Stygian Publication Context Schedule

Friday Night, 7PM until whenever

The Kolchak Party

We'll start with original made for TV movies The Night Stalker & The Night Strangler followed by the original Night Stalker 22 episode series.

Your host will be dressed as Kolchak and we'll be having a Monster Costume Party. The best, or in this case, the most true to the series (let's face it, those costumes were cheesy), will win a prize. There will be light snacks and some beverages, but BYOB.

Saturday Day, 2:00PM – ??

The Underground Readings brought to you by Stygian Publications.

Saturday Night, 7PM – 8PM

The Funky Werepig Show Live! Room to be announced.

Saturday Night, 8PM until whenever

The Stygian Party

We'll have food and drink and prizes given away every 30 minutes. There will be dancing, excellent conversation and Aquapunk.

All events will be in the Stygian Suite, except The Funky Werepig Show (location to be announced later).

Stygian Publication @ Context27 in Columbus Ohio, Sept 26-28

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, I went to my first out of state convention. Ok, it was 2009, but it feels like a very long time ago.

The convention was Context in Columbus Ohio, and I was going for two reasons. The first was that Shroud Publishing had accepted my first novel Feast, and the second was that as publisher of Necrotic Tissue, I wanted to get myself out there more and meet some of the writers I’d made friends with online.

I had a fantastic time and met some new people and forged a friendship that I never thought would occur after the age of forty. It was a great time that spawned a lot of creativity including the creation of the highly exclusive Aquapunk genre.

I repeated in 2010 and got a table for NT. I also teamed up with Tim Deal and the Gamber family to throw a fantastic publishing party that included a very famous and controversial Big Boy Dance Off contest. 

Since I’ve restarted Stygian Publications and have plans for at least three books to be released in 2014, I thought it was time to return. I won’t be setting up in the Dealer room, since I don’t have the staff and don’t want to be trapped all day behind a table. Instead, I have a party suite rented for the entire weekend. The exact times are still being worked out but I will post the official schedule here and on the Stygian and my personal FB pages when it’s ready. For now, here are some highlights.

Friday night will consist of a Kolchak The Night Stalker party, showing the first two made for TV movies that preceded the series, followed by the series itself. We’ll kick it off at 7:00 PM and go until the last person cries uncle. There will be some snacks, but BYOB. We will also be holding a Kolchak monster contest. The only rules are to come as one of the monsters in the series or movies. Winners will get free books and other swag. Don’t come as Kolchak unless you’re ok only having the second or third best Kolchak costume.

Saturday, there will be readings throughout the day from man pretty Nathaniel Lambert, Gregory L. Hall, R. Scott McCoy and many others to be named later.

Saturday night is the official Stygian Party. There will be food and booze while it lasts. We will kick off the party with the triumphant return after 20 years of The Funky Werepig! He will be doing his show live and maybe in color. He’ll be flinging Moon Pies, interviewing special guests and there will be giveaways throughout the show.

I mentioned that I’ll be putting out at least 3 books in 2014. The first is Sideshow P.I.: The Devil’sGarden by Nathaniel Lambert and Kevin Sweeney, that was just recently released and is available now on Amazon. The second is Everyone Hates a Hero: A Johnny Midnight Tale, by Gregory L. Hall and will be released a few . Both will be there with copies to sell and sign.

After The Funky Werepig show, stick around for the return of The BIG BOY DANCE OFF!! Prizes will be given for whoever comes in second and third place behind Greg Hall. After that the dance party will keep going as long as you do, so stick around for random prize drawings including 15 minutes in the whirlpool tub with man pretty Nathaniel Lambert!! Sorry, the hotel has forbid the use of Jello in the tub.

Stick around Sunday morning and help clean up!! Hello? Were'd everyone go??

Stay tuned for more Stygian and Context Convention updates.

Sideshow P.I.: The Devil's Garden to be released soon

New Ramoth. A city covered in scar tissue, where survival of the fittest decides who's on top and crime is the only promotion system. Enter Eddie "Wolf Boy" Gnash, ex-carnival freak turned private investigator. Now the bodies are piling up, and the fate of New Ramoth rests in the hands of this fur-covered freak- Eddie Gnash, Sideshow P.I.

Stygian Publications is proud to present its first novel since re-launching in 2013. Sideshow P.I.: The Devil’s Garden from the twisted minds of Nathanial Lambert and Kevin Sweeney. This is the first novel of the Sideshow P.I. Trilogy, and was originally published though Graveside Tales. Stygian Publications has signed a deal for all three books.

This first installment will be out within the next month. The second novel will come out early in 2015 and will be concluded with the third in late 2015/early 2016. Don’t worry fans, Lambert & Sweeney are a powerhouse of creation and have already started working on the final book, so you will not have time to make posts wondering when it will come out.

