Introducing

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Descartes' Demon

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Lone and Level Sands

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Uncommitted Crimes

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Omnibus! Volume 1

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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Penny Dreadnought Omnibus! Volume 1 Paperback


The Abominable Gentlemen are the worst people you don't know.

And the first Omnibus of their works is now available as a paperback (UK | US) as well as an ebook (UK | US).

Penny Dreadnought Omnibus! Volume 1 contains all sixteen stories from the first four volumes of Penny Dreadnought, as well as a bonus gallery of alternative cover art. 

It makes the perfect holiday gift for friends and family, especially strange 'Uncle Pete' who you only ever see at occasional family gatherings and who doesn't seem to be allowed near pets, children, or real cutlery.

Enjoy.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Honorary Abominable Gentlemen #3: Mark West


This interview takes place in the Jekyll & Hyde pub which is the Abominable Gentlemen's local (no matter where you live, it's your local, too) so the first question we are asking Mark West is: What are you drinking?

I would be drinking something soft (I’m teetotal) and whilst my choice would be Coke, my new get-fit-regime would dictate that it should be diet, or zero. I haven’t drunk alcohol in years, the only time I was tempted was seeing Kylie as the Absinthe Fairy in “Moulin Rouge”. Actually no, maybe it wasn’t being tempted to drink…

Introduce yourself - as writers, we often get asked for boring factual author bios. If you could write an author bio unconstrained by the boundaries of reality and truth, what would it say?

Mark West is a lazy git, who spends all of his time thinking and talking about writing, then actually spends about five minutes a day doing it. Sometimes, he would rather re-sort his bookshelves, do the hoovering or sort the whites and dark colours into separate washing piles than actually do any writing.

If you had a Mister Hyde style alter-ego what would he/she be called and why?

I already have - he’s called Pete and he writes stuff that I, as a family man, would never dare to!

'Literary horror' - oxymoron or your bread & butter as a writer?

I’m a big fan of literary fiction, in that I love to read it but find it difficult to write - my tastes seem much more simple than the pared back style required. Having said that, horror is a very wide spectrum, even if you don’t class it as literary or otherwise - you have the beautiful, quiet horror of Charles Grant, the in-your-face stuff (such as early Clive Barker, which I would argue is actually literary) and all points in between. 


The Penny Dreadnought art features people-with-telescopes-for-eyes. What low-tech body adornment or extension would you like?

As a kid in the 70s, I was always impressed with Steve Austin’s accoutrements, so I’ll go with either bionic legs or the bionic eye (and I can argue that it’d be low-tech because, hey, he only cost $6m!

If you could make any one person - alive or dead, male or female, real or fictional - an honorary Abominable Gentleman, who would it be and why?

My son Matthew, because he’s the coolest Dude I know.

Let's bitch - we partially came up with the idea of Penny Dreadnought in reaction to a lot of the 'sparkly vampire' school of supernatural writing. What about writing or publishing today makes you want to scream?

Wow, that’s a wide canvas. My main ‘I’m-gonna-scream’ would be people expecting overnight success, without paying any of their dues. When I first started getting published, around 1999, there were plenty of print small press zines out there (in fact, it’s where I first came across a lot of writers I’m now friends with). You sent in your stories, you read the zines, you talked, you worked and - hopefully - you improved. You could self-publish, of course, but it was expensive and the results often looked poor, so instead, everything went through an editing process. Now we have dingbats who write a story (and leave it in first draft), slap on some terrible cover art with unreadable fonts, spam every possible Facebook group and messageboard and Twitter feed and then complain that they’re not being treated as ‘special’. The horror boom in the 70s and 80s, in traditional print, brought the genre to its knees (looks like Fifty Shades is going to do that for erotica) and we’re still dragging ourselves out of the mess. A lot of these writers have no real love or desire for the genre, it’s seen as easy (strip that girl down to her undies and chop this other girls head off!) and that nobody will care if it’s rough and ready. Not true, on any count. I don’t have an issue with self-publishing (it can be done very well and for examples of that I’d point to Colin F Barnes and Greg James, who writes as G R Yeates), I don’t have an issue with people learning the ropes (hey, we were all there once), I have an issue with our “I want it now” culture, where people think that literary success is deserved and just around the corner.

The sparkly vampires thing is something I definitely rail against, though you have to be careful that it’s not just a case of you not liking something that other people do (I, for instance, hate The X Factor but a lot of people apparently not only like it, but buy into its crass lies and spend money on the phone calls and CDs). Having said that, they are responsible for taking a sleazy, horrible, venal character and making them into moping idiots - consider Sonja Blue against one of the twerps from Twilight - she’d kill him as soon as look at him.

