We are delighted to be able to reveal the cover for Her Gilded Voice by K.C. Aegis, which will be published this summer by Elsewhen Press. This book sits at the intersection of cyberpunk and psychological thriller, and the cover design by Paramita Bhattacharjee and Troy Edward Nikolic reflects that perfectly.
Lacey has a woman living inside her head … or is it the other way around?
Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a ‘neuro-net’ wired into their brain. This provides each person with a ‘voyce’ inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: “Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves.”
In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet. Their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father’s debt and that Lacey has been marked to become a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey’s voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they follow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, Lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it actually is – without augmented-reality illusions.
As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.
We are delighted to reveal the cover of King Street Run, the debut fantasy novel from V.R. Ling. It is a satirical fantasy thriller set among the iconic buildings of contemporary Cambridge.
Thomas Wharton, an archaeology graduate, becomes drawn into the problems of a series of anachronistic characters who exist in the fractions of a second behind our own time. These characters turn out to be personifications of the Cambridge Colleges; they have the amalgamated foibles, history, and temperament of their Fellows and students and, together with Thomas, must enter into a race against time to prevent their world being destroyed by an unknown assailant.
The cover was designed by Alison Buck, based on ideas from the author.
Sharma stands on the precipice of destruction as Gavendara’s army of shapeshifters surges towards the Valantian mountains. A mutant invasion leaving terror and death in its wake and whose victims rise again, swelling its ranks.
Yet still the Synod dithers, its leaders fractured as they plot and scheme against each other. Jaedin is now a fugitive, Bryna’s powers are waning, and Rivan grapples with the consequences of his resurrection – as well as the ominous entity that now lives beneath his skin. Whilst Miles, torn between loyalties, faces an impossible choice that could reshape the fate of nations.
Meanwhile, to the east, Elita seeks sanctuary within the enigmatic depths of Babua’s jungle. The people who dwell there are distrustful of her, but for a good reason. She indeed has secrets, and it seems that trouble has followed her.
Blood War will be available in paperback on 2nd February 2024.
“Smoothly throttles up a gear from the previous two books. The diverse and fleshed out characters face the desperate horrors of war, leading to a thrilling climax. An excellent addition to a gripping series.
“This is epic fantasy with a touch of the mythic to it. There were villains I loved to hate, and a queer protagonist I loved rooting for. Action, magic, a world in peril… what more could you ask for?
– Trip Galeyauthor of A Market of Dreams and Destiny
From ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ in the 90s, through ‘Harry Potter, Goblet of Fire’ and ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ to the award-winning ‘Eufloria’, Rudolf Kremers’ game design experience enhances his story-telling.
DARTFORD, KENT – 29 August 2023 – Elsewhen Press is a publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thoughtful speculative fiction from talented authors. One of those authors is Rudolf Kremers, a BAFTA nominated game developer. Having spent over 20 years working as a designer and consultant to many of the largest entertainment companies in the world, as well as writing a well-respected text book on Level Design, Rudolf has written screenplays and video game narratives across various genres. His skill and experience naturally come to the fore when he writes fiction, and the publication of his debut science fiction novel, Birds of Paradise, has made him think about how his video games career has affected his writing and vice versa, leading to some inspiring conclusions.
Rudolf started making games over 40 years ago as an enthusiast, although it wasn’t a realistic career path in the Netherlands in the 1980s. But when he realised that things were different in the UK, which had a thriving video games industry, he moved to London to work with Douglas Adams at The Digital Village. Rudolf was recently called a “veteran” game developer, and although that description made him grumble a bit about “not being that old”, he realised that it’s not an unfair description. He’s now been working as a professional game developer in the UK for almost a quarter of a century, in all kinds of roles for several companies (before starting his own), and worked on a great variety of titles. He says that he has “the scars and stories to prove it”.
