Tag: Luna Press

‘O Cul-de-Sac!’ reading on Podcastle

I was so delighted when this popped up in my Twitter notifications last night, as I’d spent the day being grumpy with a bad cold…

O Cul-de-Sac! by Tim Major

My sentient-house story ‘O Cul-de-Sac!’ features on the current edition of fantasy podcast PodCastle, read by Nicola Seaton-Clark. While I haven’t had a chance to listen to the full reading yet, I can tell you that Nicola’s delivery is spot on. Hearing her read my story makes me very proud!
Click here to hear the reading, or you can find PodCastle via your usual podcast app. In addition, you can read the full text onscreen, for free.
If you’ve enjoyed this story, you may like to check out the book in which it first appeared: And the House Lights Dim, my first story collection, published by Luna Press.

Open Submission Calls: April 2022

Linus writing

This post comes hot on the heels of the previous list of open submissions, as that one barely sneaked into March. Anyway, here are the most interesting current and upcoming calls for fiction submissions that I’ve spotted recently.  Good luck!

Luna Press
This excellent small press is seeking speculative, SF/F or dark fantasy novellas. But be quick about it – they’re only open this weekend!
Word count: Between 20,000 and 40,000 words
Payment: Not stated
Deadline: Open 8–9 April 2022
https://www.lunapresspublishing.com/submissions

The Other Stories
Podcast seeking stories on particular themes: the next three are Octopuses, Ageing, Faeries.
Word count: No limits stated
Payment: £15 per story
Deadline: 15 April 2022 (Octopuses), 1 May 2022 (Ageing), 15 May 2022 (Faeries)
https://theotherstories.net/submissions

The Fiends in the Furrows III: Final Harvest
Nosetouch Press is looking for folk horror stories for the third (and apparently final) volume of the popular anthology series.
Word count: 3500–7000 words
Payment: 6 cents per word
Deadline: Open 1 May–31 July 2022
https://www.nosetouchpress.com/call/

IZ Digital
Celebrated British SF/F magazine Interzone is launching a new digital imprint.
Word count: Up to 7000 words
Payment: 1.5 euro cents per word
Deadline: Always open, as far as I can tell
https://interzone.digital/submissions/

Space Fantasy
New online magazine seeking flash fiction adhering to the title theme, Is There Anybody Out There? They go on to say they mean ‘stories about unexpected encounters in isolated places’.
Word count: Up to 1250 words
Payment: 8 cents per word
Deadline: Open May 1–30 2022
https://spacefantasymag.com/submission-guidelines/

MACHINERIES OF MERCY now available

Machineries of Mercy by Tim Major

My YA SF novel MACHINERIES OF MERCY is published by Luna Press today! It’s a bit Westworld, a touch Battle Royale, a smidgen Existenz… but set in a tranquil English village that’s really a virtual-reality prison.

You can buy it direct from the publisher here, or from Amazon UK here, or from Amazon USA here, or even better, you could order it from your favourite independent bookshop.

You can also find more information about the novel on this site here, including a video introduction, a video of me reading an extract, and even a Spotify playlist soundtrack to the story.

The Best of British Fantasy 2019

Best of British Fantasy 2019So happy to say that I’ll have a story in THE BEST OF BRITISH FANTASY 2019, edited by Jared Shurin and available in June from NewCon Press. ‘O Cul-de-Sac!’ first appeared in my collection AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM, published by Luna Press, and features a sentient house desperately concerned for the wellbeing of its peculiar new residents.

Congratulations to everyone included in the table of contents! It looks like a fantastic list, all round.

Another of my stories received an honourable mention, too – ‘The Forge’, which was also first published in AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM.

You can preorder THE BEST OF BRITISH FANTASY 2019 here.

My FantasyCon 2019 schedule

I’ll be attending FantasyCon in Glasgow this weekend, and this is what I’ll be getting up to:

Launch: The Shadow Booth
Friday 5pm
Launch of Shadow Booth Vol 4, edited by Dan Coxon, with readings by Robert Shearman, Gary Budden and Tim Major.

Panel: The 13th Doctor
Saturday 12pm
The Doctor is back and she’s better than ever! What are the best moments in series 11? What do we love about Whittaker’s Doctor? How has the series riffed on existing concepts but explored them in new ways? And what kind of stories do we want to see next?
David Thomas Moore, Mark Morris, Tim Major, Una McCormack

And the House Lights DimLaunch: Luna Press
Saturday 1pm
Launch of the Harvester series of single-author collections by Marie O’Regan, Paul Kane, Nick Wood and Tim Major.
This is the official launch of my collection And the House Lights Dim, which was published in July this year.

Workshop: Short Fiction Submissions
Sunday 12pm
Alongside my BFS Horizons co-editor, Shona Kinsella, I’ll be running a workshop about how to make the best possible impression when sending short stories to editors.

…and then I’ll be attending the banquet for the first time – exciting!

