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October 31, 2014October 27, 2014

Double Trouble at the Fox Den

Double release day!

Today we are delighted to announce we have unleashed a mass of femme fatales on the unsuspecting public. Available now from Fox Spirit Books are two exciting volumes of high heels and deadly doings!

The third in our Noir series of anthologies edited by K.A.Laity is ‘Drag Noir‘ where the drag scene meets the seedy world of Chandler and Hammett, where glamour meets grit, where everyone wears a disguise.

And from Alchemy Press editors Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber we are delighted to bring you ‘Wicked Women‘! Women who write their own rules, skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave.

So join us for double trouble!

If you would like review copies or to interview the editors please contact adele@foxspirit.co.uk

October 13, 2014

The Velocity of Constant Launch Event

We are having a bit of an evening do in early November. come and warm up with cake, company and story telling at Leicester Libraries.

October 3, 2014

Ladies Choice

October at Fox Spirit is celebrating the Femme Fatale..after a fashion. Our anthologies ‘Wicked Women’ edited by Jenny Barber and Jan Edwards and ‘Drag Noir’ edited by K.A.Laity are coming up. These ladies are armed and dangerous.

From thieves and tyrants to witches and warriors, here are twelve tales of women who gleefully write their own rules, women who’ll bend or break the social norms, who’ll skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave.

Contents:
Juliet E. McKenna – Win Some, Lose Some
Christine Morgan – The Shabti-Maker
Tom Johnstone – Kravolitz
A. R. Aston – No Place of Honour
Adrian Tchaikovsky – This Blessed Union
Sam Stone – The Book of the Gods
Chloë Yates – How to be the Perfect Housewife
Stephanie Burgis – Red Ribbons
Jonathan Ward – A Change in Leadership
Jaine Fenn – Down at the Lake
Zen Cho – The First Witch of Damansara
Gaie Sebold – A Change of Heart

DRAG NOIR: this is 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.

Contents:
Introduction by Dana Gravesen and Bryan Asbury
The Meaning of Skin – Richard Godwin
Wheel Man – Tess Makovesky
No. 21: Gabriella Merlo – Ben Solomon
Geezer Dyke – Becky Thacker
Lucky in Cards – Jack Bates
Trespassing – Michael S. Chong
Chianti – Selene MacLeod
The Changeling – Tracy Fahey
Straight Baby – Redfern Jon Barrett
Kiki Le Shade – Chloe Yates
Protect Her – Walter Conley
King Bitch – James Bennett
A Bit of a Pickle – Paul D. Brazill
Stainless Steel – Amelia Mangan
The Itch of the Iron, The Pull of the Moon – Carol Borden

August 19, 2014August 29, 2014

FantasyCon 2014

A number of FS authors will be at FantasyCon in York this September.

Aunty Fox will be attending that and doing the following:

FRIDAY

4.00pm – Rejectamentalist Manifesto
The gory details of building an anthology and why stuff gets rejected
Terry Grimwood (m), Jonathan Oliver, Adele Wearing, Ian Whates, Peter Coleborn

8:20pm Joan De La Haye Reading from ‘Burning’

and

SATURDAY

11:00am – BREED LAUNCH with K.T.Davies

12.00 Noon – Charlaine Harris in Conversation
Adele Wearing interviews one of our literary Guests of Honour

6.00pm – We’ve Got It Covered

What are the elements of great cover design? From artwork and design, through to cover copy and author blurbs.
Larry Rostant, Jim Pitts, Marc Gascoigne, Helen Marshall, Adele Wearing (m)

A number of the skulk will also be attending the awards ceremony as we have been shortlisted for Best Small Press and Best Anthology.

Shortlisted for Best Small Press & Best Anth 2014

August 11, 2014August 11, 2014

’25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf’ in the Wild!

I am delighted to announce that 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf will be available in print this week from Amazon.

August titles will be available as ebooks in September from Amazon and Spacewitch

‘My name is Elkie Bernstein. I live in North Wales and I kill werewolves.’

When Elkie finds herself fighting for her life against something that shouldn’t exist she is faced with the grim reality that werewolves are real and she just killed one. Part diary, part instruction manual Elkie guides the reader through 25 ways you can kill a werewolf, without any super powers, and how she did it.

Jo Thomas is also one of the Editors on ‘European Monsters’ coming out at the end of this year.

July 23, 2014July 23, 2014

About the girl at the end of the world

There was supposed to be an introduction to Girl, I wrote it but I never sent it to the formatter with the rest of the book. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to share it yet. Now Book 1 is out, Book 2 is almost finished and I think perhaps this is a better place for it. The apocalypse can happen to anyone & I never saw it coming.

***
‘It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here.’
Nena – 99 Red Balloons

‘The Girl at the End of the World’ is undoubtedly the most personal collection for me that Fox Spirit has done. Maybe that is why I let it get totally out of hand. It was supposed to be one volume of around 20 stories, it’s now two volumes and because there were too many great ideas for covers each volume gets two cover options as well. A total of over 40 stories but I have no regrets, it was hard cutting the submissions down even that much.

The brief was ‘pre, during, post and personal apocalypse’. I wanted a wide range of interpretations and I got them! From the kick off with James Bennett’s ‘Antichristine’ to the far future sci-fi finish I hope it is obvious to readers that although you may find the odd zombie shambling among the pages there is a lot more scope to the end of the world than just natural disasters (which also feature) and the walking dead. There is some humour in there, in particular Carol Borden’s ‘Sophie and the Gates of Hell’ made me laugh out loud while reading through the submissions. The volumes include some wonderful treatments of traditional themes like the post apocalyptic urban survivor stories and some less well trodden routes are also explored. There was no genre specified for these volumes, so you’ll find fantasy, horror, sci-fi, crime and genre-bending playfulness within these pages. There are authors who will be familiar to regulars at Fox Spirit as well as plenty of names that are new to our tables of contents.

