Patchwerk, by David Tallerman (Tor.com) | review by Stephen Theaker

Scientist Dran Florrian has sneaked on to the TransContinental, in the cargo hold of which is his great invention, Palimpsest. The result of five years of work and a lifetime of thought, it is too powerful to be in the hands of a ruthless weapons man like Harlan Dorric, who is waiting for him in the hold. Also there, two hired guns, a technician who blocks Florrian’s neural connection to his clever machine, and Karen, the wife he lost while buried in work. Hang on, no, that’s not right. He’s D’ren Florein, on a queenship, an intelligent insect trying to counter the Nachtswarm, entomological engineering gone mad, and Halann D’rik is the one trying to take control of Palimpsest. No, wait, that’s not right either… This is a good novella that could easily have sprung from one of the Baen collections of classic science fiction by Poul Anderson or Murray Leinster, but instead it’s from David Tallerman, one of our own past contributors. He thinks up lots of neat tricks for the protagonist, whatever his name at any given time, to play with the Palimpsest, weaving a sharp little thriller through the middle of it. So far, the Tor.com line of ebook novellas is living up to expectations, and my expectations were high. ***

The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories, by David Tallerman (Digital Horror Fiction) | review by Rafe McGregor

David Tallerman has achieved not only remarkable but rare success with his short fiction. In the space of nine years, he has had more than seventy-five stories published in venues such as Clarkesworld, Interzone, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Lightspeed, Nightmare, AE, Chiaroscuro… and of course Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. This is his first short story collection – the appearance of which is itself an achievement given the reluctance of publishers to take on such projects. The short story came into its own with the rise of literacy in Europe and North America during the nineteenth century, but declined dramatically with the rise of domestic television ownership during the twentieth century. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is easy to forget that many of the most famous speculative fiction writers – Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and even Stephen King – began their careers as writers of short fiction. The notion of supporting oneself financially by short fiction alone is already archaic and authors like David (and publications like Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction) breathe life into what might otherwise be a dying art form. I must interject a disclosure (or perhaps disclaimer) before I proceed: I met David while he was living in York and was surprised to discover that he had been kind enough to dedicate The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories to me in memory of the small assistance I was able to give him with the initial drafts of some of the stories. Our acquaintance has not prevented me from writing this review, however, because my primary concern is not the quality of the stories. That has already been judged by others: thirteen of the fourteen have been previously published – in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Nightmare, Flash Fiction Online, Necrotic Tissue, Bull Spec, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Angry Robot’s blog, and three anthologies – with “War of the Rats” appearing for the first time.

The collection makes several hard to acquire or out of print publications available again, most notably “The Facts in the Case of Algernon Whisper’s Karma” from The Willows and Spectral Press’s “The Way of the Leaves”. For this, Digital Horror Fiction (which is an imprint of the Digital Fiction Publishing Corp) should be praised, as well as for selling both the digital and paperback editions at reasonable prices. The publisher is nonetheless the target of my main criticism, which is that the paperback appears to have been deliberately extended across as many pages as possible. The font is on the large side of medium and the lines are double-spaced, so that even a work of flash fiction (the excellent “The Desert Cold”) is stretched over four pages (six if one counts the illustration). Each story has its own black and white illustration, by the talented Duncan Kay, on a verso page but the respective recto pages have been left blank and there is altogether too much white space between front and back cover. What puzzles me is that if there was a need to increase the page count – and I understand that there often is for a variety of reasons – the publisher didn’t include more of David’s stories. There are plenty to choose from – “Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn”, published in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #37 (2011), to take just one example. Kay’s illustrations provide an impeccable complement to the stories, from first (“The Burning Room”) to last (“The Way of the Leaves”) with no exceptions. Where they are particularly successful is in the pictorial representation of the way in which David mixes the literary with the pulp uses of language. Kay offers David’s readers a mirror in which the pitch of each story is perfectly reflected, from the humour and self-conscious playfulness of “My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy, Aged 7” to the sophistication and seriousness of “Prisoner of Peace”. Kay has also pulled off another balancing act, revealing enough of each tale to tease his audience while expertly avoiding spoilers in a completely harmonious match between illustrator and author.

