Two new anthologies from Broken Eye Books, bringing you wonderfully weird short stories from so many delightful authors. 

I Am the Revolution. Repeat!
Whether Change brings you revolutionary tales of resilience and growth, defiance and upheaval from

WC Dunlap • Rachel Pollack • Nick Mamatas • Evan J. Peterson • Rena Mason • S.B. Divya • Gerald L. Coleman • Mary Anne Mohanraj • Craig Laurance Gidney • Nadia Bulkin • Bogi Takács • Margaret Killjoy

Tomorrow is here! Superpowered nationalists, CRISPR babies, alien communists, bloodsucking buildings, holy street justice, otherworldly anarchists, resurrection in the post-apocalypse, and more. There will be no going back. 

The Kids Are All Weird
Cooties Shot Required presents stories of the wondrous and secret lives of kids from

Anya Martin • Eden Royce • Nemma Wollenfang • Premee Mohamed • Laurie Tom • DaVaun Sanders • Abie Ekenezar • Clinton J. Boomer • Brian Hugenbruch • Haralambi Markov • Ada Hoffmann • Malon Edwards • Eliza Chan • Damien Angelica Walters

So you know, strange kids doing strange things, the secret goings-on of youth. There's some monster hunting, rewriting of reality, fighting with parents, a secret mystical fighting tournament, getting lost in the mall, drifting through space, avenging a bird mama's lost egg, building a dragon . . . the usual.

The kids are all weird. And we wouldn't want it any other way!

Both anthologies are available in paperback and hardcover, and pre-orders will start shipping in April.

Broken Eye Books is publishing Orrin Grey’s cyberpunk horror novel Neon Reliquary as a serial on Eyedolon. Part 1 is available now to patrons.
 
You are Soma Caldwell, an operative for Eidolon, the corporation that is the only employer, the only government, the only law in a city where the sun never shines, surrounded by an endless expanse of darkness that is peopled by unstoppable monsters. It's been this way for as long as you can remember. For as long as anyone can remember. The city is a perfect machine, and you're the implement that helps keep it running smoothly.
 
Now though, your employers have asked you to do something you've never done. You have to go into the Cauldron, that blighted spot in the center of the city where some forgotten disaster reduced the surrounding metropolis to ruin, and bring back an asset that may not want to return. It will be dangerous of course. The Cauldron is cut off from the tide—the endless sea of information that laps always at your brain—and home to strange creatures that will kill you if they can.
 
There are more dangers waiting for you than just the Cauldron though. Answers to questions you didn't even know you had, that will change what you think you know about the city, about Eidolon, and about the world in which you live. It will take all your skill to survive, but even if you do, what will be left for you when you return?
 
FROM THE AUTHOR
“Like a lot of people my age,” says Orrin, “I came up on cyberpunk. Stuff like Shadowrun and Akira and William Gibson's Neuromancer, sure, but also junk food like Albert Pyun's Nemesis, the Rutger Hauer monster flick Split Second, or even the inexplicable Double Dragon movie. So when Broken Eye Books approached me to see ‘what a cyberpunk story from Orrin Grey would look like,' I didn't run the other way as was my first instinct.
 
“Here's the thing, my fiction, as a rule, looks backward rather than forward. Horror, as a genre, is often fixated with how the past is not dead, how it continues to haunt us, and my work is no exception. I tend toward the antiquarian rather than the science fictional. Yet as I said, I came up on cyberpunk, and it has always been the 'punk' part of that portmanteau that appealed most to me.
 
“So what would a cyberpunk story by Orrin Grey look like? It would draw from the anime I watched in high school but touched with an occult bent. Things like Doomed Megalopolis or the Shin Megami Tensei games. Survival horror video games where the fog closes in to form permeable rooms occupied by half-glimpsed, misshapen forms. The films of Guillermo del Toro and the everlasting dark of William Hope Hodgson's Nightland. Under and over and around all that though, it would also be something else—deeply suspicious of capitalism, imperialism, fascism, and rich old white guys, as all good cyberpunk should be.”
 
Read ”Crucible,” part 1 of Neon Reliquary, today on Eyedolon by becoming a patron.

We are thrilled to reveal the cover for our forthcoming witchy ​folk horror novel from Stoker Award–winning Gwendolyn Kiste, Boneset & Feathers, with luscious cover artwork from Gawki.

And the very first reviews are coming in:

From Sci Fi and Scary: "Kiste enchants as she juxtaposes witches and power with vulnerability and community."

From S.J. Budd: "I don't want to give out spoilers but it's spectacular! Gwendolyn Kiste takes the magical and makes it real, makes beautiful the macabre. I really loved this book, I've read it twice already!"

Boneset & Feathers is available for pre-order now.

BONESET & FEATHERS

You don’t know their fire is coming until it’s too late.

