I allowed this newsletter to hibernate over the winter and have been shy about resurrecting it, because the obvious thing I have to say is that my own book1 is coming out tomorrow.

I do not enjoy self-promotion; over on my own personal Substack2 I toyed with trying to write a weeklyish article about writing and the process of writing ahead of the launch. Unfortunately, I’m not particularly good at writing when I feel I have said enough (which is probably why my book is a novella), and I don’t enjoy creating Content For Content’s Sake (which is one of many reasons why I am not an influencer).

But I’ll go ahead and rip the bandaid off and say that tomorrow, 19 March, sees my very own Six Mile Store birthed into the world. As I mentioned, it’s a novella at around 120 pages, but one reviewer said it made her feel like she was in a Tarantino film. Perfect, actually—that’s pretty much my intention with it.

I’ve done a “meet the author” interview at Crime Fiction Lover, and I think there will be a few other bits online soonish too, including articles, listicles, reviews, and maybe even some press if I’m lucky. I’ll be recording an interview with Talk Radio Europe in April, I’ll be on the Your Life In Film podcast at some point in the coming weeks, and I’m doing an in-person launch/reading/signing at the Faulkner County Library on Monday 6 April at 5:30pm. So I guess that’s decent self-promotion.

Ah, anyway. Next time: more about other books in 2026 from Deixis Press, including:

* A relaunch AND and a new book from Adam Saint!

* A new Sammy & Facey book from Siôn Scott-Wilson!

* A new book about the Bristol Channel Floods of 1607 from Chloe Turner!

* And a collection of short stories from Marc Joan!

All very much in the works, and coming to you later this year.

Sorry to bother you with self-promotional stuff. I promise that I hate it more than you do.

Yours,

Angel

First things first: DID YOU KNOW I am doing a £10 sale on every hardback Deixis Press has in stock1? I’ve updated my website to make it more obvious which books are on sale. Go on, have a look and tell me if I did a good job: https://deixis.press/books

Books make GREAT Christmas presents, you know. And you can still buy all of the the non-sale books at great prices (hardback and paperback) too.

And I very much need to make room for the upcoming 2026 books.

Oh, what are the 2026 books, you ask? Well let me tell you!

• A NEW Chloe Turner!

  • Chloe played a blinder with her amazing Blue Hawk (in stock, on sale at that link!), which continues to get ordered in by her local bookshop. The new one is just as beautiful and evocative. If you’re a historical fiction fan, especially if you love stories with a strong sense of place, you definitely won’t want to miss it.

• A NEW Marc Joan!

  • Marc’s books Hangdog Souls and The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man (again both in stock and on sale!) both carry the delicious weight of existential dread. His 2026 book is a collection of his award-winning short stories, which will delight all existing Marc Joan fans and fingers crossed convert some new readers too.

• A NEW Adam Saint!

  • Adam’s The Transfer Problem (not in stock at the press but still available in HB and PB at that link!) is unapologetically smart, not to mention increasingly relevant in our AI-obsessed world. I feel like I could have released it better and done a better job of finding its audience. When Adam’s new one comes out, I intend to re-release TTP so new technothriller readers can meet their new favorite author AND get two books at once from him.

• A NEW Siôn Scott-Wilson!

  • Some Rise By Sin and What We Leave Behind (also not in stock but still available in HB and PB!) have been favorites of many readers from the time the press started. Siôn is finishing up the third and (probably) final book in the Sammy & Facey series, which I can’t wait to get my hands on, and I know some of you out there are pleased to hear it too.

• and a DEBUT from, well, me.

  • I took a really long time to write a really short book, but I finally did it, and now you can pre-order Six Mile Store2 at your favorite bookshop worldwide3, or direct from the press.

And for the rest of 2025? Well, it’s cold and dark and wet and the world is going into hibernation. I’m still doing *waves hands* stuff, but it won’t be that interesting for you to hear about. So I probably won’t have much to say right here. But if you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, you might be interested in my personal Substack where I’m writing weekly about writing (if for no other reason than to stay at least a little bit thawed out).

Yours,

Angel

You thought I was dead and so did I. Exactly twice since you’ve heard from me, in fact. First in a health scare1 and, most recently (as in, within the last week), in a minor house fire2. But NEITHER managed to kill me, so I can only assume I’m in some quantum immortality situation and will have to soldier on.

Miss, miss, what did we miss? Well, we missed:

• the launch of Parallels by James Kinsley (22 May)

• the launch of The Youngster by Bibi Berki (17 July)

• the launch of The Grieving Eye by Lena Atoug (14 August)

• the relaunch, including beautiful new cover, of The Last Doorbell by William Parker

  • ...just in time for the Polari Prize! Should we talk about how The Last Doorbell was longlisted for the 2025 Polari Prize? One of the proudest moments of Bill’s and my lives? Something we were both desperately overjoyed about? Maybe some other time.

BUT! We are in time for:

• the launch of It’s Hard to Tell You This by James Kinsley, a novella (25 September3)

  • Michael’s father didn’t leave much behind. A handful of battered paperbacks, a few family photos, and an ancient tape recorder - the scattered remains of an old man’s empty life. But that tape recorder sparks something in Michael, a need to take stock of his own thoughts. His memories. His regrets.

    Turning the recorder on, Michael begins to speak. About the loves he lost. The girls who slipped away. The women he hurt. Each memory spools out of him and onto the tape, raw and unedited.

• The launch of The House of All Sorrows by Richard Gadz (23 October)

  • Jekyll is a man with a horrible, guilty secret. The results of the sinister experiments he conducts in the basement of Westwych House, the Jekylls’ country home in Somerset, are known only to a handful of people. All his family ever see is a dedicated scientist. All his servants ever hear are screams in the dead of night.

    As guests gather for a genteel weekend, a web of events entangles a young historian in local legends of monsters and werewolves, and Frederick Jekyll’s nightmare past prepares to wreak bloody revenge on everyone present at Westwych House.

• AND... a launch party!! Same time, same place, Friday 3 October. If you’ve been before, you’re welcome to come again. You SHOULD have had an email invitation; let me know if you did not and wish that you had.

I’ve also announced that Deixis Press has another novella coming out next year, Six Mile Store by A M Belsey4 (19 March 2026):

SOMETHING UGLY’S WAITIN’ FOR YOU

Honey’s working weekends down at the Six Mile, trying to figure her life out. Her boyfriend’s about to leave the country, her college advisor hates her guts, her momma ain’t listening, and she’s got this cop breathing down her neck just about all the time.

She finds a friend in her new colleague Lisa, but when one of their regular customers turns up dead, everything goes sideways faster than a greased hog at the county fair…

It’s kind of southern gothic, maybe rural noir, perhaps a little out of the ordinary for UK readers. You can pre-order Six Mile Store now on Amazon (coming soon at other retailers; it’s a little early yet) or direct from the press, and you can follow A M Belsey at her Goodreads account and/or her personal Substack5 where she is apparently going to try to start focusing her content on writing and books.