Be honest - despite being a seasoned horror pro, are you actually confident you can pronounce 'Cthulhu' correctly in public?

Not at all. I’ve always thought I was a bit of a social pariah, in that I have no real idea, so it’s nice to realise I’m not - thanks for the question. I always pronounce it as it’s written - Cuh-thoo-loo”, which is probably wrong. In fact, I’ve probably been involved in countless conversations at Cons where people have been discussing him and I just didn’t understand what they were talking about!


What's the most abominable thing you've done that you want to reveal to the internet at large?

Well, I’ve never discussed this with anyone else at all but once I…..  (nah, can’t tell you!)

The third issue of Penny Dreadnought is about the world ending. What's your favourite literary apocalypse?

I have to be honest, I’m not a big fan of apocalyptic fiction as it plays on fears I’ve had since my teens (I watched Threads as a teenager, which wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did), but “The Stand” worked well for me. I enjoyed a lot of the Abaddon zombie series (such as Gary McMahon’s “Hungry Hearts”) and I’ve just critiqued an apocalyptic novel for Simon Bestwick, which is very, very good.

Aliens are threatening to destroy the human race unless we can prove we are civilised enough to live. However they are short of time, and out of the entire cultural repository of the world to date, they want a single short story of your to prove we are worth not vaporising. Which story do you pick and why?

I would probably go for “The Mill” because, although it’s a ghost story, it’s really about grief and guilt and dealing with bereavement. I think it does have its scary moments - and it’s supposed to have - but it’s really about human emotions and how people deal with one another at those points in your life where you’re one step from the darkest abyss you’ve ever experienced. By showing the aliens that there is hope, even if it’s in the supernatural, hopefully they wouldn’t phase us!

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Honorary Abominable Gentlemen #2: Tony Rabig

Another Friday night, another top quality horror author stumbles into the Jekyll and Hyde saloon... When asked "What are you drinking?" by the Man With A Skull For A Head, Tony Rabig enters pub legend by being the first person to reply:

Twinings Earl Grey tea. Soon, very soon, I'll grab a bottle of Heineken from the fridge.
Introduce yourself - as writers, we often get asked for boring factual author bios. If you could write an author bio unconstrained by the boundaries of reality and truth, what would it say?

Hmmm. I tend a bit toward self-deprecation, so... How's this:
Tony Rabig knew from an early age that he wanted to write, and resolved to learn from the best. He traveled back and forth across the United States, England, Europe, and South America in a decades-long quest to learn his craft from some of the world's finest writers. As a result of his efforts, numerous writers' organizations were formed and the organizations pooled their resources to hire the sharpest legal minds so that restraining orders might be filed against Rabig on behalf of their clients. Undaunted by the threat of lawsuits and prison, Rabig changed his tactics; no longer did he lie in wait for the writers, or sneak into their studios to go over their drafts -- now he followed the trash trucks to the landfills in hope of finding cast-off drafts or discarded file copies of manuscripts. When his few remaining friends complained about the stench, he gave up this practice, and simply began to write. The writers' organizations he had been instrumental in creating found other things to do. Rabig has recently been allowed to go off his medications, and begin using pens rather than crayons. He claims to no longer have any impulse to hold seances so that he might speak with Ernest Hemingway; his long-suffering wife, however, reports that he must occasionally be escorted out of libraries and bookstores because he tries to substitute his own name for Hemingway's on the contents pages of anthologies that include "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." Recently, he finished the very first draft of his very first declarative sentence, and he hopes to write another sentence soon.

If you had a Mister Hyde style alter-ego what would he/she be called and why?

Godzilla. There are a number of places and people that really need the kind of attention Godzilla devotes to downtown Tokyo; the ability to morph into the big green guy would come in awfully handy there. If something more unobtrusive and not copyrighted or trademarked by Toho is needed for the alter-ego, though, let's go with Vinnie the Hammer. Same functions, basically, but on a much smaller and more personal scale.

'Literary horror' - oxymoron or your bread & butter as a writer?

Certainly not an oxymoron. As for my bread & butter -- I can't say how "literary" my stuff is; I try to make sure it reads fairly smoothly and that it's not dull.

The Penny Dreadnought art features people-with-telescopes-for-eyes. What low-tech body adornment or extension would you like?

Not really into that sort of thing myself, but a good pen for the right index finger might be of some use.

If you could make any one person - alive or dead, male or female, real or fictional - an honorary Abominable Gentleman, who would it be and why?