No witch has ever been permitted a peaceful life.

It starts with crows tumbling out of the clouds and the spectral voices on the wind that won’t leave Odette alone. And the midnight visits to the graveyard... 

Odette wants to forget magic, but her magic doesn’t want to forget her.

Her worst nightmare is about to come true—the witchfinders are returning. And this time, the decree is clear: burn the witch that got away.

We've got a couple of really great anthologies lined up for you with Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird  (weird tales of the revolution) and Cooties Shot Required: There Are Things You Must Know  (tales of the weird lives of kids). But there're also several new titles announced...

There are 12 new books on the schedule from now through 2021. And each one can be pre-ordered on the Kickstarter. So you've got lots of options!

Fall/Winter 2020

•  Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird  (anthology)
•  Cooties Shot Required: There Are Things You Must Know (anthology)
•  Busted Synapses by Erica L. Satifka (novella): Rural cyberpunk of frustrated ambitions mixed with life-altering changes and cyber-mystery. 
•  Boneset & Feathers by Gwendolyn Kiste (novel): Folk horror of a witch's trials at the hands of her witchfinder pursuers.
•  There Was a Crooked Man by Edward Morris (novel): Weird and epic time-hopping sci-fi horror.

Spring/Summer 2021

•  The Obsecration by Matthew M. Bartlett (novel): Surreal horror of a powerful wizard's resurrection... in Leeds!
•  The Mosquito Fleet by Andrew Penn-Romine (novel): Star-spanning weird space opera with synthetic humans and a fungal mystery.
•  My Drowning Chorus by Matt Maxwell (novel): The continuation of Queen of No Tomorrows.
•  The Song of Spores by Bogi Takács (novel): Weird space opera with fungal aliens, shapeshifters, a sentient spaceship and its symbiotic pilot, and so much more.

Fall/Winter 2021

•  Hairsbreadth by Craig Laurance Gidney (novel): Contemporary fairy tale of a girl born with strange powers, both wondrous and dark.
•  The Carnivàle by W.C. Dunlap (novel): Surreal and post-apocalyptic political horror show.
•  Blossoms Blackened like Dead Stars by Lucy A. Snyder (novel): Cthulhian space opera of strange supersoldiers and alien tech.

We want to keep bringing you amazing books with stunning covers and killer stories. (The Kickstarter ends on Thursday, July 30 2020 9:00 AM PDT.)

Broken Eye Books is publishing Gwendolyn Kiste’s folk horror novel Boneset & Feathers, releasing November 3, 2020.

You don’t know their fire is coming until it’s too late. That’s exactly the way the witchfinders like it. As an isolated enchantress, Odette knows this too well—she lost nearly her whole family to the last round of executions, barely escaping with her own life. All the magic she could conjure wasn’t enough to protect her mother and sister, a burden that leaves a despondent Odette practically wishing she’d burned with the rest.

Now it’s five years later, and as the last witch left from her village, Odette has exiled herself to the nearby woods where she’s sworn off all magic, hoping instead for quiet and for safety. But no witch has ever been permitted a peaceful life.

It starts with crows tumbling out of the clouds and spectral voices on the wind that won’t leave her alone. Then there are those midnight visits to the graveyard that she can’t quite remember in the morning and the strange children following her everywhere she goes. Odette wants to forget magic, but her magic doesn’t want to forget her. Meanwhile, the former friends she left behind in the village are cowering together, hiding from the ghostly birds they believe she’s sent to torment them for abandoning her. But that’s only the beginning of their problems, as Odette soon discovers their worst nightmare is about to come true—the witchfinders are returning. And this time, the decree is clear: to burn the witch that got away.

With the men drawing nearer to the village, Odette must face the whispers from the dead and confront her fear of her own growing power if she wants any chance of stopping the army of witchfinders determined to rid the countryside of magic once and for all.
 
​FROM THE AUTHOR
“Horror can revolve around so many things,” says Kiste, “from the cosmic to the mundane, but for me, as both a reader and a storyteller, the greatest horror of all is the threat of losing one’s self. That fear was at the forefront of my mind as I was writing Boneset & Feathers: how the whole world can strip you of your identity and how painfully hard it can be to fight back when the odds are so overwhelmingly against you.

“Witch hunts in particular exemplify all these horrors. That is without a doubt one of the periods in world history that terrifies me the most, and it wasn’t just a single time frame or area; it went on for centuries across numerous countries. Sometimes it was sporadic, sometimes it was horrifyingly routine, and in some places, witch hunts still happen to this day.