Ok6 I guess that’s enough. Goodbye forever7

Yours,

Angel

HI BOOK PEOPLE!

Do you wonder what I’ve been doing? Yeah, I get that. I kind of went into book hibernation. But now spring has sprung, and there’s a lot happening that you might be interested in.

Most importantly, I have FIVE books coming out in 2025! that’s f-i-v-e, five. You can pre-order them all right now! Here are some bullet points:

• Parallels by James Kinsley, out 22 May. That’s in 16 short days!

  • Is Jeff a restless young man just scraping by, or is he Jezz, a desperate soldier risking everything for humanity’s survival? As identities collide, one question rips through his fractured psyche:

    What is reality?

    • This one is a project James brought to me a while ago, long before Greyskin. In our structural discussions we talked a lot about the story, its underlying mystery, how to flesh out an overall philosophy, how to twist expectation, how not to answer all the questions, how to trust readers to bring themselves to it. James did a lot of work and came back with a banger of a draft. We put it together and … well, the first two reviewers didn’t like it.

    • Now, I am prohibited by law from saying readers are wrong! As I said, readers bring themselves to stories. But I like this book; I think it’s smart, funny, touching, and asks big questions. It spoonfeeds you nothing (and that in itself seems to have touched a nerve with a couple of folks). The terms of my release do not allow me tell you to ignore reviewers, but I can say definitively that I cannot find some of the issues that one reviewer has highlighted. In short, this book simply needs better more reviewers. Netgalley has a couple of nice comments which have unfortunately not been migrated out to Goodreads. Frustrating.

• The Youngster by Bibi Berki, out 17 July

  • Georgie and her mother Cherry have had their ups and downs. But now they're devoted to each other – and when Cherry learns that she’s in the early stages of dementia, Georgie is with her every step of the way…

    …Until she can't be. And that's when he steps into her mother's life. The one who's been waiting, watching, whispering.

    • This is a hard one to categorize. It is a quiet, literary, domestic thriller, which isn’t really a thing. And that’s probably why I like it. Bibi’s writing is phenomenal, exactly the sort of thing I often find myself five-starring when I read for pleasure.

    • Reviewers who may have been expecting a fast-paced thriller (because there is no such category as “quiet literary domestic thriller,” but one does have to categorize books when one puts them out for review, for better or worse) haven’t liked the subtlety of this book. Others don’t like reading about that weird time we experienced as a collective about 5 years ago—I get that, I do, but that’s the least important thing about this story. But yeah, again, some interesting thoughts available on NetGalley.

• The Grieving Eye by Lena Atoug, out 14 August

  • WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOSE A FATHER AND THEN A COUNTRY?

    Lena Atoug's memoir is the story of a carefree childhood doubly fractured – first by a father's death, then by war. It charts her journey as a migrant through a world of new languages and customs, navigating adolescence, loneliness and lack of belonging.

    • This is Deixis Press’s first non-fiction book (though we have had some autofiction in The Last Doorbell by William Parker. I sob through the last few chapters of this book every time I look at it. Again, this is a book that just needs more readers/more reviewers to convey a real sense of its beauty and importance.

• It’s Hard to Tell You This by James Kinsley, a novella, out 25 September

  • Michael’s father didn’t leave much behind. A handful of battered paperbacks, a few family photos, and an ancient tape recorder - the scattered remains of an old man’s empty life. But that tape recorder sparks something in Michael, a need to take stock of his own thoughts. His memories. His regrets.

    Turning the recorder on, Michael begins to speak. About the loves he lost. The girls who slipped away. The women he hurt. Each memory spools out of him and onto the tape, raw and unedited.

    • This is Deixis Press’s first novella, but our third book from James, and I’m delighted to put it out there. It was a surprise book for 2025—another potential novella got moved to next year (more on that later, maybe). It tells the story of one short period in Michael’s life, interspersed with tape-recorded monologues to all the girls he’s loved before.

    • I think there are some Important Themes here around boys, men, the epidemic of male loneliness, you know, all the Stuff in the atmosphere right now.

• The House of All Sorrows by Richard Gadz, out 23 October

  • Jekyll is a man with a horrible, guilty secret. The results of the sinister experiments he conducts in the basement of Westwych House, the Jekylls' country home in Somerset, are known only to a handful of people. All his family ever see is a dedicated scientist. All his servants ever hear are screams in the dead of night.

    As guests gather for a genteel weekend, a web of events entangles a young historian in local legends of monsters and werewolves, and Frederick Jekyll's nightmare past prepares to wreak bloody revenge on everyone present at Westwych House.

    • Hell yes, this is the third in Richard’s “Gothics Undead” collection, his retellings of classic horror stories. This time we’ve got Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde (with a light sprinkling of Dr Moreau). This collection is so much bloody fun.

    • If you liked The Workshop of Filthy Creation and The Eater of Flies, you’re in for yet another treat. And of course, it goes without saying that each of these books stands alone. Read these books in any order at any time (just make sure you don’t do it alone in the dark).

So apart from putting books together and bemoaning the general lack of reviewers, what else have I been doing? Well,

YOU CAN NOW ORDER PAPERBACKS DIRECT FROM THE PRESS AT A DISCOUNT!

That’s right—previously I only had hardbacks available, but I now have the ability to give you a fantastic discount on paperbacks as well (US and UK customers only). Each and every book currently in production now has links to both formats. For the five books currently in pre-order, the paperback links will appear after the book is released.

PLUS, A REWARD FOR READING THIS FAR: THE £10 HARDBACK SALE IS NOW ON!

I have a fair bit of stock I need to sell to make room for FIVE new books! You can now nab six of my books in hardback format for £10 each. This is the lowest you’ve probably seen it (I think I saw a few on Amazon at this price). Go to the book’s page, scroll alllllll the way to the bottom, and click the “£10 stock sale” button for a treat. This sale lasts only as long as stock remains.

Please note! These are all prize-winners or have been nominated for prizes. That is, these are seriously good books.

• Blue Hawk by Chloe Turner

• The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man by Marc Joan

• The Burn Street Haunting by Richard Gadz

• Greyskin by James Kinsley

• Hangdog Souls by Marc Joan

• The Workshop of Filthy Creation (original cover) by Richard Gadz

Please, pass this on to anyone who likes their books awesome, hardback, and cost-effective.

Yours,

Angel

First! Congratulations to Richard Gadz on the publication of THE EATER OF FLIES yesterday. Richard has a lot of events coming up giving talks hither and thither, appearing on the radio, some articles in various online magazines—he’s a powerhouse.

