Thursday 24 September 2009 Out of Reach

One of my favourite contemporary genre writers, Tim Lebbon, won the best novella gong at the British Fantasy Awards over the weekend for The Reach of Children.

Deservedly so too. It’s a tale of love and loss that transcends genre and proves that while ‘horror’ writing is much maligned, there is some truly great work in this field that shouldn’t be ignored or frowned upon by more ‘literary’ circles. At its best, it can touch us in ways no other fiction can and The Reach of Children is a fine example of this.

The sad thing is that the novella was only published in a signed and limited edition of 250 copies by the now defunct Humdrumming Press. Worse still, Humdrumming only printed just over half of those proposed 250 copies before going out of business.

I was lucky enough to get hold of one of those copies, but hopefully it will be available for a wider audience sometime soon. When it is, read it. Simple as that.

Something else that’s worth mentioning here is that Lebbon started out in the small press in the mid 90’s, publishing stories online and in print for little or no recompense.

There’s hope for us all.

5 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

There be no hope for me, I was published alongside him in the 1990s and I'm still struggling along. ;)

I treasure my ltd edition signed (gasp) novella 'White' which I believe is quite rare now.

Aaron Polson said...

There's always hope. Wonderful for Tim.

(Cate...you're there, knocking at the door)

L.R. Bonehill said...

Cate – ‘White’ is great too; novellas seem to be his speciality.

Aaron – Couldn’t agree more re Cate, but you’re within touching distance too. Don’t forget, you even have an official fan club now.

Rebecca Nazar said...

God bless small presses.

I will confess I love being an underdog, though; it's great creative fodder. There's hope for us all--hear, hear. :-)

L.R. Bonehill said...

Becca – I need all the creative fodder I can find at the minute, so I’m happy being an underdog too.