Yes, you read that right. After endless delays caused by assorted real life issues we've finally put out a new issue of OCCULT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE.
Firstly, let's adress the obvious elephant in the room. Is this a magazine, or an anthology series? Honestly, it's something of a hybrid of the two. This latest issue is the biggest yet, at 272 pages, so there's that. We don't run to a regular schedule (I bet you've noticed that) and more than one person has picked up a copy at a convention and said words to the effect of, "This isn't a magazine. It's a book!"
Honestly, I was tempted a while back to change the title, to remove the word "Magazine", but we'd already changed the title once, when we took over as publisher.
The increased size has led to another price increase, but I still think we offer great value for money. You can find it here. https://mybook.to/ODM-11
What about the Kindle version, you ask?
It will come as soon as it's ready. We had every intention of publishing paperback and Kindle at the same time, but we're having a modest launch at the Innsmouth Literary Festival, in Bedford, UK, on Saturday, September 28th, and if we waited for the ebook we'd never have copies in our hands in time.
We'll also have tables at The 2025 World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK, over the Halloween weekend.
If any of you are going to be at either of these events, please do come and say hello. It's worth noting that we'll have stock of all the issues (with the exception of the first 5, that weren't published by us) on sale at both events at a cheaper price than you'll get them on Amazon.
So what's in ODM#11? I'm glad you asked. I'm going to cheat, and cut & paste from John Linwood Grant's introduction.
So… what do we have this time? Occupying the ‘core’ of this issue is a brand new novella by Dave Jeffery. ‘A Strange Case Of Something Familiar’ – exclusive to ODM – is the first story in Dave’s latest series, Clutterbuck & Postlethwaite Investigate, and is a stimulating tale of wit and witchery. Surrounding that, we have some very different investigative tales. John Guy Collick provides ‘The Gardens Of Consamo Braque’, a dark fantasy in which a highly-skilled necromancer is charged with looking into the death of a merchant within the Iron Sphere, whilst ‘Binnorie, Binnorie’ by Rowena Spring is a contemporary police procedural with a most unusual witness.
Brandon Barrows returns to our pages with one of his supernatural/spiritual mysteries set in modern-day Japan, ‘Twilight Komorebi’, and I.A. Watson’s popular Vinnie de Soth is once more engaged in one of his weird cases as he unlocks the secrets of Charnwood Orphanage in ‘Vinnie de Soth and the Lost Generation’ (check out our back issues for more in a similar vein from both authors). Then we have ‘Where Birds Go to Die’ (set in Australia) by an author new to us, Charles Spiteri; a troubling and brutal story of drug experimentation gone bad in Thomas Hunt’s ‘Nobody Man’, and ‘The Boleskine House Affair’ by Jude Reid, featuring a meeting between her character Hilda Roxburgh and the Aleister Crowley. Plus a murder, naturally.
Rhys Hughes, known for his surrealistic tendencies, brings us the distinctly odd ‘The Ultimate Shape’, a Nathan Gesture adventure, which is a bit of a departure for us, in that we started with the illustration by Antonino Lo Iacomo, and challenged Rhys to come up with a tale based on it.
In John Llewellyn Probert’s ‘Fae From The Madding Crowd’, John Glory looks into a most peculiar case which seems to involve a changeling. We were so pleased to be offered this fourth story in JLP’s new occult detective series – the first three of which comprised Chasing Spirits, one of Black Shuck’s excellent Shadows series of small books.
We end this issue with a tribute to our co-founder Sam Gafford, who we sadly lost six years ago, by printing his deeply-moving tale ‘The Land of Lonesomeness’, one of his finest stories and one which explores the horrors of the World War One and the final days of William Hope Hodgson – the creator, of course, of Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, the seminal occult detective.
Something John didn't mention, so I will, is the number of non-fiction pieces we have this time around. As well as the usual Cold Cases (this time by Roy Bayfield, featuring a forgotten occult detective from the 19th century) and Dicing With Death columns, we have a brand new series – Dramas From the Æther: Crime Screen Investigations, by Josh Reynolds. Plus, Olly Clarke provides us with not only an overview of Cooper S. Beckett's excellent Spectral Inspector series, but an interview with the author.
I mustn't forget to mention at this juncture an event taking place on YouTube (BookTube) throughout October. OCCULT DETECTIVE OCTOBER is an annual event that was created by M.J. of the channel Reading This Life, where she, and a number of other hosts (including Roy Bayfield and Olly Clarke) show, and talk about occult detective fiction. Any one of those videos will provide links to the other channels taking part.
I am of course involved, albeit I don't have a channel, but we have plans for me to guest on a live stream with Roy Bayfield soon.
I already put on an appearance when we visited another of the hosts, Debby Raynor recently, and you can see what a forgetful old fart I am by watching that video.
I intended to cover much more in this mailing, regarding exciting upcoming projects, but I'm going to leave that for a follow-up email in the fairly near future.
You never know, I may even find the time to make our mailings look a little less amateurish by then.
Dave Brzeski
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