Parts two and three of Jeff VanderMeer and Cat Rambo’s ultra-strange collaboration, “The Surgeon’s Tale” are up over at Subterranean online, where they’re joined today by an interview with David Morrell, whose latest thriller, Scavenger has just hit the shelves. Next week, look for new the debut of our Spring issue, with a brand new cover, and some great fiction from the likes of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, Mike Resnick, and others.

We’ve just received our Advance Reading Copies of Charles de Lint’s short novel about Jilly Coppercorn’s early years, Promises to Keep, as well as those to Poppy Z. Brite’s 120 page collection, Antediluvian Tales. Reviewers, be watching your mailboxes for them. We’re especially proud of these two books. Thanks to both authors, who went above and beyond the usual amount of trouble to get their books to us.

Stephen Gallagher has just turned in (yesterday)”The Blackwood Oak,” the original novella for his collection Plots and Misadventures, and we’d love to tell you it’s wonderful, but the truth is we haven’t had the chance to read it yet! We’re planning to rectify that later today, as Steve’s one of our favorite writers of the dark stuff, and his collection promises to be one of the better ones released this year.

On the new book front, we’ve just signed a contract with Lucius Shepard to produce a 250k word career retrospective of his work, which took a lot of back-and-forthing and negotiations before Lucius and I could get a table of contents we were both happy with. In addition to the regular hardcover, current plans call for the limited edition to include a 200-300 page trade paperback of previously uncollected Shepard, including a stunning novella, Skull City, out of print for nearly two decades.

The illustrated film script to Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s hit MirrorMask is in stock in shipping. Our edition is limited to only 526 copies, with original sketches in the lettered edition. It’s printed on 80# Finch paper, with a sewn binding, leather spine, and brocade cloth to provide a lifetime of enjoyment, and, featuring cut dialogue and scenes, is yet another way of experiencing this wonderful movie.

Signed Hardcover:

$125

Peter Crowther’s newest collection of short stories, The Spaces Between the Lines, has just landed in our offices and is now shipping. Here’s just a taste of the universal praise it’s been drawing.

From Publishers Weekly:
“British author Crowther (The Longest Single Note) shows impressive versatility in this collection of 12 weird tales that evoke a variety of moods ranging from wonder to horror…these stories are grounded in believably wrought emotions that make their strangeness both credible and affecting.”

From Library Journal:
“From a quietly horrific story of a man who cannot accept his wife’s untimely death (’Stand By’) to a post-apocalyptic encounter between a traveling carnival and the last vampire (’The Last Vampire’), the dozen stories in this collection illustrate the author’s knack for finding the strange places between reality and dark fantasy and bringing them to light.”

Signed Hardcover:

$40

For those keeping track, Kealan Patrick Burke’s hard edged horror novel, Currency of Souls, has drawn another strong review, this time from Booklist: “Burke’s sharp-edged prose includes enough unforgettable characterizations and dollops of macabre wit to distinguish him as one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror.” With the reviews it’s getting — Publishers Weekly was also overwhelmingly positive — sales are picking up on Currency, so we’re not certain how much longer we’ll have copies in stock.

Head over to check out Gahan Wilson’s cheerfully macabre artwork for M is for Magic, Neil Gamain’s collection geared toward readers of all ages. In addition to the creepy cover art, we’ve also posted b&w versions of three of the interior illos. (Our designers will be adding another color when they design the book in the coming weeks.)

* Over at Subterranean, the online version of our magazine, we’ve just published the final three chapters of Lucius Shepard’s stunning new novella, Vacancy. Speaking of Mr. Shepard, now’s as good a time as any to let you all know that next year we’ll be publishing a 250k word career retrospective of his. As I’ve been reading Lucius since high school, it’s making both of us feel old!

* We’ve just sent four new titles to the printer, including: Old Man Crow (Charles de Lint); The Shadows Kith and Kin (Joe R. Lansdale); Getting to Know You (David Marusek); and Rude Mechanicals (Kage Baker). Look for them in April. One point to note. The artist for David Marusek’s collection ran into some unavoidable personal travails, so this title won’t have interior illustrations, as originally intended. Apologies to all, but please know the stories themselves are worth twice the price of admission.

We have in our hands an ultra rare PC copy of Stephen King’s new short story collection, The Secretary of Dreams, just published by Cemetery Dance. This very oversized volume contains literally hundreds of illustrations by Gleen Chadbourne, is printed in two colors, and signed by both the author and artist!

Best of all, we’re giving it away!

That’s not all!

Second prize in this giveaway will be a copy of our just published edition of The Green Mile, which features more than 60 brand new black and white illustrations by noted artist Mark Geyer. The Subterranean Gift edition consists of six small hardcovers wtih foil stamped covers, printed in two colors throughougt, housed in a custom slipcase.

To enter the drawing, all you need to do is place an order for any in-print or forthcoming title between now and 5:00 EST Friday, March 9, 2007. For every book you order, we’ll drop your name into the “hat” five times. Even better, for each of the just announced books you order (the two by John Scalzi, or Neil Gaiman’s M is for Magic), your name will go into the hat ten times.

Best-selling writer Neil Gaiman’s M is for Magic is his first collection for readers of all ages, in the tradition of such Ray Bradbury classics as R is for Rocket and S is for Space.

In M is for Magic, readers will be enchanted by a neighborhood cat that fights a nightly battle to save his family from evil, a hardboiled nursery rhyme story, and many other delights as only Neil Gaiman can provide.

Each story in our edition will feature a two-color illustration by none other than Gahan Wilson. We’re still investigating cloth and paper choices, but hope to print the book on 80# Finch, a high quality, thicker paper than usual. Gahan Wilson will also be signing the book, and providing remarques (small sketches) in copies of the Lettered Edition.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies, signed by the author and artist: $60
Lettered: 26 signed traycased copies, signed, with an artist remarque: $350

Table of Contents:

* The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds
* Troll Bridge
* Don’t Ask Jack
* How to Sell the Ponti Bridge
* October in the Chair
* Chivalry
* The Price
* How to Talk to Girls at Parties
* Sunbird
* The Witch’s Headstone
* Instructions

Really, we try to keep these career retrospectives to reasonable lengths Initially, we envisioned Bruce Sterling’s Ascendancies as 150-170k words, and did our best to hold it to that. That grew impossible, but we did manage to keep it to 500 pages — until Bruce published a wonderful 18,000 word novella, “Kiosk”, in last month’s Fantasy and Science Fiction. We couldn’t resist the urge to add that novella to the now well over 200k word book, adding it after we’d sent out Advance Reading Copies for review, making the book longer by 50 pages. Not to worry, we’ll still make our projected August publication.

We had the same problem with Connie Willis’ book, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, which was supposed to be a nice svelte, 230-250k words. So much for plans. The one story we left out, “Jack”, one of her WWII novellas, kept eating at us until we decided to add it, making her collection a full 270k words, all for only $40. Connie just turned in her delightful introduction yesterday, so we’ll be sending out to have ARCs produced this week, with the book on schedule for its late summer release.

“Some high school kids would do anything to be an IASA space cadet, but not Theodora Baumgarten in Willis’s cheerfully tongue-in-cheek SF novella… Getting out will require solving the mystery of how she got into the Academy in the first place, but it might have something to do with the annotation ‘D.A.’ in her station records. Willis (Inside Job) turns a cherished SF theme completely inside out.”