Les Vampires by Tim Major…and then I’ll be attending the British Fantasy Awards for the first time – also exciting!
(Not least because my monograph about the 1915 film Les Vampires is on the shortlist for Best Non-Fiction – though it’s up against some fine competition, any of whom I’d be delighted to see win. Still, the nomination is a great excuse to finally stick around long enough to see the awards presented.)

Another first: I’ll be staying in the convention hotel. Hopefully this will mean a more flexible approach to planning my days, and less lugging around everything needed from morning until night. And more chance to bump into people and hang around with people I like, which surely is the point of FantasyCon in the first place.

Book birthday: AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM

And the House Lights Dim - Tim MajorThis came around fast… I’m happy to say that my first short story collection, AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM, is available as of today! It’s published by Luna Press and is billed as strange stories about houses, homes and families.

Here’s something I wrote about the collection when it was first announced:

AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM is my first collection of short stories, which were written over a three-year period. They’re pretty diverse, spanning weird fiction, horror and SF – but I confess that when I wrote them they seemed more diverse than they really are. It was only recently that I realised just how prevalent particular themes have been in my writing: houses, homes and family.

Perhaps it’s no surprise. The earliest of the stories was written when my wife was pregnant with our first child; one of the novellas was written in a mad hurry in the weeks before his birth; nowadays I write in a fog of fatigue due to my second child’s sleepless nights. I think about family constantly and as a freelance editor I’m trapped in my home for the greater part of every day.

In this collection are stories about a sentient house overprotective of its new occupants, a supernatural Greenland shark that attacks a family via sound, a married couple alone on a lengthy space flight, two young girls who live in isolation and in fear of the world beyond their walls, a camping trip that turns a family feral, a post-apocalyptic Center Parcs, a man who has defragmented his mind and another who splices a rival’s brain patterns onto his own.

Most of the stories have been published in various places, including Interzone, Not One of Us, The Literary Hatchet and anthologies published by Fox Spirit, Jurassic London and Hic Dragones. ‘Carus & Mitch’ was previously published as a standalone novella by Omnium Gatherum and was shortlisted for a This Is Horror Award in 2015. People have been very nice about it: Lynda Rucker said it was a ‘compelling, unconventional page-turner… blending a John Wyndham-esque melancholy with a dose of existential despair’. Adam Roberts called it ‘punchy and scary and tense and genuinely moving’ and James Everington at This is Horror said it was ‘an intimate, original, and character-driven take on the post-apocalyptic genre’, all of which made me feel awfully proud.

One thing I neglected to mention in that description are the stories that are new to the collection: O Cul-de-Sac!, The Forge and Honey Spurge. I’m particularly proud of O Cul-de-Sac!, the 10k-word story that opens the collection – though I’m also nervous on its behalf, as if I’m forcing it out into the world rather it being there on its own merits. It’s an unusual story, written once I recognised the theme of the collection – it’s narrated by a sentient house who is proud and then wary of its new occupants.

You can buy AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM direct from Luna Press or from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

By the way, the beautiful cover image is by Daniele Serra. Do check out his incredible work.

Short story collection: AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM

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Luna Press have released some more details about my first collection of short stories, which will be published in 2019 as part of the ‘Harvester’ series. It’s called AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM and features strange stories about houses, homes and family.

Here’s my statement about the collection in full:

AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM is my first collection of short stories, which were written over a three-year period. They’re pretty diverse, spanning weird fiction, horror and SF – but I confess that when I wrote them they seemed more diverse than they really are. It was only recently that I realised just how prevalent particular themes have been in my writing: houses, homes and family.

Perhaps it’s no surprise. The earliest of the stories was written when my wife was pregnant with our first child; one of the novellas was written in a mad hurry in the weeks before his birth; nowadays I write in a fog of fatigue due to my second child’s sleepless nights. I think about family constantly and as a freelance editor I’m trapped in my home for the greater part of every day.

In this collection are stories about a sentient house overprotective of its new occupants, a supernatural Greenland shark that attacks a family via sound, a married couple alone on a lengthy space flight, two young girls who live in isolation and in fear of the world beyond their walls, a camping trip that turns a family feral, a post-apocalyptic Center Parcs, a man who has defragmented his mind and another who splices a rival’s brain patterns onto his own.

Most of the stories have been published in various places, including Interzone, Not One of Us, The Literary Hatchet and anthologies published by Fox Spirit, Jurassic London and Hic Dragones. ‘Carus & Mitch’ was previously published as a standalone novella by Omnium Gatherum and was shortlisted for a This Is Horror Award in 2015. People have been very nice about it: Lynda Rucker said it was a ‘compelling, unconventional page-turner… blending a John Wyndham-esque melancholy with a dose of existential despair’. Adam Roberts called it ‘punchy and scary and tense and genuinely moving’ and James Everington said it was ‘an intimate, original, and character-driven take on the post-apocalyptic genre’, all of which made me feel awfully proud.