• Books on the Rise bookshop in Richmond are running a talk event with Richard on 29th October: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/999150755807?aff=oddtdtcreator 

• He’ll be speaking at Bristol Central Library on 31st October

• He’ll appear on the TRE (Talk Radio Europe) Book Show, presented by Hannah Murray, I think on 31 October https://www.talkradioeurope.com/the-book-show/

• Here’s a sneak peek at this feature from Shepherd, which I think is running officially next week: https://shepherd.com/best-books/dracula-and-other-vampires

• Here he is on TripFiction talking about Victorian London: https://www.tripfiction.com/talking-location-with-author-richard-gadz-victorian-london/

• There’s also stuff coming up on Female First, Book Trail, maybe more. Richard, are you reading this? RICHARD??? Please put other stuff in comments if I’m missing things.

Second! I have two more books to announce next year, in addition to PARALLELS by James Kinsley and THE GRIEVING EYE by Lena Atoug, which I have already discussed. The two new new books are:

1. Richard Gadz! Some of us can’t get enough of Richard, and we are in luck, because has also written the third in his Gothics Undead series, THE HOUSE OF ALL SORROWS, which will be out for—you guessed it—spooky season 2025. More details on that to follow, but expect a little Jekyll, a little Hyde, a little Moreau, and a lot of Victorian country house. Delicious.

2. Another new author to Deixis Press: Bibi Berki! Bibi is an established author who was short-listed for both the Lucy Cavendish and Exeter fiction prizes for her psychological drama THE WATCH (published by Salt). She’s also a journalist and presenter of the podcast series “The Kiss” (among others). Bibi’s new book, THE YOUNGSTER, is a domestic thriller: a woman, who is caring for her mother in the early stages of dementia, becomes suddenly ill and is hospitalized. Her mother? Well, let’s just say: someone takes care of her.

There may be others next year too—I’m not ready to announce yet. But this newsletter is obviously very regular so you’ll hear soon enough. yes you will

In the meantime, I’m on holiday as of the moment I press send on this post, which in practical terms means I’m going to try to do a little editing work and then I’m going to spend a week reading things that I’m very behind on1.

Live loud, leave scars2!

Yours,
Angel

It’s a bit rich, isn’t it, calling this newsletter a “weekly”? Well, I’m not calling it that now, so none of us needs to worry anymore.

What on EARTH have you been doing? Over here we’ve been up to our necks in bookish business.

1. We had a brilliant launch for Chloe Turner’s Blue Hawk in her hometown, in the ancient1 market house at Minchinhampton. Chloe let me sleep in her house! And she didn’t even lock me in my room from the outside for her own protection.

2. We had another brilliant launch for William Parker’s The Last Doorbell in his actual home, with his extremely charming friends.

3. I’ve arranged YET ANOTHER brilliant launch for Richard Gadz’s THE EATER OF FLIES on Friday 4 October at Vout-O-Reenee’s. This will also be a second launch for Chloe and William! If you are signed up to my events mailing list, you will have received an invitation today. (If you are not and you want to be, just reply to this email and I’ll sort you out for this and future invitations.)

4. Each of these books has been getting fantastic reviews on Goodreads and Netgalley. I was particularly surprised and gratified by the attention Bill’s book got from being part of Pride Book Tours. I looked at the preorder numbers one day and they had me like:

   

5. I’ve, uh, tried to start doing some TikTok videos, because the Pride Book Tours thing mentioned above had a couple of BookTok folks involved, which I think helped raise Bill’s profile. You can follow me if you want; I enjoy using TikTok as a viewer, but I find videoing myself deeply cringey. Oh well, we find daily new ways to humiliate ourselves in the name of profit and progress.

6. I had a nice phone call from a woman at InPress; I don’t know if they’ve decided to take me on or not, but I do think it would be helpful to have a distributor and thereby become a little more legit.

   

7. I’ve been working with a social media person who is probably reading this wondering why I’m writing this instead of the things we agreed I’d talk about. The thing is, I didn’t write down what I was supposed to talk about, and now I’ve forgotten. But all of these things are good things to mention.

BUT SPEAKING OF GOOD THINGS! Next year I have two very exciting books coming out that I can now tell you about!

PARALLELS - James Kinsley

OH THAT’S RIGHT, fffffffformer presidents: Mister Kinsley is back! This was actually the first manuscript James showed me, some time ago, and while it was good then, we’ve worked on it together a bit and now it’s very, very good. What’s it about? I’ll use James’s own words:

Parallels is a psychological sci-fi thriller about two men experiencing debilitating blackouts and hallucinations of an alternative life - but is Jeff’s quiet, directionless life a product of the alien toxin that Jezz was exposed to on the battlefields of China, fending off an alien invasion alongside the combined forces of Earth? Or is that war, and Jezz himself, just something summoned up by Jeff’s psychosis as he stumbles in search of meaning? And who is the pale woman who appears to be at the heart of both their visions?

I’m so glad to be publishing this book; James is a fantastic author to work with, both personally and professionally (and, by the way, he is a finalist for the 2024 Page Turner Awards for Greyskin, alongside Marc Joan for The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man).2

THE GRIEVING EYE - Lena Atoug

Deixis Press has a new author! And her work is a slight departure from our usual fare because it is not fiction, it’s memoir. Now, The Last Doorbell is also memoir, but it’s more an autofictional memoir/novelized memoir.

THE GRIEVING EYE, though, is factual. But it’s also . . . poetic? I don’t know how to describe this book, really, which makes it the kind of book that is right up my alley. It’s a collection of 33 vignettes told from the perspective of Lena as a little girl and young woman, before, during, and after her time living as a refugee.

People, when I tell you this book made me cry every time I worked on it, and that it give me chills every time I read the last page, I’m speaking truth beyond truth. This book might well change your life.

Yours,

Angel

Wow, there are 200 of you now reading this newsletter (some poised as you read this to unsubscribe because you had forgotten about it until this very moment because the “weekly” in the title is a somewhat loose concept). Thank you for supporting small presses, especially this one, the best one, obviously.

It’s always busy, but it’s especially busy in and around school holiday time, as I’ve griped about before (and will gripe about again, surely). But I’ve been chugging away. I have three upcoming books in 2024, and they are all now more or less ready to go into print, pending a few minor editorial details. Would you like to know more about them? Of course you would.

Blue Hawk by Chloe Turner, out 17 July

17th century Gloucestershire. Joan, the daughter of a millworker with drink-fuelled pipe dreams, is thrust into her family's battle against poverty. With her father's legacy tarnished, Joan steps into his place, mastering the art of cloth-dying to save her family from destitution and restore their lost honor.

But Joan's exceptional skill challenges her community's rigid conventions--and stirs whispers of witchcraft. Her lonely endeavours are further shadowed by marital strife and a complex rivalry with her sister, Alice, fueled by jealousy and long-standing grievances.