The Sign in the Moonlight and Other Stories is introduced by Adrian Tchaikovsky of Shadows of the Apt and insect-kinden fame. Commenting on the theme of the volume, he writes: “Every story here opens a door onto some human trauma: loss, grief, death, murder and madness, encounters with the horrors of the supernatural and perhaps the worse horrors that simple mundane world can inflict” (p. 2). I’m not sure whether his description is accurate. If it is meant to indicate a distinctive world-view, in the sense that S.T. Joshi takes as definitive of the weird tale as opposed to other categories of speculative fiction, then not because there is no consistent gestalt that underpins these stories. If it is meant to indicate that all of the collected stories belong to the horror rather than fantasy or science fiction genres, then Tchaikovsky is correct and whatever else they achieve, they inspire the right combination of the fear and disgust that one demands from the tale of terror traditional or contemporary. The absence of underlying world-view does not detract from the unity of the volume; one of its strengths is the way the stories criss-cross the style and substance of subdivisions within the genre – gothic romanticism, the English ghost story, and the cosmic weird to name but three. The collection is to my mind well-named: “The Sign in the Moonlight” is my favourite story, where fact and fiction combine to produce a tensely entertaining tale inspired by – rather than a slavish pastiche of – the themes explored by H.P. Lovecraft. My only disappointment is “A Twist Too Far”. The narrative is accomplished enough on its own, and was no doubt an asset to the issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in which it appeared, but is eclipsed by “The Facts in the Case of Algernon Whisper’s Karma” here. The stories are quite similar and the latter is superior in both intrigue and ingenuity. A minor complaint in a collection that is a major success.

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #50 is now available for free download!

free epub | free mobi | free pdf | print UK | print USA | Kindle UK | Kindle US

Welcome to Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #50!

This three hundred and twenty-four page issue – our longest ever! – features fiction from many of our previous contributors, who have returned to help us celebrate fifty issues and ten years of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction: Antonella Coriander, David Tallerman, Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Phillips, Howard Watts, John Greenwood, Matthew Amundsen, Michael Wyndham Thomas, Mitchell Edgeworth, Rafe McGregor and Walt Brunston!

Plus reviews from Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Watts, Jacob Edwards and Stephen Theaker. Stephen and members of the reviews team answer your questions in “Ask Theaker’s”! Cover artist Howard Watts takes us through his process in “Artful Theakering”! And there’s a round-up of everything Stephen Theaker read last year but didn’t have time to review! Happy fiftieth to us!

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• Fifty Issues! Stephen Theaker
• Artful Theakering, Howard Watts
• The Wrong Doctor, Rafe McGregor
• The House That Cordone Built, David Tallerman
• Dodge Sidestep’s Second Dastardly Plan, Howard Watts
• One Is One, Michael Wyndham Thomas
• Save the Dog, Douglas J. Ogurek
• Heritage, Mitchell Edgeworth
• A Murder in Heaven, Matthew Amundsen
• A Mare’s Nest, John Greenwood
• The Morning of Seventeen Suns, Walt Brunston
• Love at First Sight, Howard Phillips
• Crystal Castle Crashers, Antonella Coriander
• Ask Theaker’s! with answers from Stephen Theaker, Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Watts and Jacob Edwards
• The Quarterly Review, by Stephen Theaker, Jacob Edwards, Douglas J. Ogurek, and Howard Watts, including reviews of As Above, So Below, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Doctor Who: Engines of War, Gatchaman, Happy, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair, Interstellar, Invincible, Vol. 17: What’s Happening, Megalex: The Complete Story, Tusk and The X-Files: Season 10, Vol. 1, plus ratings for everything else Stephen read in 2014
• Also Received, But Not Yet Reviewed
• Forthcoming Attractions

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Here are the contributors to this grandest of issues:

Antonella Coriander’s story in this issue, “Crystal Castle Crashers”, is the fourth consecutive episode of her ongoing Oulippean serial.

David Tallerman writes “The House That Cordone Built”, which follows “Imaginary Prisons” (TQF29), “Friendly” (TQF31, “Glass Houses” (TQF34) and “Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn” (TQF37). Angry Robot Books published his acclaimed Easie Damasco trilogy: Giant Thief, Crown Thief and Prince Thief. His excellent blog is called Writing on the Moon, and it’s highly recommended.

Douglas J. Ogurek lives in a Chicago suburb with the woman whose husband he is and their five pets. This time he reviews the films As Above, So Below, The Hunger Games: Mockinjay, Part 1 and Tusk, answers question in “Ask Theaker’s!”, and supplies a story too: “Save the Dog”, a sequel of sorts to “NON” (TQF33). See http://www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com.