“With Boneset & Feathers, I wanted to capture the horrors of being a persecuted witch but also touch on the wonder of witchcraft as a practice too. To balance the deeply somber theme, this story incorporates some of my very favorite things: ghosts, birds, witches, and weirdness. After my novella Pretty Marys All in a Row, which was a bit of a fairy tale in its own right, I knew I wanted to write a full-length novel with that same kind of mythic, folkloric vibe. Boneset & Feathers has been in the making for over a year now, and I’m so excited to be sharing this story with everyone as well as to be working with Broken Eye Books again.”

Pre-order today and books will ship to you as soon as they are available. 

Hope you're all finding some joy in these strange times! Perhaps we can help with a big sale of our older titles in stock (40% off paperbacks, 30% off hardcovers) through April: 

• The Package from Desertshore: Joseph S. Pulver's surreal tale of the Night Museum!
• Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Modern tales of the mythos!
• By Faerie Light: The fair folk are coming!
• Ghost in the Cogs: Steam and the supernatural!
• Never Now Always: Strange post-apocalyptic mystery!
• Izanami's Choice: Samurai versus robot!
• The Hole Behind  Midnight: Hilarious, foul-mouthed and irreverent!
• Royden Pooles's Field Guide to the 25th Hour: More of same!

It's been a challenging season for us (and other creators) as all of our conventions are getting cancelled. For good reason, for sure, but for us, convention sales typically make up half our yearly sales, so it's a big hit. If you've been holding off on any of our titles, now would be a great time to buy.​

Broken Eye Books is an independent press, here to bring you the odd, strange, and offbeat side of speculative fiction. Our stories tend to blend genres, highlighting the weird and blurring its boundaries with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Discover our books at brokeneyebooks.com.

Support weird. Support indie.

Broken Eye Books is publishing the serial novel Better Living through Alchemy by Evan J. Peterson, a fabulist mystery exploring the boundaries of science and magic.

Kelly Mun operates Non-Linear Investigations out of a small office in misty, steam-heated Seattle. Using esoteric techniques taken from Dadaism as much as from occultism, Kelly makes the connections others ignore. When a young woman dies under impossible circumstances at a crowded show, Kelly is hired by a mysterious businesswoman to find out all she can about a new recreational drug that may have been involved. Kelly will have to face down monsters, but that's just business. In this parallel Seattle, monsters can be allies and lovers, and they're not the scariest things lurking in the shadows. 

​"Better Living through Alchemy comes from several points of inspiration," says Peterson. "My curiosity around the merger of magic and science, my fascination with the work of William Burroughs and David Cronenberg and their slippery, queer genres and social satire. I also wanted to add more diversity and dignity to such stories, especially for the femme and POC characters. This is a story about in-betweens--hyphenated reality--the people and forces at the gateways. What starts as a mystery gets weirder chapter by chapter. Occultism, drugs, and queer noir are just the beginning."

​The story begins today over at Eyedolon.

Evan J. Peterson is an author and game writer in Seattle. He’s the creator of Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag performer RPG, as well as The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir (Lethe Press). A Clarion West alum, and his writing has appeared in Weird Tales, Unspeakable Horror 2, Queers Destroy Horror, Nightmare Magazine, Boing Boing, and Best Gay Stories 2015. Evan edited the Lambda Literary Award finalist anthology, Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam: Gay City 5. He lives in Seattle with his lazy werewolf, Dorian Greyhound.

Broken Eye Books is an independent press, here to bring you the odd, strange, and offbeat side of speculative fiction. Our stories tend to blend genres, highlighting the weird and blurring its boundaries with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Discover our books at brokeneyebooks.com.

Support weird. Support indie.

What if you crossed Archer and Brooklyn 99 with D&D?​

Broken Eye Books is publishing the hilarious debut adventures of Clinton J. Boomer’s fan-favorite fantasy gaming party, Team Murderhobo: Assemble. What happens when the lovable barbarian, perpetually high druid, judgy paladin—absolutely no ninjas—and all the others are thrown together? The punchline to all the RPG jokes ever told...

With Team Murderhobo, Clinton J. Boomer has created a series of short, comedic, in-character gaming scenes, composed of all the traditional stock characters of fantasy gaming, interacting with each other in a day-to-day, workplace-style comedy. Lots of gaming jokes and pop culture references thrown in. Rocks fall, everybody laughs. This lovable crew will steal your heart--and your coin purse, so stay wary. 

"These little slice-of-life comedic moments draw from shows like Archer and Brooklyn 99," says Boomer. "Larger-than-life characters in impossible, action-packed scenarios who still find the time and energy to bitch at each other about totally mundane crap—​extreme personalities forced to work together, bouncing off one another and creating comedy in friction."

New scenes with the characters are tweeted daily by Boomer (@boomer_kid). Read the collected adventures of the series in the forthcoming Team Murderhobo: Assemble under our Stink Eye imprint, with cover art by Jason Bradley Thompson (@mockman).

