Happy Halloween!

Today, Solaris Books–who just last week announced the acquisition of BLESS YOUR HEART for UK readers–is revealing the cover art for the UK edition! I love the vintage feel and Southern Charm on this cover, and the subtle nods to characters Mina Jean Murphy and Snow Leger. 

The UK edition of BLESS YOUR HEART drops from Solaris Books on July 18, 2024.

I am over the moon to announce that Solaris Books will be bringing BLESS YOUR HEART to UK readers! The UK edition will drop in July 2024, following the US release from Minotaur Books in April 2024.

From The Bookseller acquisitions announcement:

Solaris has bagged Bless Your Heart, a vampire horror story set in south-east Texas, by Lindy Ryan. 

Editor Amanda Rutter acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Kerry Nordling, vice-president and director of sub-rights at Minotaur Books. The book will be published in July 2024. 

Bless Your Heart follows Ducey, Lenore and Grace, known as the Evans women, who are owners of the only funeral parlour in town and must ensure the dead stay dead. When the town gossip rises from the dead it’s clear the Strigoi, the original vampire, has returned: "As more folks turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, the Evans women must take up their blades to protect their town."

Ryan commented: “I’m delighted to steep UK readers in Southern charm and introduce them to the Evans women and their monstrous south-east Texas hometown by working with Solaris on Bless Your Heart.”

Rutter added: “Lindy’s sharp, clever, funny writing is a perfect match for the Solaris list, and I am over the moon that we have signed Bless Your Heart for the UK market. I cannot wait for readers to enjoy the charm and terror of this amazing book.”

Stay tuned for the UK cover reveal coming on Halloween!

I'll admit, I have a soft spot for novellas. I also have a soft spot for holiday hauntings, grieving widows, estranged mother/son relationships, and manifestations of grief that stalk through frozen forests.

In short, I have a lot of soft spots.

Inspired by a somewhat ill-fated holiday trip of my own, COLD SNAP is a story near and dear to my heart, and I am over the moon that it has found a home at Titan Books. I've LONG wanted to work with Titan, and look forward to COLD SNAP being the beginning of a beautiful novella relationship. As I said in the Bookseller trade announcement, "COLD SNAP strips away the bright lights and shiny glare of the winter holidays and looks instead at the darker things we can’t wrap up in pretty packaging and bows. Grief, guilt and isolation are haunting enough, but add in a sinister presence that won’t let you look away and suddenly the cold, dark days of winter are even bleaker than we could have imagined."

I can't wait to tell you more about this book in the coming months as we move toward release in October 2024!

A KISS OF SHADOWS (Merry Gentry #1) by Laurell K. Hamilton
TENDER IS THE FLESH by Agustina Bazterrica
THE INVISIBLE HOUR by Alice Hoffman
NOT FOREVER BUT FOR NOW by Chuck Palahniuk

Wow, my reading list this month says a lot about me! What can I say, other than I'm a well-rounded reader, LOL.

I first read Laurell K. Hamilton in the early-aughts, and lately I've been craving a little guilty pleasure in my reading, so I've decided to re-read the entire Merry Gentry series, beginning with A KISS OF SHADOWS. There's so much to love about an estranged sidhe princess embroiled in fey politics who is told that she might inherit the throne–if she can beat her (rather evil) cousin to producing an heir. Re-reading this first book brought back so many memories from when I first discovered Hamilton's work, and I already know that once I finish with Merry, I'll be ready to re-read the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.

Speaking of cravings, lately I've become very interested in the theme of hunger in horror fiction. TENDER IS THE FLESH has admittedly been on my TBR for some time, but I gobbled this juicy novella down over the course of two nights and am still recovering from the delicious stomachache. There is so much to love about Bazterrica's cannibalistic future, and her meaty yet subversive discourse on everything from women's roles to factory farming. Highly recommended to those with an iron gut.

Lighter fare is to be found in THE INVISIBLE HOUR, but that doesn't make Alice Hoffman's latest simple. Beautiful woven with Hoffman's characteristical literary voice, this story of two generations of women who lose themselves to and find themselves in a cult (the Community)–as well as ample servings of love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books–is a page-turner. Brimming with soiled beauty, this novel is yet another reminder that Alice Hoffman is a national treasure. 

Okay, look. I love Palahniuk's weirdness as much as the next girl, but the amount of enjoyment I've had reading NOT FOREVER BUT FOR NOW has caused me some concern. A horror satire that makes A Clockwork Orange look like a children's bedtime story, once you sink into the voice of this novel, you're already a goner.

​When Black Spot Books first launched its women-in-horror poetry series in 2021, we wanted to not only give voice to women in dark prose, but through the series, to feature women from cover to cover, and we did: with cover art commissioned from noted horror artist Lynne Hansen, cover and interior design by Najla and Naja Qamber, and illustrations by the incomparable Marge Simon. More important, we wanted to give women-in-horror a platform to speak on topics and themes that speak to her soul, to her heart, and to her darkness. 
 
In our first showcase, UNDER HER SKIN (2022), my co-editor Toni Miller and I collected poems from cis, trans, and nonbinary women across the world themed on body horror, because, as I said in an interview with Cat Lowe at The Nerd Daily, “Body horror is an innate part of the female experience—from the subtle to the obvious—and women have a lifelong relationship with the subject.” And, as I said in that interview, by the time UNDER HER SKIN—which later won the BookFest Book Award for Poetry Collections and Anthologies—released, we were already hard at work on the next showcase.
 
We wanted the next showcase to be bigger, more brutal, more important. Thus, UNDER HER EYE, this time with Lee Murray joining as co-editor, was born. Lynne Hansen returned with more brilliant cover art, and once against the Qamber sisters transformed the collection into a jaw-dropping showcase. (For a full list of poets, see the Table of Contents here.)

Focused on the theme of domestic horror, we partnered with The Pixel Project, a global nonprofit focused on ending violence against women worldwide. With this project, we wanted to not only raise our voices, but unite them. We want to bring the topic of domestic violence against women to the forefront of the conversation. We want to stand with women who experience terror in the place they should feel the safest. We want to scream with them and for them. ​

UNDER HER EYE, no matter how fierce, how full of rage, how powerful, its poems are, are only a step in that direction–but it is a step. The showcase features work from Bram-Stoker Awards® winning and nominated authors, as well as over one hundred poems from women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes in horror. Developed in recognition of United Nations General Assembly’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, resources are included in the book's matter as a call to action for those who know women suffering and a resource for who are women suffering.

Domestic violence is not always loud, but sometimes it is.
Domestic violence doesn’t always leave bruises, at least not the visible kind.
Domestic violence can come from a partner, but it doesn’t have to.
Domestic violence isn’t an accident, though it often comes without warnings.
Domestic violence might happen just once, but once is enough.
​