Re: Rhys Hughes
 

I am delighted to announce that my twenty-sixth book was published yesterday. The Young Dictator is available from Amazon right now and will be available from many other places in the coming weeks... This novel is my most accessible book to date, so if you are new to my work and want to try something but don't know what to go for, I'll say try this one. It has been described as Roald Dahl meets Spike Milligan and Kurt Vonnegut and that's exactly the effect I was aiming for!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2fHshrek_m...ator+cover.jpg

Many years ago I tried to write a children's story but I never completed it. Then back in 2010 the editor Mike Ashley asked me to write a YA (young Adults) story for an anthology he was compiling. I dusted off the story I had started long before and finished it for him. As it happened, his anthology was cancelled so I decided to make my story the first chapter of a novel. The result was The Young Dictator. It's not really a YA novel, though I do think it can be easily read by anyone from the age of 12 onward.

That first chapter was published as a stand-alone story in the Spring issue of the BFS (British Fantasy Society) journal last year and was received well by readers. I sent the finished novel to my agent but he didn't like it very much. He felt that the main character, Jenny, a young girl, was too vicious. But that's the point. The novel is a comedy about dictatorship and nice dictators aren't much fun in fiction, are they? My agent also didn't enjoy the fact that the novel often uses lateral logic rather than the logic of everyday events.

Luckily there was a publisher out there who was willing to embrace absurdity and humorous darkness. Pillar International Publishing was founded in Ireland in the 1930s by Victor Lloyd and named after Nelson's Pillar, a structure that stood in the middle of O'Connell Street in Dublin until it was blown up by the IRA in 1966 (it had already survived an earlier attack in 1955 in which nine students had tried to melt it with flamethrowers). The original press issued many murder mysteries of the Death Carries a Coffin and She Died of Death type...

Victor's grandson, Mark Lloyd, refounded the press last year and by happy chance I learned of its existence thanks to the writer Sara Crowe. I submitted the book and it was accepted, and now it is a physical object and an ebook. I am proud of all my books but this one has increased the width of my grin by an unprecedented magnitude. It can be purchased online All hail The Young Dictator! All hail her Gran too!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

Started today a real time review of this novel here: The Young Dictator s Gestalt Real-Time Reviews

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

How does one promote two books AT THE SAME TIME?

The only answer is to duplicate yourself and promote them both equally... So here we go. I closed my eyes and strained and eventually popped into two individuals this morning! It wasn't easy...

THE JUST NOT SO STORIES on the left; THE YOUNG DICTATOR on the right. (And yes, she is mainly on the right, even if not always in the right)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ByoBZHtj-g...s+together.jpg

The Just Not So Stories can be purchased by following this link


The Young Dictator can be purchased by
Thanks!!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

Bear with me folks! I am going to promote a different book of mine every few days of this month as part of some misguided 'Advent Calendar' promotional campaign. It won't work, of course, but why should that hold me back?

The first book to promote is my very first book ever, WORMING THE HARPY, a collection of 16 stories which was originally published as a limited-edition hardback in 1995 by Tartarus Press. It was published when I was 29 years old, so I effectively began my career at the same age that Christopher Marlowe ended his. The first edition sold painfully slowly but it did make a small mark in the minds of certain luminaries, who championed my work in later years.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31PFLb-QlCL.jpg

At the time, WORMING THE HARPY contained what I regarded as my best stories. They are mainly a bit more gothicky and orthodox than my later tales but I was already moving away from traditional themes to lighter, more complex and more absurdist concerns, so it straddles what I used to be and what I became. In short my influences changed from Poe, Le Fanu, Hoffmann, etc, to Boris Vian, Barthelme and Calvino.

The book remained out of print for seventeen years until the second edition was issued in 2012 as a paperback, and it's the paperback I am promoting today, as the original hardback has become a collector's item that fetches hundreds of dollars.

If you buy it directly from the publisher, he gets more money, I think. But don't feel you have to buy it at all, of course!
Worming the Harpy

Thanks for listening!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

My 'Self Promotional Advent Calendar' continues with a plug for my fourth ever book, THE SMELL OF TELESCOPES, which was published back in the year 2000 by Tartarus Press.

