While we’re busy in the Greyhart Garret working on books due out in the New Year, I thought I’d spread some news from other contributors to the world of independent speculative fiction.

NewCon Press are giving away a hardback edition, signed by all the authors, of a book they launched at Easter called Fables from the Fountain. I’ve read it and heartily recommend. As a reviewer on Amazon said, there isn’t enough pub-based science fiction. Quite right! Fables is a collection of short stories. These are loosely-linked tall tales told by a (semi-) fictional group of scientists and science fiction fans and authors. It’s very much inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart. In fact, the book is a fundraiser for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

NewCon Press have a knack of attracting absolutely top talent (For example, the current Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, Lauren Beukes, was in the other book NewCon launched this Easter. Strewth!) But the idea of putting together a fundraiser and tribute to Arthur C. Clarke attracted a very impressive array of authors indeed. Neil Gaiman is one. He’s kind of popular, but my preferred story was from Stephen Baxter… who is also kind of popular. In fact there are a bunch of Hugo, Nebula, BSFA and all sorts of other award winners too.

Well, I’ve done enough waffling about it now. It’s a book. It’s got very good stories in and most of them involve pubs and real ale (I guess that translates to craft beer in some locales). And you can enter a contest to win one signed by all the authors if you friend the NewCon page on Facebook by December 18th. Oh, and it’s available from Amazon and all those places (though postage is expensive outside of the UK). There’s an eBook edition in the Kindle Store and hopefully will be out soon for Nook and iPads and all those kind of things.

So if you win Neil Gaiman and his friends, where to go next? Try new community blog The Darkleian. It bills itself as a community portal for writers and readers of all things speculative fiction. I’ve taken a look and recommend this. It’s honest, informative, doesn’t waffle, and isn’t based upon the idea of selling you just one publisher’s/ author’s books. So kind of the opposite of the Greyhart Press blog, I suppose. Although it does have a special focus for independent publishers, a commendable perspective.

Tim