I think I'd go with John Collier; for the reason, look no farther than his short story collection Fancies and Goodnights. Wonderful, wonderful stuff, and the book's worth the price of admission just for the closing paragraph of "Over Insurance." Trust me.

Let's bitch - we partially came up with the idea of Penny Dreadnought in reaction to a lot of the 'sparkly vampire' school of supernatural writing. What about writing or publishing today makes you want to scream?

What's happened to mass market paperbacks over the last forty or fifty years. I groused about some of this in my blog a little while ago. When I started buying paperbacks, I could walk into a pharmacy in my neighborhood and find, in mass market editions, writers like Anthony Burgess, Vladimir Nabokov, John D. MacDonald, Anthony Powell, Theodore Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, B. Traven, Cornell Woolrich, Henry James, Richard Matheson, John O'Hara, Isaac Bashevis Singer, W. Somerset Maugham, Nevil Shute, William Goldman, Evan Hunter, Roald Dahl, and more. A lot of the writers whose work once appeared in editions aimed at mass audiences simply aren't available that way any more, and the casual reader browsing the supermarket or WalMart racks won't see anything like that range of material. There's apparently an assumption that only the newest sparkly vampire stuff will sell enough copies to warrant that kind of distribution. Sad.

Be honest - despite being a seasoned horror pro, are you actually confident you can pronounce 'Cthulhu' correctly in public?

Seasoned horror pro? Moi??? Anyway... Can I pronounce Cthulhu correctly in public? You bet. Ka-THOO-loo. Right? RIGHT?????

What's the most abominable thing you've done that you want to reveal to the internet at large?

Well, in every national election from 1984 to date (and 2012 won't be any exception) I've voted a straight Republican ticket. Does that count?

The third issue of Penny Dreadnought is about the world ending. What's your favourite literary apocalypse?

Novel-length would be a three-way tie between Stephen King's The Stand, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids. Shorter -- a tie between Alfred Bester's "Adam and No Eve" and Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God," and I might toss "Vintage Season" by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore in there too.

Aliens are threatening to destroy the human race unless we can prove we are civilised enough to live. However they are short of time, and out of the entire cultural repository of the world to date, they want a single short story of yours to prove we are worth not vaporising. Which story do you pick and why? 

One of my stories? Kiss the planet goodbye... While I don't necessarily think it's my best story, I'd probably go with "Acts of Faith" (included in "The Other Iron River, and Other Stories." End of commercial.) The protagonist tries to preserve something of value for the future even though there's little hope he can do that, and even less hope for his own survival; but he tries anyway, putting his personal safety aside for larger concerns. Of course, aliens of a devious nature might regard people with that capacity as a potential threat and wipe us out just the same.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Honorary Abominable Gentlemen #1: Cate Gardner