Chloe Turner’s Blue Hawk explores the power of passion, the price of ambition, and the beauty of courage.

The Last Doorbell by William Parker, out 28 August

"What the bloody hell am I doing here?"

Ben's past was supposed to be behind him: debts paid, savings secured, and a collection of outrageous anecdotes that would amuse his friends for a lifetime. But under pressure from his escort agency for "one final favor," he now stands at a precipice, finger poised over a doorbell.

There’s a moment’s pause before his finger makes reluctant contact. He can’t possibly know it, of course, but this doorbell, the last, changes his life forever...

The Eater of Flies by Richard Gadz, out 24 October

Summer, 1868. London's West End buzzes with a chaotic blend of affluence and moral decay, a place where high society and underworld meet. A valuable box from Transylvania, sealed tight, falls into unscrupulous hands. Its opening releases a vampyr, a wraith-like parasite that hides inside a host – whether young or old, man or woman – and thirsts for human blood.

For those who live and work around Holmwood's music hall, just off The Strand, the vampyr's arrival begins a nightmare of betrayal and death, and a race to return the creature to the grave before others of its kind come to pick the city clean.

The Eater Of Flies leaves traditional vampiric lore behind, offering a chilling Victorian gothic tale laced with crime, pitch-dark humour and, above all, rampant greed: for money, for power … for blood.

(trailer to come)

As ever, these brilliant books are available for pre-order from deixis.press/books and Amazon, and they should all be available from other online booksellers soon—

—Which leads me to my final point. After all, what would this newsletter be without a complaint? This “week” I’m puzzled by why Blue Hawk, which is registered at Nielsen, has not percolated out to online booksellers like Foyles etc. Usually that happens immediately. I’m using a new content manager that was supposed to make my life easier; it has not as yet. Is the content manager to blame? Is it me? Am I the drama?

Yours,

Angel

I feel like this newsletter is often one of a few types:

• “hey, there’s a new book, you should buy it”

• “hey, there’s an event coming up, you should come to it”

• [rage against the book machine]

But today I believe a different theme is bubbling to the surface, and that is a sense of individual futility because of my spatiotemporal inability to be more than one person1. So if you aren’t so into the whine, whine, whine, you might not like this one.

Reading for people

I really enjoy reading work that people send me, even when it’s not really my bag in terms of publishing it, or even when it’s not the type of literature I personally prefer.

I’ve mentioned the novel prize I manage, for authors who are self-published or not yet published. For that contest I read all kinds of things that are not normally up my alley. And one of the hardest things I’ve done was picking just ONE book from my open submissions period (that was Hangdog Souls, by the way). I got about 70 books and I liked almost all of them. I loved about 10, but I couldn’t afford to publish 10.

So I don’t really personally2 mind when unagented3 authors try to sneak into my inbox with submissions even though submissions are not open. I do my best to read them and provide at least a little feedback. But right now I have a pretty massive backlog of people’s work where I’ve agreed to have a look. I’m months behind where I intended to be.

And so I think now I have to draw a line under it and say: look, it doesn’t prejudice me against any author who tries to submit outside of an open subs period. I absolutely believe in breaking the rules, and often that’s the only way to get ahead in this shitty industry. I get it. I support you. I love authors and their drive and their amazing work. But I can’t read any more speculative submissions4. And this is only because I am a human-presenting being who has succumbed to the seductive illusion of linear time, which means that if I say I will read your book, it will take me months and I will piss you off5.

I hate holidays

Yeah, so as I said, I manage that novel prize, which obviously I love doing. I was extremely on track with it, which is important because of the volume of submissions we typically get. Then I went on holiday.

I know that most people love holidays. I used to love holidays, too, when I had jobs that I didn’t give a shit about. But now that I do what I do, I need to make it clear: holidays wreck my life.

Let me be clear: my five typical States of Being are6

1. working efficiently

2. working inefficiently

3. work-rooted paralysis characterized by doomscrolling

4. doing childcare/housework/basic personal hygiene

5. sleep [rare]

Holidays mean that everything gets turned on its head. And for every one week of holiday I take, States of Being 1-3 go into maximum overdrive for at least two weeks upon my return7. So yeah, a week of staring at the horizon? sounds good but I’ll pay. Oh, I’ll pay alright.

Money

Speaking of oh, I’ll pay alright, the book creation process is getting smoother and smoother all the time, but that’s because I now pay more people to do more stuff. Which should in theory mean that I could, in turn, do more, but in practice means that I’m wondering how long I can really keep treading this very cold, sharky water. Through 2025 for sure.

The good news is that all of my books for 2024 are, in at least some sense, done. I mean, there’s a little outstanding editorial work for all three, but nothing major. Covers are progressing. Advance reading has begun for Chloe Turner’s Blue Hawk. I’ll be able to tell you more about William Parker’s The Last Doorbell and Richard Gadz’s The Eater of Flies soon.

But, with added expenditure, the pressure feels very much on—as it should be, of course—to make sure that every book I make is maximally visible and attractive to those who would like to buy good books. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I’m merely a single entity who has, for reasons unclear, not opted to be perfect in this incarnation, and while I’m undeniably the GOAT at the “find good books” part, I’ve humbled myself when it comes to the “sell good books” part8.

Right, I could just keep going here, but now seems a good place to stop. If I can leave you with just one thought, just remember: my approach to work and life is extraordinarily healthy for both body and soul, and it should be emulated by everyone.

Yours,

Angel

Two really exciting things for you this week!

First,

Our very own award-winning author Richard Gadz has started a podcast, Bookmarks with Richard Gadz, where he interviews his fellow authors about their books, their writing process, and whatever else they happen to get onto.

I believe there might be plans for Bookmarks to get some kind of radio syndication (if you see this, Richard, please comment any details), but for now, please find it at richardgadz.co.uk and on Spotify:

Second,

Chloe Turner’s upcoming book is available for pre-order direct from the press (and shortly to be available at the usual retail links worldwide).

17th century Gloucestershire. Joan, the daughter of a millworker with drink-fuelled pipe dreams, is thrust into her family's battle against poverty. With her father's legacy tarnished, Joan steps into his place, mastering the art of cloth-dying to save her family from destitution and restore their lost honor.

But Joan's exceptional skill challenges her community's rigid conventions--and stirs whispers of witchcraft. Her lonely endeavours are further shadowed by marital strife and a complex rivalry with her sister, Alice, fueled by jealousy and long-standing grievances.

And, folks, would you just look at that gorgeous cover?

That’s it from me for today.

Yours,

Angel

How was your Christmas? Your new year? I hope everyone had a restful festive season and a non-eventful storm Isha.

