Major congratulations to Cherie Priest, whose steampunk extravaganza Boneshaker recently won a Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award. We didn’t read a book that was more fun last year than Boneshaker, a rollicking tale infested with zombies, poison gas, dirigibles, pirates, and attitude. Fans of the novel will be happy to hear we have in hand a 50,000 word novella set in the same world, Clementine, which we’ll be announcing very soon.

The latest issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction has just been posted. It features a review of the last issue of Subterranean Online, quite favorably mentioning the stories by Jay Lake (“Chain of Stars”), Tim Pratt (“Troublesolving”), with a Highly Recommended note for Lewis Shiner (“The Death of Che Guevara”) and our plans to reprint his backlist in trade paperback: “No greater praise can be given to Subterranean Press that it is bringing Shiner’s work back into print, and this story illustrates why this is so. The interview form, the voice of the narrator, ring perfectly true. Here is alternate history as it ought to be done.”

Lois Tilton, the short fiction reviewer, also made her picks for the best stories of 2009, with three tales from Subterranean Online making the cut: the aforementioned Shiner; a different Tim Pratt story (“Her Voice in a Bottle”); and a nasty fairy tale by C. S. E. Cooney (“Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden”).

With the shipping madness of new John Scalzi (The God Engines), Kelley Armstrong (Angelic), and Robert McCammon (Mister Slaughter) titles behind us, we’re back to the regular order of new books lined up on the shipping tarmac.

First up, shipping this week, is Lewis Shiner’s majestic, Collected Stories, recipient of a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which said, “These 41 powerful stories cover Shiner’s career across three decades and multiple genres, showcasing hard-edged, often political genre genre fiction at its finest…Shiner never fails to astound, and this collection highlights everything that makes him one of today’s best storytellers.”

Most times, we get our projects in the regular way, by making an author or agent an offer. Every once in a while, though, we snag something from off the edges of the normal publishing-as-business map. Like, possibly, a favor that’s likely to turn into a future Patrick Rothfuss novella…

Norman Partridge has written a number of short stories that can be considered classics of modern horror — including “Guignoir”, “The Bars on Satan’s Jailhouse”, “Red Right Hand”, as well as a number of gems like “Apotropaics” (which we reprinted at Subterranean Online), “Blackbirds”, and “Dead Celebs”.

His new collection, Lesser Demons, is no exception. It contains tales like “Durston”, which is so dark it strays into the ultraviolet, a new twist on Lovecraft in the title story, to say nothing of the new novella, “The Iron Dead”, which can best be described as steampunk-goes-to-hell.

Head over to the book’s page and grab a look at early praise from the likes of Jeffrey Ford, Ellen Datlow, Laird Barron, and others.

We’ve just posted the first tale over at Subterranean Online.

“The Second Journey of the Magus” may be a little late for the holiday season, but it’s an excellent Ian R. MacLeod tale nevertheless. Those interested in some of the best short sf being written today can look forward to Ian’s new collection, Journeys, which we’ll be announcing soon.

John Scalzi’s new fantasy novella, The God Engines, is selling even more quickly than we envisioned. In fact, it’s doing so well that we’ve already ordered a second printing.

We filled our initial online retail and wholesale orders with first printing copies, but we’re holding back the last couple hundred firsts for our direct customers. What’s this mean to you? If you ordered from Amazon etc. before the book was published, chances are very good you’ll land a first printing. If you order now, or in the future, you’ll probably end up with a later printing. As noted above, we are holding the last first printing copies to sell direct, so even after other retailers only have later printings, we’ll be able to offer firsts to those who order direct. When this changes, we’ll note it on The God Engines page.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that, several months before publication, we already have more orders than we’ll be able to fill for Peter Straub’s The Skylark, the longer version of what eventually became his taut new novel, A Dark Matter, which is receiving glowing reviews.

We continue to receive wholesale and large online retail orders, which will be only be partially filled, if at all. Those who order direct from SubPress will, as always, be taken care of first.

Michael Wm Kaluta came through with the beautiful cover you see here, just in the nick of time. We’ve sent Peter S. Beagle’s mammoth career retrospective, Mirror Kingdoms (over 200,000 words) to the printer. If all goes smoothly, Mirror should be right on schedule for its late February release.

The signed leatherbound edition of Mirror Kingdoms is already sold out — no surprise given Peter’s devoted fans — but the trade hardcover is still in good supply. We haven’t ordered a huge print run, and know of several very strong reviews that will appear soon, so there’s a good chance this will join other SubPress Best ofs that have been Sold Out on publication or shortly thereafter.

SFRevu has just weighed in on a few different SubPress titles, including Charles de Lint’s 100,000 word high fantasy, Eyes Like Leaves: “In the introduction to Eyes Like Leaves, Charles de Lint explains how this early work ended up never being published. It was finished around 1980. He edited it trying to stay true to the writer he was at the time it was written. I have to say that even knowing it’s an earlier work, this is vintage de Lint. There are characters that come alive on the page and writing that pulls you into the story and makes you care about the people that inhabit the pages and what is happening to their world. This is a must have for any fan of de Lint’s works.”

From there, the site goes on to the Nick Gevers edited anthology, The Book of Dreams, with original work by Robert Silverberg, Jay Lake, Kage Baker, and Jeffrey Ford: “Each of these stories raises fascinating questions and, as dreams do, provides a variety of ways out or possible interpretations. These are thinking-persons fantasy stories, intended for people who look beyond the initial facade of story line into the depths of character and meaning.” An important note: due to scheduling difficulties, Kage Baker will not be able to sign the limited edition, though all other contributors will do so.

And on to Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs: “If you’re a fan of the Mercy Thompson series and the Alpha and Omega series of books, you’re really going to want to pick up this novella in order to fill in the backstory of their meeting and to get a better handle on these two characters. This is probably especially important if the Alpha and Omega books continue to follow their storyline.” We’ve recently received a double handful of copies of this title back from a large online retailer, so it’s available again for a very limited time.