Fox Blog

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Piracy Yarr!

The full line up of authors for the first Fox Pocket Piracy in no particular order:

Emma Teichmann – Silvermelt

Jenny Barber – Past Lives

Christian D’Amico – Insurgent

Den Patrick – Becalmed

Kit Marlowe – Black Ethel’s Beast

Francesca Terminiello – Plunder

T.F.Grant – Geronimo

Chloe Yates – Leave the Pistol Behind

Rahne Sinclair – No Quarter

Margret Helgadottir – Nora

K.C.Shaw – Skyway

Ruth Booth – The Real Deal

Catherine Hill – The Trouble with Daydreams

Asher Wismer – True to the Song

S.J. Caunt – X Marks the Spot

Rob Haines – Pieces of 2^3

I’m really excited about this series and we have great stories taking piracy from a child’s mind, to the high seas and straight onto mind jacking. We have strange beasts and the penalty for stealing dreams.

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Fox Central: The one for voyeurs

For those of you with voyeuristic tendencies, i’ve just finished moving the office upstairs and getting it straight. I still have pictures to frame and hang and obviously most of the bookshelves are in the rest of the house. Still here it is, the heart of the Den.

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Books, my teenage mutant turtle toy bin and a Victorian china cabinet full of action figures and such. Oh and a cat bed.

foxden4Moving round to the right, umm, a scratching post, more bookshelves and my world map (being populated with tiny black foxes).

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My Bureau. This belonged to my grandfather and in it you can almost see his gorgeous portable typewriter all tucked away.

foxden2My computer desk which the printer will go on and the top of my ‘office’ chair, which is actually an old rocking chair. So that’s it. How publishing empires are built. 😉

 

 

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Call for Stories: Noir Carnival

This is also up at awesome editor Kate Laity’s site

We are also planning on bringing Weird Noir cover artist S.L.Johnson back on for this project.

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A call for stories from Fox Spirit Books, publishers of Weird Noir and many more superb volumes.

Dark’s Carnival has already left town, but it’s left a fetid seed behind. There’s a transgressive magic that spooks the carnies and unsettles the freaks. Beyond the barkers and the punters, behind the lights and tents where the macabre and the lost find refuge, there’s a deformity that has nothing to do with skin and bones. Where tragic players strut on a creaking stage, everybody’s going through changes. Jongleurs and musicians huddle in the back. It seems as if every one’s running, but is it toward something—or away?

Carnival: whether you picture it as a traveling fair in the back roads of America or the hedonistic nights of the pre-Lenten festival where masks hide faces while the skin glories in its revelation, it’s about spectacle, artificiality and the things we hide behind the greasepaint or the tent flap. Lead us on a journey into that heart of blackened darkness and show us what’s behind the glitz.

Touchstones (to give you a sense of the breadth of the net cast):

John Webster’s “skull beneath the skin” • Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love • Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus • Gargantua & Pantagruel • Pinocchio (the novel! Not the Disney atrocity) • Papa Lazarou • Doctor Lau • Ray Bradbury’sSomething Wicked This Way Comes • Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal • Leonor Fini

Surprise me, delight me, make me afraid of the shadows of a warm summer night, rip my guts out and stuff them back in again. Just don’t bore me. 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.

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. Spaced 1.5 lines. Use paragraph formatting to indent first line nottabs. 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 & title
  • Submitted in RTF format via email to katelaity at gmail with at least your name, the story title and total word count included in the body of the email; make sure the Subject line includes “Submission: Noir Carnival” + your name
  • Due by Walpurgisnacht

We will ask for world-wide print & ebook rights for a year and pay $10 via Paypal as an advance against the royalties to be split with the publisher. We plan to launch the book at EDGE-Lit in Derby in July 2013.

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Announcing – 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf

You may have spotted mutterings and rumours about this, but I am pleased to formally announce that Fox Spirit will be publishing ’25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf’ a YA novel by Jo Thomas (@journeymouse) later this year.

I’m delighted Jo will be joining us at Fox Spirit, she has written an unusual and entertaining novel that is perfect for readers who prefer their werewolves to be primal killers and who like their heroines smart and capable.

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Cover reveal for Blood Bound

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We have kept this one a bit quiet really but in April we are delighted to be releasing a novella by the wonderful Sarah Cawkwell.

Sarah opened Tales of the Nun & Dragon with ‘The Ballad of Gilrain’ which we loved so much we made her write an actual ballad which was recorded by Under a Banner.

Blood Bound is a more traditional fantasy with the wit and tight story telling that is typical of Sarah as well as wonderful characters I hope she will revisit at some point.

Blood Bound

‘Agreement is made this night between Jareth De’Roth and Taryanderon ap Pallerion. For the successful procurement and return of the item (as
 described) in its original state and undamaged, the promised and most generous payment will be made in full. Should this contract be broken, the
 consequences will be most severe. By signing this oath, you acknowledge your full and complete understanding of these terms.’

