The SubPress edition of Jack Vance’s uncommon novella, The Kragen, has just been sent to our printer, along with the mad scribblings of Tim Powers, James P. Blaylock and “William Ashbless” contained in Pilot Light. We’ll post tentative release dates as soon as we have them.

John Scalzi’s second novel in his “Old Man’s Universe” is in stock and shipping, as is the sold out Coyote novella The River Horses by Allen Steele.
Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades a dust jacket and full-color interior artwork by Vincent Chong, as did the first volume, Old Man’s War. We’re already hard at work on the third volume in Scalzi’s series, The Last Colony. Look for ordering information for that one son.

Speaking of Scalzi, head on over to Subterranean Online, where you can not only catch up on Daniel Abraham’s comic serial, The Support Technician Tango — being posted a chapter every weekday during November — you’ll also find the full text of John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” universe The Sagan Diary.

We’re more than pleased to announce that we’re signing contracts soon for four projects by SubPress favorite, Tim Powers. First up will be a limited and ultra-affordable trade hardcover edition of Tim’s thrill-a-minute pirate novel, On Stranger Tides. As well, we’ll be doing matching limiteds of his Fisher King novels, Last Call, Expiration Date, and Earthquake Weather. The latter two titles have never been published as limited editions. Last Call, of course, had a glorious edition by Charnel House, which has climbed out of the price range of the average collector. Our matching volumes will be illustrated throughout by J.K. Potter, with prices tentatively in the $45 range.

Next year, we’ll be releasing the limited edition of the first six issues of Joe Hill’s comic series, Locke & Key, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, which Joe describes as “a supernatural thriller about three kids who find themselves the custodians of an unlikely New England mansion called Keyhouse. Within the house are secret doors with transformative powers, the power to fundamentally change a person’s identity. There’s one door, when a kid steps through it he’s turned into an old person. Pass through another door, and a boy will turn into a girl, while a girl will be turned into a boy. There’s another door that unlocks a closet, filled with robes: an African robe, an Asian robe. By putting the robe on, you change your race. And they find themselves pitted against a thing that calls itself Dodge, who preys on children with a weak sense of self. Dodge has a habit of turning them lethally dangerous: into Columbine style-killers, or lynch mobs. There’s a terrible door within Keyhouse that Dodge would like to force open, and which my heroes have to keep shut at all costs. Ultimately it’s a kind of modern Grimm’s fairy tale, about the way young people discover and construct their own identity.”

Our hardcover edition will be limited to only 250 numbered and 26 lettered copies, with a whole bunch of extras, and will not be reprinted to fill further demand. Look for a more complete announcement soon, with ordering info. Further down the line, after the full tale is told, and we’ve done limiteds of each miniseries, we may also release a compilation of the complete graphic novel and scripts, along the line of the recent excellent Absolute Sandman volumes.

We’ll be announcing Locke & Key first via our email newsletter, so sign up there or risk missing out on this very limited edition by one of our hottest young writers.

Please accept our apologies, but The Best of Lucius Shepard has had to slip a number of months in our schedule, to August 2008. When he signed the contract for our book, Lucius forgot that PS Publishing had the rights to a number of stories intended for The Best of tied up past our initial publication date. Rather than shorten the book, or alter the table of contents to include other stories — the book had already been designed and proofed, we decided the best solution was to push our publication date back until mid-2008 and give everyone the book as we, and Lucius, intended.

Another title has undergone an unexpected change, this time in length, not publication date. We were in the process of sending our nifty little Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock (writing jointly as “William Ashbless”) book, Pilot Light, to the printer when we were informed it was a little too nifty, and too little. To bring it up to the 64 page length our printer requires, we’ve decided to include the interview originally intended for the limited editions in the regular edition of the book as well. We wanted to add more material to the limited to balance things back out, but Ashbless, being, well, Ashbless, this wasn’t possible. The limited edition will still be the only signed edition of this book.

We’re proud to announce that select Subterranean Press titles are now available as ebooks through Baen’s webscriptions site. Titles already part of the program–with more on the way–include those by Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Mike Resnick, and more. We don’t plan on making our entire backlist–or every forthcoming title–available as ebooks, but we will have a representative sample of our titles available in this new medium. Best of all, most will be priced at only $5, less than paperback prices!

Roughly two weeks before they’re due to ship, the reprints of Charles de Lint’s Newford novel, Promises to Keep, and Connie Willis’s mammoth short story collection, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, feature print runs that are both more than halfway to sold out. If you’re on the fence about a copy, you might want to preorder one now.

Speaking of Promises to Keep, Bookslut just had this to say: “In his novella Promises to Keep Charles de Lint returns to the early days of one of his most beloved Newford characters, Jilly Coppercorn. For fans this will be a delight well worth seeking out but teen readers who have a chance to read it should not pass it up. You do not need any prior knowledge of Jilly’s life to enjoy this story and its message of taking control of your life and moving beyond the legacy of a horrific childhood. It is also a very interesting journey into the world of the dead that has the usual de Lint twist of difficult choices and heavy promises.”

Another one of our titles, Tim Lebbon’s forthcoming two novella collection, After the War, was greeted most positively by Fantasy Magazine: “Luckily, the stories hold together well, take some interesting risks, and ultimately, pay off. If you’ve read the previous Noreela novels, these will give you a fuller sense of the world and keep your appetite in check until the next full-length novel is published. If you’re new to Noreela, these stories will please you, give you a taste of what Lebbon’s writing is like, and perhaps send you to the bookstore searching for Dusk and Dawn.”

Congratulations to Connie Willis, whose mammoth (700 page) compendium of short stories joined such stellar works as David Anthony Durham’s Acacia and Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind on Publishers Weekly’s esteemed list of Best Books of the Year. According to PW, “Willis makes brilliant short fiction look easy in this collection of 23 novellas and short stories, which display a powerful range of sensibility, from poignant tenderness and heartbreak to close-to-the-bone satire and blackest savagery.”

Now’s as good a reason as any to head over and preorder a copy of the second printing, due in our office in just two short weeks.

(P.S. I’ve read both David and Patrick’s novels, and they’re two of my favorite novels of the year.)

Daniel Abraham’s newest novel, A Betrayal in Winter, the second volume of his The Long Price Quartet, is just out, and we can’t recommend it or its predecessor, A Shadow in Summer, enough for those who like their fantasy thoughtful, well-written and deftly-plotted, without being awash in influences from the ususal suspects (Tolkien, et al.)

The serial of Daniel’s we’re running this November, The Support Technician Tango, is definitely not sf. Think of Connie Willis in her madcap comic mode and you’ll be closer to the pleasures Tango has to offer. Look for a chapter or two every weekday over at Subterranean Online.