But he had always wanted to be a writer, having developed an insatiable love of reading from an early age, especially science fiction, fantasy and horror, but also books on mythology, space exploration, euro comics, superhero comics, and various other pulpy endeavours. He says, “I’m one of those poor sods afflicted with that famous ‘restless creative’ gene, which ensured that a desire to read also came with a desire to write. Luckily, as a game designer I often had the opportunity to work on game stories and lore and other such things. But writing for games comes with its own pitfalls and peculiarities and while that has its own charm, I eventually felt the need to do the kind of writing I fell in love with from a very young age. Initially, I took a detour where I wrote a bunch of screenplays but I finally arrived at a point where I just wanted to create something by myself, written for fans of my favourite genres. Something I would love reading myself. That wish turned into a big fat sci-fi novel called Birds of Paradise. I have had some of my short horror stories published, and I have finished a second novel, historical this time, set in 1630s Japan.”
With the publication of Birds of Paradise this summer by Elsewhen Press, Rudolf started to think about the relationship between game design and writing. He realised there had been a positive feedback loop between his video games career and his writing projects, indeed he concluded that “Every single one of those writing projects has made me a better game developer; and, conversely, every game I have developed has made me a better writer.” As a result he has begun to write a series of blog posts examining this conclusion. He has started with a topic that is the subject of frequent debate by writers: the pros and cons of meticulous planning and outlining versus more freeform writing and development – Rudolf looks into how both styles can be accommodated in a project, drawing on both writing and game development experience, to set out some unique writing techniques.
Peter Buck, Editorial Director at Elsewhen Press, says “It’s clear that there is a huge cross-over between literature and video games, especially in science fiction and fantasy. Indeed, games often beget books and books beget games, and they can all spin-off into films and TV! So it’s no real surprise that what Rudolf calls ‘restless creatives’ in any one of those media will likely excel in the others. Birds of Paradise is an epic science fiction story, a page-turner that would also be ideally suited as a thrilling blockbuster movie or as the underlying story-arc of an engaging video game. We were honoured that Rudolf approached us to publish it.”
Birds of Paradise is available as an eBook and in paperback from good retailers. Rudolf’s series of articles about the relationship between game design and writing is available on his blog.
Notes for Editors
About Rudolf Kremers
Rudolf is a BAFTA nominated veteran game developer, author, photographer, producer, father, husband, cat person, filmmaker, dog person, and consultant. (Not necessarily in that order). Originally of Dutch/Spanish descent, he currently lives and works as an interactive entertainment consultant in Canterbury.
He has worked with clients across the entertainment landscape for more than 23 years, including companies like Lionsgate Studios, Framestore and Electronic Arts, providing design and consultancy work for some of the biggest intellectual properties in the world.
Including his debut science fiction epic Birds of Paradise, which has just been published by Elsewhen Press, Rudolf has written two novels, a gaggle of short stories – some of which are collected in The Singing Sands and Other Stories (published by Demain Publishing) – a textbook on game design (published by CRC Press), several screenplays, and an abundance of video game narratives.
This gives him all the license he needs to continue writing sci-fi, horror, weird fiction, historical fiction, and whatever other muse he succumbs to.
Humanity received a technological upgrade from long-dead aliens.
But there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Humanity had somehow muddled through the horrors of the 20th century and – surprisingly – managed to survive the first half of the 21st, despite numerous nuclear accidents, flings with neo-fascism and the sudden arrival of catastrophic climate change. It was agreed that spreading our chances across two planets offered better odds than staying rooted to little old Earth. Terraforming Mars was the future!
A subsequent research expedition led to humanity’s biggest discovery: an alien spaceship, camouflaged to appear like an ordinary asteroid. Although the aliens had long since gone, probably millions of years ago, their technology was still very much alive, offering access to unlimited power.
Over the next hundred years humanity blossomed, reaching out to the solar system. By 2238, Mars had been successfully terraformed, countless smaller colonies had sprung up in its wake, built on our solar system’s many moons, on major asteroids and in newly built habitats and installations.