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Fox Pockets

FS big thing 72

 

A look at the first three Fox Pocket covers, so you can see the what a gorgeous set of books they are going to be.

Cover art by Sarah Anne Langton

Don’t forget these will have a rolling closing date. The first volume Piracy closes on the 14th March 2013 and the second volume will be Shapeshifters. Closing date will be set after the 14th March, but get your submissions in.

Full details are at the bottom of the submissions page.

 

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Tales of the Fox & Fae cover reveal

It is a thing of beauty is it not? The cover is designed to fit with the style of Nun & Dragon and is by Vincent Holland-Keen.

fox-and-fae front-cover-1

 

The book will contain stories by Chloe Yates, Andrew Reid, James Bennett, Cat Connor, Geraldine Clark Hellery, Peter Ray Allison, a comic strip by Jasper Bark, Margrét Helgadóttir, Alec McQuay, Haralambi Markov, T.F. Grant

 

 

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Fox Pockets!

Fox Pockets is a series of small books (4.25″x6.87″) containing around a dozen flash length short stories in perfect pocket sized editions.

Fox Pockets will provide a quick, inexpensive introduction to the kind of authors we work with and the type of stories we love. The books will contain a mix of horror, sci fi, fantasy and crime and their many sub genres and will be organised around loose themes. Fox Pockets will be collected flashes of inspiration, rather than full short story anthologies.

Cover art will be by the talented and fabulous Sarah Anne Langton who is working to create an image for the collection as well as giving each book its own identity.

There will be ten Fox Pockets in total over 2013 and 2014, released every two to three months.

To celebrate the release of the fist Fox Pocket in April two pocket foxes have been commissioned from the very talented Emily (@foresthouse)

The subjects will be (in no fixed order):

Piracy

Missing Monarchs

Shapeshifters

Guardians

Under the Waves

In an Unknown Country

Things in the Dark

The Evil Genius Guide

Reflections

Piercing the Veil

Due to the small size the books will be available as paperbacks from Lulu and will also be made available in e formats.

Full submission details on the FS Submissions page.

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Dark Fiction Magazine calling for submissions

Ok foxes, Dark Fiction Magazine which is an audio magazine, is looking for stories. Here is the call in their own words.

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For 2013 we’re taking a slightly new approach. There will be themes, and we will be telling you about them beforehand – the first new episode of the year will be coming in March, and the broad theme is “Folklore and Fairy Tales”. Now, we’re still hoping to cover our genres of choice – namely Fantasy, Science-Fiction and Horror – so feel free to be as wild as possible with your fiction-weaving. Can you write a story about the Seelie Court and make it science-fiction? Can you conjure an epic fantasy from the earliest of stories? Do fairy tales lend themselves to horror? (I suspect they do; in fact I suspect they are the very roots of horror).

For the first time we’ll be looking at original stories as well as reprints, so send us your tales of stone, feather and iron by Thursday the 28th of February to be considered for the March episode, and if you have any questions please do contact me on jen@sennydreadful.com

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More information and submission guidelines here

 

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Our Inaugural Year

Or six months really.

I am wrapping up 2012 with a real sense of achievement and not a little astonishment. At Easter, to the soundtrack of Buffy The Musical, plans for world domination were jokingly discussed and the conclusion was reached that The Nun & Dragon was the perfect pub name. Since none of us own a pub, we decided to make a book. By June that decision had morphed into Fox Spirit and the Bushy Tales series.

I get a bit Oscar speechy now, so you can skip through to the end and the fox if you like.

Joan De La Haye put her trust in me and let me put her titles out, the psychological horror novel ‘Shadows’, the serial killer crime novel ‘Requiem in E Sharp’ and the fun zombie novella with a different perspective ‘Oasis’. Over the following months three more writers have trusted me with their work. In fiction Alec McQuay with the wonderfully weird post apocalyptic punk novella ‘Spares’ and Colin F Barnes with a gothic chiller of a novella ‘A Heart for the Ravens’. In non fiction, our last release of the year ‘The Pseudopod Tapes’, a collection of essays that served as outro’s to the world renowned podcast in which Alasdair Stuart is honest, smart, heartfelt and witty.

I have also had the honour of working with a number of fantastic authors on Nun & Dragon, our first anthology and the incredible writer and academic K.A.Laity who did an astonishing job of editing Weird Noir. I’ve been very fortunate to work with fantastic artists throughout and have tremendous support from a variety of people on a personal and professional level.

Special mentions to Gav at handebooks for performing miracles and having endless patience and Daz for copy editing at short notice.

We have more fantastic things coming next year and I’m very excited. The next two Bushy Tales books, Tales of Eve edited by Mhairi Simpson, the charity cookbook ‘Fantastic Treats’ edited by Andrew Reid and a host of other wonderful things.

So I want to say thank you to everyone who has worked with me, supported me, entrusted me with their stories and hung in their while I work it out as I go.

Now here is an Artic Fox playing in the snow. Image by Phil Knott. Happy Christmas.

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