Howard Phillips is a dissolute poet whose contributions to this zine have ranged from the mediocre to the abysmal. In this issue he begins a follow-up to the still unfinished Saturation Point Saga: “Love at First Sight” is the first episode of A Dim Star Is Born.

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides the cover art for this issue, “Artful Theakering” (an article on his covers for us to date), a story (“Dodge Sidestep’s Second Dastardly Plan”), and a review of Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, as well as contributing to “Ask Theaker’s!”.

Jacob Edwards reviews Gatchman and Interstellar in this issue, and contributes to “Ask Theaker’s!”. This writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist’s website is at http://www.jacobedwards.id.au, his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/JacobEdwardsWriter.

John Greenwood, co-editor and guiding ethical light, supplies this issue with the story “A Mare’s Nest”.

Matthew Amundsen follows up “House of Nowhere” (TQF35) with a new novella, “A Murder in Heaven”. He has written extensive literary and music criticism for various alternative weeklies. He now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife and daughter.

Michael Wyndham Thomas writes “One Is One”. We previously published his novels The Mercury Annual and Pilgrims at the White Horizon, extracts from both of which are sprinkled through our zine’s history, beginning all the way back in TQF8.

Mitchell Edgeworth writes “Heritage”, sixth in the Black Swan series of stories, following “Homecoming” (TQF40), “Drydock” (TQF42), “Flight” (TQF43) and “Customs” (TQF46) and “Abandon” (TQF47). He keeps a blog at http://www.grubstreethack.wordpress.com.

Rafe McGregor provides this issue with “The Wrong Doctor”, which follows “Murder in the Minster” (TQF25), “The Chapel on the Headland” (TQF34) and “The Last Testament” (TQF37). Rafe is the author of over sixty short stories, novellas, magazine articles, and journal papers. His work includes crime fiction, weird tales, military history, and academic philosophy. This is Roderick Langham's fourth outing and takes place twenty-eight years after the misadventure in the Himalayas with which regular readers of TQF may be familiar.

Stephen Theaker lives with three slightly smaller Theakers. In this issue he reviews Engines of War, Happy, In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair, Invincible, Vol. 17, Megalex and The X-Files: Season 10, Vol. 1, and rounds up everything else he read this year.

Walt Brunston, follows his adaptation of a Space University Trent episode (TQF13) – we still miss that show! – with “The Morning of Seventeen Suns”, the first astounding adventure of the Two Husbands.

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Bonus! To celebrate our semi-centenary, all our Amazon exclusive ebooks will be absolutely free this week: Professor Challenger in Space, Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!, The Fear Man, His Nerves Extruded, The Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta, The Day the Moon Wept Blood, The Mercury Annual and Pilgrims at the White Horizon.

As ever, all back issues of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

Should have sold more copies: Giant Thief by David Tallerman #bookaday

In doing this series of blog posts it seems polite to avoid promoting our own work, so I won’t pick The Mercury Annual, Pilgrims at the White Horizon, Five Forgotten Stories or any of our other titles, all of which should have sold more than the handful they did, and almost certainly would have if they had been published by a more active publisher!

So I’m going to pick instead Giant Thief by David Tallerman, the story of a thief who steals a giant and sets off on the world’s most exciting piggyback. I’ve no idea how well or otherwise it did, although two sequels were released. But it stands here for all the interesting books that Angry Robot have been publishing over the last few years.

Unfortunately, Angry Robot has run into a bit of trouble this month, forced into closing two of its offshoots: YA imprint Strange Chemistry and crime imprint Exhibit A. The approach of Angry Robot seems to have been to throw a lot of books at the wall to see which ones stuck. Not all of those books were brilliant, but I didn't read any that were boring.

Their enthusiastic approach means they have given lots of new authors a crack at mainstream publishing, and they’ve also been a home to more experienced writers with good books still to write. Long before NetGalley, they sent ebooks to reviewers. If they disappear, they'll be missed. But Angry Robot have come through rough times before, let’s hope they do again.

What contributors did next #2

Last April I interviewed Rhys Hughes for the British Fantasy Society’s journal. Due to production problems the journal wasn’t published until September, and Rhys finally received his contributor copy this month. All a bit frustrating, but the interview turned out well and Rhys blogs about it here.

