I’m writing this sitting in Hornsea’s famous (or should that be infamous?) Floral Hall, having quizzed Nicky on what this week’s Letter should contain while the North Sea, clad in an array of frisky white-tops, bounces against the promenade, ignorant of the poor souls trying to get past.

It’s been a crazy week here at PS Towers . . .

. . . thanks to Mike’s Hallowe’en offer, which saw some 500-600 books pulled and piled and then packed, bagged and posted pretty much by close of play on Wednesday (today as I write this). This week sees some new material, kicking off with preparations for the deluxe lettered edition of Ramsey Campbell’s THE SEARCHING DEAD, which seems to be causing quite a fuss. So we asked author and Campbell fan Gary Fry (pictured with Ramsey) to have a few words with Ramsey and to get the lowdown on a bravura opening salvo in what promises to be a groundbreaking trilogy of nar-total darkness.

You can see the result here.

Meanwhile, here’s the first handful of Glenn Chadbourne’s 27 stunning b&w images for the oversized lettered edition

This is limited to just 26 copies—a la our recent Ray Bradbury (SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES) and Joe Hill (20TH CENTURY GHOSTS) volumes. We’ll be giving away one of these images signed by the artist with every copy of the book. And we’ll be doing similar volumes of the second and third titles of Ramsey’s tremendous trilogy. Order page soon.

Also gearing up to an imminent order page is Stephen King’s NIGHT SHIFT

Gloriously illustrated by Dave McKean, here’s a sneak preview of the two most recent pieces from Dave. Mike is working on covers right now, with the likelihood being that there’ll be two, as we did with Joe’s 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS—all being well, we’re aiming to have order pages up next week, gang!

Tipped-in copies of the long-awaited ASSAIL from Ian Cameron Esslemont arrived a couple of days ago

Carole and Katie have been working hell-for-leather to stay ahead of the game. This has meant an occasional 5 am start for many of the Hornsea team which, coupled with plummeting temperatures and losing more sleep because of the US election, saw Mike, Nicky, Carole and me—and even Tamsin who has been firing reports and blogs into the Twittersphere with considerable panache and determination--staggering towards the weekend. It can’t come soon enough, this week, believe me.

Numerous conversations—hoarser by the day—with the unruffleable Sara and her team at our primary printers, TJ International, have shown that our chums at the sharp end are feeling the same. And that was before Nicky had blown ‘em out of the water when she and Mike uploaded files and placed orders for THE FIREMAN, CENTRAL STATION and WINTER CHILDREN, all of ‘em wondrous volumes.

CENTRAL STATION a novel by Lavie Tidhar

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper.

When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris’s ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik—a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multigenerational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return.

Rising above them is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful alien entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness—are just the beginning of irrevocable change.

At Central Station, humans and machines continue to adapt, thrive . . . and even evolve.

CENTRAL STATION is limited to just 100 copies signed and numbered in an illustrated slipcase

WINTER CHILDREN & OTHER CHILLING TALES, a collection by Angela Slatter

Angela Slatter has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, one Ditmar Award, and five Aurealis Awards. She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. She was an inaugural Queensland Writers Fellow in 2013 and the Established Writer-in-Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth in 2016.

Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales collects some of Angela Slatter’s finest horror stories to date. From the Lovecraftian laments of “The Song of Sighs” and “Only the Dead and the Moonstruck” to the uncanny notes of “The October Widow” and the stunning new “The Red Forest”, it’s clear that Slatter is, in the words of Stephen Jones, ‘a powerful and eloquent voice in horror fiction.’ Each tale is a darkly crafted gem.

Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales is limited to just 200 copies signed and numbered.

SKELETON CREW—signed by all contributors—

—is gearing up for delivery to PS Towers next week.

This is really for those folks who have committed to the same letter for each title but we do have one copy unspoken for: anyone interested should drop me a line at:

editor@pspublishing.co.uk.

Here’s the latest on our comicbook line from Molly

Two new titles—WEIRD THRILLERS and AMAZING ADVENTURES—are being posted to customers this week. The next books due sometime in December are FORBIDDEN WORLDS Vol 11 (from the mid- to late-1950’s , my favourite time in the annals of ACG) and THIS MAGAZINE IS HAUNTED Vol 4. These will be the last titles before 2017. Yikes!

Slipcases are expected in tomorrow (Friday, accuracy-fans)

. . . for the signed editions of Ramsey Campbell's THE SEARCHING DEAD and Stephen Volk’s THE PARTS WE PLAY. Talking of which, check these out . . .

thisishorror.co.uk/book-review-the-parts-we-play-by-stephen-volk/

Steve just contacted us to say he’s  doing a ghost story reading at Keele University arranged by David McWilliams on Monday 21st November . . .

estore.keele.ac.uk/browse

Plus, here’s a link for Sledge-Lit

derbyquad.co.uk/special-event/sledge-lit-2016

(at which Steve will be interviewed about THE PARTS WE PLAY by Mark Morris)

And finally—We just bought a new novella from Steve, entitled THE LITTLE GIFT. The boy is most definitely on a roll.

Just heard from Dan at CD and Bill at Subterranean . . .

that our copies of, respectively, the bumper 74/75 issue of CEMETERY DANCE and CD Head Man Rich Chizmar’s colossal collection, A LONG DECEMBER are heading our way so pre-ordered copies should be going out in a week or so. And as titles appear on the horizon, heads down as they negotiate the cold winds of west coast UK and head towards Yorkshire, so too are other homegrown titles lining up for last-minute checks before green buttons are pressed and corks popped (we’re always popping corks, here at PS Towers . . . particularly on a Friday, which is what it is now, as I put the finishing touches to this week’s letter)—it’s what keeps us alive.

Latest titles about to leap from the comfort of the nest into the wide world are . . .

Darrell Schweitzer’s TALES FROM THE MISKATONIC LIBRARY, Stephen Jones’s BEST NEW HORROR #27 and Steve’s magnificent two-volume achievement, THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF SOLAR PONS by the late great Basil Copper.

Cunning plans and audacious preparations are now in place . . .

. . . for our big PS Australia launch of Jack Dann’s monumental anthology DREAMING IN THE DARK at Dymocks Bookstore in Brisbane on Thursday 8 December at 6 pm for 6.15—and Jack is aiming to have some of the book’s contributors on hand to sign copies. Be there or be square, booklovers!

Okay, just one thing to sign off with, alas . . .

We’ve lost another beacon of light today following the announcement of the death of Leonard Cohen. It’s timely, in a way, because I and a couple of chums from this crazy business we’re in have been getting together and re-evaluating Rolling Stone magazine’s best 500 albums and thus I found myself sizing up Cohen’s debut  (SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN from 1967, which I purchased on the week of release) on the back of his marvellous recent album, YOU WANT IT DARKER. And so I’m playing it right now, a few minutes after 7 am, marvelling at that one-in-a-million voice and those remarkable lyrics.

We’ve talked before, you and me, about classic songs that we’d be hard put to live without. One that always presses my button is Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’. Another is the noir-esque ‘Seems So Long Ago, Nancy’ with this haunting verse:

It seems so long ao
Nancy was alone
A .45 beside her head
An open telephone.

And that’s all I want to say about Leonard save to wish him safe passage to wherever it is poets and musicians go when their work is done. If you have a few pounds or dollars or Euros spare this coming weekend then treat yourself to a copy of SONGS OF and share it—particularly the crushing ‘Suzanne’ —with  someone special.

Happy reading . . . and listening!

Pete

PS Publishing

Grosvenor House, 1 New Road

Hornsea, HU18 1HG

Contact Phone 01964 537575

Website www.pspublishing.co.uk

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