Hello happy readers! It's time to let you know that we're planning, at long last, a fourth edition of the Amityville House of Pancakes anthology. As you may know, AHOP serves a breakfast so good, you'll hardly miss your soul. Well, some of you may have missed it more than others, and with that in mind, we're pleased to announce AHOP 4 - the Kiva edition.

What is AHOP?

Amityville House of Pancakes is our irregular anthology of humorous speculative fiction - might be horror, might be SF, might be fantasy, but will always send milk shooting out your nose. We include 3 or 4 novellas from some of the funniest people on the planet - past guests have included Gary K Wolf, Adrienne Jones, Paul Kane, Jack Mangan and Jetse de Vries. Vol's 1&2 are now out of print, though Amazon says there's some used copies around. Vol 3 is still very much on sale.

What is KIVA?

Kiva is the granddaddy of microfinancing online - as a participant, you can contribute to loans to entrepeneurs worldwide, with the focus being on do-it-yourselfers in developing nations. Though a not-for-profit, Kiva is not a charity - recipients of loans pay them back according to terms decided with the local microfinance organization in their region. Kiva lets you see the people asking for loans, filter by types of businesses, even coordinate with other loaners by joining teams (yes, there is a CGP team!). The great thing about this is that once your loans are paid back, you can loan out again and again. See the site: http://www.kiva.org

So what's the deal with souls?

I'll assume you're asking specifically about this book and not existentially - all proceeds from sales of the book will go to Kiva, either in loans or donations for the organization's administrative costs. So, good for the reader's soul. Also, the authors will be receiving a portion of their royalties in Kiva credit. Good for their souls too.

What do I do now?

Well, if you're the sort who enjoys good stories, and you must be if you're here, you can always treat yourself to a copy of AHOP 3, available at all your favourite online stores, and in the better bookstores near you (if they don't have it on the shelf, pester them!) and whet your appetite for the newest book, which will be available in mid-2011. If you're a writer who'd like to contribute, we'll be posting full guidelines on the website soon, and giving the other usual suspects (Ralan, Duotrope) the details. Submissions will be opening toward the end of this year, and in short, we're looking for novella-length work, 15-40k words, any genre but must be humorous in nature. Payment will be $100 advance on royalties, $50 cash and $50 in the form of a Kiva gift certificate.

Yeah but what do you think is funny?

Many of the books we've published are humorous in nature - if you want to see what tickles us, check out: AHOP 3, Stays Crunchy in Milk, Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, Ace Hawkins and the Wrath of Santa Claus, Brine, You're Not Very Important, Random Acts of Malice, Funnybones, or hunt up some of the earlier editions of AHOP.

Congratulations Lucy!

The final ballot for the Bram Stoker awards are out, and Lucy A. Snyder's Chimeric Machines is an official nominee for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.

Read the entire nominee list here.

We are extraordinarily tickled and wish Lucy best of luck in the final voting!

And another kudo for Chris Conlon and Starkweather Dreams for making the preliminary ballot.  We're glad people are starting to recognize our good taste!

Congratulations Chris and Lucy!

We have learned that Christopher Conlon's Starkweather Dreams and Lucy A. Snyder's Chimeric Machines have both made the preliminary ballot for the 2009 Bram Stoker Award, Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.

Read the entire preliminary ballot here.

Well done, guys!

Hey kids, it's holiday season - you will note we did NOT start hassling you pre-Thanksgiving like some stores we could mention.  But now that carols are playing, there's snow in Hawaii and Black Friday is a done deal, we figured you might want some alternative gift ideas for that hard to shop for person/people in your life.  You can of course shop for our books at the usual suspects, Amazon, B&N, Powells, and etc., but there are some limited edition hard-covers still available JUST from us:

• Stays Crunchy in Milk, by Adam P Knave -- one of 34 limited edition hardcovers, signed by the author and numbered.  Holiday price $45 bucks including shipping US only, elsewhere add 5 bucks)!
• Chimeric Machines, by Lucy A Snyder -- one of 50 limited edition hardcovers, signed by the author and numbered. Holiday price $30 bucks, including shipping (US only, elsewhere add 5 bucks)!
• Brine, by Adrienne Jones -- one of 100 limited edition hardcovers, signed by the author and numbered.  Holiday price $35 bucks, including shipping (again, only in the US - everywhere else, you get stiffed for 5 extra bucks).

Quantities are, as we say, limited -- really, in this case.  By definition.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

We're having a contest for our newest child prodigy, Stays Crunchy in Milk -- the short form is, buy the book, take your picture with it, and you might win the ENTIRE Farscape Collection on DVD.  Farscape? Stays Crunchy? Does this even make sense?  Is there a connection (Legally, we must say there's no association, but you can decide if one of these things is not like the other)?  Anyway, full details as well as where you have to post your picture is on the author's site, where you can read all about it.  Follow the link to the contest - you know you want to.

BUT WAIT ONE MORE THING

Though it's not in hardcover it is our signature Christmas Classic around here - have you wondered why you haven't made a soft candlelit family reading of Ace Hawkins and the Wrath of Santa Claus part of your holiday tradition?  We certainly have! (We'll let you work out whether 'we have' means 'have wondered' or have incorporated the book into our holiday traditions -- maaaaybe it's both!