Ace reviewer Jacob Edwards takes a turn as Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine editor with #55, and includes fiction from Tom Holt, Stephen Gallagher, Deborah Kalin and Lisa A. Koosis, among others, as well as an interview with Glen Duncan and a “musical interlude” with Richard O’Brien. More details here.

David Tallerman’s novel Crown Thief is now out, a sequel to the very enjoyable Giant Thief (reviewed by me here), and a third in the series will follow soon. He’s written an interesting article on his late realisation that the first two books failed the Bechdel test: read it here.

(I realised a while ago that there was a similar problem with my Howard Phillips novels, and became quite maudlin till I realised it gave me an excellent plot for the fifth book. Well, I say excellent – excellent by the standards of my Howard Phillips novels..!)

Richard Ford, who contributed “Dead Gods” to Dark Horizons #55, has a new novel Herald of the Storm coming from Headline. It’ll be out in April this year. For more info see his blog: www.richard4ord.wordpress.com.

Our cover artist extraordinaire Howard Watts has set up a DeviantArt page, including some TQF cover pieces. Prints available! Here’s the link: http://hswatts.deviantart.com/

Giant Thief by David Tallerman – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Stories by the author of Giant Thief (Angry Robot, ebook, 4314ll), David Tallerman, have appeared twice in our magazine, and twice more in my issues of Dark Horizons, so of course you must bear my potential bias in mind when reading this review. That said, on to the book. Easie Damasco is the thief of the title, who finds himself dragooned into the army of ruthless warlord Moaradred, who’s on his way to capture the crown of Castoval. Key to Moaradred’s plans are his contingent of giants, kept under his evil thumb by his possession of an object just small enough to be accidentally stolen by a thief hustling his way into the tent. Riding Saltlick, the giant to which he has been assigned, straight off the battlefield and into the hills, Easie is somewhat surprised by the persistence with which he is pursued—and subsequently, the keenness with which he and his huge new friend are courted by the resistance, particularly Estrada, female mayor of Muena Palaiya.

Easie Damasco is not a particularly nice guy. He’s a thief, of course, and he’s selfish—for example in abandoning friends to delay his own capture—and something of a sexist, as revealed by his having assumed Estrada’s appointment as mayor to be a prank of some kind. He assumes Saltlick to be an idiot and exploits him with barely a wince of conscience. Where he has to choose between himself and others, or between virtue and wealth, he’ll make the selfish, greedy choice. The book doesn’t apologise for that. One of its most admirable, likeable characters, Alvantes, brave captain of the Altapasaedan City Guard, utterly detests him, and you can see his point of view. But Easie isn’t too bad: where the chances of survival and financial gain are equal either way, he’ll choose good over evil. As the book goes on, the question is whether the good influences in his life—Estrada, Saltlick, Alvantes—will rub off on him; can he be encouraged to consider his self-interest in more than just the short term. Can this rascal be socialised by contact with upright citizens?

This novel isn’t a startling reinvention of heroic fantasy (although its portrayal of principled civil servants is somewhat novel), and the plot—mostly a long chase seen from a single character’s point of view—isn’t terribly complex, but the book is as much fun as you’d expect the story of a thief who steals a giant to be. It’s a pleasure to read, the author always at pains to give the reader a clear idea of what’s going on and where people are in relation to the action. If I say the book reminded me of an RPG scenario in that sense, I mean it as a compliment. It reminded me of one of the other fun things about playing pen and paper games: if you can do anything, you might as well do the most entertaining thing, and that’s the route this book takes. David Tallerman will almost certainly go on to write more complex, substantial novels, but I hope he gives us a few more like this first.

Past contributors, new projects!

Some of our contributors have new projects out!

D. Harlan Wilson ("Houseguest", TQF33) and Douglas J. Ogurek ("NON", TQF33, and many, many reviews in recent issues) both appear in WTF?! from Pink Narcissus Press, which features "corrective surgery gone wrong, punk rockers abducted by aliens, zombie sharks, dead matadors, exploding ice cream factories, and dwarfs obsessed with pomegranates".

Alison Littlewood ("The Eagle and Child", DH53; "Day of the Bromeliads", TQF31; "Sarkless Kitty", DH55; "Off and On Again", TQF38) has a novel from Jo Fletcher Books about to hit the shelves, A Cold Season, about a young widow who takes her son back to the town she grew up in. I've read it, and let me tell you, that book is enough to give any freelancer nightmares for weeks. Especially if they're also a parent!

