Entering the Final Hours of Hymns of Abomination

So, here’s where we stand: we have until TUESDAY at NOON (central time) to reach the following stretch goals for Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds, a tribute to Matthew M. Bartlett. But first, I have to note that, unfortunately, some of these projects will not be revisited if these stretch goals fail. We simply won’t have the budget to print an expanded, hardcover Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, for instance. We certainly won’t be able to support an open call if we don’t make $7,000, and we are still very short of being able to offer pro rates. 

This isn’t meant to sour the mood. We’ve made our minimal budgeting, and we have a strong TOC as it stands, but I’d be remiss to neglect to point out that we could do so much more with this project with your help! Here are the immediate stretch goals again: 

At $5,500  we’re giving every contributor who has pledged $5 or more two eBooks! These eBooks, graciously provided by Robert S. Wilson of Nightscape Press, are the 2018 This is Horror Award winning anthology Ashes and Entropy, and Nightscapes Volume 1 edited by Robert S. Wilson, Jennifer Wilson, and Mark C. Scioneaux.

At $6,500 we’re publishing a very limited special hardback edition of our debut anthology, Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, which was named the “best multi-author anthology of 2019” by Rue Morgue magazine. The new Mannequin will feature an expanded TOC of original stories by several authors of the original lineup (including, so far, S.L. Edwards and Christopher Slatsky) and work by a few new authors as well. It will also sport a new cover, new layout, interior art, and a new introduction!

At $7,000 we’ll open Hymns of Abomination to public submissions! The open call will be announced on Silent Motorist Media’s submissions page following a submission period allotted for the initial open call exclusive to authors of underrepresented demographics. We’ll also give two more eBooks to every contributor with a pledge over $5 (titles to be announced). 

And if we really get a boost over these next few days…

At $15,000 we can finally afford to pay all contributors pro rates! If we can push to this goal, we’ll add a limited run of a special edition Hymns of Abomination into the mix as well.

As we enter the final hours, it’s more important than ever to contribute, share, and share again. Please note that some of the reward tiers offer all of our anthologies in one format or another, including The Nightside Codex, which just debuted on Amazon a few days ago. Please help us complete this project–help us take our next step into the professional publishing arena–help SMM create more exciting books for you! With your help, we hope to become among your preferred sources for discovering new voices in weird and horror fiction. 

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed and shared an update!  

Best,

Justin A. Burnett 

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August 30, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media

Hymns of Abomination, Nightside Codex, 10 Weird Writers, and More (an update)

Okay–so there’s a lot going on here at SMM. I’m not the best at being the promotional mouthpiece required for a venture of this size (I’m a single dad of two little boys working full time in the medical field), so I apologize for falling behind on announcements. I’m going to have to pack a few of them in this post at once. Bear with me. 

First, public nominations for our list of “Ten Weird Writers to Save Us All in 2020” are officially closed. Next we’ll move on to the voting portion of the process, involving a volunteer panel of editors and writers. The picks this year are awesome! We can’t wait to share them with you. 

Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds, our tribute anthology to Matthew M. Bartlett, has achieved its base funding on Kickstarter! This one is BIG, figuratively and literally (there are a total of 27 slots now, including authors like Nathan Ballingrud, S.P. Miskowski, John Langan, Gemma Files, Brian Evenson, Tom Breen, and many more). However, we still have plenty of stretch goals to hit along the way, so please stop by to see all the cool rewards we have to offer to those who pledge. Give it a share on social media. If we make it to $7,000, we’ll open this thing up to public submissions. There’s only 10 days left to make the goal! (This is also where I’ve been spending nearly ALL my “down time.” Kickstarters require constant maintenance and calculation).

