (sob!).

Anchoress

A gorgeous film that shows exactly why a medieval teen girl might decide to become an anchoress, which means being walled into the side of a church. Sounds mad, right? But to know that you wouldn’t be forced to work in the fields or to marry a man much older than you – plus everyone suddenly thinks your important and holy. Bonus: Christopher Eccleston is the priest.

Hrafninn Flygur/The Raven Flies

This is an Icelandic film; director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson wanted to use the Viking sagas to create a set of films that had the appeal of a spaghetti western. The film succeeds in the same fun sense of adventure. It doesn’t borrow directly from any one saga but uses familiar tropes of revenge, masculine one-upsmanship, the conflict between the Norse gods followers and Christians, and the divided loyalties of former slaves who become wives. Bonus: Icelandic horses are awesome albeit tiny and who knew there were Vatican ninjas?

Kristen Lavransdatter

Directed by the legendary Liv Ullman, this sumptuous film captures a good sense of how disruptive modern notions of love would be in the Middle Ages. Kristen’s mother offers a realistic picture of the reality of marriage as something one grew into when there were no other options. The film shows how the convent was really just as much a girls school as any modern one, with the same furtive conversations about sex and religion. Bonus: it’s so beautiful!

The Wife of Bath

This is a bit of a cheat: it’s a modernisation of Chaucer’s tale but it’s just so good (all the films in this BBC series range from good to extraordinary). Julie Walters plays the wife as an aging soap star who falls for a younger man after he joins the show. She’s larger than life and bawdy as they come, just like the original. The main story is the Prologue and her many marriages, while the plot of the soap borrows from the Tale (which is quite clever! Well done, Sally Wainwright). Bonus: Bill Nighy!

I could name a lot more but these will get you started.

Kathryn ‘Kit’ Marlowe is a writer of historical fiction, often with a good bit of humour. There are those who say she’s secretly an English professor who writes under other names. You can find her on Facebook, too. Her lovely author portrait was created by the fabulous artist S. L. Johnson.

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