David Tallerman ("Imaginary Prisons", TQF29; "Friendly", TQF31; "Glass Houses", TQF34; "Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn", TQF37) has a novel out from Angry Robot, Giant Thief, on February 2. I hope it's about someone who steals giants. That would be awesome. He'd have to take them to a giant fence, or possibly a giant launderer.

A reminder to any contributors to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction (or to Dark Horizons 53 to 57): we're always happy to run free adverts for you in the magazine, so do get in touch if you have a new project out.

(Thanks to ISFDB and its capable indexers for assistance in putting this blog post together!)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #37 – now available for free!

We have eight stories in this summer’s issue of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and I’m immensely proud to be publishing all of them:

• “Apoidroids” by Douglas Thompson
• “Make It Sacred” by Mike Sweeney
• “The Last Testament” by Rafe McGregor
• “Curios” by Ben Kendall-Carpenter
• “The Model of a Boy” by Alex Smith
• “Harrowing of the Barrow” by Skadi meic Beorh
• “Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn” by David Tallerman
• “The Watchman” by Chris Roper.

The editorial, “How Could a Person Up and Call a Person Wack?!”, addresses, in my clumsy way, the suggestion put to us in recent months that giving bad reviews to books is something we should avoid. I also discuss the unfortunate lack of female contributors to this issue, and set out one practical step I’m taking to improve the visibility of female writers in our magazine.

In a bit of a departure, we also have an article: “In the Shadow of Slartibartfast: Donald Cotton and Doctor Who’s Other Comedic Trilogy” by Jacob Edwards. You can see why it appealed to me.

Our review section stretches to thirty pages. In books John Greenwood and I look at The Art of McSweeney’s, The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook by Jason Heller, The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes, The Gift of Joy by Ian Whates, The Heavenly Fox by Richard Parks, Outpost by Adam Baker, Revenants by Daniel Mills, Spectral Press #2: The Abolisher of Roses by Gary Fry and Vampire Warlords by Andy Remic.

In the audio section I review three Doctor Who adventures: The Forbidden Time, The Sentinels of the New Dawn and The Hounds of Artemis. The film section covers Death Race 2, Insidious, Never Let Me Go, Red Riding Hood, Source Code and X-Men: First Class (three reviews by Jacob Edwards, two by Douglas J. Ogurek, and one by me). I review two comics this time: Baltimore, Vol. 1: The Plague Ships, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight, Vol. 2: No Future for You.

This 128pp issue is available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

Paperback from Lulu
PDF of the paperback version (ideal for iPad - click on File and then Download Original)
Kindle (free)
Epub (ideal for Sony Reader)
TQF37 on Feedbooks

Which sweet fools lined up for literary exploitation this time?

Alex Smith lives in Bethesda, Maryland and he is a doctoral student of psychology at George Washington University. Alex’s poems and stories have recently appeared in Catch-Up Louisville, Food I Corp, and Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #31. He is the author of a novella titled THE BERSERK and a book of poems titled LUX. His chapbook, BLOWN, was published by Superchief in 2011.

Ben Kendall-Carpenter lives and was born in Manchester. He enjoys cricket, the work of H.P. Lovecraft and J.G. Ballard, and listening to The Smiths. He is currently working on a collection of horror stories.

Chris Roper lives in Brighton, England, with his girlfriend of three years, Sarah-Jane. When not writing he enjoys travel, normally to tropical climates in Asia, and is a keen reader of horror and science fiction.

David Tallerman’s horror, fantasy and science fiction short stories have appeared in over thirty markets, including Lightspeed, Bull Spec, Flash Fiction Online and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of anthology The Living Dead. Amongst other projects, David has also published poetry (in Chiaroscuro), various film reviews and articles, and comic scripts through the award-winning British Futurequake Press. David’s first novel, comic fantasy adventure Giant Thief, will be published in early 2012 by UK publisher Angry Robot, to be closely followed by two sequels. He can be found at http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work appears in or is forthcoming in the British Fantasy Society Journal, The Literary Review and Dark Things V (Pill Hill Press). Ogurek has also written over 50 articles about architectural planning and design. To this issue he contributes reviews of Insidious and Red Riding Hood. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their six pets.