Jemm Delaney is a Xeno-Archaeologist and her 16-year old son Clint a talented hacker. Together they make a great team. When she accepts a job to retrieve an alien artifact from a derelict space station, it looks like they will become rich. But with Corps, aliens, AIs and junkies involved, nothing is ever going to proceed smoothly.
If you’re a fan of Julian May, Frank Herbert or James S.A. Corey, you will love Birds of Paradise.
Professor Ian Stewart, renowned mathematician and author, writes an ‘inventive’ ‘high concept’ science fiction adventure to speculate on ideas at the edge of known physics.
DARTFORD, KENT – 21 July 2023 – Elsewhen Press is a publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thoughtful speculative fiction from talented authors. One of those authors is Professor Ian Stewart, a Fellow of the Royal Society, globally recognised award-winning mathematician, and celebrated author of text books and popular science books including The Science of Discworld. But while science books, even pop-science, can make mainstream science entertaining as well as informative, even renowned scientists relish the possibility to explore intriguing but less well-established aspects that push the scientific boundaries. The relative freedom of science fiction provides an ideal medium for such speculation and Ian Stewart’s latest novel, Loophole, seizes that opportunity to explore concepts on the edge of known physics while keeping within the bounds of probability: faster-than-light travel, wormhole-linked black-holes, alternative universes. At the same time, he tells a gripping adventure story of universe-shattering proportions.
Multiple award-winning hard-science-fiction author Stephen Baxter says of Loophole, “When universes collide … A multicosmos at war in a scenario of staggering, but scientifically authentic, invention … As if the Marvel multiverse collided with 2001: A Space Odyssey … I am awed, and I don’t awe easily. The highest of high-concept SF.”
Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature, and author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth and The Sigil trilogy, says, “There’s Hard SF. There’s Wide-Screen Baroque. Now with Ian Stewart’s Loophole we have Wrap-Around Rococo. Daringly inventive, Loophole is a mind-fryingly, Möbius-twistingly intense SF adventure of the first order.”
Peter Buck, Editorial Director at Elsewhen Press, says “We were chatting to Ian at a science fiction convention and he told us about the novel he had recently finished writing. We were intrigued by the concept and told him how much we were looking forward to reading it. So you can imagine how delighted we were when Ian submitted it to us for consideration. Once we had read it, there was absolutely no doubt that we wanted to publish such an awesome book. We are thrilled that Loophole is now available for readers. Initial comments from Stephen Baxter and Henry Gee were very gratifying and will undoubtedly reflect the response of readers everywhere for this ‘daringly inventive’ ‘high concept science fiction’ adventure.”
Writing the story was an adventure in itself, says Ian Stewart: “I wanted to write the kind of book I like to read: high-concept space opera. The central gimmick had been rattling around in my head for years. There was a plan, of sorts, on the computer, but I had to write the novel to find out what really happened. Once I started on the details, my characters took over and it ended up quite different from what I’d expected. … Which was what I’d expected.”
Elsewhen Press commissioned space artist David A. Hardy to produce a cover for the book, which thrilled the author. Ian said, “I’ve been a David Hardy fan for fifty years. His elegant cover captures a key moment in the story, and subtly conveys a hint of mystery and menace. You don’t watch a moon disappearing every day.”
Loophole is available as an eBook from today and in paperback from 21st August 2023.
