Wanted: Real-Life Monsters!

Hey all,

Right, we’re setting aside our scepticism for a moment. As a rule, we’re pretty secular, rational, twenty-first century people, here at Abaddon Towers – as I think you have to be, to publish books about zombies, aliens, and steam-powered robots – but there are enough people out there who are convinced about the existence of the supernatural in this world, or even that they are supernatural creatures themselves, that it’s got to be worth suspending your doubts and taking a plunge.

Which is why we’re looking for real-life monsters to write books for us. If you are a genuine Haitian zombie, or a vampire hunting among the social elite of Paris, and you think you can write a book, then get in touch with us!

We appreciate that the inhuman, posthuman and superhuman communities are traditionally very reluctant to come out and make themselves known, and we can promise total anonymity. But we do need all our writers for this project to definitely be supernatural beings, and may ask you to (discreetly) provide proof. We also recognise that these communities are small, so it may be that the number of monsters interested in writing a book – and able to do so with flair and confidence – may be small, but if you’re out there, we want you.

What we need from you is a pitch, including a chapter breakdown and writing sample, for our latest project, which we haven’t given a title yet, but which we’re tentatively calling “Ultranormal Romance” (or “Urban Mundanity”). Some ideas we’re knocking around at the moment include a series of books set in a world in which accountants have risen up and destroyed civilisation; a love story between a normal girl from the big city and a tortured dentist on the run from his own kind; and an alternate history in which Gordon Brown is still the Prime Minister. These are rough guidelines only; if you have a similar pitch in mind, get in touch and we can workshop it.

So get in touch, and your name might be on the cover of one our most exciting new series in 2012!

New Series Announcement!

Okay, everyone, this is it: a world exclusive scoop.

Abaddon is proud to announce Malory's Knights of Albion, a new series of high-action Arthurian fantasy books, starting in 2011.

Here's the background:

In 2006, volunteers working in the archives at a church in Salisbury uncovered a fifteenth-century manuscript, previously unknown to scholarship. It was apparently a sequel to the Morte d'Arthur; the frontispiece titled it The furtherre boke of Kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghts of the round table, by Sir Thomas Malorie. The style and vocabulary proved consistent with the Morte, and analysis of marks on the edges of the pages suggest that the paper was from Caxton's workshop around the time the Morte was printed.

Specialists at King's College, London, have suggested that the stories may have originated as notes made while Malory was writing the Morte and discarded as superfluous, that Caxton persuaded Malory to develop into full tales after the success of the first book. The second volume was apparently never completed and at any rate never printed.

Late last year, Abaddon successfully negotiated exclusive access to the material, and is commissioning some of the UK's most exciting up and coming authors to modernise the language and make it accessible to our readers.

Malory's new stories are good British chivalric adventures at their best: brave, noble knights, questing for honour and glory; wise and beautiful women, shrewdly seeing into the hearts of those around them; monsters and evil men, defeated at last and thrown to their destruction.

The first tale, Thee sad comedie of Sir Alymere and thee Blacke Chalyce, is being novelised by Steven Savile as The Black Chalice even as we speak, and is due to hit the shelves at the beginning of next year.

Caveat Emptor: Some of the statements made above are, in fact, lies. :)