Why these books are so personal to me, why this project was inevitable really from the moment Fox Spirit was registered as a publisher is two-fold. One is my own love for these sorts of heroines: Ripley, Sarah Connor, Resident Evil’s Alice and of course Buffy the Vampire Slayer to name a few. Women and girls fighting for their own survival, to hold back the end of the world and in some cases just to be normal and live in the world again for a moment. The same love for these characters and for exploring what goes into their survival that led to the collaborative project ‘The Girls Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse’ stayed with me once that came to an end. It just took a little time to work out what I wanted to do with it.

It was more than that though. Fox Spirit would never have happened if my world as I knew it hadn’t ended. When I realised that my marriage was never going to work I had to let go of the shared life we had planned and suddenly I had no idea what my future was going to look like. It was a painful, frightening and sometimes just numbing experience. I got to spend some time as a zombie, mostly looking for my own brain rather than eating anyone else’s. A lot of the time I was just trying not to fall apart, to keep going every day and then I started to put myself back together and move on. It was while I was moving on from that I ended up agreeing to do ‘Nun and Dragon’ and through that Fox Spirit emerged. I am very fortunate that so many of my close friends, of the people who propped me up through it all are writers and artists and let’s be honest about it, a bit insane.

‘Sorry to barge in. I’m afraid we have a slight apocalypse.’ – Rupert Giles BTVS

July 16, 2014

The Girl at the End of the World Vol 1

The end is nigh!

The first volume (city cover as shown) of Girl at the End of the World is now available via amazon worldwide. The alternate ‘girl’ cover and ebooks will be going live over the next few days so keep an eye out!

Volume 2 is due for release at the end of July.

It’s the end of days. The sky is falling, the seas are burning and your neighbour is a zombie. It’s brutal out there. It’s every man for himself and these heels are going to have to go; you simply can’t run in them!

Across two volumes, The Girl at the End of the World offers forty-one striking visions of the apocalypse and the women and girls dealing with it. From gods to zombies, from epic to deeply personal, from the moment of impact to a future where life is long forgotten; bestselling authors and exciting new writers deliver tales you’ll still remember when holed up in a fallout shelter with one remaining bullet and a best friend with a suspicious bite mark on their neck.

The two volumes feature a number of new and established authors including Adrian Tchaikovsky and best selling crime novelist James Oswald.

April 18, 2014April 20, 2016

Bushy Tales

The bushy tales series was how it all began. If I were looking to buy a pub in 2012 Leicestershire would now be the proud home of The Nun & Dragon Pub, but instead it’s the home of Fox Spirit Books and our first anthology ‘Tales of the Nun & Dragon’.

Come, rest your weary bones, draw a flagon and hark to the tales of Nuns & Dragons, of bravery and steadfastness in the face of mighty and implacable foes. Settle down and indulge yourself in wild flights of fancy brought to life by your fellow travellers.”

The Nun & Dragon is a local like no other – share in the wild and wonderful tellings of a gifted panoply of authors, tales replete with wonder, a liberal coating of mysticism, the odd splash of darkness and a sprinkling of grim humour.

With stories by: Sarah Cawkwell, Mhairi Simpson, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jasper Bark, Mark West, Joan De La Haye, Simon Bestwick, Colin F Barnes, Andrew Reid, Ren Warom, Pat Kelleher, Cat Connor, Peter Ray Allison, S.J.Caunt, Wayne Simmons, Geraldine Clark Hellery, V.C.Linde, Catherine Rogers, Jay Faulkner, Sammy H K Smith, Francesca Terminiello, K.A. Laity, Karen Davies

The second book in the series ‘Tales of the Fox and Fae’ is also out.

Deep in the woods where wild things lurk you’ll find foxes and rarer creatures, the fae. Join us for tales of faeries at the bottom of the garden, foxes falling foul of their own nature, battles fought in the night where human lives hang in the balance. Not all faeries are good, not all foxes are hunted. Welcome to our Tales of the Fox & Fae.

With stories by: Andrew Reid, Margret Helgadottir, James Bennett, Chloe Yates, Alec McQuay, Haralambi Markov, Peter Ray Allison, Jasper Bark (writer) & Soussherpa (artist) & Bolt-01 (letterer), Geraldine Clark Hellery, Jay Faulkner, T.F.Grant, Cat Connor

The final ‘Bushy Tales’ book, ‘Tales of the Mouse and Minotaur’ is coming later this year.

Tales of the Mouse and Minotaur explores the adventure of mice (and rats) and twists on greek mythology. It also sees the return of Gilrain.

All three books feature cover art by Vincent Holland-Keen and internal art by Kieran Walsh. In Mouse and Minotaur Kieran will be collaborating with Joe Kolessides on the internal art. I’m excited to see the images for that!

March 3, 2013April 20, 2016

Cover reveal for Blood Bound

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.’

June 7, 2012April 20, 2016

Weird Noir

Yesterday Fox Spirit sealed the deal on publishing an anthology of Weird Noir edited by K.A. Laity, to come out later this year.

Here is K.A. Laity on the concept
“The ambience is pure noir but the characters aren’t just your average molls and mugs—the vamps might just be vamps. It’s Patricia Highsmith meets Shirley Jackson or Dashiell Hammett filtered through H. P. Lovecraft. Mad, bad and truly dangerous to know, but irresistible all the same.”

This will be an exciting addition to the 2012 publishing schedule and a wonderfully entertaing read. More to come on this soon.