Dark Faith: The Table of Contents*

POEM: “The Story of Belief-Non” by Linda D. Addison
"Ghosts of New York" by Jennifer Pelland
“I Sing a New Psalm” by Brian Keene
“He Who Would Not Bow” by Wrath James White
“Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation” by Douglas F. Warrick
“Go and Tell It on the Mountain” by Kyle S. Johnson
“Different from Other Nights” by Eliyanna Kaiser
POEM: “Lilith” by Rain Graves
“The Last Words of Dutch Schultz Jesus Christ” by Nick Mamatas
"To the Jerusalem Crater" by Lavie Tidhar
“Chimeras & Grotesqueries” by Matt Cardin
“You Dream” by Ekaterina Sedia
"Mother Urban's Booke of Dayes" by Jay Lake
“The Mad Eyes of the Heron King” by Richard Dansky
“Paint Box, Puzzle Box” by DT Friedman
“A Loss For Words” by John C. Hay
“Scrawl” by Tom Piccirilli
POEM: “C{her}ry Carvings” by Jennifer Baumgartner
“Good Enough” by Kelli Dunlap
“First Communion” by Geoffrey Girard
“The God of Last Moments” by Alethea Kontis
"Ring Road" by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Unremembered” by Chesya Burke
POEM: “Desperata” by Lon Prater
“The Choir” by Lucien Soulban
“Days of Flaming Motor Cycles” by Catherynne M. Valente
“Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects” by Lucy A. Snyder
POEM: “Paranoia” by Kurt Dinan
"Hush" by Kelly Barnhill
"Sandboys" by Richard Wright
“For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer” by Gary A. Braunbeck

For those keeping track at home, that makes 5 poems and 26 stories by 17 men and 14 women. Coming May 2010 from Apex Books. Debuting at Mo*Con V



*Barring any issues regarding the dotting of i's and crossing of t's. And this isn't the final, final cover.

Harlan County Horrors (Now with Reviews!)

The Harlan County Horrors anthology is out. Its line up includes:

“The Witch of Black Mountain” – Alethea Kontis

“The Power of Moonlight” – Debbie Kuhn
“Hiding Mountain: Our Future in Apples” – Earl Dean
“Psychomachia” – Geoffrey Girard
“Yellow Warbler” – Jason Sizemore
“Kingdom Come” – Jeremy C. Shipp
“Trouble Among the Yearlings” – Maurice Broaddus “Spirit Fire” – Robby Sparks
“The Thing at the Side of the Road” – Ronald Kelly
“Inheritance” – Stephanie Lenz
“Greater of Two Evils” – Steven Shrewsbury
“Harlan Moon” – TL Trevaskis

Afterword: Harlan County: A Short History by Preston Halcomb

Cover art by Billy Tackett

REVIEWS:

Bookgasms

Jeff Cutler

University Chronicle

Monster Librarian

Paladin Freelance

Amazon Reviews

Shroud Magazine

You and the Library: The Broaddus Experiment

Okay, I've occasionally run my mouth at conventions about the burgeoning crop of black horror writers, what we can do to increase diversity, and how the horror market needs to quit whining about the shrinking audience and instead actively expanding its audience. You know, rather than decry books like the Dark Dreams series as somehow "reverse racism" (oh, yeah, I LOVED those discussions), embrace them as the opportunity that they are. For example, when I spoke to Jason Sizemore at Apex Books about marketing Orgy of Souls, I asked how he planned on marketing to the black audience. I fully expected something along the lines of "we published you". Instead, there was a gentle glow about his face, his head tilted to the side (he gets like that when he's in love, and in this case the object of his affections was ... more sales) and with a lilt to his voice he asked "what's our next step?"

With help from my friends (another random shout out to RAW Sistaz), I've been posting resources like Black Literary sites, places folks can send their books to market themselves better and build new audiences. I'll be posting a similar list of black book expos and conventions for folks to begin to add to their convention schedule. And I've compiled a list of black book stories which folks are free to contact me to receive.

In addition, I recently received this blog which I have permission to re-post.

My Name is Greg Fisher and I'm the Undead Rat.

I'm a a librarian assistant at the Cleveland Hts.-University Hts. Public Library. I work 20 hours at the main library on Lee Rd. and 20 hours at the Noble Neighborhood Library (a branch). So I get the experience of working at a branch and working at a main building.

Today I wanted to talk about Maurice Broaddus and an idea mentioned at last year's Context 21 convention.

He was on a panel -- I think the topic was 'is the horror genre dead?' -- and he mentioned the book he'd written with Wrath James White called Orgy of Souls. Orgy was published by Apex in trade paperback format at a reasonable price. Maurice said that he thought Apex had done a great job marketing the book in all the available horror fiction venues but . . .

They hadn't explored marketing the book in any African American venues.

Not to black book discussion groups, not to any black book-of-the-month clubs, black book review magazines and online journals nor the blogs. Not a fault of Apex, it just didn't occur to them.

I heard what he said and it got me thinking (and that can be a really bad thing . . . )

At the Noble branch we have a horror section (it's still considered an experiment although last month it circulated books better than the cookbook section) and an African American fiction section. An ideal set up to test his theory.

I purchased, for Noble, two copies of Orgy of Souls, Succulent Prey and The Book of a Thousand Sins both by Wrath James White, as well as two copies of Bad Blood and Bite the Bullet both by L. A. Banks. I would have liked to have purchased more books but my budget limited me.

Still, it's enough for an informal test so . . .

One set of each was cataloged HORROR while the other set was cataloged as AF-AM FICTION. Currently both sets are listed as New Books so they're in special promotional bins -- one bin for new horror novels and the other bin for new African-American novels.

All this year I will monitor how many times each book goes out. I'll periodically report on it here in Horror Mall's The Haunt and send Maurice a copy for him to distribute.

It's not scientific since I have no control group or enough diversity (i.e., only 3 authors) in my study group but it might give us a clue how to better promote the horror genre.

And perhaps someone running a bookstore might pick up this idea and run with it? I'd love to hear about it if you do.

I'm all about continuing to experiment. Not every effort will be successful and folks may not see immediate dividends, but we'll all be the better for it.


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