Douglas Thompson’s short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines, most recently Albedo One, Ambit, and PS Publishing’s Catastrophia anthology. He won the Grolsch/Herald Question of Style Award in 1989 and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His first book, Ultrameta, was published by Eibonvale Press in August 2009, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize, and shortlisted for the BFS Best Newcomer Award. His second novel Sylvow was published in autumn 2010, also from Eibonvale. A third novel Mechagnosis will be published by Dog Horn in autumn 2011.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF, including the cover for this issue. His story “Totem” appeared in TQF36.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes three film reviews and a paean to Doctor Who’s great lost humorist.

Mike Sweeney lives in Central New Jersey. His short stories can be found here and there. He’s especially fond of the ones over at Jersey Devil Press (www.jerseydevilpress.com).

Rafe McGregor is is a crime fiction author who spends far too much of his time rereading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He lives with his wife in a village near York.

Skadi meic Beorh is a writer of speculative fiction who presently lives with his wife Ember on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. He is the author of the story collection Always After Thieves Watch, the poetry collections Golgotha and New Irish Poems, the dictionary Pirate Lingo, and the novel The Pirates of St. Augustine.

We hate it when our friends become successful...

...especially when they are at least a dozen years younger and so very much better looking!

Bitter, crippling jealousy aside, we're really, really chuffed for Theaker's Quarterly Fiction (and Dark Horizons) contributor David Tallerman, who has just been snapped up by up-and-comers Angry Robot – and an agent too. Here's the info about the first book:

"The notorious Easie Damasco is a rogue and a thief and a scoundrel, who somehow always lives to see another day. In the first of his outlandish adventures, Giant Thief, Damasco manages to steal the wrong treasure and ends up with an entire army on his tail. Riotous swashbuckling adventure in the popular tradition of recent fantasy successes Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie, the Easie Damasco adventures will run to at least three books."

More details here and here. Congratulations to David – and to Angry Robot!

David Tallerman on the small press, Peter Tennant on ebooks

TQF contributor David Tallerman has begun a series of blog posts on Ten Things the Small Press Can Do As Well (Or Better) Than the Professional Press, beginning with Part 1: Non-Grudging Acceptances. Well worth a read. I can guarantee that I'll have made every mistake David goes on to list, if not with David himself, then with someone else for sure!

David contributed "Imaginary Prisons" to Theaker's Quarterly #29, which I read as a satire on the mind-numbing pervasiveness of prophecies in fantasy, and "Friendly" to Theaker's #31, a terribly serious story about overcoming cultural differences.

Elsewhere on the web, Black Static's other book reviewer, Peter Tennant, has contributed a post on ebooks, Random Thoughts by a Random Reviewer, to a Grand Conversation on the subject being hosted on the blog of Shane Jiraiya Cummings. As ever Peter has some extraordinarily sensible things to say.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #34

It's been a long time coming, but finally it's here! Unfortunately there are no female contributors to this issue, as previously discussed, but at least that means we don't have to talk about our feelings. Except for manly feelings about war and death and stuff, that is, and a bit in the convention report where grown men blub. But at least there are no girls around to see our tough facades crack!

What we do have though is a series of terrific stories, an indulgent editorial, our first ever convention report, and a huge review section: twenty-two books, seven movies, three audio reviews, one comic and one game. The cover is once again by the wonderful Howard Watts.

If you fancy taking a look, you could download the free pdf of this issue from us here (it's the perfect size for reading on an iPad), ebook versions are available for free from Feedbooks (including Kindle and epub versions), and the original version, a 156pp paperback, is available from Lulu for £3.99 (they also have a slightly higher resolution pdf available for free download).

Editorial:

• Why Aren’t I Reading My Paper Books Any More? Stephen Theaker

Fiction:

• The Chapel on the Headland, Rafe McGregor
• The Needs of the Dead, Jon Vagg
• The Frog God’s Chosen, Steve Cotterill
• The Free Dynamos and the Lone Island in the Sky, Mike Phillips
• Of Kith and Kin, Howard Watts
• Barney Wilson, Kevin R. Bridges
• Glass Houses, David Tallerman
• Name the Planet, Ross Gresham

Convention report:

• Mr Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction Goes to FantasyCon, Stephen Theaker

Reviews:

