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| Fungi cover art (c) by Oliver Wetter |
With the chiming-in of the New Year, the holiday season is now sadly yet officially behind us, which turns our vision away from the magic in the air, to the sorcerous conjuring brewing in the mind.
As stories written in the rapidly fading Old Year burst forth from their tightly wound cocoons and blossom in anthologies and publications, a new swath of waiting display cases open up, eager for interesting, beautiful, and often terrifying specimens.
2012 promises to be a very exciting year rife with opportunities, both personally and throughout the overlapping Weird fiction and Lovecraftian multiverses, as more and more compelling books are in the planning stages by various major indie and small press outfits. As I write toward the release of my collection in late 2012/early 2013, I'll also endeavor to embrace as many anthology invites and open calls as I possibly can. It'll be a labor intensive tight rope walk, and I've already had to decline a few choice opportunities that in a "normal" year I would have jumped upon. But sadly, when time is limited and every creative move shaded by cold calculation, tough decisions must be made. 2012 has dawned as the Year of Opportunity for me, if I can stay focused, inspired, and continue down the path that has been hacked through the jungle by so many trusted (and trusting) friends and colleagues. As such, this is my year to raise my ink-stained banner, as it were, as room on the horizon has been made. Now, I just have to pitch strikes, and knock them down one by one. Heady times, indeed, and not without its share of anxiety. Need to keep that forked grip tight, and the sinker low and inside.
The first of the open calls that really piques my interest and plays to what I perceive to be my strengths as a writer is the intriguing anthology
Fungi, edited by
Orrin Grey and
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, for publication by Moreno-Garcia's stellar
Innsmouth Free Press, which has lately produced such handsome tomes as
Historical Lovecraft, and
Future Lovecraft, and the Gothic fiction collection
A Candle in the Attic Window, and puts out the tri-annual fiction review
Innsmouth Magazine, featuring an array of some of today's top Lovecraftian scribes, available for free download at the IFP website.
I wrote for but didn't complete in time two respective stories for both
Historical Lovecraft and
Future Lovecraft (back when I chased every submission call I ran across, wrongly thinking I could finish any and all story to which I set my mind and energies). After two misses, I'm trying like hell to not blow the deadline for
Fungi, as just the spectacular cover alone - combined with the impressive efficiency and professionalism shown by Innsmouth Free Press in the past - makes this collection definitely one of the can't-miss books of 2012, as both a writer and a reader of Weird/speculative/Lovecraftian fiction. On a more superficial level, a writer (or maybe just me) loves to have their work wrapped in a gorgeous bow, and that cover shown above by the genius Oliver Wetter (who also goes by
Fantasio) is exactly that, and then some. Cover art counts, for writer and customer, and it rarely gets more eye-catching than Wetter's work.
From the official IFP submission call
press release:
Days Micotic: Announcing Fungi for 2012
In 2012, Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackle the darkest of all horrors: fungi. William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night”, and its Japanese film adaptation, Matango, terrified and fascinated the editors. And now, they’re back for more.
Fungi is an anthology of dark speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction, and any other variant, such as steampunk) focused solely on the fungal. Full guidelines for the anthology will be posted in December (Don’t send anything, yet!).
In the meantime, we are trying to build a comprehensive mushroom fic list. Do you know of a story, movie, TV episode, or book that featured fungi in it? Add it to our little spreadsheet. The list will be used to compile a comprehensive database of fungi fiction, to be used as an appendix for the book. You can see the items we have already collected here.
Fungi will be released by Innsmouth Free Press as a special edition hardcover, paperback and e-book. Look for it in October of 2012, which we are gleefully dubbing “The Year of the Mushroom”.
About the editors:
Orrin Grey writes stories of the supernatural and macabre, which have appeared in a number of Innsmouth Free Press anthologies, as well as other venues like Bound for Evil and Delicate Toxins. His first collection, Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, is due out from Evileye Books in 2012. His fascination with monsters and fungus, and fungus monsters, is longstanding and shows no sign of waning any time soon.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Evolve 2, The Book of Cthulhu, and a number of other publications. In 2011, Silvia won the Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize (in the Emerging Writer category), sponsored by Gloria Vanderbilt and Exile Quarterly. She was also a finalist for that year’s Manchester Fiction Prize. Together with Paula R. Stiles, she has co-edited Historical Lovecraft, Candle in the Attic Window and Future Lovecraft.
Fungi: Guidelines
What?
Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackle the darkest of all horrors: fungi. William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night” and its Japanese adaptation, Matango, terrified and fascinated the editors. And now, they’re back for more.
Fungi is an anthology of dark speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction, and any other variant, such as steampunk) focused solely on the fungal. No happy mushrooms from Mario Bros. A fungus of some type must be a key element in the story, not just a throwaway element. A character can attempt to poison someone with a mushroom, mushroom cultivation may be of importance to the story, the dark patch of mould on the ceiling may begin to terrify an unhappy tenant, a group of people may consume hallucinogenic mushrooms, etc.
We are looking for a variety of settings and protagonists. Mushrooms sprout around the world, after all.
Oh, and if you can add a story, novel, movie, or TV episode with mushroomy content, please do it! We are keeping a spreadsheet, here.
Payment
• 1 cent per word for original stories.
• Reprints paid at a flat rate of $35. Canadian dollars, eh. Indicate where and when it was published.
• One complimentary print copy and one e-book copy provided.
Length
Short fiction up to 5,000 words.
Submitting
E-mail us at fungi.innsmouth AT gmail.com. Subject line: Fungi, [Title of your Story, Author's Name].
Do not send more than one short story submission at a time. If we reject one story, you can send another one.
Include a cover letter with the story word count, salient writing credits and any reprint information (if applicable). Yes, we do read cover letters, so include the information.
Attach story as an RTF (preferred) or Word document. Use standard manuscript format. Italics as italics, bold as bold. No fancy fonts.
Stories can be sent in English or Spanish.
Submissions are accepted from January 15 to February 15, 2012. Do not send anything before or after that date. If you do, we will ignore it.
Final story selection will take place in the spring of 2012. Check back for updates.
So, hug up to that toadstool, meander amongst the molds, and listen closely to the lichens. They definitely have a story to tell, and a firm place amongst the strata of Weird fiction and cosmic horror. HPL wasn't just whistling Dixie (can you imagine?) when he penned
Fungi From Yuggoth, in which he famously wrote:
This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!
From penicillin to yeast to black mold and Cryptococcus, the smallest and most innocuous living things amongst us can either grant life, or take it, on a massive scale. That's the stuff that sets the mind a' wheeling, and the eager spores swirling out into the evening gloom.
That's the stuff of
Fungi.
