Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Parallel Universe Publications page on Facebook
We have now created a facebook page for Parallel Universe Publications.
Tuesday, 24 June 2014
Black Ceremonies by Charles Black
 | |
| Paul Mudie |
The book will include:
The Coughing Coffin
Call of the Damned
To Summon a Flesh-Eating Demon
The Revelations of Dr Maitland
Face to Face
A Fistful of Vengeance
The Obsession of Percival Cairstairs
Tourist Trap
The book's cover is by Paul Mudie, well known for his striking covers for the Black Books of Horror. The accompanying illustration is an unfinished glimpse of it.
Friday, 20 June 2014
Kitchen Sink Gothic - submissions
Parallel Universe Publications is now accepting submissions for an
anthology of stories inspired by the classic British cinema/theatre
phenomena known as kitchen sink drama. What Culture
described it as: "A determination to examine the lives of the working
and dispossessed classes in a non sentimental way...The movement began
in the late 1950s and has survived to this day with the oeuvre of Ken
Loach and films such as Nil By Mouth. Tackling thorny themes is a trademark of the Kitchen Sink drama.
Abortion, divorce, homelessness, single motherhood, inter racial sex,
poverty and homosexuality were all ripe topics to be examined. There was
also the advent of The Angry Young Man – usually working class men
railing against everyone and everything."
That fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, describes it as: "a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.
The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders.[1]
In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist-type scenes of domestic life.[2]"
I look forward to tales of darkness and horror, of the supernatural and the weird within the overall framework of the social realism of the kitchen sink drama.
Please send your submissions to rileybooks@ntlworld.com headed "Kitchen Sink Gothic" as an attachment in either doc or docx. I welcome either new stories or reprints. If a reprint please add details of previous publication.
Payment will be £5 per thousand words and a contributor's copy of the book.
That fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, describes it as: "a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.
The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders.[1]
In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist-type scenes of domestic life.[2]"
I look forward to tales of darkness and horror, of the supernatural and the weird within the overall framework of the social realism of the kitchen sink drama.
Please send your submissions to rileybooks@ntlworld.com headed "Kitchen Sink Gothic" as an attachment in either doc or docx. I welcome either new stories or reprints. If a reprint please add details of previous publication.
Payment will be £5 per thousand words and a contributor's copy of the book.
Friday, 6 June 2014
New Project - Kitchen Sink Gothic
What is Kitchen Sink Gothic?
M. John Harrison used the term in relation to Robert Aickman: "John Coulthart on reading Robert Aickman: “like finding the quotidian Britishness of Alan Bennett darkening into the inexplicable nightmares of David Lynch.” I often return to BBC4′s The Golden Age of Canals, which features Aickman as a broody, nerdy TE Lawrence of the waterways, for its footage of decaying tunnel entrances, drained locks & Kitchen Sink Gothic clutter embedded in wet mud."
Kitchen Sink as a genre description was coined in the late 1950s, early 1960s to describe British films, plays and novels generally set in the North of England which depicted working class life in a gritty, no-nonsense, warts and all style, sometimes referred to as social realism.
For me, within the horror genre it is the antithesis of Jamesian or Lovecraftian horror. There are no distinguished scholars in these stories. The settings are unglamorous, perhaps even unatmospheric in the accepted use of that word in supernatural horror.
I first became aware of it when someone reviewed my story Scrap (Dark Visions 1, Grey Matter Press, 2013): "Scrap by David A. Riley could easily have been a kitchen sink drama, depicting the lives of two brothers growing up in a poverty-stricken council estate in England. Riley chooses to inject a healthy dose of horror, elevating his story to a different, altogether more gruesome level."
Of course I’m not the only writer to use such settings. Which is why I am interested in editing an anthology of stories under the title Kitchen Sink Gothic, to see how diverse this sub-genre can be and what riches it can produce. I'll post more details soon about pay rates, etc. At the moment this project is still in the planning stage.
M. John Harrison used the term in relation to Robert Aickman: "John Coulthart on reading Robert Aickman: “like finding the quotidian Britishness of Alan Bennett darkening into the inexplicable nightmares of David Lynch.” I often return to BBC4′s The Golden Age of Canals, which features Aickman as a broody, nerdy TE Lawrence of the waterways, for its footage of decaying tunnel entrances, drained locks & Kitchen Sink Gothic clutter embedded in wet mud."
Kitchen Sink as a genre description was coined in the late 1950s, early 1960s to describe British films, plays and novels generally set in the North of England which depicted working class life in a gritty, no-nonsense, warts and all style, sometimes referred to as social realism.
For me, within the horror genre it is the antithesis of Jamesian or Lovecraftian horror. There are no distinguished scholars in these stories. The settings are unglamorous, perhaps even unatmospheric in the accepted use of that word in supernatural horror.
I first became aware of it when someone reviewed my story Scrap (Dark Visions 1, Grey Matter Press, 2013): "Scrap by David A. Riley could easily have been a kitchen sink drama, depicting the lives of two brothers growing up in a poverty-stricken council estate in England. Riley chooses to inject a healthy dose of horror, elevating his story to a different, altogether more gruesome level."
Of course I’m not the only writer to use such settings. Which is why I am interested in editing an anthology of stories under the title Kitchen Sink Gothic, to see how diverse this sub-genre can be and what riches it can produce. I'll post more details soon about pay rates, etc. At the moment this project is still in the planning stage.
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