Linky-Dink And a Holiday Hup-Ya to All

Just a quick round-up of stuff. T'is definitely the season round my place, so a bit of laziness is to be expected. January depression should get me buried in this aul craic again and the posts will be flying out. Until then, here's this:

Declan Burke has me furthering my unexpected editorial experience with this new project (working title) With Dark Joy, The Madness. God bless him and his family. It's a collection of non-fiction essays on all things Irishly crime fictiony. And I get to contribute. You're all going to love it. Click the blooming link for more info on it, but come back here and read the rest of the stuff, okay?

Stuart Neville is fairly getting about the aul publicity trail. Read the guy's brilliant story on his journey to publishing The Twelve / The Ghosts of Belfast, courtesy of The Belfast Telegraph.

And a new magazine has added to my wee list on the right (scroll up or down depending on when you're reading this). Thanks to Elaine Ash for bringing Beat to a Pulp to my attention. Any others out there, get in touch. I'd like to keep my list as current and up to date as possible, but I'm too busy to go looking for these wonderful sites. And a bit lazy, okay? Oh, and on that topic, if you're in the mood for some speculative fiction, the first issue of Three Crow Press has just gone live. That's the e-zine affiliated with Morrigan Books.

Finally, it's all about me. Read a funky interview with me on A Twist of Noir. I'm very pleased to have been asked to spread my wondrous words of whining. But don't worry, Christopher Grant did a great job of shaping by blathering into something quite entertaining. Check it out.

I'm hoping to post a couple of reviews in the next few days, but if I don't get around to it in the Christmas melee, Happy Holidays, whatever way you take 'em. It's been a good year, and a lot of you fine folk out there have contributed to that. Cheers.

A Noir Original? Me? Really?

It’s been a good self-promotion week. Allow me to bask...

Just two days ago, Stuart Neville described my short story, King Edward, as an example of Norn Noir. I’ve no argument with that at all. I think it’s a killer tag. Noir fiction from Norn Iron. Cracker. There were more kind comments at the story’s venue, A Twist of Noir, and an actual (quite positive) review of it on Eastern Standard Crime. This all pleases me.

And speaking of Noir, a couple of submissions I made to Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals have passed muster and are now available on the site. Click here to read my interview with Adrian McKinty, and click here to read the first chapter of Piranhas; the post-Troubles crime fiction novel I’m trying to house right now.

Publishing Karma & A Twist of Noir

My story, King Edward, is now available to read on the newly established A Twist of Noir. John McFetridge pointed me to this site in a comment to a previous post, and if it's good enough for him...

KING EDWARD - GERARD BRENNAN

Where did I leave that cigar?

The thought has no place in this situation. Vinto Feehan is pushing the stubby snout of his .38 revolver into my forehead. Twisting his wrist to grind it into the thin layer of flesh. It hurts just a little more than the wine-before-beer hangover, kicking the shit out of the inside of my skull. My stomach is scraped out from puking, brought on by binge-drinking and stress. I’d been expecting Vinto, you see. That’s why I’d sparked up the cigar in the first place.

You'll find the rest here.

Have a wee read of it, why don't you? It'd make me look a bit popular if you left a comment on the site.

Criminally Good Magazines

Okay, crime fiction magazines, e-zines, web-zines, whatever. It turns out there’s more than a handful of them out there. After a previous post in which I yapped about a lack of venues for crime fiction short stories, constant reader, Colman Keane, emailed me to subtly hint I should dry my eyes, and to point me in the direction of some of his favourite websites. He’s a good lad. Spurred on by this generous time donation, I web-hunted a little more and found an additional few of them myself.

So, I’ve decided to gather the links and collect them all in a wee sidebar. Look to the right and scroll down a little. When I’ve finished the first draft of the current novel-in-progress, I’m going on a short story kick with an aim to go guerrilla on this scene. All out proliferation! Watch me fail miserably with interest, indifference or sadistic pleasure, why don’t you?

And in the meantime, why not check the sites out? If you’re a reader, spend a little time reading. If you’re a writer, check out the up-and-coming competition. Some of these markets pay and some don’t. They all publish crime fiction in some shape or form. I’m not advising writers to give their work away for free, nor am I advising against it. Your work, your call. But feel free to comment on the paying vs. non-paying market if you feel strongly either way. I’m not particularly passionate on the topic, but I prefer to send my short stuff to paying markets.

If you know of any other magazines that I haven’t mentioned, drop me a comment or an email and I’ll add them to the little bunch. Alternatively, if any of the links are dead or the 'zines are dying, I want to hear about that too.