Our shippers recently discovered a box of first printings of Jim Butcher’s Backup that had somehow been overlooked when we were in the midst of the shipping marathon for The Dresden Files novelette. So it’s back in print for a very limited time!

Magic is already fading in the Green Isles, but it’s still a time when myths walk the world and the children of the ancient gods are engaged in one final confrontation. But when legendary creatures wage war, it’s the ordinary people who suffer the consequences–unless they, themselves, can find a way to bring an end to the hostilities. The trouble is, not all of them are able to pick a side.

Eyes Like Leaves was written in the days of Moonheart and Charles de Lint’s other high fantasy novels. The tale slept like a long-forgotten lover until he recently chose to revisit (and polish) this never-before-published gem.

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Eyes Like Leaves is a long (100,000 words) never-before-published novel. Our other recent de Lint collections (Woods & Waters Wild, Quicksilver & Shadow) sold out immediately and had unfilled orders for thousands of copies. We expect demand for Eyes to be even stronger, given that it’s a novel, and do not plan additional printings to meet increased demand.

Spring, it appears, is the time for dragon fever.

In the next week or so, we’ll be packing up copies of the third volume in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, Black Powder War, and the numbered edition will be completely sold out once we finish shipping. In fact, we won’t have enough copies to fill all of our large online retailer and wholesale account orders, so the only way to be absolutely certain of snagging a copy is to order one from SubPress before we pull it from the site.

For those interested, the first Temeraire adventure (His Majesty’s Dragon) is already sold out, and we have limited stock left of volume two (Throne of Jade).

As some of our British counterparts might say, we were mighty chuffed when sent a link to the nominations for this year’s Locus Awards.

SubPress made the final ballot in the following categories:

– Publisher
– Magazine, for Subterranean Online
– Collection, for The Best of Lucius Shepard
– Collection, for The Best of Michael Swanwick

Many thanks to everyone for their kind support, and congratulations to all of the other nominees.

Now that The Graveyard Book shipping marathon has ended, and we’re starting to get feedback from those receiving their books — and it’s uniformly favorable, thank goodness — it’s safe to announce that we have another project we’ll be working on with Neil and Dave.

Smoke and Mirrors is Neil Gaiman’s first major short story collection, and a personal favorite here in the SubPress offices. It contains classics such as “Chivalry; “Murder Mysteries”; “Snow, Glass Apples”; as well as what we consider an under appreciated masterpiece, The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”, among its many treasures.

Dave McKean will be designing and illustrating the entire book in two colors, and we’ll select appropriately elegant binding materials — as we did with The Graveyard Book — to make this a volume that Gaiman and McKean fans, and those who love short stories, will treasure.

We expect Dave to begin his work this fall, so we’ll post ordering info and updates as and when progress begins.

We’re mighty pleased to announce that we’ve just finished negotiating the rights to Locke & Key: Head Games, the second graphic novel in Joe Hill’s seriously horrific (and good) comic book series.

We’ll have more details down the line, but you can expect a very limited edition (276 copies) published roughly nine months ahead of a 1000 copy trade edition the same way we’re handling Welcome to Lovecraft, the first miniseries in Locke & Key.

Speaking of Welcome to Lovecraft, the books have long been done. We’re waiting now on the slipcases, which are expected to land in our offices in the next 3-4 weeks. The trade edition has already been printed as well, and we’ll have it up for preorder soon.

Here’s a project that’s dear to our hearts here at SubPress:

“Shiner doesn’t work through dazzle, diversion, or sleight of hand. His prose is a model of clarity. When you come to the end of a story, you know what happened; you know how Shiner feels about it. The power seldom arises in trick and technique, but is located instead in voice and conviction. He is not the sort of writer who keeps an ironic distance. His work is more the heartfelt sort… The emotional world of these stories feels very like the real world to me.”
– from the introduction by Karen Joy Fowler

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Containing 41 stories and extensive author’s notes, Collected Stories is the definitive compilation of Shiner’s short work. His best known stories are all here, including “The War at Home,” “Twilight Time,” “The Circle,” “Perfidia,” and “Mozart in Mirrorshades,” as well as a brand new story, “The Death of Che Guevara.”

The limited edition will be accompanied by Widows and Orphans, a chapbook of stories not in the main volume, including: “Deserted Cities of the Heart,” (short story version), “How I Won the War on Drugs,” (with Bruce Sterling) “The Shoemaker’s Tale,” “Like the Gentle Rain,” and “You Never Know.”

We’re pleased to announce The Shop of the Mechanical Insects, a full color chapbook by Ray Bradbury, illustrated and designed by Dave McKean.

Here’s a short description:

Like the mechanical insects it so lovingly describes, this short, sharp gem of a story is haunting, beautiful, and infinitely strange. The accompanying illustrations by Dave McKean provide the perfect complement to Bradbury’s evocative prose. The result of this inspired collaboration is that rarest of creations: a seamless, perfectly balanced marriage of image and word.

Our previous Bradbury/McKean chapbook was very well received and sold out quite quickly. We expect this never-before-published Bradbury tale to do the same.

Now that the epic shipping marathon that was The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is complete, we can turn our attention to all of the other books that are done and ready for shipping. They include:

– Fool Moon (Jim Butcher);
– Dark Integers and Other Stories (trade paperback, Greg Egan);
– The Steel Remains (Richard K. Morgan);
– Trips (Robert Silverberg).

The fourth volume of Robert Silverberg’s Collected Stories, Trips, may well mark his high point as a writer of short fiction. As Publishers Weekly notes, “Thought-provoking and deeply ironic, these stories and the others in this volume are as powerful today as they were when they first saw print.”

We also happen to know that Trips will be receiving a starred review from another prestigious trade journal soon, which makes a sell-out in the next month likely.

Limited Edition:

$65

Trade HC:

$35