It’s July 1! That means the long-awaited “Telling Tales” is released today!

Well, sort of. Due to a last-minute change, we had to upload new files to Lightning Source and anxiously await the button that will allow the book to go online. This should be a day, two at the most.

But rest assured — the book is DONE, it looks FABULOUS, and is truly A WORK OF ART. It’s beautiful on the inside and the outside. Cover to cover, it is one of the most solid anthologies we’ve ever read.

Stay tuned! We’re almost there.

Ta-da! At last, we can reveal to the world the magnificent cover for Telling Tales. This magnificent image was created by renowned artist Todd Lockwood, and the gorgeous titling by Choo Ling Khoo. We at Hydra House couldn’t be prouder of the way it turned out.

The anthology is also now available for preorder! For a discount! We won’t have copies until June, but we’ll send your copy when we get it.

You can find more information about the book here. You can also preorder the book at a discount here. (It will be available at the University Bookstore in Seattle, in fine independent bookstores, and through the major online outlets in June.)

Over the weekend, I got a peek at the titling that’s being done for the cover. While it’s not quite right, it should be done soon! The cover art itself is finished (thanks, Todd Lockwood for going above and beyond!) but we’re not ready to release it just yet. Suffice to say … it looks GOOD.

You may have got a sneak peek if you’re on the Clarion West mailing list. Each of those letters got a bookmark with a portion of the art on it, and on the backside a QR code that leads to the page where you can order the book.

Keep watching! Soon it will be here!

… Tod

SFWA today announced the nominees for this year’s Nebula Awards — and Cat Rambo’s “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” is one of them!

The story was first published in her collection Near + Far, available right here in the Hydra House bookstore. We are tickled to death about this!

The Nebula Awards will be held May 16-19 in San Jose. See all the Nebula nominees.

Congratulations, Cat!

We here at Hydra House are pleased to announce a brand new title we’ve been keeping under wraps for months. There’s no title yet, but it’s an anthology celebrating 30 years of Clarion West graduates and their contributions to the field of speculative fiction.
The anthology will feature award-winning writers and writers of special note who have passed through the Clarion West Writers Workshop since 1984, and will be edited by award-winning editor Ellen Datlow, who has taught at Clarion West in the past and will be teaching again in 2013. We are expecting the anthology to be released in the Spring.
You can read more about it in the press release.

Hydra House is very pleased to announce the release of Sandra Odell’s “The Twelve Ways of Christmas,” a collection of twelve short stories based on the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

The stories were written in the twelve days leading up to Christmas 2011, one per day. A Christmas party in zero gee; ten fancy men leaping through a cattle drive camp; a dancer at the end of the world—these are not your typical Christmas images, just as these are not your usual takes on the twelve days of Christmas. Sandra Odell brings an edgier, more fantastical approach to the holiday season, reimagining the classic song in her own way.

Publishers Weekly calls it “a bewitching enterprise.”

Graham Joyce called it “A delightful Christmas stocking of a book rammed with gifts of poignancy, fun, and inspiration.”

Connie Willis noted that she is “a sucker for Christmas stories, and [Odell] offers a clever and intriguing array of them, from the grim to the sentimental to the hauntingly eerie. A perfect collection for Christmas!”

“The Twelve Ways of Christmas” is available in print and ebook formats through the Hydra House bookstore, the University of Washington Bookstore in Seattle, Amazon.com, or Barnes & Noble.

Happy Launch Day!

Cat Rambo’s double-anthology of short science fiction gets officially kicked out the door today! w00t!

Congratulations go out to a few people: Sean Counley (www.seancounley.com) who provided some AWESOME cover art (Chesley Awards, here we come!), Mark Tripp, who created those beautiful interior ornaments at the beginning of each chapter, Vicki Sanders, who did a masterful job of the interior layout, Jo Molnar, who copyedited the manuscript, and of course Cat Rambo for all of her hard work on creating these beautiful stories in the first place. And for coming up with the tete beche format! I can’t remember the last time I had a book I could flip over like that.

The book is now available for sale through the Hydra House website, although truth be told, we’ve run out of copies! I’m waiting on another batch of books to show up before I can even fill a few orders I have sitting here!

You can order it through most independent bookstores, and also find it at the University of Washington Bookstore in Seattle (the U District location). But you can also find it at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, as well as a most other retail outlets.

If you read ebooks, you can find the EPUB or MOBI here in the Hydra House bookstore, or look for them on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. [B&N isn’t up yet, for some reason, but should be there soon.]

Huzzah!

Front cover	Back cover

Pre-orders for “Near+Far,” Cat Rambo’s stunning collection of short fiction, are now being taken! As part of the book launch, Hydra House is offering 20% off the cover price of the book through September 16. The book will officially be available through Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Kobo, the University of Washington Bookstore, and other fine bookstores in print and ebook format on September 16.

And don’t forget that if you order $25 or more worth of books, shipping is free!

https://hydrahousebooks.com/bookstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=7

Watch for the ebook in coming days!

With the release of Cat Rambo’s two-volume collection of short fiction about a month away, we’re ready to reveal the cover art to be used for the book. Artist Sean Counley (www.seancounley.com) out of Great Britain put together two FABULOUS images, one for “Near” and one for “Far.”

Here is the art for “Near,” which is an image taken from “The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each.”

Below is the art for “Far”:

Which was inspired by the story “Amid the Words of War.”

Impressive, no? We’re pretty stoked about the book! We’ve got blurbs, and reviews, and everything is looking great. We’ll have the book available for presale soon, and if you happen to be at ChiCon (the World Science Fiction Convention), watch for Cat’s book release party. She has promised gummy bears that have been drowned in something.

We just got the review from Midwest Book Review! And they like it!

They wrote:

Life is bizarre and it seems our world is only out to make it more confusing. “Snapshots from a Black Hole & Other Oddities” is a collection of short stories from K. C. Ball who spins tales of the everyday gone wrong, with the twists of horror and sci-fi added on throughout it all. “Snapshots from a Black Hole & Other Oddities” is a strongly recommended pick for those seeking a unique and offbeat collection of short stories.

We couldn’t be more pleased.

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/apr_12.htm#Fantasy/SciFi