Also from Subterranean, On Pirates was a deluxe chapbook by William Ashbless (a pseudonym for Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock) with interior two-colour illustrations by Gahan Wilson. Limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies, it included ‘Slouching Toward Mauritius’, a short pirate story written more than twenty-five years ago but never published, along with a lengthy pirate poem, ‘Moon-Eye Agonistes’. Powers and Blaylock supplied the introduction and afterword respectively.
Cat Stories by Michael Marshall Smith was published by Paul Miller’s Earthling Publications, collecting three tales (one original) featuring fantastique felines in an attractive 350-copy chapbook designed by the author. Fifteen lettered and signed hardcover copies were also issued in a slipcase, along with a facsimile of the original handwritten manuscript for Smith’s short story ‘The Man Who Drew Cats’.
Chico Kidd’s self-publishedSecond Sight and Other Stories contained four rousing supernatural adventures introducing readers to turn-of-the-century sea captain Luis Da Silva, who had the power to see ghosts after losing his left eye to a demon. It proved an impressive showcase for one of the genre’s most interesting and genuinely original new characters.
From Sean A. Wallace’s Prime Books, The Hidden Language of Demons was a 33,000-word modern novella by L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims which was billed as ‘Poe in his Sgt. Pepper period’.
Limited to 100 copies, W. (Wilum) H. (Hopfrog) Pugmire’s Songs of Sesqua Valley was published by Imelod and contained thirty-three weird sonnets inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, The Cthulhu Mythos and various dark places, with an introduction and cover illustration by Peter Worthy. From the same author, Tales of Love and Death published by Delirium Books was a 300-copy signed chapbook containing sixteen horror and Lovecraftian short stories (two original).
Mark McLaughlin’s Shoggoth Cacciatore and Other Eldritch Entrees was a chapbook collection of ten Lovecraftian stories (six original) also from Delirium, with an introduction by Simon Clark. The Night the Lights Went Out in Arkham was an anthology of Lovecraftian stories set in the 1970s from Undaunted Press. It contained five new tales by Shawn James, Megan Powell, Octavio Ramos, Jr., Lawrence Barker and the ever-popular McLaughlin.
Louis de Bernieres’s Gunter Weber’s Confession: The Final Chapter to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a thin chapbook from Tartarus Press, published in a special limited edition of 350 numbered copies. Hand-set in Perpetua type and printed and bound by Alan Anderson at the Tragara Press, it was available in a 250-copy edition on Teton paper or as one of 100 special copies on Zerkall paper signed by the author for $120.00.
Eden was a novelette by Ken Wisman about a drug-fuelled spiritual journey, published by California’s Dark Regions Press. True Tales of the Scarlet Sponge by Wayne Allen Sallee and Weston Ochse’s Natural Selection were both available from DarkTales.
Billed as ‘A Double Shot of Repugnance’, the first release in the new Necro Chapbooks line from Florida wasPartners in Chyme, featuring Ryan Harding’s ‘Gross-Out Contest’-winning story ‘Damaged Goods’ paired with ‘The Dritiphilist’ by Edward Lee. It was published as a 300-copy signed and numbered chapbook and a twenty-six-copy signed and lettered hardcover.
Quantum Theology Publications was a new chapbook line from Canada that launched with The Narrow World, a collection of five stories by the talented Gemma Files, including a new vampire tale, plus an introduction by Michael Rowe.
Colorado’s new online bookstore and specialty press Worm-hole Books launched its limited-edition Contemporary Chapbook line in May with Pioneer by Melanie Tem, briefly introduced by Nancy Holder, and A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned by Edward Bryant, with a new introduction by S. P. Somtow and an afterword by the author.
Also from Wormhole, Pink Marble and Never Say Die were two short stories by Dawn Dunn with an introduction by Nancy Kilpatrick, and Dunn also contributed an author biography to While She Was Out by Bryant. Steve Rasnic Tern’s bizarre novella about a travelling salesman, In These Final Days of Sales, included an autobiographical afterword by the author and interior photography by Bryant.
Each Wormhole booklet was limited to 750 signed copies, a 200-copy hardcover edition and a fifty-two-copy lettered edition, featuring full-colour covers, illustrated interiors and archival materials.
Fallen Angel Blues was an apocalyptic round-robin novella from Succubus Press/horror.net which, despite owing a little too much to Stephen King’s The Stand, succeeded because of the enthusiasm of its ten collaborators, who included Suzanne Donahue, James Newman, Steve Savile and Mark Tyree.
Lee Martindale’s The Folly of Assumption was a chapbook collection of five stories (one original) from Yard Dog Press, while A Game of Colors by John Urbanick was a novella from the same publisher.
The Exchange by Nicholas Sporlender (aka Jeff VanderMeer) was a beautifully produced little enveloped chapbook illustrated by Louis Verden (aka Eric Schaller) and published by Hoegbottom & Sons to celebrate the city of Ambergris’s 300th Festival of the Freshwater Squid. It was available in a 300-copy edition or as a 100-copy deluxe limited signed edition in a box containing several items traditionally used during the Festival.
The Haunted River produced Oliver Onions’s Tragic Casements: A Ghost Story as a seventy-five-copy chapbook with an introduction by Jonathan Harker. Published by Athanor Press, Because Horrors Linger contained four classic tales by Terence Ekenan.
The second volume of Jeff Paris and Adam Golaski’s New Genre included new SF and horror stories by M. J. Murphy, Jan Wildt, Barth Anderson, Jon-Michael Emory and Zohar A. Goodman.
Darrell Schweitzer’s They Never Found His Head: Poems of Sentiment and Reflection collected twelve Lovecraftian poems, four of which were Cthulhuoid hymns, in a chapbook published by Zadok Allen.
Defacing the Moon and Other Poems by Mike Allen was a slim chapbook from DNA Publications with illustrations by the poet. From Dark Regions Press, A Box Full of Alien Skies collected thirty-one poems by G. O. Clark in a signed edition of 200 copies.
Published by New Jersey’s Flesh & Blood Press, What the Cacodaemon Whispered by Chad Hensley and Jacie Ragan’s Deadly Nightshade both collected thirteen poems each and were limited to 150 copies apiece. The Temporary King by P. K. Graves was a short story also available from the same imprint.
Travelers by Twilight was the first volume of a portfolio of selected illustrations by Allen Koszowski with an introduction by Brian Lumley and an appreciation by fellow artist Jason Van Hollander. It was published by Magic Pen Press in an edition of 350 numbered copies.
It was reported that Famous Monsters of Filmland was facing an uncertain future after US Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Greenwald declared that its publisher, Ray Ferry, fraudulently transferred the magazine’s ownership to his housemate, Gene Reynolds. In 2000, a Van Nuys jury found Ferry liable for breach of contract, libel and trade-mark infringement and awarded the title’s creator and former editor Forrest J. Ackerman $518,000 and rights to the pen name ‘Dr Acula’.