Merry Christmas and prepare for the Year of the Shark!

Coming next May from Snowbooks...

SHARKPUNK

A collection of unashamedly pulp page-turners by some of the best writers in the business. The one thing they all have in common? Sharks, and lots of them! Featuring brand new, original short stories by...

Kit Cox, author of the Major Jack Union stories

Den Patrick, author of the Erebus Sequence

David Lee Stone, creator of the Illmoor Chronicles, Gladiator Boy and the Undead Ed series

Jonathan Oliver, author and award-winning editor

Gary McMahon - "Firmly in the front ranks of the new wave of British horror" (The Guardian)

Andrew Lane, author of the Young Sherlock Holmes novels

Josh Reynolds, creator of the Royal Occultist stories and phenomenally prolific tie-in author

Toby Frost, author of the Space Captain Smith books

Laurel Sills, author and co-editor of Holdfast Magazine

Ian Whates, award-nominated author, editor and publisher of speculative fiction

Al Ewing & Sarah Peploe - Sarah is an author and illustrator, while Al is an author best known for his work for legendary British anthology comic 2000AD

Kim Lakin-Smith, award-nominated author of YA and speculative fiction

David Tallerman, author of the Easie Damasco novels and numerous short stories

Steven Savile, international best-selling author and prolific tie-in writer

and more still to be announced...

Check out and 'Like' the Facebook here, to receive regular updates of this forthcoming anthology here, and tell all your friends!

SHARKPUNK - Stories with Bite!

Coming next May from Snowbooks...

SHARKPUNK

A collection of unashamedly pulp page-turners by some of the best writers in the business. The one thing they have in common? Sharks, and lots of them!

Featuring brand new, original short stories by

Kit Cox

Den Patrick

Jonathan Oliver

Gary McMahon

Andrew Lane

Toby Frost

Ian Whates

Al Ewing & Sarah Peploe

David Tallerman

Steven Savile

and more

Check out and 'Like' the Facebook here, to receive regular updates of this forthcoming anthology here, and tell all your friends.

Great White vs Killer Whale

Perhaps the next anthology should be called Wolves of the Sea...

Great White chokes to death on a Seal

I think this is what's called a taste of your own medicine.

The following video shows a Great White in trouble after literally biting off more than it could chew.



The 13-foot fish was discovered washed up dead on the shore the following day, after being filmed struggling in the shallow waters of Coronation Beach near Geraldton, Western Australia.

The Department of Fisheries in Western Australia concluded that the sea lion either damaged the shark's internal organs, or the shark became stranded whilst trying to "get rid of the obstruction."

The 15 largest predators of all time!

And coming in at Number 3...

Robosharkcop

By artist Emerson Tung.

Sharks, Shakespeare and Shirley Jackson

Today I am delighted to be able to tell you that I am branching out and trying something new with my writing this year. I'm going to be editing not one but two short story anthologies for Snowbooks.

The first, and heading your way this time next year, is SHARKPUNK - an anthology of pulpy shark-themed stories that cover every speculative fiction sub-genre from steampunk to urban horror, by way of war-time tales of terror and post-modernist dark fantasy. SHARKPUNK features all new stories, from a host of genre writers, working at the top of their game, that includes the likes of Gary McMahon, Al Ewing and Toby Frost.

And after that, there's Mr William Shakespeare's Tales of Cthulhu*, which blends some of the Bard's most well-known and best-loved plays with the eldritch squamous horrors of H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

In other Short Story Saturday-related news, The Book of the Dead, edited by Jared Shurin, and which features my mummy-themed love story Egyptian death and the afterlife: mummies (Rooms 62-3), has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, for Best Anthology, which is nice.

* Working title.

Slow-moving killer

The Greenland shark is one of the slowest-moving fish ever recorded and has been found with reindeer, polar bears, and fast-moving seals in its stomach. It's thought that Greenland sharks prey upon sleeping seals, which snooze in the water to avoid polar bears.

Megamouth!

One of the rarest sharks is the megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios, meaning "giant mouth of the deep"). Fewer than 100 specimens of the beast have ever been seen. It was first discovered in in 1976 when struck by and tangled in the anchor of a Navy ship off Hawaii. The animal can grow up to 15 feet (4.6 meters) long and is a filter feeder, syphoning plankton from the water.

Did you know some sharks can reproduce without having to mate first?

Some captive female sharks have been known to reproduce without the aid of a male, essentially cloning themselves. In 2001, a female hammerhead shark gave birth in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska without mating with a male, taking researchers by surprise. It's an example of parthenogenesis, wherein embryos can be created without external fertilisation, and has been seen in all types of animals except for mammals.