In exciting press news—and, to clarify, I mean this is exciting specifically for the press, not for the reader, but the main focus of this newsletter has always been Figuring Out What The Hell I’m Doing As A Publisher And Dragging You, The Interested Reader, Along This Adventure With Me—we have joined the Indie Press Network.

The Network was created by the apparently indefatigable Will Dady (Renard Press’s founder), and it has rather brilliantly brought together a bunch of [NOTE TO SELF BEFORE SENDING: I need a kindly, sympathetic but brutally true epithet here that applies perhaps most strongly to myself, maybe “dumbasses”?] who have started small presses in THIS economy. Now we are all up in each other’s Discord sharing tips about distributors and printers and prizes and our fantasies about dismembering Gardn . . . wait, no, that last one is just me.

Even if you’re not a bookseller, you might like to go to this page to see what indie gems are upcoming in the near future. Don’t forget: the only reason any of us do this work is because we love books and authors, so have a look around there secure in the knowledge that what is there is created and produced with care and love, for probably next to no profit, apart from that which profiteth the soul. (lol, imagine if I still had a soul. Onward!)

But here’s a treat! In exciting FOR YOU news, Deixis Press is welcoming two new authors in 2024!

Chloe Turner

Chloe’s book Blue Hawk is her first novel, and it is set in the steep-sided Chalford valley near her home in Gloucestershire. It’s the gorgeously imagined and meticulously researched story of a young woman who takes over her father’s cloth business in pre-industrial England—and the societal pressures she faces as a result. I’ve loved this book since I first read it some time ago, and I’m so lucky to be the person who now gets to publish it.

Chloe’s short stories have been widely published, including in Best British Short Stories 2018. Her debut collection, Witches Sail in Eggshells, won the 2020 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. You can follow her on Twitter @TurnerPen2Paper.

William Parker

William’s book The Last Doorbell is a novel-memoir about Ben, a young gay man who, after some time as an escort, meets an aristocrat and becomes hopelessly entangled with not only the man but also his family. It’s fascinating, touching, funny, and maybe even a little scandalous.

William has written about Ben before in his novel The House Martin, and now it’s time for Ben’s continuing story. Again, I’m really fortunate to be this book’s publisher, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

That’s probably enough for now—we have a third book coming out later in the year, too, but I’ll leave you on tenterhooks for that one. What could it be?! Feel free to speculate.

Yours,

Angel

Last week we launched Richard Gadz’s new book The Burn Street Haunting and Marc Joan’s upcoming The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man at Vout-O-Reenee’s, the best little book launch haunt1 in London.2 It was a really lovely event, if slightly smaller than usual due to 1. the weather 2. impending demos 3. my experimental invitation process.3 Thank you to everyone who came out, and if you couldn’t make it this time, you can still buy the books, and maybe bring them with you to the next launch for signing.

I’m actually running a little special at the moment. If you buy The Workshop of Filthy Creation or Hangdog Souls in hardback from the press by noon on Tuesday 21 November4, you’ll automatically be entered into a draw to get a free paperback of The Burn Street Haunting or The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man. I don’t usually have paperbacks, but this time I happen to have one of each! So grab a hardback and you’ll be in for the chance to get a free paperback too.

This week in press news: The launches have lunched, the two newest books are either already winging their way to their new homes (Burn Street) or sitting trembling in warehouses waiting for their chance to fly (Cartoon Life), social media is queued up, and for me it’s time to finalize some contract details, do reading/editorial work, and to consider what I will do next year. And it’s cold and it’s been so dreadfully rainy, and I’m tired, so motivation has been a challenge.

This all improved, though, when I got wind of the new Indie Press Network that has been launched by Will Dady, who runs Renard Press. The tiny indie corner of the publishing industry feels wild and lonely most of the time; I’m very much in danger of becoming a withered old hermit screaming on the edge of a desolate cliff (maybe metaphorically? hard to be sure). But I think something like the IPN just might save my sanity. Please do go sign up for their newsletter to keep up with what they’re doing.

Today? I’m in the process of trying to set up a TikTok shop. Yes, the press does have a TikTok account; no, I’m not yet any good at it. I’ve gone entirely off social media at exactly the wrong time in my career to do that. So there we are.

Yours,

Angel

A brief note to say that if you are in the Bristol area tomorrow you can see Richard Gadz at BristolCon, and maybe even pick up an early copy of The Burn Street Haunting if you are very lucky1.

Please do keep those pre-orders rolling in for The Burn Street Haunting and The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man, which are both getting brilliant reviews on GoodReads! And if you’ll be in London on 10 November, and you’d like to party down with the authors, join us:

That’s it for now. Short and sweet. Just like me.

Yours,

Angel

This newsletter started out as a way to discuss stuff I was learning as I stumbled around the guts of publishing, trying to put it all together. Of course, after 10 books I’ve got reasonably good at making books a tangible reality, and I’ve come to understand, if not fully accept, the issues that plague me as an independent publisher, especially the hurdles that large publishers don’t face.

For example, all of my books are marked “returnable” at Ingram Spark, and I have set an admittedly low-ish discount (something like 30%), but when bookstores try to order from Gardners, they see that the books are not returnable and that they get only a 10% RRP discount. And I’d really, really, REALLY LIKE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE but Gardners, who hold all of the power, don’t particularly care to inform me about anything.

All of that was less of an issue when I wasn’t trying to get into bookstores. But now I’m trying to venture toward bookstores more, so it’s recently become concerning. And the bookstores themselves (somenotall) set some remarkable requirements for independent publishers. Selling my books to (somenotallof) them is almost like preparing for a job interview. And I have this sneaky suspicion: do the same self-flagellation rules apply to the big-name publishers they stock? Does a penguin need to go down on its feathery knees? Does Simon have to bend over backward while Schuster juggles? 🤨 I'll leave that for you to consider.

Worse, I’ll never know if the lack of reply is because I’ve been deemed unworthy or because my email has gone into spam. As it is wont to do. Well. there we are.

In less irritating news, you can continue to pre-order The Burn Street Haunting and The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man. Excited? You better be! Here is a selection of the links you could use to do that. (Other URLs are available.)

I also had a meeting with an author yesterday who is very likely to become the newest member of the Deixis family in summer 2024. Of course, anything could happen, so I won’t say too much yet, but I look forward to adding even more subject matter variety to my already diffuse list. Damn, there are a lot of good stories out there.

And for all those on tenterhooks about the launch party, invitations are almost on their way! A little change though: instead of going the Paperless Post route, I'll be sending out invites via email—just finishing up the final graphic. Stay aware! and look in your spam folder ffs

Yours,

Angel

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been getting back into the swing of things after my long contract, and I’ve spent most of my time trying to make sure The Burn Street Haunting and The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man get a good start in life.

