Catfish Lullaby releases today! 

Small town secrets lead to trouble for everyone as Caleb must confront the demons of his past in this Southern Gothic queer cosmic horror.

This 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.

Written by AC Wise and cover by Sishir Bommakanti with Scott Gable on design. Early reviews have been amazing! Hope you love it!

Lewis is a Town of Secrets
The Royce family has been a plague on the small, Southern town of Lewis for generations. Caleb has heard rumors about the family his whole life, just like he's heard the rumors about a monstrous creature known as Catfish John living in the swamp. 

When the Royce house burns down, Caleb's father—Lewis's sheriff—takes in the sole survivor, a young girl named Cere. Caleb quickly learns the truth about Archie Royce and the terrible fate he had planned for his daughter. After a woman is brutally murdered, Cere begins to suspect that not all of her family perished in the fire, and she and Caleb set out to stop her father's dark vision from coming to pass. 

Years later, Caleb is the sheriff of Lewis, and the monsters of his childhood return. Now Caleb must fight to protect those he loves from Archie Royce's legacy, and his best hope may be a legend he's almost managed to convince himself never existed—Catfish John.

Reviews
"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)

From the Author
"Even though Catfish Lullaby has its share of monsters, darkness, and characters fighting to save the world," A.C. says, "at its heart, it's a story about family. Caleb lost several people in his life early on, and he's terrified of losing the rest of the people he loves. As an adult, the very concept of family frightens him, even as he craves that closeness and connection. For Cere, her journey is about overcoming the family she was born into and protecting the family she chooses.

"In-between family and fighting monsters, Catfish Lullaby is also a novella about the power of stories—how legends are born, how they are passed down through the generations, and how they can shape a person's worldview for good or for ill."

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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.
​
Support weird. Support indie.

The Great Faerie Strike has been released on the world!

A hilarious romp through a steampunk Victorian London while, just next door in the Otherworld, Marxism is coming to Faerie.

This title launches our new imprint Stink Eye: story by Spencer Ellsworth; cover by Mike Uziel and Jeremy Zerfoss. 

Revolution in Faerie
Ridley Enterprises has brought industry to the Otherworld, churning out magical goods for profit. But when they fire Charles the gnome, well, they’ve gone too far. And against a gnome's respectable nature, he takes to the streets, fighting for workers’ rights.

The Otherworld's first investigative reporter, Jane, is looking for a story. And she finds it, witnessing a murder and getting sucked into a conspiracy within werewolf high society.

Jane and Charles team up to unite the workers and bring the Ridleys to justice. But a budding romance complicates everything. Can they bring change to Faerie or will dark powers consume both worlds?

Reviews
"A rollicking adventure told with Pratchettesque wit and compassion. This is an Otherworld as real and as strange as our own, with characters you can't help but root for and an economic system you can't help but recognize. This book is a delight." (Kate Heartfield, author of Alice Payne Arrives)

"Wacky, satirical, and downright hilarious. With sharp writing and a rollicking pace, Ellsworth will throw you down the rabbit hole and into the Otherworld." (Sean Grigsby, author of Smoke Eaters & Daughters of Forgotten Light)

"Charming, rakish, and a rollicking good time." (Tina Connolly, Nebula-nominated author of Ironskin & Seriously Wicked)

"Spencer Ellsworth's The Great Faerie Strike is Dickensian fantasy that punches the soot off tradition with a cunning female lead and a dastardly fun world. Must read for those who love fantasy but need a revolutionary fix." (Jason Ridler, author of Hex-Rated and Harvest of Blood and Iron)

"Ellsworth’s feypunk Victorian fantasy is A Midsummer Night’s Dream meets Underworld with a dash of Dickens, featuring a heroine who is Lois Lane as imagined by a slightly drunk Jane Austen. While full of humor and fun fantasy adventure, it doesn’t shy away from also exploring the darker side of capitalism or the struggle between finding your place in the world versus making your place in the world versus making the world the place you want it to be. A fitting tale for our times." (Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy)

From the Author
"The Great Faerie Strike," says Spencer, "is just the weirdest, most fun idea I've ever had for a novel. A Marxist gnome union leader! A plucky vampire reporter! It's my Eugene Debs/Nelly Bly in the Otherworld fanfic ship. It was also easily the hardest project I ever wrote. Between 2006 and 2014 I pecked and pecked, rewrote and deleted, and then earlier this year, deleted most of it and started over. I'm so pleased that my weird little book has a place at Broken Eye Books."

