A project I have had in mind for a few years was to write a collection of short stories that would pay homage to one of the greatest albums of all time Scenes from the Second Storey by The God Machine.

The idea was that I would write 13 short stories to correspond with the 13 tracks on the album, each story inspired by the track of the same name.

This year that dream changed, as I realised what would be really interesting was to see what the stories would look like if others wrote their inspiration instead - namely writers that I respected.

And so the Scenes from the Second Storey project was born. I sat down and began jotting down names only to quickly realise I had too many for the book. As I realised that more than half of the list contained Australian writers, I decided to have two books: one Australian and one ‘international’ basically writers who are not Australian).

I sent out my e-mails and got 25 acceptances and one rejection. I then sent another mail, was accepted for that and so begins this roller coaster of a project!

Morrigan Books will release both these books 13th November 2010 (my 40th birthday) but of course there will be much more news before that!

Here’s the line-up:

And here we have the official front cover for Gary McMahon’s new collection, How to Make Monsters, which will be released at FantasyCon in Nottingham, England, this September.

Great artwork for a truly great collection!

Morrigan Books has today come to an agreement with Gary McMahon, to publish a collection of his short fiction (including both reprints and original stories), entitled How to Make Monsters.

Preliminary thoughts are for a late 2008/early 2009 release but there will be more news to follow.

Suffice to say that I, in particular, am very excited and proud to have McMahon (recently named in both Datlow’s and Jones’ best ofs) on board and this is yet more proof that Morrigan Books has a commitment to publishing high quality dark fiction.