Upcoming book stuff

Some of you have been asking about the launch! We are again having a two-book launch party at Vout-O-Reenee’s on 10 November. I’ll send out proper invitations sometime this week, but it would be brilliant to have as many of you there as possible. If you want to come and I haven’t invited you before, please just let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

Both books have had really good response from advance readers. Here are some reviews:

Burn Street

Gadz has created something that feels truly horrific and nasty without, on reflection, ever writing anything gratuitous or obscene. It's the atmosphere that sells the vibe and that's a truly remarkable achievement.

and

Imagine Stephen King's IT filtered through the sensibilities of Thomas Ligotti and Ramsey Campbell, and you'll still be nowhere near prepared for where this ends up. Brilliant and unsettling.

and

The tension and sense of unease never lets up! Mr Gadz draws you into this man’s mind and then royally messes with you until you too feel like the supernatural entity that has been hunting the main character since childhood is out to get you too.

Cartoon Life

A stylistically brilliant novel with an extremely unreliable and troubled narrator … The sympathetic but obtuse central character and command of language and dialogue reminded me of the works of Nabokov and John Kennedy Toole. Strongly recommended.

and

It’s a slow burn of a story, well written and plotted, and progressively claustrophobic. I was totally sucked into the book, and had to tear myself away last night in order to go to sleep. The novel isn’t for everyone. It’s definitely not light reading. But for those who like literary novels with an edge, it’s definitely worth reading.

and

This is one of those novels that really defy genre expectations. It's intriguing, creepy in some instances, and very well written but it's not overtly horrific in the traditional sense … I recommend this book for those who want a quieter and slowly unsettling horror read. You'll find a lot in here to enjoy.

Pretty good, huh? Just remember: the success of books and small presses is mostly down to . . . selling copies. And if you are able to be involved in the buying part of that equation, my authors and I really appreciate it. If not, please just share news of upcoming/existing books (from any small press, not just this one!) with people you think could be interested. And please do also know that I do all I can to keep my books’ prices reasonable—not easy in current circumstances, but it’s just about ok.

Other news

My website (which I need to update, and again will try to do this week) currently says that submissions are likely to open in autumn 2023. That’s pretty firmly now, but I have not opened for submissions. Here are some reasons:

1. Some of my existing authors have books coming out next year and the next too (I hope with me), so my slate is already theoretically full, depending how much money I want to spend.

2. I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to publish some books I’ve seen in the past, where I didn’t have the money to take them on before.

3. I’d quite like to write something myself once I’ve got these two books out the door. I think I have a little window then if I don’t try to take anything else on straight away.

The thing I’d like to write is about what it really means to be published by a large publisher, and how there are better and healthier options for most authors than pursuing the big 5 (or even the slightly smaller however-many), especially early on in their writing careers.

You may have gathered that, despite being a publisher, I am not particularly pro-publisher, any more than I am pro any business, whether that be Coca-Cola or a locally-owned franchise or an independent clothing shop. That is, I don’t see any business as inherently evil (not even Amazon! as we have explored in these very pages), but I’m also not going to pretend that they aren’t commercial entities with correspondingly commercial priorities.

I’d like would-be authors to understand where legitimacy comes from in writing—and I can tell you for free right now that being traditionally published simply is not it. But in pursuit of that fictional legitimacy, writers strive for those big contracts, and they can easily end up getting chewed up and spat out, no less impoverished than before, having attracted the brief attention of a fickle, easily distracted audience.

I’d quite like to talk about these things in more depth. The question is whether I can make a whole book about them. Maybe, maybe not (but at least nobody is making me write to a minimum word count before dropping me like last week’s banana).

I’d also quite like to put something together to help people get started in self-publishing, which is something I VERY MUCH BELIEVE IN. I’d like to talk to them not only about the functional how-tos, but also about the real costs of doing it well, the pitfalls they are likely to face, and, ultimately, the liberation it can bring. And maybe that’s a separate book.

Or maybe both of these ideas are just a series of blog posts. I don’t know yet. But I’d like to take some time to myself over the next few months to figure out how to do it properly. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, and/or anything you feel passionately about that you’d like to hear represented in any part of this work, feel free to comment or email me. (Also if you think it’s a terrible idea.)

Yours,

Angel

…You’d think WRONG, mofo! Oh ok, I’ll do a little vacationing IF FORCED. But so many exciting things are going on here at this little ol’ press!

In case you didn’t know, our very own Genevieve Jenner has been shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers First Book Award for CHOCOLATE CAKE FOR IMAGINARY LIVES! She is one of THREE finalists in this category; one of the others is an *ahem* quite well-known chef, and the other has a surname that is, as far as I’m concerned, tantamount to cheating. May the best man win, and may that man be a woman.

I’ve also got some exciting BEWK NOOS for you! Richard Gadz and Marc Joan both have new novels coming out this autumn. Both are horrors (Richard’s paranormal; Marc’s psychological).

Here’s Richard’s (Kindle pre-order link):

London, 1973. A small-time crook is on the run – from the law, from the local crime boss and, above all, from a horror that’s haunted him since childhood: a supernatural psychic entity that seeks to devour his soul. It’s crawled out of his memories and now, slowly, it’s emerging from his mind and into reality. So he believes, but is it real? Are feelings of guilt about his most recent crime pushing him into paranoid delusions?

At the boarding house where he takes refuge, he hopes to restart his life through his love for a fellow resident, but his growing fear of the entity – and the imminent vengeance of London’s criminal underworld – threatens disaster for them both. When they find themselves at the entity’s mercy, trapped in a bizarre, menacing otherworld, reality itself mutates into something truly evil…

And here’s Marc’s (Kindle pre-order link):

As an independent comic book store owner and the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, Philippe Favrier lives a life that straddles the real world and the realm of fiction. Struggling with mental illness, Philippe relies on his wife, Marilyne – a successful surgeon with her own haunting secrets – and a groundbreaking drug his father developed. Bound by their shared pain, they navigate their haunted lives, forever shadowed by the heart-rending loss of their baby, Antoine.

Their fragile world begins to crumble when Philippe catches a disturbing glimpse of an unfamiliar profile in the mirror. And his uneasiness is further fueled by an anonymous comic strip that arrives at his store, featuring a character bearing an eerie resemblance to him.

Is Marilyne hiding an affair? Is she connected to the comic strip that's tormenting him? As he probes deeper, Philippe is drawn into a web of deception, where the lines between reality and imagination blur – until his investigations into Marilyne and the malicious comic artist at last reveal the tragic truth.

Speaking of covers, I had my say, as they say, about commercial covers on Twitter the other day. The context is that the account Caustic Cover Critic posted a collage of all of the “dark houses with yellow windows” crime/thriller novels that are coming up soon. I noticed a handful from my own group at ALPH (and ALPH’s US arm).