From Team Murderhobo: Assemble

Wizard: “Ahh. That FIRST sip of coffee.”
Fighter: “YOU REALIZE WE’RE IN COMBAT, NO?!”
Wizard: “YOU are in combat. YOU idiots kept me up all night, ergo no spells. I’m gonna sit here, drink my coffee, and stab anyone who gets close. Look! LOTS of people have already been stabbed. Some of them enemies!”

Praise for Team Murderhobo: Assemble

Clinton J. Boomer, known to his friends as Booms, resides in the quaint, leafy, idyllic paradise of Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife, two cats, three children, and several moving boxes full of books & magazines. He began writing before the time of his own recollection, predominantly dictating stories to his ever-patient mother about fire monsters and ice monsters throwing children into garbage cans. Boomer is a writer, filmmaker, gamer, and bartender. He began gaming with the 1993 release of Planescape and has not taken a break since. He currently devotes a full 99.9% of his waking hours to thinking about fantasy adventure in general or about ninjas more specifically.

Stink Eye Books is an imprint of Broken Eye Books dedicated to celebrating the influences of popular culture on speculative fiction—in our odd, strange, and offbeat way.

Broken Eye Books is an independent press, here to bring you the odd, strange, and offbeat side of speculative fiction. Our stories tend to blend genres, highlighting the weird and blurring its boundaries with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.
​
More information can be found at www.brokeneyebooks.com. Inquiries for review copies or for more information should be directed to scott@brokeneyebooks.com.

Catfish Lullaby was announced as a finalist for the Nebula Award! We are so incredibly proud and excited. Voting is now open until the end of March for SFWA active members. I hope you'll consider voting for it for Best Novella. And to celebrate the occasion, all purchases of the paperback of Catfish Lullaby from the BEB store in March will be signed and personalized by the author herself, A.C. Wise. Just write in the comment section during checkout who you'd like her to personalize it to, and she'll wing a copy your way. 
​
The Cop & the Swamp Witch
Small town secrets lead to trouble for everyone as Caleb must confront the demons of his past in this Southern Gothic tale of horror.

Catfish Lullaby is a split story, following Caleb and Cere, part as children, part as adults, as they deal with homegrown bigotry, sorcerous generational evil, and the everpresent, bog-monster specter of Catfish John. All while embracing the love of found family.

Praise for Catfish Lullaby
"Wise’s visceral language conveys an experience of eerie magic that simultaneously lures and repels, placed in close juxtaposition to the mundane monstrousness of prejudice, cancer, and loneliness. This story can be appreciated simply for its ghost story shivers and rich imagery, but its full power comes with the author’s choice to center the misunderstood and marginalized as beloved family to one another, even when the outside world sees them as monstrous." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

"Catfish Lullaby seamlessly combines Southern folklore with cosmic horror. There's an elegiac undertone to this lullaby that's as deep and mysterious as the bayou where it takes place." (Craig Laurance Gidney, author of A Spectral Hue)

“In her excellent novella, AC Wise revisits a Louisiana family at key moments during the later decades of the recent past—moments connected to what seems to be a local legend, one concerning the conflict between a pair of fantastical figures. Not only do her protagonists discover that what they took for fantasy is fact, they learn that it is more complicated than they could have expected. The result is a compelling narrative that begs to be read in one sitting.” (John Langan, author of Sefira and Other Betrayals)
 
"Folk tales give birth to new mythologies in AC Wise's delightfully enthralling Southern Gothic novella Catfish Lullaby. Flooded with dark sorcery and white-knuckle suspense, Catfish Lullaby demonstrates the many ways saviors and devils can occupy the same body, whether it arises from the depths of the swamp or the dark of the grave." (Mike Allen, World Fantasy Award–nominated author of Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident​)

"Over the last few years, A.C. Wise has been consistently creating some of the very best speculative short fiction out there, and now with her glorious novella Catfish Lullaby, she takes her craft to a whole new level. With a potent atmosphere, a formidable antagonist, and well-drawn, unforgettable characters, this book has definitely got it all. An absolute must-read for 2019." (Gwendolyn Kiste, author of The Rust Maidens and Pretty Marys All in a Row)

"What we need is a satisfying, believable story with engaging characters, and that’s what Wise delivers with this weird, suspenseful tale." (Brandon Crilly, for Black Gate)

"[Caleb's] outsider status forces him to confront demons both literal and figurative, and it results in a deeply affecting coming-of-age story." (Carson Winter, for Signal Horizon)

"[A] story that will suck the air from your lungs with its beauty, poignancy, and terror, leaving you on your knees wheezing for more." (The Miskatonic Review)

Broken Eye Books is an independent press, here to bring you the odd, strange, and offbeat side of speculative fiction. Our stories tend to blend genres, highlighting the weird and blurring its boundaries with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.