Notes for Editors
About Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has five honorary doctorates and is an honorary wizard of Unseen University. His more than 130 books include Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities and the four-volume series The Science of Discworld with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen. His SF novels include the trilogy Wheelers, Heaven, and Oracle (with Jack Cohen), The Living Labyrinth and Rock Star (with Tim Poston), and Jack of All Trades. Short story collections are Message from Earth and Pasts, Presents, Futures. His Flatland sequel Flatterland has extensive fantasy elements. He has published 33 short stories in Analog, Omni, Interzone, and Nature, with 10 stories in Nature’s ‘Futures’ series. He was Guest of Honour at Novacon 29 in 1999 and Science Guest of Honour and Hugo Award Presenter at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki in 2017. He delivered the 1997 Christmas Lectures for BBC television. His awards include the Royal Society’s Faraday Medal, the Gold Medal of the IMA, the Zeeman Medal, the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Euler Book Prize, the Premio Internazionale Cosmos, the Chancellor’s Medal of the University of Warwick, and the Bloody Stupid Johnson Award for Innovative Uses of Mathematics.
About Loophole
Don’t poke your nose down a wormhole – you never know what you might find.
Two universes joined by a wormhole pair that forms a ‘loophole’, with an icemoon orbiting through the loophole, shared between two different planetary systems in the two universes.
A civilisation with uploaded minds in virtual reality served by artificial humans.
A ravening Horde of replicating machines that kill stars.
Real humans from a decrepit system of colony worlds.
A race of hyperintelligent but somewhat vague aliens.
Don’t poke your nose down a wormhole – you never know what you might find.
Two universes joined by a wormhole pair that forms a ‘loophole’, with an icemoon orbiting through the loophole, shared between two different planetary systems in the two universes.
A civilisation with uploaded minds in virtual reality served by artificial humans.
A ravening Horde of replicating machines that kill stars.
Real humans from a decrepit system of colony worlds.
A race of hyperintelligent but somewhat vague aliens.
Who will close the loophole… who will exploit it?
“When universes collide… A multicosmos at war in a scenario of staggering, but scientifically authentic, invention… As if the Marvel multiverse collided with 2001: A Space Odyssey… I am awed, and I don’t awe easily. The highest of high-concept SF.”
– Stephen Baxter, Award-winning author of the Xeelee sequence, Time Slip and many others
“There’s Hard SF. There’s Wide-Screen Baroque. Now with Ian Stewart’s Loophole we have Wrap-Around Rococo. Daringly inventive, Loophole is a mind-fryingly, Möbius-twistingly intense SF adventure of the first order.”
– Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature,and author of The Sigil trilogy and A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth.
Humanity received a technological upgrade from long-dead aliens. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Humanity had somehow muddled through the horrors of the 20th century and – surprisingly – managed to survive the first half of the 21st, despite numerous nuclear accidents, flings with neo-fascism and the sudden arrival of catastrophic climate change. It was agreed that spreading our chances across two planets offered better odds than staying rooted to little old Earth. Terraforming Mars was the future!
A subsequent research expedition led to humanity’s biggest discovery: an alien spaceship, camouflaged to appear like an ordinary asteroid. Although the aliens had long since gone, probably millions of years ago, their technology was still very much alive, offering access to unlimited power.
Over the next hundred years humanity blossomed, reaching out to the solar system. By 2238, Mars had been successfully terraformed, countless smaller colonies had sprung up in its wake, built on our solar system’s many moons, on major asteroids and in newly built habitats and installations.
Jemm Delaney is a Xeno-Archaeologist and her 16-year old son Clint a talented hacker. Together they make a great team. When she accepts a job to retrieve an alien artifact from a derelict space station, it looks like they will become rich. But with Corps, aliens, AIs and junkies involved, nothing is ever going to proceed smoothly.
If you’re a fan of Julian May, Frank Herbert or James S.A. Corey, you will love Birds of Paradise.
Whereas, actual witch hunts in the UK are conducted by HM Office of the Witchfinder General, a secretive arm of law-enforcement concerned with enforcing ‘magus laws’, and ‘Protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645’.
