Tor dot Com just
announced the September Releases of Horror Books and it looks like September is going to be a fabulous month. My friend and former editor of my SEAL Team 666 books, Brendan Deneen, starts the month out with his second novel The Chrysalis. I end the month with my new military horror novel Burning Sky.
So what's in the middle of this genre-bending hydrox cookie? Here's a sampling, but for the full list, go
here.
The Chrysalis—Brendan Deneen (September 4, Tor Books)
Barely employed millennials Tom and Jenny Decker have to grow up fast
when they lose their cheap Manhattan apartment. Leaving the city is
hard, but the blow is softened when they stumble upon a surprisingly
affordable house in the suburbs. For Tom, the bills, the mortgage, and
Jenny’s unexpected pregnancy add up to terror. Then he finds the thing
in the basement. It makes him feel like a winner even as it scrambles
his senses. A new job soon has him raking in the big bucks—enough that
Jenny can start making her entrepreneurial dreams come true. The
Deckers’ dream home conceals more than one deadly secret. As Tom’s
obsession with the basement grows, Jenny realizes that to save her
family, she must expose everything. Before it destroys them all.
The Land of Somewhere Safe—Hal Duncan (September 4, NewCon Press)
The Land of Somewhere Safe: where things go when you think, “I must put
this somewhere safe,” and then can never find them again. The
Scruffians: irreverent foul-mouthed street urchins, older than their
years, waifs who have been Fixed by the Stamp, frozen so that they are
immortal, providing perpetual slave labour. But now the waifs have
nicked the Stamp and burned down the Institute that housed it,
preventing any more of their number being Fixed and exploited. Peter and
Lilly: two school kids orphaned by Nazi bombs, who find themselves
thrown together by circumstance and evacuated from London during the
Blitz. Sent far further north than intended, all the way to the Isle of
Skye, they are taken in by Clan Chief Lady Morag MacGuffin of
Dunstravaigin Castle. With them are the four Bastable children – a jolly
queer bunch – who prove to be far more than they seem. The Reverend
Blackstone: no real reverend at all, but an occultish Nazi spy
determined to get his hands on the priceless Stamp, even if he has to
raise hisself a demon to do so…
Flight or Fright—Stephen King & Bev Vincent, editors (September 4, Cemetery Dance)
Stephen King hates to fly. Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you. Welcome to
Flight or Fright,
an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when
you’re suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more
than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers.
All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a
nightmare, including some we’ll bet you’ve never thought of before but
now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate
in the hands of a total stranger. Featuring brand new stories by Joe
Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem
from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan
Simmons, and many others.
Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling—Philip Pullman (September 18, Knopf)
Nonfiction. From the internationally best-selling author of the His Dark
Materials trilogy, a spellbinding journey into the secrets of his
art—the narratives that have shaped his vision, his experience of
writing, and the keys to mastering the art of storytelling. One of the
most highly acclaimed and best-selling authors of our time now gives us a
book that charts the history of his own enchantment with story—from his
own books to those of Blake, Milton, Dickens, and the Brothers Grimm,
among others—and delves into the role of story in education, religion,
and science. At once personal and wide-ranging, Daemon Voices is both a
revelation of the writing mind and the methods of a great contemporary
master, and a fascinating exploration of storytelling itself.
Burning Sky—Weston Ochse (September 25, Solaris)
Everything is dangerous in Afghanistan, nothing more so than the mission
of a Tactical Support Team or T.S.T. All veterans, these men and women
spend seasons in hell, to not only try and fix what’s broken in each of
them, but also to make enough bank to change their fortunes. But seven
months later, safely back on American soil, they feel like there’s
something left undone. They’re meeting people who already know them,
remembering things that haven’t happened, hearing words that don’t
exist. And they’re all having the same dream… a dream of a sky that
won’t stop burning.
Burning Sky will be available September 25th. Please pre-order so we can
sell out the print run before publication. That will help guarantee
more books in the series. You can click on one of the book links on the
left, or go to the following links for your favorite stores.
When I was asked to write a story for an anthology of rockabilly horror, I only said yes because I was asked by Eric Guignard, my former mentoree and now peer. I had no idea what I was going to write until I was in Astoria, Oregon last summer and saw the Desdemona - a bar made from the remains of an old frigate that was shipwrecked on the Columbia Bar. Then it came to me. And as I began writing the story, I realized that my characters had a startling resemblance to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Part of me said to stop and change them, but another part, a louder and more obnoxious part told me to roll with it. I not only did, but I intentionally paid attention to Fritz Leiber's creations and tried to get them to inhabit my characters of Hemmo and Doogie.