 

And lastly (for now), please remember that The Nightside Codex releases on the 24th! This is our second themed anthology, featuring stories about malicious manuscripts. Here is the full TOC, including 18 works of all-original fiction: 

K. A. Opperman • The Book of Black Dreams

Richard Thomas • In His House

Brian Evenson • I Cannot Remember

Nadia Bulkin • Les Belles Infideles

Jessica McHugh • Pulpit Fiction

Alistair Rey • The Past is a Foreign Country

Michael Fassbender • Schattenlenker’s Hidden Treasure

Scott J. Couturier •Monster of the Mind

Selene dePackh • The Red King

S. E. Casey • The Redneck Library

Devora Gray • Tongue-Tied

Philip Fracassi • As I Sit to Write This Story

Luciano Marano • My Eyes are Closed to Your Light

Christine Morgan • For Bobby

Sarah Walker • Ouroboros

Rhys Hughes • Between the Circles

Austin James • Vanity

Stephen Graham Jones • The Hero of Flight 247

So much to do! Please stay tuned. This is a very exciting and busy time for us. There’s much more to come. 

Best,

Justin A. Burnett

August 21, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media

Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds Kickstarter Launch

We did it! The 14 day Kickstarter for Songs of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds, a tribute anthology to Matthew M. Bartlett, has officially launched! Follow the link above or click on the Songs of Abomination icon below to check out the KS homepage, where we have loads of SMM rewards waiting for contributors. 

The Project

One thing I want to spare you is redundancy–our KS homepage lays everything out in quite some detail that we won’t get into here (we strongly encourage those of you interested in participating to read the KS description carefully–there’s a lot of nuts and bolts to this that’ll help you determine your level of involvement with this project). Here’s the basics: Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds is, as it stands, a 25-author tribute anthology to Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination, Creeping Waves, The Stay-Awake Men & Other Unstable Entities, as well as a flurry of chapbooks, anthologized stories, and audio performances. Bartlett (check out our 2018 interview with the man himself here) is a beloved figure in contemporary weird fiction with a highly distinct mythos surrounding a fictionalized Leeds, MA. This anthology will consist of stories from various authors set in Bartlett’s demented universe. And we’re talking authors like

The Contributors 

Nathan Ballingrud, John Langan, Brian Evenson, Gemma Files, S.P. Miskowski, B.R. Yeager, Jonathan Raab, Tom Breen, Joseph Pastula, Joanna Parypinski, Farah Rose Smith, Scott R. Jones, Betty Rocksteady, Christine Morgan, Kristine Ong Muslim, Christopher Slatsky, William Tea, Donyae Coles, S.L. Edwards, John Linwood Grant, and two collaborative efforts, one between Robert S. Wilson and Jon Padgett, another between Sean M. Thompson and Brian O’Connell

Yeah

we think this is going to be one hell of a book too. We’re excited to put everything we’ve learned with Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh and the upcoming Nightside Codex anthologies into practice with this one. Expect things like a unique layout, interior illustrations, and who knows what else. It’s all or nothing with this one. We want to make a book that we’d be proud to give to Bartlett himself.

The Funding

Although we’ve had the luck to put out two highly-praised anthologies, this one’s quite unlike any other project we’ve tackled before. Both previous anthologies were personally funded by myself (Justin A. Burnett) and another anonymous individual. Life circumstances have rendered my friend unable to help with funding this time around. Given the profile and caliber of Hymns of Abomination, this project is well outside of my financial scope. We need help if this bird’s gonna fly. Silent Motorist Media has never lined my pockets (we’ve barely broken even on our first anthology)–this has always been a passion project centered around creating anthologies that I’d love to have in my personal library. And I’m fine with that. But if we want Hymns of Abomination to happen, I don’t have the resources as a single dad with a lower-tier day job to do it myself.

The Rewards

That being said, there’s plenty for contributors to enjoy as well. Copies of Mannequin and Nightside Codex are waiting for shipping, and this is a great place to reserve your own copy of Hymns as well. Not only that, stretch goals will include things like open submission calls, a Hymns special edition, and even a limited hardback run of Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, featuring an expanded TOC, new layout, an alternate cover, and more! Here at the beginning, I don’t want to assume too much, but if things go well, the possibilities are very, very exciting.