DARTFORD, KENT – 30 June 2023 – Elsewhen Press is a publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thoughtful speculative fiction from talented authors, including many debut authors. One of our more established authors is Simon Kewin. Perhaps best known for science fiction novels, Simon is, nonetheless, an accomplished author of fantasy stories that often include witches. His Witchfinder series of books is predicated on the premise that the role of Witchfinder General in Britain was instigated by parliament, and indeed has survived to the present day in the form of HM Office of the Witchfinder General. The OWG is now a shadowy arm of law-enforcement concerned with enforcing the ‘magus laws’, and trying to ensure that the general public are not aware of the evil forces that are at large. Their mission statement is ‘Protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645’. But the main protagonist, Danesh, an officer of the OWG, questions their approach and attitude towards all magic users not just those who are a danger to the public. Indeed, he objects to the Office’s motto ‘Maleficos non patieris vivere’, which while literally translating as ‘You shall not suffer an evildoer to live’ is widely interpreted to mean ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, thanks to the misogynistic translation in the King James Bible. The ambiguity of Danesh’s evolving position is a compelling sub-plot in the Witchfinder series of books. The OWG’s treatment of magus law-breakers today is rather more nuanced than in the 15th century, and Simon Kewin’s witty writing style makes the books both thrilling and engaging.
The third novel in the series, Head Full of Dark, is a book close to the author’s heart, revealing, as it does, certain autobiographical details about him – including his own connection to the Office of the Witchfinder General. While names have been changed to protect the innocent, it remains to be seen how the Office will respond to one of their own breaking ranks in this way. He very much hopes that he will be able to produce further (redacted) reports on the battles waged against malign magic use and supernatural incursion – and that he does not, for example, get consigned to Oblivion never to be heard from again…
In reality, of course, the actual role of Witchfinder General was one that Matthew Hopkins invented and assumed for himself in 1645 during the English Civil War, pretending to have been commissioned by Parliament, and using many techniques from King James’ own book Daemonologie to discover witches. Like many entrepreneurs, cult leaders and fascists since, Hopkins made a fortune from the gruesomely lucrative business of ridding communities of an imagined enemy, often used as a cover by power-hungry locals to remove their rivals or exact revenge. Within a couple of years, however, his methods and motivation were called into question by a popular puritan cleric who described them as “abominable, inhumane and unmerciful” and Hopkins was forced to retire in 1647. He wrote a book justifying his own methods and the results of his hunts, A Discovery of Witches, which became a popular legal text especially in the Colonies, and is widely recognised as having had considerable influence on the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts some 45 years later. Ironically, the man responsible for the deaths of at least 300 women was reputed, in contemporary legend, to have died in one of his own ducking stool ‘trials’ after he had himself been accused of witchcraft; but more prosaically, in fact, he actually died not long after his retirement, either of tuberculosis… or a curse.
Today narcissistic politicians, especially in English-speaking nations, use ‘witch hunt’ as a conveniently dismissive label when being held accountable for their own lies, corruption and misdeeds. While hoping to leverage the perception that witch hunts were unfair and often conducted for ulterior motives, they fail to recognise that unlike modern judicial reviews and law enforcement activities, historical witch hunts were conducted without evidence and against (usually poor) victims who had neither the resources, nor often the wit, to defend themselves. The two situations could not be more different. Perhaps those politicians are trying to identify themselves with the poor defenceless ‘wise women’ typically portrayed in popular myth as the victims of witch hunts – which, given the largely misogynistic behaviour displayed by those same politicians, would be a cynical irony if it weren’t so contemptible.
Head Full of Dark, the third book in Simon Kewin’s Witchfinder series, is available as an eBook from today and in paperback from 31st July 2023.
Notes for Editors
About Simon Kewin
Simon Kewin is a pseudonym used by an infinite number of monkeys who operate from a secret location deep in the English countryside. Every now and then they produce a manuscript that reads as a complete novel with a beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes even in that order.
The Simon Kewin persona devised by the monkeys was born on the misty Isle of Man in the middle of the Irish Sea, at around the time The Beatles were twisting and shouting. He moved to the UK as a teenager, where he still resides. He is the author of over a hundred published short stories and poems, as well as a growing number of novels. In addition to fiction, he also writes computer software. The key thing, he finds, is not to get the two mixed up.