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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.
​
Support weird. Support indie.

​Broken Eye Books is publishing the serial novel Carnivàle by WC Dunlap, a surreal and post-apocalyptic political horror show.
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In the midst of a post-apocalyptic dust bowl sits the Village of Junk. Villagers roam like zombies through the routine of life without living, persisting on pure biological instinct. They shit, they eat, they fuck, they die. But each year, the Carnivàle rolls into town, bringing false hope and broken promises.

For some, it is a respite from the doldrums of poverty, an evening of rancorous hedonism—when hunger, sickness, and depression are lulled by carnal indulgence. But for the Virgin and the Whore, it is an opportunity to take the helm of the most sinister show on earth. They’ve prepared all year to submit themselves to the trials of the Carnivàle, ready to risk their souls for the opportunity to rule. But one does not simply lose at the Carnivàle. This year’s Carnivàle will be the ultimate test of the human spirit, all of them.

“This story was inspired by the insanity of participating in an electoral system with fervent fanaticism,” says WC, “compromising our values and placing faith in candidates whom we viciously defend when ultimately the decision is not ours at all. And then the candidates rarely deliver what they promised. It’s the stuff of a surreal dystopia, so I attempted to write one.”

The story begins in September 2019 over at Eyedolon.

​WC Dunlap draws her inspiration from the complexities of a Black Baptist, middle-class upbringing by Southern parents and all that entails for a brown-skin girl growing up in America. Equally enthralled by the divine and the demonic with a professional background in data & tech, she seeks to bend genres with a unique lens on fantasy, fear, and the future.

Her writing career spans film, journalism, and cultural critique. You can find her most recent work under “Wendi Dunlap” at PodCastle, in the Lovecraft-inspired anthology Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird, and the inaugural edition of the award-winning FIYAH literary magazine. Her website wcdunlap.com is coming soon.

She holds a BA in Film and Africana Studies from Cornell University. She is the proud mother of a young adult son and two British Shorthair familiars. Follow WC Dunlap on twitter @wcdunlap_tales.

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.
​
Support weird. Support indie.

A special Valentine's Day offer for Clinton J. Boomer fans! Order any of Boomer's books from brokeneyebooks.com by this coming February 18 (could be The Hole Behind Midnight, paperback or hardcover, Royden Poole's Field Guide to the 25th Hour, Tomorrow's Cthulhu--or really anything, even if he's not in it!), and he'll sign/personalize it (and maybe even doodle in it) for you.

IMPORTANT DETAILS: Please write SIGNEDBYBOOMER in the memo section of your purchase followed by anything special, like who you'd like it personalized to, for instance. (This must all go in the memo section, not the coupon section.) Once all orders are in, Boomer will sign them and mail them directly to you. Overseas orders must use the more expensive Overseas From US shipping option (and not the AUS- or EU/UK-Friendly Shipping, if given the choice) since these particular orders must be shipped from the US. Everyone should expect longer shipping times than usual given the special circumstances.

Broken Eye Books is publishing the novella Busted Synapses by Erica L. Satifka, a sci-fi tale that explores the changing future.

After a freak superstorm wipes out the entire East Coast of the US, society crumbles in an economic depression known as the Break. Humans have been priced out, driven from the remaining cities. And their replacements—the artificial New People—are smarter and stronger, heralding the future of humanity. 

Broken Eye Books is publishing the serial novel The Mosquito Fleet by Andrew Penn Romine, a sci-fi horror tale that explores the fringes of the cosmos.

In the far future, humankind has settled remote frontier worlds thanks to the exotic science of biotics, a combination of organic and inorganic engineering that powers FTL drives, starships, and even synthetic humans.  

Queen of No Tomorrows releases today! Matt Maxwell takes us to eighties LA in this supernatural horror noir: librarian Cait MacReady forges occult books in her spare time, but her latest has developed a life all its own. 

Early Reviews

"LA noir goes weird and eerie in Queen of No Tomorrows. You might think you’re merely faking an ancient text for profit, but the power of the Word is real, and its truth will likely slither from the shadows of your imagination and bite you. Intriguing and finely written.” (Jamie Delano,  author of HELLBLAZER)

"A dark tour of our most sun-drenched city, led by a woman unlike any other. The prose positively crackles with dread—I couldn't put it down!" (Corinna Bechko, author of INVISIBLE REPUBLIC and HEATHENTOWN)

Broken Eye Books is publishing the novel The Great Faerie Strike by Spencer Ellsworth, a Victorian faerie tale (and revolution).

