Myths and Mobsters

I’m getting this announcement in before my co-editor lets the cat out of the bag over at Book Smugglers. Yup, I said co-editor. That’d be Mike Stone. And we’d be editing a collection of short stories. Crime fiction stories, as if you had to ask.

A while ago, I was contacted by Mark Deniz, who runs the ever-growing small press Morrigan Books. He’d read some of my work and enjoyed what was happening here at CSNI. He also happened to know that Mike Stone is a good friend of mine, and as he’d wanted to work with Mike on a project for quite a while, he figured I might be able to persuade him onto this one.

Morrigan Books aims to put out the very best in dark genre fiction, and who does dark crime fiction better than the Irish? Nobody, in my opinion. And luckily, Mark was willing to accept this opinion. It left one small problem, though. How to set this collection apart from Ken Bruen’s excellent Dublin Noir and Colin Bateman’s forthcoming Belfast Nights? Well, it’s Morrigan Books, right? Morrigan is the Celtic goddess of war. Why not ask for stories with an Irish mythology theme? Why not, indeed?

We asked a bunch of writers and they all seemed intrigued. We’ve even received a number of stories already. Ken Bruen, Adrian McKinty, Garbhan Downey, Sam Millar and Tony Bailie have each sent us something. And I know Paul Charles has completed a first draft of his contribution and that Neville Thompson is working on his. We’ve also received positive interest from Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Aifric Campbell, Lucy Caldwell, Ian McDonald and John McAllister. Me and Mike might even write something, but next to the talent we’ve attracted, we’d need to write something special to justify a place amongst it.

So, what do you think?

And if the whimsy takes you, could you suggest a title? Me and Mike are stumped. At the moment, Stuart Neville’s suggestion is in the lead; Myths and Mobsters (which I've swiped for the title of this post). Mike’s decided to run a draw in which you can win a paperback copy of his novella collection, Fourtold. Each suggestion will be entered into it and the winner picked at random. I’ll sweeten the deal by adding a crime fiction book from my collection. I’ll give the winner a choice of books after the draw. Leave your answer here, or over at Mike’s Book Smugglers piece. It should go live in about four hours.

UPDATE -- Mike's Book Smugglers article can be found right here.