World Horror Convention announces its MOC

The World Horror Convention now lists five guests of honor plus one mistress of ceremonies. The GOH are writers Tanith Lee and David Case; artists Les Edwards and Dave Carson; and editor Hugh Lamb. All good enough reasons to attend. The icing on the cake is that the MOC is my long-time friend Jo Fletcher. She is Associate Publisherat Gollancz and has worked as an editor at several other publishers, including Headline and Pan. Jo has also edited and co-edited several books. She is an award-winning poet -- and examples of her brilliant and moving poetry can be found in Shadows of Light and Dark, co-published by the Alchemy Press and Airgedlamh Publications.

Copies of this book remain available -- but only a few. This book was designed by Michael Marshall Smith, has an introduction by Neil Gaiman, and is illustrated by Les Edwards and Seamus A Ryan -- and all of these, as well as Jo -- have signed copies of this limited edition hardcover.

If you would like a copy, at the special price of £10 inclusive of p&p in the UK, please email me at gatesoffantasy@gmail.com. I accept payment by PayPal, if that helps. And the WHC website is here.
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Poet Laureate Announced

It's just been confirmed that my friend Chris Morgan has been appointed as Birmingham's Poet Laureate. Well done, Chris. He will be expected to write poems about the city, mentor the Young Poet Laureate, and attend special events. A very prestigious appointment.

With his permission, here is one of Chris’ poems:

THE CAR BODY PLANT

I always cycled in through pre-dawn
gloom, it seemed, for the 7.15 start,
yellow and sweating beneath my cape,
just one of a tide of half-asleeps
flowing into that infernal manufactory,
smoke-city of the blood-red night, each
of us squeezed into a terrifying conformity;
for them, fat pay-packets like an addiction.

My green boiler-suit, APPRENTICE
on chest pocket, possessed me,
marking me out, to be sent
for left-handed screwdrivers, for tubs
of elbow grease, for a laff. My O levels
and RP accent made me an outsider,
fuelled a mutual misunderstanding,
and a soupcon (my word, not theirs) of guilt.

Huge presses shook the floor, crunching
improbable shapes from steel sheets,
Richter six point something as I walked past;
older press operators all lacked
a finger, blood sacrifice to inattention;
hearing dimmed by decades of carcrash;
I never asked about their hearts or souls.
On assembly lines, spotwelding guns

were like futuristic weapons from a movie,
spitting chains of sparks across gangways
as their superhero crab-claws pinched,
and the air smelled sharply of lung-
destroying metal dust. Always loud hissing
and screeching, as of dying breaths,
as bodies were tortured into shape.

Chris Morgan