It was rated by Michael Moorcock as one of the top ten 'overlooked speculative fiction classics':
https://www.sfsite.com/lists/10odd02.htm

The book consists of 26 short stories. Some of these stories are collected into three story cycles which all converge (and are resolved) in the final story in the book.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ie7AWLqz-7...telescopes.JPG

TELESCOPES remains one of my best books, I think. The second edition was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007 and, funnily enough, the publisher David Rix announced this morning that he has a few copies which he is offering at a discount. The original Tartarus edition is now worth a fair bit of money. Message David if you are interested:
http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/book...telescopes.htm

Thanks!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

The fourth day of my 'Self Promotional Advent Calendar' means that I intend to plug STORIES FROM A LOST ANTHOLOGY.

This was my fifth book and was published by Tartarus Press back in 2002. I went up to Yorkshire to sign copies, I remember. I have since changed my signature, I ought to point out, for reasons I'll explain if anyone wants me to.

Michael Moorcock wrote the Introduction; and this fact delighted me hugely and delights me to this very day, especially when he revealed he had been a fan of my writing since my first book seven years earlier. We never really know who is reading us and who isn't. Bear that in mind!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ie7AWLqz-7...+anthology.jpg

STORIES FROM A LOST ANTHOLOGY was only ever published as a hardback and sold out and now effectively is out of print, so really it shouldn't form part of this 'Advent Calendar'.

However I believe that the owner of Tartarus Press, Raymond Russell, has kept a few copies in reserve that he is willing to sell. There aren't many of them though!

On Abe Books and elsewhere it's quite an expensive book to purchase, so approaching Ray directly is the undoubtedly the surest method for obtaining the cheapest available copy.
http://freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/anthol.htm

Thanks again!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

First published as a hardback in the year 2000; and then republished as a hardback in the year 2007... THE SMELL OF TELESCOPES is now finally available as an ebook too! This happened a couple of days ago, courtesy of Ray Russell at Tartarus Press.

http://www.tartaruspress.com/telescopes.jpg

The ebook is available directly from Tartarus Press here:

http://www.tartaruspress.com/telescopes.htm

Needless to say I am delighted that this huge collection is available again!

Hope you all had a good Xmas!!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

In the past two months I have set up my own small press. This is something I have been planning to do for a long time.
It has a name: Gloomy Seahorse Press.
And it has a mandate: to publish my own works (of course) but also a few writers who have gone out of print, or foreign writers who haven't yet been adequately translated into English.

I have the rights to issue the first ever low cost edition of the 1950 cult classic The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson.
I am interested in publishing such writers as W.E. Bowman, Shinichi Hoshi and Jacques Sternberg.

Here is the logo, painted for me by Adele Whittle:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lkJdJTAGjm...orse+cover.jpg

So far it has published three books by Yours Truly, including:
* More Than a Feline (an illustration collection of cat-themed stories and poems)
* The Gloomy Seahorse (my one and only poetry collection)
* Flash in the Pantheon (a collection of 123 flash fictions)

All these books are (or will be) available on Amazon and elsewhere, but in the meantime they can be purchased from here.

I will soon be reissuing my book from 2002 Journeys Beyond Advice, among others.

Thanks for listening!

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

I have started a review of 'Flash in the Pantheon' by Rhys Hughes:
Flash in the Pantheon s Gestalt Real-Time Reviews (2008 - 2014)

123 tales: one to be reviewed each day.

Re: Rhys Hughes
 

Wonderful, Des. Thanks!

So far Gloomy Seahorse has published five of my own books.

There will be a total of ten as follows:

* More Than a Feline (an illustrated collection of cat-themed stories and poems).
* The Gloomy Seahorse (a poetry collection)
* Flash in the Pantheon (a collection of 123 flash fictions)
* The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers (a novella)
* Rhysop's Fables (a collection of 207 fables)
* Journeys Beyond Advice (a reissue of my collection from 2002)
* Tellmenow Isitsöornot (a collection of 70 stories)
* Mirrors in the Deluge (collection)
* The Crystal Cosmos (a science-fiction collection)
* My Rabbit's Shadow Looks like a Hand (a collection of illustrated and experimental fiction).

There won't be anything more of my own other than those ten. I have just accepted a novel by a previously unpublished writer and I will be making an announcement about this soon. :-)