I have a real dislike for that kind of cover, though I accept that they have a very real commercial purpose (which is also a purpose I dislike). If you’re interested in my little monologue about it all, just click below:

And that’s it for now! I hope you’re excited about these books, and about Genevieve’s potential prize (which will be announced 6 September!). And don’t forget that even though Genevieve’s book is sold out from my own small stocks, you can order it from your preferred bookshop, worldwide!

Yours,

Angel

I can’t stay long, friends. Just hopping into your inbox to say three things:

1. Have you listened to Your Most Avid Reader yet?! It is SO GOOD—and, if like me you’ve got a short little span of attention1, you’ll be delighted by the tasty little bite-sized episodes. HERE IS EPISODE ONE; no more excuses, now:

2. Nutsford House have announced their Residential Tutored Writing Retreat, held from September 12th to 17th, 2023. Imagine writing your next masterpiece nestled in a beautiful 1920s house on the edge of the scenic Exmoor National Park—the perfect serene and rural location for all your creative musings.
   
   The retreat will be run by Alice Little - an accomplished author, Oxford University tutor, and former Writer in Residence at Wytham Woods, near Oxford. Prices are set at £695 for your own private room or £595 for a shared twin room, and the retreat is fully catered. More info here!
   
   I’m telling you about this because I know James and Amanda (who run Nutsford House) very well, and they are absolutely lovely and, crucially, not a couple of psychotic weirdos trying to lure authors to a remote location where nobody can hear you scream. PLEASE PASS THIS INFO ON TO YOUR AUTHOR FRIENDS (you can leave this whole paragraph out)

3. WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND is out tomorrow!

To celebrate, on the press website I’m running a deal where you can buy any two books and get £2 off your order. Use the code TWOBOOKS at checkout and let the magic unfold. Yes, you read it right. That's any two of our books (but if you want this discount on, say, 4 or 6 or 8 books, you’ll need to do multiple orders, I’m afraid). Now, I’m not saying this will work on merchandise2, but feel free to try if you're feeling a bit cheeky.

Right, back to the salt mines,

Yours,

Angel

Quick promo moment: before I get into Deixis books, I want to make a recommendatione1 to those of you who enjoy audio dramas:

Your Most Avid Reader

Basically, if you like books and authors and tales that spiral into, well, unpleasantness, you will love this. But don’t trust me; here’s a review:

If you're hankering for modern writing with that classic noir flavour, look no further. An exchange of emails sets a sinister foundation: the arrogant author of historical romances finds inspiration from an infatuated fan. A collision of exploitation and obsession is in motion.

Onto the books!

So James Kinsley’s GREYSKIN is officially running wild. I’m so delighted to see this book finally in people’s hands—and all over the world, it seems, as it appears to have sold more in pre-orders in the USA than even I expected to see (and you know me; I expect that EVERYONE will and should read ALL of the books I publish, so my standards are high).

I’m so proud to have an author like James as part of the Deixis family, who commands this kind of incroyable reviewage:

Much of the collection echoes of J M Coetzee’s work, particularly his 1980 novel ‘Waiting for the Barbarians.’ Like Coetzee, Kinsley uses his narratives to reveal the fear and lack of understanding colonisers and settlers had when it came to understanding the indigenous people who lived on the land before them, and how this fear led to violence. … Coetzee’s work highlights the assertions surrounding the binary of colonial discourse in a slightly satirical way (eg. Barbarians break the colonizers plates because they are uncivilised and therefor do not use or like plates). Kinsley uses his narratives in much the same way, emphasising the attitudes surrounding not only the indigenous people, but women, the settlers, morality and marriage. Much like Coetzee’s statement ‘show me a barbarian army and I will believe,’ Kinsley’s collection reveals how most of the misconceptions around others are based entirely on rumour, fear, misunderstandings, racism, sexism, misogyny, anthropocentrism and, put simply, the arrogance or Empire.

(from Lucy Nield at The Fantasy Hive. Damn, girl!)

I’ve got a few copies left, so hit me up at the press storefront if you somehow haven’t managed to buy your copy yet.

(There’s also, like, some new press merch there, too. —No, don’t, it’s too embarrassing. If I could make the font of this paragraph smaller I would. But I do like the sample mug2 and totebag and shirt that I got for myself.)

The NEXT book, my friends, is only a couple of weeks away! We have got Siôn Scott-Wilson’s WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND just waiting to jump into your eyes and snuggle straight down into your warm, pliant occiptal lobe.

DO note that author quote. Just DO note it.

Now, of course this cover echoes SOME RISE BY SIN, but you’ll note that there’s a single figure on this one: a boy. And a boy is the main concern of this new book, but the specific boy on the cover here was a real boy. His name was Carlo Ferrari and he was called “The Italian Boy,” and he has a particularly tragic backstory that has been neatly summarized by, of all people, an antique figurine collector in Staffordshire.

As with the first book in the series, I’m so grateful that the Wellcome Collection has made these images available to the world at large. It’s so gratifying, when making meaningful books, to be able to use meaningful cover art too.

I feel like there was more that I was going to say. Hmm. If I remember anything, I’ll make a note of it for next week.

Yours,

Angel

Yeah, I’m spoiling you with a newsletter two weeks in a row. It’s like how the olden times used to be, remember those? Ahhh, those halcyon days when I was hoeing

the rows of my press field, planting the seeds of all the books to come.

SPEAKING OF BOOKS TO COME, you know you can pre-order James Kinsley’s GREYSKIN right now, right? Oh, by the way, an influential newspaper1 will be reviewing it in a roundup in a couple of weeks. Why not get ahead of the curve? You can take your smug little enemies down a peg when you tell them you knew about this book long before it was cool.

Let me help you with some links:

• Amazon (ebook2, HB, and PB)

• Waterstones (HB and PB)

• Blackwell’s (HB and PB)

• Foyles (HB and PB)

Here’s that gorgeous trailer again:

There’s another book deal on at the moment, too, but I set it up in a rubbish way, and I’ve failed to promote it as robustly as would have been ideal. But here you go:

HANGDOG SOULS by Marc Joan is currently on sale on ebook for £3.99, but in just over 15 hours it will be back up to its normal price of £4.99. It was £0.99 for like a day and a half, then it went up by a pound, etc etc.

Marc’s book is so good, you guys, so good. Like how do I even express how good it is? The only person I know with adequate words to say how good is probably Marc Joan himself. He recently did an interview with Asian Books Blog that is just *chef’s kiss*:

Briefly, it is a novel-in-stories set in South India over a period of nearly three hundred years from the past to the near future (late 1700s to ~2070). It can be read on different levels, according to what kind of reader you are or what mood you are in. On one level, it is a set of more-or-less standalone stories and novellas that one can dip into at will. On another level, readers may enjoy the links between the stories; some of these echoes are rather subtle, others more obvious. And finally, some readers may appreciate the higher-level narrative that runs through the entire set of stories, and which deals with themes such as guilt, shame and, eventually, absolution, of a sort.