The Link

So here’s the link again. Please head over there and look at all the cool stuff we have waiting for you. If you can’t contribute (we totally get that things aren’t great for everyone financially right now), you can definitely help by sharing the link below. Every share is one step closer to making this book. And remember, we only have two weeks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silentmotoristmedia/hymns-of-abomination-secret-songs-of-leeds

Thank you so much for your help! We couldn’t do it without you. Much love, and stay safe out there. Now lets go make an anthology!

Best,

Justin A. Burnett

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silentmotoristmedia/hymns-of-abomination-secret-songs-of-leeds

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silentmotoristmedia/hymns-of-abomination-secret-songs-of-leeds

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silentmotoristmedia/hymns-of-abomination-secret-songs-of-leeds

August 18, 2020October 28, 2021 by Silent Motorist Media

Secret Gateways from Nightscape Press: LAST CHANCE!

Have you heard of the Secret Gateways box set from Nightscape Press?  It’s a boxed set of three hardcovers including two modern classics of unsettling weird fiction: The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett and Gateways to Abomination by Matthew M. Bartlett; and a third slim volume titled The Latham-Fielding Liaison consisting of four weird mind-bending tales written by both authors in collaboration with each other.

WE DESPERATELY WANT TO SEE THIS HAPPEN. Anyone familiar with these works should agree. That’s why were sharing Nightscape’s Kickstarter. At the time of writing, there’s only SIX HOURS LEFT TO CONTRIBUTE! At SMM, Nightscape Press is one of the entities we continually look up to for inspiration. We want more than anything for this press to succeed. They consistently make exciting work of amazing quality. We need more presses like Nightscape in the world.

I would detail all of the amazing benefits they have waiting for you, but THERE’S NO TIME! Go there now and see for yourself! We promise you won’t regret contributing. Quickly now, help Nightscape Press! Go! Please! What are you waiting for! 

August 16, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media

Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds, a Tribute to Matthew M. Bartlett

With our second anthology, The Nightside Codex, available for preorder and nearing its release date (8/24), you may be wondering what’s next for SMM. For our 2020 open call, we’re putting a temporary hold on Mysterium Tremendum to publish a more-than-deserved tribute anthology that readers and writers alike have demanded for quite a while now.

We are excited to present Hymns of Abomination: Secret Songs of Leeds, a tribute to Matthew M. Bartlett (author of The Stay-Awake Men and Other Unstable Entities, Creeping Waves, and Gateways to Abomination). The chance to honor this singular voice in weird fiction is a thrill to us, and we’ve already found a host of esteemed authors who agree. So far, contributors include John Langan, Nathan Ballingrud, Gemma Files, S.P. Miskowski, Brian Evenson, Jonathan Raab, Tom Breen, S.L. Edwards, John Linwood Grant, and a collaboration between Robert Wilson and Jon Padgett. And this is just the beginning, people—we’re expecting many more to join the ranks!

Much of Hymns’ TOC will be left open to public submissions. Due to the size and profile of this anthology, it’s necessary for us to employ the help of a modest Kickstarter campaign. Upon the success of the Kickstarter, we will be able to offer professional rates to public submissions, an expanded TOC, and interior illustrations. Additional tiered benefits will be announced in the Kickstarter, which should begin within the next couple of weeks.

We understand, of course, that times have been exceptionally difficult for everyone. We ask that you please refrain from contributing to the Kickstarter if you aren’t in the position to do so. To those who are able to contribute, we feel that it is more important now than ever to maintain professional rates for writers in this uncertain economic climate. Any support you are able to show this endeavor is greatly appreciated.

Stay tuned for the development of Hymns of Abomination! We’ll be announcing the Kickstarter here as soon as we’re able to formulate a reasonable goal.

August 3, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media