Broken Eye Books is publishing the novella Catfish Lullaby by A.C. Wise.

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.

"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."

Catfish Lullaby will be released in March of 2018. Cover illustration by Sishir Bommakanti.

A.C. Wise is a transplanted Canadian, born and raised in the suburbs of Montreal, and currently living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Tor.com, The Dark, Liminial Stories, and The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2017, among others. She has two collections of short fiction published by Lethe Press, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again and The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In addition to her fiction, she publishes semi-regular Women to Read and Non-Binary Authors to Read columns on her blog and contributes a monthly short fiction review column to Apex Magazine. Find her online at www.acwise.net and on twitter as @ac_wise.

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.

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The first issue of Eyedolon magazine is here! It's 84 pages with four stories:

• Maura McHugh’s “Y,” a very personal apocalypse
• S.P. Miskowski’s “Patio Wing Monsters,” a quizzical tale of convalescence
• Matthew M. Bartlett’s “Who Beareth the Body,” mindbending small-town horror (part 1 of the serial The Obsecration)
• Joseph S. Pulver's “The Package from Desertshore,” a surreal and poetic novelette (part 1 of The Night Museum)

Illustrations by Annada Menon and Thom Davidsohn. And Nick Gucker's wonderful cover.

Plus patrons can order Joseph Pulver's chapbook of “The Package from Desertshore” at a 50% discount.

Subscribe today: https://www.patreon.com/brokeneyebooks

Broken Eye Books is publishing The Song of Spores by Bogi Takács as an ongoing serial. Three experienced counterintelligence operatives of Alliance Treaty Enforcement are on a mission to find the source of shapeshifting infiltrators into Alliance space. Will the gruff Ereni commander, the Chasidic Jewish shapeshifter, and the cynical insectoid grandma be able to work together, or will their differences drive them apart before they can reach their goal? And how can they cooperate with the sentient spaceship and symbiotic pilot, who only signed on to provide transportation and not to be eaten by giant space fungus? This is weird space opera at it's finest.

"The Song of Spores," says Bogi, "is set in my space opera continuity, the Eren Universe. I have had quite a few short stories in this continuity that have appeared in places like Clarkesworld and the anthology Ride the Star Wind, also published by Broken Eye Books. I have another ongoing serial in the Eren universe, too: Iwunen Interstellar Investigations, which is set in a very different corner of the world. While Iwunen examines what shapes crime and investigation can take in the far future, The Song of Spores takes on more of a weird and biological emphasis—it takes a long, hard look at what alien invasions can mean. I very much enjoy writing serialized fiction because it enables me to explore themes and characters in detail but offers more flexibility than many other traditional formats."

The Song of Spores will be available on the Broken Eye Books Patreon with new chapters released regularly to patrons every few months or so, interspersed with other serial releases as part of Eyedolon magazine.

Wonderful news! Ride the Star Wind got a starred review from Publishers Weekly: "Each author provides unflinching glimpses into the void beyond the stars where misery, hungry gods, and madness most surely await."

Thanks to all the authors for their creative talents: Lucy A. Snyder, Remy Nakamura, Wendy Wagner, Tim Curran, Brian Evenson, Joe Pulver, Premee Mohamed, Nadia Bulkin, J.E. Bates, Gord Sellar, Heather Hatch, Desirina Boskovich, DaVaun Sanders, D.W. Baldwin, J. Edward Tremlett, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Tom Dullemond, Kara Dennison, Brandon O'Brien, Heather Terry, Wendy Nikel, Robert White, Ingrid Garcia, Richard Lee Byers, Angus McIntyre, Ada Hoffmann, Bogi Takács, Wendi Dunlap, and Cody Goodfellow.

Every year, Ellen Datlow scours the newly published horror short fiction and compiles her big list of those notable. For her list of Honorable Mentions 2016, Best Horror of the Year Volume Nine, we had 7 stories from Tomorrow's Cthulhu get the nod. We're thrilled! Congratulations to the authors:

• Clinton Boomer, “The Sky Isn’t Blue”
• Desirina Boskovich, “The Great Dying of the Holocene”
• Samantha Henderson, “The Lark Ascending”
• Lynda E. Rucker, “Testimony XVI”
• Damien Angelica Walters, “A Pathway for the Broken”
• Kaaron Warren, “68 Days”
• AC Wise, “Tekeli-Li, They Cry”
  

And congratulations to all of the authors on the list.

Check it out for yourself and see what the near-future has in store for us!

The first review of Gwendolyn Kiste's novella Pretty Marys All in a Row is in (with some minor spoilers): "Kiste's craft and artistic ambitions are all very much in top form here." Read the full review by Morgan Crooks.

To be released Nov 28. Pre-order from Broken Eye Books.

Limited edition chapbook of Joe Pulver's novelette "The Package from Desertshore," the first episode of his serial The Night Museum, is now available. Dive headfirst into the author's poetic prose as his iconic character Fable receives a strange package.

The chapbook is limited to 100 copies. (If you're going to Portland's 22nd Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film, you can choose to pick it up there.) The ongoing serial is available through our Patreon.

