The Mall is published in Dutch by De Arbeiderspers as De Plaza. The print edition will be released in February 2012, but you can get an early look at the e-book right now for just €5.
Nu bestellen De Plaza e-boek. Print verschijnt februari 2012.
In case you missed it over at the World SF blog, our post on Writing Genre Fiction in South Africa has been published in November’s Something Wicked. Read all about it:
THE OTHER DAY AT a literary festival event (one of the rare occasions when both halves of S.L. Grey have been trundled out in public in the same room) the panel was asked whether South Africa should have its own genre imprint. The audience was made up of some of South Africa’s very loyal SFFH fans, and we think they expected the answer, ‘Yes, of course, it’s a scandal that there isn’t a dedicated genre imprint in South Africa.’ But we and fellow panellists, Lauren Beukes and Tom Learmont, all agreed that there shouldn’t be. The market in South Africa is simply too small to sustain one.
There’s no particular reason to have a dedicated imprint selling local science fiction, fantasy and horror. There’s still very little original novel-length SFFH coming out of South Africa, although it’s clear from District 9 (an example of South African SFF idiosyncrasy which is reaching its retirement date) and Lauren’s marvellous Moxyland and Zoo City, that there is a potential audience for them. There is a very loyal and fanatical SFFH fanbase in South Africa, which devours whatever SFFH it can lay its hands on, and most of this is British and American. Louis worked in a bookshop for years and remembers the round-the-corridor queues at a Terry Pratchett signing, compared with the embarrassing no-show at a signing by Graham Swift who had just that year won the Booker Prize.
Zoo City and Moxyland were published first in South Africa by Jacana, a publisher known for choosing leftfield novels of interest to them. ‘We publish what we like’ is their tagline, more than a nod to the title of murdered struggle icon Steve Biko’s posthumously collected writings, I Write what I Like. Jacana is not making a great deal of money.
It was barely a decision for us to submit The Mall overseas and bypass South African publishing.
Read on at Something Wicked
S.L. Grey’s first-ever short story, “OMG GTFO”, has been published in Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, which was launched on 4 November at the Tate Britain and edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin, the brains trust behind the Pornokitsch blog.
The collection features over a dozen original stories set at the end of the world, as imagined by science fiction and fantasy writers such as Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Lauren Beukes, Charlie Human, Sam Wilson, Jonathan Oliver, Sophia McDougall and Chrysanthy Balis.
The tales are inspired by the art of John Martin, and the book will be released to coincide with the Tate Gallery’s new exhibition of his work. Martin (1789 – 1854) was a Romantic painter with a taste for sweeping Apocalyptic scenes. Although he never received much positive critical attention, his huge and wildly imaginative paintings were popular with the masses. Since his death, Martin’s reputation has gone through periods of complete insignificence and others of great renown. In short, he’s our type of guy.
More info and news here.
The first review is already in and singles out “OMG GTFO” for special praise in its rave opinion:
I’d heard of the gestalt entity that is S.L. Grey, usually in glowing terms, before reading Pandemonium, but this was my first encounter with them. ‘OMG GTFO’ took me by surprise, not for the high quality (which met my absurdly high expectations and proves that hype isn’t always unjustified), but for the cynical nihilism on display within it.
The book is soaring up the charts at Amazon (South Africa, US and international | UK).
Apart from a 100-copy special edition, for sale at the Tate Britain, Pandemonium is an ebook-only release. Buy it at Amazon (South Africa, US and international | UK).
For the moment, folks can get the ePub directly from Pornokitsch.
The Corvus Spring 2012 catalogue is just out, including a juicy spread on The Ward, our next book, coming out in June 2012. Here’s your first taste of what you’re in for:
You can download the whole Corvus Spring catalogue here: http://www.atlantic-books.co.uk/about/catalogue/corvusspring2011.pdf
This week, S.L. Grey is the featured author at the World SF blog. Today, they’re running Sarah’s Botswana zombie story, ‘Maun of the Dead’, which originally featured in the wondrous, fantabulous Home Away (product page | contributors gallery).