Otherworld has a new upper class—humans. And those werewolves and sorcerers and alchemists have industrialized Faerie itself, churning out magical goods that command a high price in the mundane world. But when they fire Charles the gnome, well, that's just too much to take.

It seems that the new synthetic blood substitutes (readily available, highly nutritious, and completely disgusting) have led these socialites to believe that they can run their factories on nothing but vampire labor. And though vampires are stupid, smelly, and ponderously boring, they keep quiet, thinking they’re getting a good deal.

Charles is lucky enough though to have Otherworld's first investigative reporter on his side: Jane, a half-vampire with all the smarts the devil denied other vampires. He has to help Jane convince the other workers to strike, convince the whole of Otherworld to work together. But a budding romance complicates everything while the discovery of darker powers, driving what the humans have called Progress, threatens the doom of two worlds.

"The Great Faerie Strike," says Spencer, "is just the weirdest, most fun idea I've ever had for a novel. A Marxist gnome union leader! A plucky vampire reporter! It's my Eugene Debs/Nelly Bly in the Otherworld fanfic ship. It was also easily the hardest project I ever wrote. Between 2006 and 2014 I pecked and pecked, rewrote and deleted, and then earlier this year, deleted most of it and started over. I'm so pleased that my weird little book has a place at Broken Eye Books."

The Great Faerie Strike will be published in Spring 2019.

Spencer Ellsworth has been writing since he learned how. He is the author of the Starfire trilogy, a series of short space opera novels from Tor.com beginning with A Red Peace. He has also published short fiction in Lightspeed, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other places. He lives in Bellingham, Washington with his family and works at a small tribal college. He hopes to die on the back of a brave mammoth, charging a thicket of enemy spears, with seven chocolate bars in his mouth.

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.

We are now open to original short stories of urban weird fiction (so stories about cities and dealing with the complexity that is other people) for the upcoming anthology Nowhereville: Weird is Other People. These are modern weird tales (give or take a few decades) that could only be told of the weirdness of the urban experience and our interactions with one another. (See the full open call for more details.)

EYEDOLON MAGAZINE is an online magazine of weird tales. These are the stories that take place in the realms between science fiction and fantasy, between the realistic and the absurd. This is weird fiction and its borders with other genres.

Our Kickstarter for the anthology Welcome to Miskatonic University offers options for a full year's subscription to Eyedolon Magazine. You can read one of its stories, "Some Muses Are Not Gentle" by Brandon O'Brien right now (available to non-patrons).

After alarms were triggered in the Restricted Stacks, Library Science Security has instituted a lockdown of the MU campus library pending a thorough cataloguing. Local law enforcement are being blocked from the investigation, adding insult to a century of injured relations with Arkham. If you know anything, you can reach out to Library Services on their anonymous tip line.

Come explore our forthcoming anthology Welcome to Miskatonic University.

Just this morning, I was interviewed by the folks over at Mad Scientist Journal!

News: We're so very close to funding! Thanks all for your contributions and sharing. I mentioned the EU-Friendly and AUS-Friendly international S&H rates in the last Update. This time, I want to assure all of you that, if you're at a tier for both books, we will not leave you hanging if the second anthology doesn't fund. You will get a second book. If we reach our goal for Welcome to Miskatonic University but don't reach our first stretch goal, anyone that backed a tier that has two anthologies will get a second book of their choice, either from those we've already published or from an upcoming title. (This applies to both print and ebook reward tiers.) I know this has been on a lot of your minds, and I've updated the campaign FAQ.

Story from Brandon O'Brien
We've tried to paint a detailed image of what these anthologies are all about. But what better way than to give you a story. So here's Brandon O'Brien's short story "Some Muses Are Not Gentle" from (the almost forthcoming) Welcome to Miskatonic University, posted on the Eyedolon Magazine Patreon page for free.

We asked Brandon for a quick note about his potent story:

"'Some Muses Are Not Gentle' follows Darryl, a Creative Writing international student at Miskatonic whose poetry thesis replies to one of Arkham's most beloved historic poets. But when he starts losing time and gaining newly crafted pieces he can't remember writing, he learns that some ghosts hate to be spoken down to, even in verse.

