Tag Archives: Neil Gaiman

Beautiful Sorrows Joins the 99 Cent Movement

Posted on December 6, 2012 by K. Allen Wood

For the next seven days, the Kindle edition of Beautiful Sorrows will be on sale for just 99 cents. Please consider buying a copy for yourself or a friend. Help us make this one a bestseller!


[ Both covers created by Yannick Bouchard ]

Praise for Beautiful Sorrows:

“Beautiful Sorrows… delicate prose with devastating impact. Mercedes Yardley is a female Joe Hill, and I fear her ‘Broken’ will haunt me to my grave.” —F. Paul Wilson, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Keep and The Tomb

“Mercedes M. Yardley has the Right Stuff. She demonstrates that in her wonderful collection of short stories: Beautiful Sorrows. Each story is a different kind of gem, the bagful priceless.” —Gene O’Neill, Bram Stoker Award™-winning Author of The Taste of Tenderloin and Double Jack

“Mercedes Yardley’s debut collection, Beautiful Sorrows, holds its hands out, palms up, no tricks, no irony, no clever retreats from honest emotions. Life’s travails inhabit these pages, and she renders them beautifully.” —Christopher Barzak, author of One for Sorrow and The Love We Share Without Knowing

Again, you can download the 99-cent digital version here. Or if you’d prefer the print version, you can order it through our webstore, Amazon, or other online booksellers.

If you have any questions, please let us know. As always, your support is greatly appreciated!

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Posted in Alumni News, Sales, Shock Totem Digital, Shock Totem News, Staff News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Psychos and the Appalachian Undead

Posted on August 16, 2012 by K. Allen Wood

Some staff news, ya’ll! Cue banjo!

This coming October, if not sooner, Apex Publications is set to release Appalachian Undead, a new anthology dedicated to the walking dead. I contributed a quirky tale called “Long Days to Come.”


[ click for full image ]

The brilliant artwork was created by Cortney Skinner. Quite a lineup, too: Elizabeth Massie, Jonathan Maberry, Tim Waggoner, S. Clayton Rhodes*, Maurice Broaddus, Bev Vincent, Tim Lebbon, Steve Rasnic Tem, John Skipp* & Dori Miller, and Gary A. Braunbeck, to name a few more than a few.

If you’d like to check out the full table of contents, click here.

You can also pre-order via the above link (and get 5% off if you tweet the link), but before you do, check out this groovy contest they’re running for those who do pre-order.

As always from Apex Publications, you can expect quality.

Not to be outdone, Mercedes and John each have stories—“Murder for Beginners” and “Intruder,” respectively—in Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane, the latest slab—and I do mean slab; these things are massive—in an ongoing series edited by the inimitable John Skipp which has thus far included Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, Werewolves and Shapeshifters: Encounters with the Beasts Within, and Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed.


[ click for larger image ]

Psychos is due out in September via Black Dog & Leventhal, and features new and classic fiction from the likes of Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, Lawerence Block, Neil Gaiman, Leslianne Wilder*, Violet LeVoit, Weston Ochse*, Kathe Koja, and many more.

If you order now, Amazon has it for $10.07. That’s 608 pages for $10! No-brainer.

We hope you’ll buy both!

* Shock Totem alumni.

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Posted in Alumni News, New Releases, Recommended Reading, Staff News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Demonic Acceptance

Posted on July 14, 2011 by K. Allen Wood

Some Big News for one of our own.

Mercedes M. Yardley’s “Daisies and Demons” made it into the upcoming anthology Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed, edited by the almighty John Skipp.


[ not final or accurate cover art ]

The anthology is slated to come out this October through Black Dog & Levinthal. Mercedes has declared that she’ll sign her story with “a lipstick kiss” if you bring it to her.

The Table of Contents is as follows:

CHERUB – Adam-Troy Castro
THE DEVIL – Guy de Maupassant
THE BOOK – Margaret Irwin
THE MONKEY’S PAW – W.W. Jacobs
THE HOUND – H.P. Lovecraft
…THE BLACK CAT – Edgar Allan Poe
THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER – Stephen Vincent Benet
NELLTHU – Anthony Boucher
THE HOWLING MAN – Charles Beaumont
THE EXORCIST (excerpt) – William Peter Blatty
HELL – Richard Christian Matheson
VISITATION – David J. Schow
…BEST FRIENDS – Robert R. McCammon
INTO WHOSE HANDS – Karl Edward Wagner
PILGRIMS TO THE CATHEDRAL – Mark Arnold
THE BESPELLED – Kim Harrison
NON QUIS, SED QUID – Maggie Stiefvater
DEMON GIRL – Athena Villaverde
HE WAITS – K.H. Koehler
HAPPY HOUR – Laura Lee Bahr
…STAYING THE NIGHT – Amelia Beamer
DAISIES AND DEMONS – Mercedes M. Yardley
AND LOVE SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION – Livia Llewellyn
MOM – Bentley Little
20TH LEVEL CHAOTIC EVIL ROGUE SEEKS WHOLE WIDE WORLD TO CONQUER – Weston Ochse
CONSUELA HATES A VACUUM – Cody Goodfellow
OUR BLOOD IN ITS BLIND CIRCUIT – J. David Osborne
EMPTY CHURCH – James Steele
…ANGELOLOGY (excerpt) –Danielle Trussoni
THE CODA OF SOLOMON – Nick Mamatas
John Skipp THE LAW OF RESONANCE – Zak Jarvis
STUPID FUCKING REASON TO SELL YOUR SOUL – Carlton Mellick III
HALT AND CATCH FIRE – Violet LeVoit
SCARS IN PROGRESS – Brian Hodge
THE UNICORN HUNTER – Alethea Kontis
OTHER PEOPLE – Neil Gaiman

If you’ve read Skipp’s previous anthologies in this series, Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead and Werewolves and Shapeshifters: Encounters With the Beast Within—which includes Mercedes’s “Werewolf 101″—then you know you can expect a hefty—and I mean hefty; these things are HEAVY!—platter of great fiction, old and new.

Dig on that!

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