Later this week, you’ll be able to read our guest post on writing genre fiction in South Africa and — gulp — World SF’s review of The Mall by Harry Markov. Keep checking back.
***
In other news:
Sarah will be reading at the Bloody Parchment Horrorfest at The Book Lounge in Cape Town on 26 October.
S.L. Grey’s first short story will be published in Pornokitsch.Com’s ur-cool Pandemonium anthology, out this month to coincide with the Tate Modern’s exhibition of the art of apocalyptic painter, John Martin. Insane fun in store for all.
We’ve also been entered by our publisher, Corvus, to Pornokitsch’s Kitschies awards (won this year by Lauren Beukes). Hold tentacles for us in February.
We’ve had wonderful feedback about THE MALL. Check our shelf page here for the latest reviews and read the views of the happy Shoppers at Amazon.co.uk. THE MALL will be out in paperback in January for those who missed out on the trade paperback, and of course it’s alway available on Kindle. Also out in January is the Dutch edition of The Mall: DE PLAZA. Watch out for THE WARD, coming in June 2012.
The second issue of Jungle Jim magazine is out now, and carries an extract from The Mall. Check out the funky retro-pulp design of the magazine:
Ask for Jungle Jim at any good South African pulp outlet, and visit JungleJim.Org.
We’re delighted to parts to announce that The Mall is part of Corvus’s Twelve Days of Kindle promotion. Between Christmas Day and 6 January only, 12 of Corvus’s key titles for 2011 will be available at Amazon.co.uk’s Kindle Store for just £1 each: 12 days, 12 books, £12. Those primo Shoppers who have a UK Kindle account will be able to fill up their new tech with a dozen Corvus highlights for 2011.
Word is that South African and Australian Kindle account-holders will be able to access the promotion from Amazon.com’s Kindle Store, also from Christmas Day. Metadata is being mangled as we speak. Watch this space.
Remember that if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reader from Amazon for your computer.
10 of the 12 titles on the 12 Days of Kindle promotion, like The Mall, are exclusive Kindle pre-releases for this period only. This is your only chance to get hold of The Mall before June, at a fabulous price.
The 12 Corvus Kindle titles are:
Blue Heaven – C.J. Box
Open Season – C.J. Box
First Thrills – ed. Lee Child
The Hanging Shed – Gordon Ferris
Splinter – Sebastian Fitzek
End Game – Matthew Glass
The Mall – S.L. Grey
1222 – Anne Holt
The Library Of Gold – Gayle Lynds
The Diviner’s Tale – Bradford Morrow
Ghost Watch – David Rollins
Hollywood Hills – Joseph Wambaugh
The advance reading copy of The Mall has gone to print. Here’s the back cover which shows what booksellers and the media will shortly be getting themselves into.
On 24 October 2010 12:30, S wrote:
Hey L,
[...] we were talking about The Mall trailer – R___
said she thought it was a good plan to have it out before the end of the
year.
[...]
Possibly we should avoid maggots (!) I don’t want to find any.
_____
On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 4:31 PM, L wrote:
This all sounds brilliant and extremely exciting [...]
But I was thinking maggots, maggots, maggots before I read your line.
We need a maggot… just one. (You can get meal worms at pet shops but
horror fans will know their maggots from their meal worms.) You’ve got
horses… leave a bit of offal out for a couple of days and you’re in
business.
_____
On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 6:51 PM, S wrote: » read more
The Bookseller‘s Victoria Gallagher reports the sale of The Mall to Corvus.
Wonderful senior editor at Corvus, Laura Palmer, had some kind words too:
“Have you ever felt that moment of brain-clutching, heart-stopping fear when something ordinary mutates into something terrifying, just for a split-second? Like when a light flickers, and the shadows turn menacing. Or when a lift stops suddenly before it’s reached your floor. Well, that’s what it’s like reading The Mall – only it’s not over in a split-second. When I finally finished reading at 4am, my adrenaline was pumping too fast to go to sleep. And I knew I had to buy this book.”
