Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback

I know that this site has not been getting quite as much attention from me as usual over the last year. This is largely because I have been so busy with various book projects. A quick update on these might be in order.

First up is my academic monograph, Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback. Out via the Anthem Press Studies in Australian Literature and Culture series in early July, it now has a cover and is available for pre-order. It is in hardcover, with a price that reflects the fact that it is being targeted at institutions and, in particular, libraries, in the first instance, but I have negotiated with Anthem for a much cheaper paperback version of the book will be released by Anthem next year.

Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback originated in a PhD I took at Sydney’s Macquarie University and turning it into a monograph has taken a considerable amount of my time over the last year. Regular readers will no doubt be familiar with Horwitz, as the publisher of many of the paperback covers that I post on this site. My study is the first book length examination of Australian pulp and one of the few detailed studies I am aware of a specific pulp publisher to appear anywhere. It not only looks the genres Horwitz published, but the writers and artists who worked for it, including some groundbreaking research on Australian female pulp writers. It also reveals the hidden role that Horwitz, derided purely as a low rent purveyor of cheap, salacious fiction for most of its existence, had in the take up of the paperback by mainstream Australian publishers, as well as how Horwitz pulp was a key vehicle for powerful vernacular modernist currents that coursed through Australia in the1950s & 1960s.

I have three other quick pieces of book news to share with you. First up, Orphan Road, my third novel, and the sequel to Gunshine State, has been accepted for publication by Down and Out Books. Orphan Road continues the story of my professional (or not so) thief Gary Chance. The heist always goes wrong, only this time it happened half a century ago. Orphan Road will be out in the world sometime in early 2023. This will give those of you who have not already the opportunity to pick up a copy of Gunshine State, which you can do at this link here.

Second, the book I co-edited with Iain McIntyre, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950-1985, has been nominated for a prestigious Hugo award at the upcoming World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in September. The third in a series published by PM Press that look at various aspects of pulp & popular fiction over the period sometimes referred to as the long sixties, I am beyond thrilled to have Dangerous Visions & New Worlds recognised in this manner.

And talking about PM Press, I have recently inked a contract for a new book with them. It is another co-edited book, but with a different collaborator and with a focus on film, so it is a little bit of a change of pace for me, which I am looking forward to. More details later.

Last, but not least, if you have had a chance read any of my books, it would be most appreciated if you could leave a review or rating on Goodreads and/or Amazon.