YOU WILL NOT REGRET THE £3.99 DEAL. You won’t even regret paying £4.99, if you see this after it’s over. Though you probably would have liked it even more at 99p.

Ok, ok, here is some Learning, which used to be part of this newsletter’s whole reason for existing:

Hangdog Souls is currently in a Kindle Countdown Deal. I’m experimenting with different ways I can promote the press’s books. The beauty of Kindle deals is that even with the special, temporary lower prices, the rate of return that I share with the author stays high. Normally, if you set your ebook prices too low on Amazon, you only get like 30%, but if you set it to be above a certain price you get 70%.

If I want to continue making books, I need to devote my soon-to-be-expanded non-ALPH free time to better marketing. My primary aim in taking this maternity cover role was to learn from big presses what they do for their authors. Guess what! They don’t do a lot more for their authors than I do for mine, in most cases—unless the authors are big brands in some way...

…but they do have a lot of marketing brains working out ways to milk all of their books as hard as possible. Makes sense; gotta line R***** M******’s pockets. For me personally, it’s not about the profit per page, but I do want my authors to have a lot of sales, because that helps them, you know, not die in penury. So, as the current runt of the publishing litter, I need to figure out how to wiggle in and squeeze the teat of commerce.

Yours,

Angel

P.S. Did you know that you too can write a Substack? Substack wants me to tell you that. Apparently, if you do it through the following link, we become somehow intertwined, and that makes people more likely to read what I have to say. Seems unlikely but whatever:

For fun, I instructed ChatGPT (version 4, no less! only the best for you!) to write a newsletter in the style of my previous newsletters. I provided some samples. Here’s what I got back:

Ahoy, dear readers of the written word! 🌊⚓️ We find ourselves yet again on the tumultuous seas of the publishing world, where the winds of change are forever blowing. In recent tides, we've seen a veritable armada of independent publishers take to the waters, and it's no mere fluke. These fearless literary privateers have a keen sense for buried treasure and a taste for unearthing the rarest gems.

Now, these daring independents, driven by a passion for prose and a love for the printed page, are unshackled by the heavy chains of corporate expectations that weigh down their more sizeable counterparts. As a result, they have the liberty to chart their course, seeking out the stories that might be lost in the vast ocean of the mainstream industry. This freedom opens up new ports of call, ensuring that our literary map becomes a more diverse and inclusive reflection of the world around us. 🏴‍☠️📖

Alas, on the other side of the coin, we find the larger publishers, who with their eyes fixed on the glittering gold of profit, can sometimes lose sight of the precious art that lies beneath. Chasing bestsellers, they might find themselves adrift in a sea of formulaic tales and monotonous voices. Fear not, dear reader, for we do not mean to castigate all the work of the big publishing houses; rather, we simply caution against the siren song of commerce that can, at times, obscure the true spirit of creativity. 💰🎨

Emojis aside, it seems that I have two tics:

1. Talking like a pirate1

2. Never shutting up about how small presses are better at making good books than big ones.

In real news:

• James Kinsley's much-anticipated book, GREYSKIN, is now ready for pre-order! (Amazon, direct, Waterstones, or from your preferred bookstore.) This stunning collection of interconnected western adventure stories with a twist is just waiting for you to dive in. Pre-order now and be among the first to explore the thrilling world James has created! Why not watch this gorgeous trailer to get yourself in the mood?

• And guess what? We're throwing yet another launch party for not one, but TWO amazing books! On Friday, April 28th, we'll again be at Vout-O-Reenee’s to celebrate the release of both GREYSKIN and Siôn Scott-Wilson's new book, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (the much-anticipated sequel to SOME RISE BY SIN. You absolutely don't want to miss this double-book2 extravaganza! Send me a note if you want to come but I’ve somehow failed to invite you.

• Both books are available on NetGalley, if you’re a reviewer there.

• I'm still bustling away at ALPH, but my contract is coming to an end in June3. With more time on my hands, I'll be able to bring you even more Deixis Press goodness. That’s right: we have TWO more books in the works for the end of the year! I can't give away too many details right now because I haven’t sent out contracts for the new books just yet, but here's a hint: both of the authors are already part of the Deixis Press family. Who could they be?!

Thanks so much to everyone here for your continued support for Deixis Press and our incredible authors. Small presses absolutely thrive on three things: early reviews, pre-orders, and word of mouth. So if you don’t want to read/review on NetGalley, and you don’t want to pre-order, you can still help us out by telling someone about what we are doing. Forward this newsletter, tell a friend about a book we publish in a genre that they may enjoy, follow us on Facebook or Instagram, retweet us on Twitter—it all helps. Here: I’ll put a subscribe button right here for your friend:

Shiver me timbers,

Angel

Just grabbing this lunch break by the horns to bring you some Deixis Press news. We’ve got (at least!) two new books coming out this year, as I mentioned last time. Right now I want to talk to you about Greyskin, the new short story collection from James Kinsley. We’ve got a blurb, folks, and it goes like this:

Discover the harsh realities of the frontier in this powerful collection of western adventure stories, where settlers who flood into a new continent in search of a better life must confront the indigenous population who call it home.

Follow the journey of a determined young widow who is struggling to keep her farm going, as she must deal not only with the harsh realities of the frontier but also the injustices brought by the settlers. Meet a newlywed couple who are flailing to understand each other and their new life together.

Watch the small town lawman fighting to keep the peace in a land filled with tension and violence. Read the perspective of an academic looking to make his name by documenting the indigenous peoples.

And follow the orc wanderer, watching his people being swept aside by the human settlers, and facing the difficult decision of whether to fight or to assimilate.

Through these disparate but interwoven stories, we see a new mythology of settlement born, old stories told in new ways, a fresh focus on the legends we write for ourselves.

And, oh babies, have I got a treat for you—because we also have a cover! That’s right! It’s a two-fer today:

And as an added bonus, let me just drop the Kindle pre-order link here for you.1 Go on, treat yourself (on April 27th).

I went on Twitter this morning and accidentally created a new mission statement/slogan for the press:

I mean, obviously commercial publishing is really good for (front-list) authors when it comes to global reach, publicity, marketing, and soon. I can’t fault the hard work and care I see every day. I want those kinds of deals for my own authors, and I just can’t provide that level of investment and comfort, and commercial publishers can because they’re great at sniffing out material that will sell.

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . you can’t always guarantee that whatever you pick up from one will be a fucking good book. But I think you can with Deixis Press, and with so many amazing small presses out there.

So I’ll just sign off with:

Yours,

Angel