He has a first class honours degree in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing (distinction). He’s married and has two daughters.
About the Witchfinder series
Stories of HM Office of the Witchfinder General: Protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645
The Witchfinder series is a different type of police procedural. For a start, it’s about a department of law enforcement that you’ve never heard of. They investigate crimes that you’re never supposed to hear about, criminals that you really don’t want to know about, using methods that it’s best not to ask about.
When Danesh Shahzan gets called to a crime scene, it’s usually because the police suspect not just foul play but unnatural forces at play.
Danesh is an Acolyte in Her Majesty’s Office of the Witchfinder General, a shadowy arm of the British government fighting supernatural threats to the realm. This time, he’s been called in by Detective Inspector Nikola Zubrasky to investigate a murder in Cardiff. The victim had been placed inside a runic circle and their eyes carefully removed from their head. Danesh soon confirms that magical forces are at work.
Of all the denizens of the circles of Hell, perhaps none is more feared among those of a high-minded sensibility than the succubi.
The Assizes of Suffolk in the eighteenth century granted the Office of the Witchfinder General the power to employ ‘demonic powers’ so long as their use is ‘reasonable’ and ‘made only to defeat some yet greater supernatural threat’. No attempt was made in the wording of the assizes to measure or grade such threats, however – making the question of whether it is acceptable to fight fire with fire a troublingly subjective one. Now, in the twenty-first century, Danesh Shahzan, Acolyte in Her Majesty’s Office of the Witchfinder General, had been struggling with that very question…
There is clearly someone in the Office of the Witchfinder General who is working for or with English Wizardry, and Danesh and the Crow are determined to track them down. It might even be one of the Lord High Witchfinders. Who can they trust? Can Danesh even trust the Crow? To ensure the traitor is not alerted, Danesh conducts an off-the-books investigation under cover of an inquiry into a cold case. But not all cold cases stay cold; not all dead witches stay dead; and not all traitors stay hidden… and what is the significance of the goat’s skull?
In conjunction with The Fantasy Hive, we are delighted to be able to reveal the cover of the latest epic science fiction story by Ian Stewart, Loophole. As Ian warns: Don’t poke your nose down a wormhole – you never know what you might find!
In Loophole, two universes are joined by a wormhole pair that forms a ‘loophole’, with an icemoon orbiting through the loophole, shared between two different planetary systems in the two universes. We are introduced to a civilisation with uploaded minds in virtual reality served by artificial humans; a ravening Horde of replicating machines that kill stars; real humans from a decrepit system of colony worlds; and a race of hyperintelligent but somewhat vague aliens.
Who will close the loophole… who will exploit it?
Stephen Baxter, award-winning author of the Xeelee sequence, Time Slip and many others, said, about Loophole: “When universes collide … A multicosmos at war in a scenario of staggering, but scientifically authentic, invention … As if the Marvel multiverse collided with 2001: A Space Odyssey … I am awed, and I don’t awe easily. The highest of high-concept SF.”
Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature, and author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, said: “There’s Hard SF. There’s Wide-Screen Baroque. Now with Ian Stewart’s Loophole we have Wrap-Around Rococo. Daringly inventive, Loophole is a mind-fryingly, Möbius-twistingly intense SF adventure of the first order.”
The cover art was created by David A. Hardy. It wraps around from front to back on the print edition. Ian said: “I’ve been a David Hardy fan for fifty years. His elegant cover captures a key moment in the story, and subtly conveys a hint of mystery and menace. You don’t watch a moon disappearing every day.”
Loophole will be published by Elsewhen Press in eBook on the 21st July 2023 and in paperback on the 21st August 2023.
We are delighted to reveal the cover for Rudolf Kremers’ scifi novel Birds of Paradise, which will be available in eBook from 7th July and in paperback from 7th August. The cover art is by Max Taquet.