We've been working with the artist Nick Gucker, who did the cover for Ride the Star Wind, to personalize each of the Kickstarter and pre-order hardcover copies. We even have some footage of him doodlefying them. And you can watch him! It's hypnotizing. (You still have a little over a week to pre-order your own copy with a unique sketch.)

Watch the artist: https://www.facebook.com/nick.gucker.3/videos/10212718603753090/

Broken Eye Books is publishing the novella The Queen of No Tomorrows by Matt Maxwell. This is a crime horror tale set in Los Angeles of the recent past, one close enough to remember—sharing the world first introduced in the short story "Chunked" (from Tomorrow's Cthulhu). Magic and crime go hand in hand here, where neon and stucco is a façade to the darkness. History once-forgotten is thrust to the forefront as criminal organizations exploit elder powers and perhaps find themselves exploited in return.

Cait MacReady spends her days in the Special Collections library at UCLA, restoring old books and saving them from the ravages of age. By night she's either catching a show or working her real job, making copies of antique and forbidden texts. But don't call them forgeries. She only gives the customers exactly what they want.

When her old lover and current business partner shows up on behalf of some customers who want a book that isn't written yet, Cait becomes suspicious. When she discovers they're from the organization No Tomorrows, she becomes afraid. And when she finds out that their leader, the enigmatic woman-child known as the Queen, wants the book that only Cait has, she begins to wonder what's real and what she's manufactured on her own.

Part crime novel, part ashes-of-the-past romance, part weird horror, The Queen of No Tomorrows takes readers through dirty alleys and the pounding industrial fever dream of the Last Prayer club, where Cait tries to stay one step ahead of the Queen, who seems to know the future before it's even happened.

A future that Cait would give anything to cut off.

"The Queen of No Tomorrows is the kind of book that I want to read," says Matt. "I wrote it simply because of that. Instead of placing things in the arcane and rarified (now all-too-familiar and safe) settings of the old and mannered, I wanted to bring cosmic horror and the uncanny out to the sunshine and neon of Los Angeles. Instead of simply revering a period or place, I wanted to poke at things, to see where the horror might show up in the everyday, even in the simple act of creation itself.

"Besides, there just aren't enough stories that treat crime like magic, or vice versa."

The Queen of No Tomorrows will be released in the Fall/Winter of 2017.

Broken Eye Books is publishing the novella Pretty Marys All in a Row by Gwendolyn Kiste. You’ll find her on a lonely highway, hitchhiking at midnight. She calls herself Rhee, but everyone else knows her by another name: Resurrection Mary. And when she’s transported home each night to a decrepit mansion on a lane to nowhere, she’s not alone.

In the antique mirror, call her name three times, and Bloody Mary will appear. Outside, wandering through a garden of poisonous flowers is Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary, a nursery rhyme come to gruesome life. Downstairs is another jump-rope rhyme—Mary Mack, forever conscripted to build her own coffin. And brooding in the corner with her horse skull is the restless Mari Lwyd.

They are the Marys, the embodiment of urban legend and what goes bump in the night. Every evening, they gather around the table and share nightmares like fine wine, savoring the flavors of those they’ve terrified.

But other than these brief moments together, the Marys are alone, haunting a solitary gloom that knows them better than they know themselves. That’s because they don’t remember who they were before—or even if there was a before. And worst of all, they don’t know how to escape this fate.

That is, until a moment of rage inspires Rhee to leap from the highway—and into the mirror with Bloody Mary. Suddenly, the Marys are learning how to move between their worlds, all while realizing how much stronger they are together.

But just when freedom is within their reach, something in the gloom fights back—something that isn’t ready to let them go. Now with her sisters in danger of slipping into the darkness, Rhee must unravel the mystery of who the Marys were before they were every child’s nightmare. And she’ll have to do it before what’s in the shadows comes to claim her for its own.

"Folklore and fairy tales," Gwendolyn says, "have always been a huge inspiration for me, both for their whimsy and their remarkably dark underpinnings. As a horror writer, there’s nothing as familiar and unsettling as many of the original fairy tales most of us grew up reading.

"In that vein, Pretty Marys All in a Row started from a conversation I had with my husband, who is a fellow devotee of folklore. He and I went through all the Marys who appear in fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and other legends. It’s astounding when you list them all, how often the name appears in different incarnations (ditto for the Jacks, though he’ll have to wait for another story).

"That conversation led me to a series of questions that immediately unnerved me. What if these Marys know they’re storybook legends—and what if they want no part of it? If the choice to be in our folklore was never theirs to make, then what if we’re perpetuating their torment by continually retelling these tales? And if the Marys, like Resurrection Mary and Bloody Mary in particular, are the embodiment of nightmares, then what kind of powerful force controls the nightmares? That last question terrified me most of all—the notion of something else, something unknown to them, controlling the Marys—and from there, Pretty Marys All in a Row was born.

"Ultimately, the story became one about loss and identity and finding yourself and your home and family, even when all other choices have been ripped away from you. To have Pretty Marys join the incredible roster of releases at Broken Eye Books is beyond thrilling and humbling. This is a journey that’s been a wonderful one to take as a writer, and I hope that readers feel the same way."

Pretty Marys All in a Row will be released in the Fall/Winter of 2017.