Hardback Super Sale, One Day Only...

That's right, the Irish crime anthology, chock full of top names in the crime field: Ken Bruen, Maxim Jakubowski, Stuart Neville, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, Sam Millar, John McAllister and many others... is on sale to you today, on not one but two formats:

The UK hardback edition price has been dropped from £12.99 (+ shipping) to only £7.99 (+ shipping). (To overseas buyers: if you contact me today, I will offer the book at a similar discount to your country - e-mail me a request and we can discuss.)

But not only that, the e-book edition (for all formats) is now $3.99 (USD) over at Smashswords! (Please make sure to use the coupon code: FA25T when ordering to get your $2 discount)

Remember, today only!

Pre-order Requiems for the Departed Now

Edited by Gerard Brennan & Mike Stone

Requiems for the Departed
Irish Crime, Irish Myths.

Requiems for the Departed can now be pre-ordered on the Morrigan Books website. So this seems like the right time to begin a CSNI promotional push in the hopes that I can convince some of you to dig in to your wallets and spend a little cash on this incredible collection of short stories. Go on, make it your 2010 book for the beach, yeah?

Anyway, I plan to run an interview for each of the contributors and post a short introduction to the story they've written for the anthology.

First up, the super-cool Stuart Neville. Stay tuned.

The Irish Mythology Anthology - Coming Very Soon...

Another great anthology from Morrigan Books and yet another fantastic cover from Reece Notley:

Edited by Gerard Brennan & Mike Stone

Requiems for the Departed
Irish Crime, Irish Myths.

It has been said before, that every story has already been told.

Maybe so. But if you’ve got the gift of the gab, you can tell the same tale as often as you like and still give it a life of its own every time.

Requiems for the Departed flaunts that gift seventeen times over with top shelf stories from Ken Bruen, Maxim Jakubowski, Stuart Neville, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, Sam Millar, John Grant, Garry Kilworth, and many more.

The children of Conchobar are back to their old mischievous ways. Ancient Celtic royalty, druids and banshees are set loose in the new Irish underbelly with murder and mayhem on their minds.

Requiems for the Departed contains seventeen short stories, inspired by Irish mythology, from some of the finest contemporary writers in the business.

PUBLICATION DATE: 1st June 2010

Requiems for the Departed
Stories:

Queen of the Hill - Stuart Neville
Hound of Culann - Tony Black
Hats off to Mary - Garry Kilworth
Sliabh Ban - Arlene Hunt
Red Hand of Ulster - Sam Millar
She Wails Through the Fair - Ken Bruen
A Price to Pay - Maxim Jakubowski
Red Milk - T. A. Moore
Bog Man - John McAllister
The Sea is Not Full - Una McCormack
The Druid's Dance - Tony Bailie
Children of Gear - Neville Thompson
Diarmid and Grainne - Adrian McKinty
The Fortunate Isles - Dave Hutchinson
First to Score - Garbhan Downey
Fisherman's Blues - Brian McGilloway
The Life Business - John Grant

Pre-orders can be made soon

Red Hand of Crime -- The Irish Mythology Anthology

Last week, I received the final story for the Irish mythology anthology I’m co-editing with Mike Stone. Me and Mike are now caught up in a flurry of activity in preparation for sending the manuscript off to the publisher, Morrigan Books. And I’ll tell you what; this editing malarkey is way tougher than I ever thought it would be!

We’ve been very lucky, though, and have received stories from the best of the best. Feast your eyes on this jaw-dropping list of contributors:

Adrian McKinty
Arlene Hunt
Brian McGilloway
Dave Hutchinson
Garbhan Downey
Garry Kilworth
John Grant
John McAllister
Ken Bruen
Maxim Jakubowski
Neville Thompson
Sam Millar
Stuart Neville
T.A. Moore
Tony Bailie
Tony Black
Una McCormack

Frickin’ awesome, right?

Me and Mike are pretty much on track time-wise, so hopefully our projected publication date of Summer 2010 will still stand. Any earlier than that, would be a bonus, of course, but Morrigan Books seem to have a very busy publication schedule on their hands, so we’ll just see what happens, eh?

Stay tuned for more updates!

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.

Speaking of Which - A Bit About Sam Millar & The CWN

Did you know that Glen Patterson judged the Brian Moore Short Story Award last year? Well, he did. And Sam Millar won it ten years ago, and believes it was a turning point in his writing career. He even told the folks at BBC Radio Ulster's Artsextra programme all about it. You can listen to it on the Artsextra website for the next five days. Better hurry.

Interviewed alongside him is Mark Madden from the Creative Writers Network. They run the Brian Moore competition every year. Although I've never won the award, I have benefited greatly from my membership there. They introduced me to Ian McDonald two years ago on their mentoring course, told me of an Ian Sansom workshop before I discovered The Mobile Library Series, and tipped me off on a Colin Bateman reading where he signed my copy of Divorcing Jack. I even attended a writing for radio course hosted by Annie McCartney last year. Ah, good times. So, thanks CWN. Keep on truckin'.

Oh, by the way, Tammy Moore did a lot of work for the CWN in her time. Nowadays she can be found writing for Morrigan Books, a new publishing house going from strength to strength in genre fiction. Best of luck to the lot of them.

Tammy's first publication, The Even, can be purchased from the publisher, Amazon or Waterstones. Take your pick.