The Abominable Gentlemen are always looking for exceptionally talented weird fiction authors, and luckily earlier this week the amazing Cate Gardner wandered into the Jekyll & Hyde pub - either drawn there by mysterious, demonic forces or because she wanted to get out of the rain. 
Cate is the author of the short story collection Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits and if the title alone doesn't make you want to run out and buy it now, then you're dead to us.
Naturally she was beckoned over for a chin-wag, and this was the result:
What are you drinking?
Maybe something non-alcoholic (and low calorie) or maybe a pint of rum and coke, heavy on the rum - it all depends on whether I'm Jekyll or Hyde. I hope I'm Hyde.
Introduce yourself - as writers, we often get asked for boring factual author bios. If you could write an author bio unconstrained by the boundaries of reality and truth, what would it say?
My name is Cate, which is short for Catherine the Terrible and I live in a hut at the bottom of the garden with a short hairy man called The Wolf Dude and a skeletal bloke known to regular folk as the Grim Reaper.
My novellas have graced the hands of the famous (I dug up Charles Dickens and I've also dropped my books into the lap of Tim Burton - quite a feat when you consider I was flying over his garden in a hot air balloon). My short story collection is currently available on Pluto thanks to a gust of wind and an adventurous postman wearing a space suit he picked up in a fancy dress shop. Forthcoming stories will appear on all laptops and computers, possibly even some television screens, once the Gremlins in my employ have figured out how to hack the satellites. Watch this space.
If you had a Mister Hyde style alter-ego what would he/she be called and why?
Oh my, I guess by this question you are assuming that I am Jekyll whereas I may actually be a Miss Hyde pretending to be a Miss Jekyll. In saying that I suppose I should temporarily shake off my disguise and reveal who I truly am…
I am Eugenie Primrose, a time-travelling double agent in the court of Victoria and my weapons of choice are an umbrella and poisoned lipstick.
Have you noticed how I've been three different people in the first three questions? I suspect I'm very confused.
'Literary horror' - oxymoron or your bread & butter as a writer?
Neither. Of course horror can be literary, although I doubt I am (I'll leave that up to the reader to decide).
The Penny Dreadnought art features people-with-telescopes-for-eyes. What low-tech body adornment or extension would you like?
Something to make me taller would be good. Then I could finish painting the little strip of wall above my bath. At the moment, I'm contemplating really high platform shoes or balancing on someone's shoulders.
If you could make any one person - alive or dead, male or female, real or fictional - an honorary Abominable Gentleman, who would it be and why? 
Oscar Wilde for his wit, his dress sense and his fabulous hair.
Let's bitch - we partially came up with the idea of Penny Dreadnought in reaction to a lot of the 'sparkly vampire' school of supernatural writing. What about writing or publishing today makes you want to scream?
I don't think anything makes me want to scream but that's a rather boring reply. Ooh, I do have something. I want to scream every time someone at work asks have I read Fifty Shades of Grey and then goes on to tell me how bloody brilliant it is and I should read it. And I doubly hate that they'll then re-read that book a dozen times rather than giving another author a go.
I'm a little mad now.
Be honest - despite being a seasoned horror pro, are you actually confident you can pronounce 'Cthulhu' correctly in public?
Until I heard the word spoken in an episode of Supernatural (season 6, I think), I was saying it completely wrong. And no, I'm not confident I could pronounce it correctly, but I'll admit I also don't really care about Cthulhu. I'm not a Lovecraft fan. (Should I get my coat now?)
What's the most abominable thing you've done that you want to reveal to the internet at large?
Now if I don't answer this question you're going to think I have something to hide. Thus, I shan't answer the question.
The third issue of Penny Dreadnought is about the world ending. What's your favourite literary apocalypse?
I want to say 'I am Legend' by Richard Matheson, but that would be cheating because I've only watched the movies. I know! I loved 'The Forest of Hands and Teeth' by Carrie Ryan, but was less keen on the sequels so feel I shouldn't pick that. So I'll plump for 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy.
Aliens are threatening to destroy the human race unless we can prove we are civilised enough to live. However they are short of time, and out of the entire cultural repository of the world to date, they want a single short story of your to prove we are worth not vaporising. Which story do you pick and why?
We're fucked.
I guess I should pick Empty Box Motel because it’s a sad little tale and the aliens will be too busy wiping their eyes and blowing their noses to kill us all. They may still vaporise me though.


Buy Cate Gardner's books! And don't forget the first Penny Dreadnought Omnibus is out now (AmazonAmazon UK|Barnes & Noble)

Sunday, July 8, 2012

The Penny Dreadnought Files...

Want to hear how the Abominable Gentlemen and Penny Dreadnought are viewed by the powers that be? You betcha. Then head on over to Keith Brooke's site and read this.
"I don’t mind admitting to feeling some nausea."
Keith runs the excellent Infinity Plus small press; plus with this act of kindness he's ensured himself a place in at least the middle-echelons of the Abominable Government, when our plans come to fruition... In the meantime, check out his books!



And don't forget the first Penny Dreadnought Omnibus is out now (Amazon| Amazon UK |Barnes & Noble)

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Penny Dreadnought Omnibus - Volume 1


The Abominable Gentlemen's diabolical plan is coming to fruition, with the release of the first Penny Dreadnought Omnibus!

It contains all sixteen stories from the first four volumes of Penny Dreadnought as well as a bonus gallery of cover art. Side effects may vary from reader to reader, but are likely to include: trembling hands; creeping dread; visions of the end times; speaking in tongues; existential doubt, and an intolerance to sparkly vampires.

Experience it at Amazon UK | Amazon US
 
The stories are:
 
‘Lilies’ - Iain Rowan
‘Cargo’ - Aaron Polson
‘First Time Buyers’ - James Everington
‘Invasion of the Shark-Men’ - Alan Ryker
‘Falling Over’ by James Everington
‘All the Pretty Yellow Flowers’ by Aaron Polson
‘Ice Age’ by Iain Rowan
‘A Face to Meet the Faces that You Meet’ by Alan Ryker
‘Precious Metal’ by Aaron Polson
‘Only the Lonely’ by Iain Rowan
‘The New Words’ by Alan Ryker
‘He’ by James Everington
‘Occupational Hazard’ by Iain Rowan
‘The Aerialist’ by Alan Ryker
‘Packob's Reward’ by James Everington
‘Poe's Blender’ by Aaron Polson