Piccirilli’s novella Every Shallow Cut, while a wealthy industrialist attempted to create a perfect community amongst a race of shape-shifters in David Nickle’s Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism.
A Rope of Thorns was the second novel in Gemma Files’ “Hexslinger” weird Western series.
Most ChiZine books were available in signed hardcover editions only by pre-order.
Chilling Tales, somewhat obliquely subtitled Evil Did I Dwell: Lewd I Did Live, was the first in an original horror anthology series edited with an Introduction by Michael Kelly and published in trade paperback by Canadian imprint Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. The eighteen contributors included Richard Gavin, Barbara Roden, Simon Strantzas, Nancy Kilpatrick, David Nickle, Brett Alexander Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Gemma Files and others, while the cover was by the distinctly non-Canadian Les Edwards.
Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes was the third in a series of supernatural Sherlockian anthologies edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec. It contained twelve stories (one reprint) by Stephen Volk, Christopher Fowler, Fred Saberhagen, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Simon Clark, Paul Kane, Tony Richards, Kim Newman and others, with artwork by Dave Elsey, Mike Mignola and Luke Eidenschink.
Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead contained twenty-two new stories about how bloodsuckers and humans might co-exist after a future apocalypse. Contributors included Kelley Armstrong, William Meikle, John Shirley, Bev Vincent, Thomas Roche, Tanith Lee and Sandra Kasturi.
From Edge’s Hades Publications imprint, Rigor Amortis was an anthology of zombie erotica edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt which featured thirty-three stories and two poems, while Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives edited by Justin Gustainis contained fourteen “urban fantasy” stories by Carrie Vaughn, Tanya Huff, Lilith Saintcrow, Simon R. Green, T. A. Pratt and others, including the editor.
From PS Publishing’s poetry imprint, Stanza Press, A Woman of Mars: The Poems of an Early Homesteader collected thirty-three poems about the red planet by Australian writer Helen Patrice. It was limited to 300 hardcovers signed by the poet and illustrator Bob Eggleton.
Blood Wallah and Other Poems from Dark Regions Press collected forty-three poems (fifteen original) by Robert Borski, illustrated by Marge Simon.
From Australian PoD imprint P’rea Press, The Land of Bad Dreams edited by Charles Lovecraft featured twenty-eight poems by Kyla Lee Ward, who also supplied the black and white illustrations.
PS Publishing also launched its first issue of the “PS Quickies” chapbook series with Ramsey Campbell’s original short story Holding the Light.
Hector Douglas Makes a Sale was another slim chapbook from PS that contained a missing section from Ian R. MacLeod’s alternate-world novel Wake Up and Dream, the reasons for which were explained by the author in an extensive Afterword.
From Nicholas Royle’s chapbook imprint Nightjar Press came Remains by Ga Pickin, Sullom Hill by Christopher Kenworthy, Lexicon by Christopher Burns and Field by Tom Fletcher. Each title was limited to 200 signed and numbered copies.
Simon Marshall-Jones’ similar Spectral Press imprint was launched with the chapbook What They Hear in the Dark, a haunted house story by Gary McMahon. It was followed by King Death by Paul Finch, Nowhere Hall by Cate Gardner and Abolisher of Roses by Gary Fry. Each slim volume was limited to only 100 signed and numbered copies apiece.
From Bedabbled’s B! imprint, Three Demonic Tales by Michel Parry contained two reprints (originally published in the 1970s under the pseudonym “Roland Caine”) and an original story. It was limited to just fifty signed copies.
Mysterious Islands was a selection of nautical nightmares (including H. P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu”) and other horrors by artist Gary Gianni. The chapbook was limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies from Flesk Publications.
There was a touch of the memento mori hanging over The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which put out its usual six bumper issues featuring fiction by Kate Wilhelm, Albert E. Cowdrey, Richard A. Lupoff, Alan Dean Foster, Paul Di Filippo, Chet Williamson, Don Webb, Scott Bradfield, Steve Saylor, Peter S. Beagle, Esther M. Friesner, Geoff Ryman, Sarah Langan, M. Rickert, Tim Sullivan, and the deceased Joan Aiken, Alan Peter Ryan and Evangeline Walton, among others.
David Langford, Paul Di Filippo, Paul Dellinger and the late F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre contributed to the “Curiosities” column, and editor Gordon Van Gelder wrote a fascinating editorial in the May/June issue about the strange life and even stranger death of “Froggy” MacIntyre.
A free Kindle version of F&SF was also launched that included various columns and a sample short story.
Andy Cox’s Black Static turned out six colourful issues with the usual news, reviews and opinion columns by Peter Tennant, Tony Lee, Stephen Volk, Christopher Fowler and Mike O’Driscoll. Maura McHugh, James Cooper, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Joel Lane, Simon Bestwick, Ramsey Campbell, Alison Littlewood, Christopher Fowler, Gary McMahon and Andrew Hook were amongst those who contributed stories, and there were interviews with Angela Slatter, Steven Pirie, Tim Lees, Tom Fletcher, Kaaron Warren and D. F. Lewis.
Black Static’s sister SF publication, Interzone, also produced six attractive-looking issues.
The two issues of the magazine that continued to call itself Weird Tales was filled with the usual whimsical nonsense, along with interviews with writer Caitlin R. Kiernan, Angry Robot publisher Marc Gascoigne and artist Carrie Ann Baade.
Thankfully, in August, editor Ann VanderMeer announced in a surprisingly self-congratulatory press release that publisher John Betancourt of Wildside Press was selling the magazine to author/editor Marvin Kaye. However, as a result of the change in ownership, VanderMeer — who had been reading fiction for the magazine for five years — and her all-female management staff would be let go.
The new owners of Weird Tales, Nth Dimension Media, Inc., brought out a special electronic issue in time for the 2011 World Fantasy Convention that featured stories by Meg Opperman, Jean Paiva, Parke Godwin, Tanith Lee and Christian Endres.
The second annual issue of editor Michael Kelly’s Shadows & Tall Trees from Undertow Publications retained its trade paperback format with eight original stories of “quiet, literary horror” by Steve Rasnic Tem, Ian Rogers, Alison J. Littlewood and others.
The first perfect-bound issue of David Memmott’s ambitious literary journal Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism included eleven stories (one reprint), eight poems, two essays and two artist features. Contributors included Brian Evenson and Ray Vukcevich.
For the third time in recent years, it was announced that Realms of Fantasy magazine was being closed down, with the October edition being the final issue from the current publisher. Meanwhile, editor John Joseph Adams purchased both Fantasy and Lightspeed magazines from Prime Books and announced plans to combine them into a single ebook.
The April issue of Suspense Magazine included an interview with Jack Ketchum.
Issue #117 of Granta: The Magazine of New Writing was a special devoted to “Horror” that included contributions from Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Will Self and Stephen King.
In the first issue of the year, King announced that he was giving up his column “The Pop of King” in Entertainment Weekly after seven years. However, the author did contribute a “Summer Reading List” to the magazine’s special June issue that featured Robert McCammon’s The Five, Graham Joyce’s The Silent Land and Michael Koryta’s The