• Doctor Who, The Daleks’ Master Plan, Part II: The Mutation of Time
• Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons
• Doctor Who 133: City of Spires
• Blind Swimmer: an Eibonvale Press Anthology
• Blood Oath
• The Collected Connoisseur
• Crack’d Pot Trail
• The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach
• The Cult of Osiris
• Dinosaur Park
• Doctor Lerne, Subgod: the Scientific Marvel
• Fiction of Maurice Renard, Vol. 1
• The Empathy Effect
• Flirt
• Futile Flame
• Hell’s Belles!
• The House of Canted Steps
• Johannes Cabal the Detective
• The Library of Forgotten Books
• Ms Wildthyme and Friends Investigate
• The Occult Files of Albert Taylor
• Quartet & Triptych
• Rare Unsigned Copy
• The Terror and the Tortoiseshell
• Twisthorn Bellow
• Unpleasant Tales
• Magic Mirror: A Compendium of Comics 1983–1998
• Perfect Dark
• The Dinner Party
• Hunter Prey
• Ju-on: White Ghost / Ju-on: Black Ghost
• Iron Man 2
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
• The Storm Warriors

Here are the brilliant people who made this issue possible:

Kevin R. Bridges lives in the Pacific Northwest. (I would expand on Kevin’s bio to explain that the Pacific Northwest is part of the United States of America – but according to Feedbooks’ analytics the vast majority of our readers are actually American…)

Steve Cotterill lives and works in Birmingham.  He’s just starting out as a writer but his work has also appeared on the Horrorbound website and he is starting to plan his first novel.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes a book review.

John Greenwood is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, as well as its most frequent contributor. His blog on rare and unusual books can be found at http://oxfambooksandmusicmoseley.blogspot.com.

Ross Gresham lives in Colorado. His contribution to this issue is “Name the Planet”. He previously contributed the excellent “Beyond the Fifth Sky” to Dark Horizons #54.

Rafe McGregor is is a crime fiction author who spends far too much of his time rereading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He lives with his wife in a village near York.

Douglas Ogurek’s Roman Catholic faith and love of animals strongly influence his work. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their pets. To this issue he contributes a pair of movie reviews. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”.

Mike Phillips grew up on a small farm in West Michigan, where every summer he would tend sheep, mend fences, garden, build furniture, chop wood, and goof off. The time remaining he spent reading.

David Tallerman is the author of around a hundred short stories, numerous poems, reviews, comic scripts, and at least one novel.  Publication highlights so far include appearances in Chiaroscuro, Space and Time, Flash Fiction Online, and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of anthology The Living Dead. For more see http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote many but not all of this issue’s reviews, as well as the News & Notes and Contributors sections.

Jon Vagg mainly writes educational and coffee-table books. He is socially isolated, works late into the night and suffers from a highly deviant imagination. His stories have appeared, among other places, in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #30, Ignavia 3.2 and Ballista #7.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously supplied covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF.

So that's that! We're now hoping to do another two issues by the end of the year, catching us right up, and then next year we'll settle into a regular quarterly schedule.

Dark Horizons #53

Dark Horizons 53, produced by us for the British Fantasy Society, contains nine short stories of fantasy, horror and a smidgen of science fiction, arranged very roughly in chronological order; from days of yore to near-future apocalypses:

• In a Shining Hall, by Ian Hunter
• Sir Cai, the Shining Knight, by Andrew Knighton
• The Eagle and Child, by Alison J. Littlewood
• The Tyranny of Thangrind the Cruel, by David Tallerman
• The Boy in the Andersens’ House, by Peter Van Belle
• Timeless, by Paul Campbell
• Fleet, by Rafe McGregor
• Beholders, by Allen Ashley
• A Jar of Pickled Nightmares, by Richard Hudson

Interspersed among the stories are eight poems:

• November Dusk, Star Streams, Savage Spires and The Sunken City by Michael Fantina
• Shapechanger, by J.S.Watts
• Kali’s Kiss, by Karl Bell
• The Inhabited Man, by Douglas Thompson
• A Little Piece of Your Life, by Ian Hunter

Then there's an article taken from a forthcoming book on Terry Pratchett, plus an interview with the book’s author, Lawrence Watt-Evans. Later in the issue, the BFSQ&A section makes its first appearance, covering various burning questions of the day, such as: Is the BFS biased towards horror? Who reads Margit Sandemo? Why join the BFS? And why make a fan film? The issue comes to a triumphant close with our updated submission guidelines, the advertising prices, and a list of BFS email addresses!

Jim Fuess provides the cover art for this issue, while six other wonderful and generous artists allowed the use of their work to illustrate the issue’s fiction: Lara Bandilla, Dominic Harman, Steve Cartwright, Michelle Blessemaille, Paul Campion and Alfred R. Klosterman.