To help celebrate the new re-launch of this series, Stygian Publications has enlisted the help of artist George C. Cotronis to create cover art for all three of the novels. The trilogy will be available from Amazon in print and ebook.

Cover Model Contest

Stygian Publication is proud to announce it’s first ever cover model contest. The book is entitles Boobageddon, and it will be coming out late in 2014. The winner of the contest will have their photo used as the cover art for the novel. It will be modified to resemble a classic painted pulp cover from the fifties and sixties. The winner will also receive $200 US dollars and two contributor copies of the novel when it is published. There will be only one winner, but runners up may be used for promotional purposes.

To enter, contestants need to submit a high-resolution 8x10 digital photo of themselves in the dress and pose of an exotic dancer. A pole is not required, but being female or at least resembling a female is required, this is not a contest for Chippendales. This will be distributed through Amazon, so no nude pictures will win. Send your photos to submissions@stygianpublications.com. Submission of photos implies a release and gives permission to Stygian Publication to use as promotional material.

The contest starts immediately, and ends on September 30^th, 2014. The winner will be announced on:

The Stygian Publications website(www.stygianpublications.com),

Facebook site(https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stygian-Publications/187826163792) and

Their Blog(http://stygianpublications.blogspot.com/)by October 31^st, 2014.

The Website is Live

http://www.stygianpublications.com/

Please check it out when you get a chance. As a reminder, we start taking submissions for novellas and novels on November 1st.

Did you miss us?

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While many of you only know Stygian Publications because of the short fiction magazine, Necrotic Tissue, we also put out the anthology Malpractice, the novel Samhane by Daniel I Russell and a short play collection with Roy C. Booth. I was mostly testing the waters and what I found out is that while none of this is easy, doing a novel takes less time than putting out a short fiction magazine every three months.

A good friend of mine and former editor for Necrotic Tissue, John P. Wilson, has talked me into restarting Stygian Publications with a focus on novellas and novels. I may at some point start another short fiction project but never again a quarterly unless I win the lottery and no longer need to work. I will be heavily involved with this new direction, but John will be the Editor-in-Chief.

Our plan is the launch the website Stygianpublications.com in October and start taking submissions in November. The first of these novellas or novels should appear in early 2014. No idea yet how many. We have no lofty goals other than taking it as it comes. Details on submissions are still being worked out, but we’re looking at a 50/50 net split with authors. As always, we’re interested in dark stuff but less worried about genre or categories than we are about good writing and unique ideas.

Novellas will be e-book only, but novels that sell well in e-book format will also be made available in print. We’ll also have discounts for print copies for the author and I will send out e-book copies to reviewers. We’ll do what we can to push all books through the regular channels, but it should be no surprise that as a small press we won’t be funding nation-wide book tours. Assuming things go well, I will be bringing Stygian to conventions, but if a writer wants to increase sales they need to be as invested in promotion these days as they are with writing.

While running Necrotic Tissue, I had a few goals. Fast turn around time, pay the writers on time and put out a good magazine. I met those goals for three years. With the novella and novel lines, I intend to do something similar. You won’t have to wait three months to hear from us, but I can’t promise the same turn around time as I did with a 2,500 word short story either. What I can promise is that writers will be treated with respect, be paid their fair share for all sales and you will be able to get hold of me or John or hear back from us in a reasonable time with regard to all issues, be it email or by phone.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that trust must be earned and that there are far too many examples of shady publishers. Even when they seem to meet all their obligations, writers have suspicions that they are not seeing all the earnings from all sales. I’ve earned the trust of the horror community since 2006 and plan to continue where I left off in 2012 when I had to close NT. 

Who wants to come along for the ride?

Necrotic Tissue: Best Of Anthology is out, come get some.

Time for an update. Thank you all for your patience.

The print version is ready, but there is always a lag between the printer and Amazon of up to two weeks. When the print is available, I will post a link on the FB Stygian Publications page. The price for the print version is $11.95, with 32 stories and over 65,000 words of the best horror short fiction in the last three years.

The ebook version is already available on Amazon and Smashwords if you are into that for $2.99.

All US contributor copies have been mailed out. Overseas contributor copies will get mailed out in two weeks as well as subscriber copies. I'm treating this like the 15th issue for all those subscribers with copies still due.

After they are all mailed out, those of you that have copies still due to you will get refunds as previously described. I hope to issue all refunds by the end of the year. If you believe you are due a refund but haven't seen anything by Jan 31st 2012, let me know.

Congratulations again to all the writers that made it into this anthology.

If anyone is interested in a review copy, please let me know.