DarkWinter Wednesdays: Special Announcement!

Well, it’s been a wild ride since we launched DarkWinter Press on June 28th this year. We’ve read through a huge stack of wonderful submissions, and now we’re thrilled to announce our upcoming catalogue for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024!

Coming This Fall 2023

The Dogcatcher by Sean Carlin

This occult horror/dark comedy in the spirit of Shaun of the Dead, Carlin’s debut novel, begins with a series of savage killings. Something monstrous lurks in the woods of Upstate New York, putting the idyllic Finger Lakes community of Cornault on edge.

Investigating the wildlife attacks is beleaguered Animal Control Officer Frank Antony. Misunderstood by his father, the mayor of Cornault, mistreated by his brother, chief of staff at City Hall, and mischaracterized as “the dogcatcher” by the newspaper’s op-ed columnist, Frank commands no one’s respect. Even his earnestly loyal sidekick, Animal Care Technician Steve “Waff” Pollywaffle, is too hopelessly irresponsible to ever be counted on when Frank truly needs him.

With the assistance of a world-weary forensic veterinarian at the university, Jessica Bartendale, Frank and Waff must deal with the deadly predator-at-large before it’s too late.

The basement on Biella by Bill Garvey

The basement on Biella is a poetry collection that emanates from a blue-collar town in Massachusetts,
travels to New Hampshire, the Midwest, Nova Scotia, and finally, Toronto. Bill Garvey’s poetry captures
moments which celebrate the wonder of familial relationships, find solace in death, and explore the
torment of mental illness. The basement on Biella is a chronicle of Garvey’s experiences that resonates
beyond his personal world.

Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock by Cecilia Kennedy

Punch in your timecard to begin the shift. The twenty-four dark tales of short fiction in this
collection explore the unsettling things that might linger on and off the clock. Here, you’ll find
short stories of work-related haunts and happenings, from the truly sinister (a human-vending
machine restaurant), to horror-comedy (a photo shoot with possessed bunnies). But in the hours
in between, it can’t be forgotten that the roles played as parents, co-workers, and friends are no
ordinary side hustle. That work never ends. And the work shift? Well, that’s the thing that makes
you peek over your shoulder and ask, “What just moved?” But you have to clock in to find out.

Coming this Spring 2024

The Roach Family and Other Stories by Cindy Matthews

Taking place in Canada, the deeply flawed characters in The Roach Family and Other Stories share one thing in common: they strive to fit in. A malingering mother pays an agonizing visit to her ex-husband, his boyfriend, the narrator, and a tank of hissing roaches. A first-time mother blunders upon self-doubt and finger-pointing after leaving her infant behind at a support group meeting. A previously voiceless child discovers he can communicate. Organizers of a writers’ festival determine that food allergies do matter. A
grieving mother uses unconventional means to appease her sorrow.

Where Sands Run Finest by Vikki C.

Where Sands Run Finest is a lyrical tribute to the liminal landscapes of time, memory, reveries, spirituality and the human condition. Foregrounding the author’s life experiences through an aesthetic and defamiliarized lens, the collection’s forty-eight poems serve as an artistic awakening to themes of identity, heritage, generational trauma, motherhood, love, loss and existential querying. From life’s transient halcyon moments through to the complexities of the metaphysical, the narrative captures the lexicon of time’s delicate rhythms within the human experience. Hence, the title ‘Where Sands Run Finest’ embodies both the “temporal hourglass” and an awareness of time in “otherworlds” born of cosmic, esoteric and subconscious realms.

Words On The Page by Zary Fekete

In the not-too-distant future, a malicious Artificial Intelligence bot has overrun its protocol and is flooding the web with malicious content. Dr. McCaffery, Director of Net Scour, has developed a revolutionary new web-scouring technology which uses the written literature of the world against the AI. The procedure? Reading books. Newly hired Net Scour agent Zach is trained to read, and the more he reads the more power he, and agents like him, can use to fight against the AI.

Dr. McCaffery also has a secret: his daughter, a young woman named Julie. She possesses a unique literary mind; she is the greatest threat against the AI and is the main bulwark of protection for the web. Because of her literary power, the AI has attacked her, and now she can only survive by living in a secure inner chamber in the center of the agency.

Zach and Julie’s fates are intertwined and the future of the web is dependent on the literary power which builds as they grow closer together. 

We hope you’re as excited as we are about these awesome authors and titles. There are a couple more still in the works with contracts about to be signed, so we’ll keep you posted, but stay tuned for cover reveals very soon!

33 thoughts on “DarkWinter Wednesdays: Special Announcement!”

  6. Wow, Suzanne, you’ve been busy. My jaw dropped when I saw Sean has a title in the lineup! Finally. LOL. It seems he’s been doing more than saving the planet after all. I’m looking forward to that read for sure, but they all sound wonderful. Congrats to you and congrats to all the authors.

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        • You’ve been such a wonderful supporter of my nonfiction writing (on my blog), Diana, I know you have been waiting and asking for years when I’d finally have a piece of published fiction! Well, that day has come! The stars aligned for both this particular manuscript and Suzanne’s publishing endeavor, and I really could not have hoped for a more ideal “forever home” for The Dogcatcher! I know it’s probably outside your usual genre interests, but I hope you find a lot to enjoy about the novel. Much more than a mere “creature feature,” I tried to endow it with all the lessons of moral creativity we’ve been discussing on my blog for the past many years. And it’s got a lot of humor, too. My blog posts don’t necessarily show my silly side!

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  8. Pingback: Need Another Reading Fix? – Michael Seidel, writer

  10. I’ve very pleased to see such progress in all that you’ve accomplished, and in such a short amount of time.
    How is Ken reacting to all this post-retirement activity? “You said you were gonna retire, Suzanne.”
    If this is what retired looks like, I might as well continue to work.
    We know that’s a lie, I’d much prefer to write than work. Maybe you’ll still have a spot for me when I finally quit my daily toil.

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