Monday 16 May 2011

New novelette from Andy West

Published through member Tim C Taylors http://greyhartpress.com, comes "Rescue Stories".

From the website:
Rescue Stories was a runner-up in the BSFA 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition.

Andy West is a rising star of the SF world and this is first title for Greyhart Press. His short fiction has recently appeared in anthologies alongside such authors as Neil Gaiman, Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross, and Sarah Pinborough. He has co-written a novel with Ian Watson.

For more information, check out the site here - http://greyhartpress.com/our-science-fiction-stories/rescue-stories/

Wednesday 4 May 2011

The Lost Film Novella to be published by Pendragon Press


Coming soon, from the award-winning Pendragon Press -

The Lost Film
A Novella by Mark West

Gabriel Bird is a private detective. He’s been hired to track down Roger Sinclair, an exploitation film-maker who disappeared in 1976, having just completed his last film. Long since lost, “Terrafly” was reputed to have an adverse, often fatal effect on those who watched it. Sinclair’s producing partner, Sorrell Eve, is concerned that the film is about to appear again and wants to make sure it stays lost forever.

As Bird closes in on his target, strange incidents begin to happen to those around him and when he’s offered the chance to watch a clip of “Terrafly”, things turn very dark indeed.

A modern detective story, filled with rich detail of the low-budget heyday of British exploitation films, this will ‘pull you into a dark cinematic nightmare’.

More details to come...


"Lights, camera, action...Mark's West's lost film novella will grab your soul by the sprocket holes, pull you into a dark cinematic nightmare, and then re-edit the way you look at the world. Experience it at your peril."
- Gary McMahon, author of “Pretty Little Dead Things”

Greyhart Press - for immediate release

Contact: Tim C. Taylor FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Email: editors@greyhartpress.com

BE THE EDITOR OF YOUR OWN ANTHOLOGY: SCI FI, HORROR, AND FANTASY
A new type of publisher launches to bring professional-quality short fiction to eReader devices, such as the Kindle and iPad.

May 3rd, 2011: Bedfordshire, England. Greyhart Press, a new publisher of fantastic stories, launches to exploit the potential of eReader devices, so that readers can build their own anthology of short genre fiction at low-risk and low-cost.

"I grew frustrated trying to find great science fiction stories for my Kindle," said founder Tim C. Taylor. "With the wireless capability of eReaders, I should be able to pick a short story to enjoy with my coffee shop cappuccino just as easily as I can have biscotti. But if I browse through traditional publishers, I'm forced to take the editor's story choices and timetable. Besides, too many science fiction periodicals have distanced themselves by championing literary cleverness over traditional storytelling. As for the 'self-publishing revolution', my excitement of picking up cheap e-books for my new Kindle quickly died with the realisation that many of them should never have been published or would have been better for the attention of a good editor. So I decided to do something about it and launched Greyhart Press."

Greyhart Press is different because
• It establishes a relationship with its authors, with the intention of building a library of stories from each one. This is like a traditional print publisher of novels and unlike a traditional short story print periodical. Readers can explore the work of authors they enjoy whenever their eReader device is connected, rather than hope their author is featured in the next edition of a periodical.
• All the stories are carefully edited, and the e-books checked for formatting issues. While many great e-books have been self-published over the past couple of years, the absence of agents and editors in their traditional gatekeeper roles have inevitably meant a deluge of poorly written and formatted e-books.
• In addition to the free sample facility provided by e-book retailers such as Amazon, Greyhart Press always provides a selection of complete e-books for free. This helps to introduce readers to new authors.
• Greyhart Press champions a philosophy of traditional storytelling and clear writing style encapsulated in The Real Story Manifesto. This gives readers confidence that Greyhart Press stories will be written in a style that is accessible to the mainstream of science fiction, horror, and fantasy lovers, without being ’dumbed down'.

Background
• Amazon reports that Kindle e-books outsold paperbacks in 2010 Q4 – The Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8288204/Amazon-Kindle-ebooks-outsell-paperbacks.html)
• Sales to date of iPads and iPhones are 120 million – Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone )
• Sales of eReader devices in 2009/10 were 15 million - IDC (http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22737611§ionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS)
• Internet forum posters complain about poorly written and badly formatted self-published e-books. (For example a Google search on the terms 'ebook poor formatting' returns 10.5 million results http://www.google.com/search?q=ebook+poor+formatting )

About Greyhart Press
Greyhart Press was established in April 2011 by Tim C. Taylor. It sells science fiction, horror, and fantasy e-books through retailers such as amazon.com, Smashwords, and Apple iBookstore.
It specialises in short stories, novelettes and novellas (reading time of approximately twenty minutes to three hours), with an initial catalogue of eight stories which will be extended rapidly. A selection of complete stories are always made available for free.
For more information, visit http://www.greyhartpress.com/

About Tim C. Taylor
When Tim C. Taylor was made redundant in February 2011, a consequence of the global recession, his co-workers gave him a Kindle as a parting gift. He soon saw this presented an exciting new opportunity. So after twenty years writing and managing software releases for a FTSE 100 company, Tim now does much the same thing with fiction as a writer, publisher, and freelance e-book designer. His short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies over the past decade, most recently in books by NewCon Press.

For more information, visit http://www.timctaylor.com/

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If you would like more information on this topic, contact Tim by e-mailing: editors@greyhartpress.com