"Working with Broken Eye has definitely been a strong reminder that weird fiction is very fertile ground for asking questions about how we see the world around us. Miskatonic University is a perfect symbol for the genre's themes of the consequences of knowledge, so I was immediately excited to submit something, and I thought it would be interesting to seek some knowledge of my own through writing this story, namely: how do you respond when you love someone's work, but not what their work means?"

You can read "Some Muses Are Not Gentle" right now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17646073

Interview with Frank Casey
One of those cool things in the stretch goals is the second anthology, and it will have a cover illustration by artist Frank Casey. I had the chance to interview this very talented artist, and well, you can read that below—while you glory at some of his illustrations!

SG: Frank, you have such a detailed and lushly colored technique. Can you tell us something about your style and influences?

FC: My artistic background is a mix of traditional photo-realism and comic book art. I grew up on comic books, and artists like Bernie Wrightson, Alex Raymond, Winsor McKay, and Al Williamson continue to inspire me with their line work and their ability to render fantastical realities in realistic ways. I try to keep a strong sense of realism in my work, as though the worlds and situations I’m creating were drawn from observation instead of imagination. I experiment with rendering the illusion of three-dimensional form and space through the use of contour lines and limited shading.

Classic pulp sci-fi also heavily influences me. I love the stylish simplicity of the genre, created at a time when ideas of space travel where still open to great mystery and visions of the future were optimistic.

SG: I enjoy how you mix the strange and the normal. What’s your inspiration for those amazing monsters?

FC: Creating a good monster is something of a balancing act: how human or inhuman do you go when making a monster? I’ve never been content to make monsters that look like people with rubber appliances (line in Star Wars and Star Trek)—unless the illustration kind of calls for it (like, for humorous effect). When you’re dealing with lines on paper, you can do just about anything. But going too far from anthropomorphic can keep a monster or alien character from being relatable. There should always be some element of the creature that is reminiscent of human characteristics (usually the eyes), so the viewer has something familiar to grab onto and can access the rest of the monster’s design through that. Aside from that, I will also look for inspiration in biological forms that depart from animals we are familiar with. Microscopic insects and deep-sea creatures are good for alien starters.

I use references heavily in my work to maintain the sense of realism. If a design for a creature is super complex or there is not much like it that I can find in nature or a photo, I will build a model of it out of clay or plastic to see what it actually looks like—how much space it takes up and how the light reacts to it—then use that as a reference when drawing.

SG: What are you working on right now?

FC: My current work, Tales of the Incompletely Peculiar, is a series of illustrations for stories that don’t exist. I create an image with a title and a caption—a few recipe ingredients for a story—and leave the rest up to the viewer. It’s an invitation to imagine whatever world or situation, whatever beginning or end, the viewer can come up with. My “stories” are meant to start a conversation that the viewer can continue by adding their own thoughts, desires, and experiences. Though I mainly work through the styles of steampunk and retro sci-fi, I try to make my stories diverse; some are whimsical, some are poignant, some are action-packed, some are romantic, some are political, some are allegorical. I believe what Gene Roddenberry believed: that science fiction can be forum though which we can talk about the human condition in ways we can’t necessarily in other genres. I sell my works individually and in collected volumes as coloring books. They can be found at www.etsy.com/shop/MonkeyHouseStudio.

One thing that people have admired about my work is its diversity of characters—diversity of age, race, gender, and sexual identity. I feel that representation is important and try as often as I can to avoid making images that rely on the white, straight, male hero trope. I want to cast characters in the heroic role who are rarely represented as heroes in mainstream sci-fi. That’s one thing that I think makes my work stand out: the juxtaposition of traditional sci-fi themes and ideas, starring characters that don’t quite look like your classic Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon type of hero. The genre has been changing for the better lately, and I want to keep that spirit of diversity and equitable representation thriving in my work.

One thing that I think I will never do in any of my work is to put any character, especially a female character, in a position of weakness or helplessness. That’s one point at which I want to depart from classic pulp sci-fi, which was strong in misogynistic, damsel-in-distress images. In my stories, even the ones in which there’s conflict, everyone is strong. Everyone can face whatever challenge ahead without fear.

SG: And in your future?
FC: I am currently in the fifth volume of my Incompletely Peculiar series. Each volume has seven illustrations, so... that makes 35 in the series so far. My plan is to get to even 50, so 7 volumes in the series. After that, who knows? Maybe a narrative comic.

Thanks, Frank!

And thank all of you! More soon...