Tag Archives: dark

New Release: Stark Naked (illustrated poetry collection chapbook)

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IFWG is very pleased to announce the UK/Australian release of Silvia Cantón Rondoni’s dark and intensely personal collection of poetry, Stark Naked.

“This is the third chapbook published by IFWG,” said Managing Director, Gerry Huntman, “and the first that has an exclusive focus on the poet’s personal life and journey. Silvia is a very talented poet, and is undeniably a new, notable talent in the Australian scene, and globally from the point of view of dark genres. Additionally, the injection of Silvia Nieto’s accomplished illustrations – both for the cover as well as internally – has made this project an enjoyable one indeed.”

Stark Naked is Silvia Cantón Rondoni’s intense personal journey. These reflections reveal her transition from childhood through grief and trauma, to the woman of resilience she is today. Illustrated by Silvia Nieto in close collaboration with the poet, her artwork adds visual soul and compliments a collection filled with raw emotion and brutal honesty.

Stark Naked is available now in all good print stores, bricks and mortar as well online. It is not available in ebook formats.

The chapbook will be released in North America on 14 June 2021.

New Release: Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies

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IFWG is very excited to announce the release of its second of three new anthologies this year, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, edited by Deborah Sheldon. This is a particularly unique anthology for us, as it is the very first that is sourced from a fiction callout, with the exception of four commissioned pieces.

Some of our commissioned authors include Jack Dann, Kaaron Warren and Sean Williams, and we certainly attracted amazing additional talent from the Australian shores: Geraldine Borella, Renee De Visser, Jason Fischer, Tracie McBride, Rebecca Fraser, Gary Kemble, David Kuraria, Paul Mannering,  JM Merryt, Samantha Murray, Robyn O’Sullivan, Kat Pekin, Antoinette Rydyr, Charles Spiteri, HK Stubbs, Matt Tighe, Mark Towse, Ash Tudor, and Janeen Webb.

“This anthology is the culmination of a great deal of work,” said Gerry Huntman, Managing Director of IFWG,” and Deb Sheldon has done an amazing job. It was her idea and we gladly played along – we were particularly attracted to the concept of an Australian Body Horror anthology, and yet elevated with a good dose of literary horror. Is this work disturbing? Definitely. But it is also amazingly thought-provoking.”

Kudos should also be given to Keely Van Order who was challenged to provide the artwork and design of our cover. All of us in IFWG certainly believe she nailed the brief.

A selection of the darkest Australian fiction.


Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies taps into anxieties, painful memories and nightmares. Here, your worst fears come true.


Penned by established authors and fresh new voices, these stories range from the gothic and phantasmagorical, through the demonic and supernatural, to the dystopian and sci-fi.


Prepare for a visceral, frightening read.

Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies is now available for purchase world-wide, through bricks and mortar stores and online, in print and ebook formats.

New Release: Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 3

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IFWG is proud to announce the release of the third and final volume in its Cthulhu Deep Down Under series, edited by Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira and Bryce Stevens. We say ‘final volume’ but we aren’t necessarily holding to it: what we can say is that the series was conceptualised for three volumes, and we have delivered.

The publication of these three volumes was ambitious: we wanted to have as many of the talented Australian horror and weird fiction authors possible to contribute to Antipodean Lovecraftian fiction, and we believe we succeeded. We even had a small detour a few years ago publishing Cthulhu: Land of the Long White Cloud and gathered a fine selection of New Zealand authors. This was a four-year journey (with a COVID-hiatus of one year thrown in), and it has been a great ride.

“Two things stand out in this final volume,” said Gerry Huntman, Managing Director of IFWG. “Firstly, the title only has one reprint, so a lot of original content is contained between its covers. Secondly, along with a great introduction by Cat Rambo, we have a series closure essay by Jack Dann that deserves to be featured in itself. Bravo to all contributors!”

Finally, special mention should also be given to Steve Santiago, the cover designer for all three volumes and the New Zealand addition. For the three volumes we challenged him to present iconic Australian settings, and it ended up a great success: Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Australian outback, and in this final volume, the Daintree Rainforest.

In the story that first established the monstrous cosmic terrors of his Mythos writer H. P. Lovecraft said “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity…” 

Which makes it all the more fitting that the adepts of Lovecraft’s vision writing today would choose to unveil ever-evolving and terrible fears besetting those that live on the largest island on the planet, and force the protagonists of some startling new horror fiction tales in this book to face, indeed, not placidity, but their own black seas of infinity…and madness.

Again, some of the greatest scribes of the weird and startling from the land down under bring you brand new stories in the Lovecraftian genre, taking you from the realms of contemporary Australian cities, to the blood-soaked, post-colonial past (touching the powerful original cultures of the land), and even hinting at the disturbing future of Terra Australis.

You will fear a sunburnt country.

Tales of terror by Alan Baxter, David Conyers, Julie Ditrich, Jason Fischer, Steve Kilbey, Steven Paulsen, Steve Proposch, Alf Simpson, Cat Sparks, Maurice Xanthos. Introduction by Cat Rambo and Afterword by Jack Dann.

Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 3 is now available in Australia, UK, Europe, and New Zealand in all good bookstores, bricks and mortar as well as online, print and ebook formats. It will be released in North America 30 June 2021.

New Release: Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and Distract

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IFWG is incredibly happy to announce the world-wide release of Rebecca Fraser’s dark and weird collection of short fiction, Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and Distract. Fraser has published through IFWG before, and we are very pleased to see her talent and skills shine in the adult fiction catalogue.

A surfer who becomes horrifyingly one with the sea. A new mother’s devastating search for belonging. A stone gargoyle with a violent history. A fisher boy who discovers the real cost of forbidden love. A farmer whose delight at drought-breaking rain quickly turns to terror. A hedonistic rock star who manifests double trouble. A young girl’s chilling sacrifice for justice. A dirty ex-cop with a dirtier secret. An unscrupulous mayor’s solution to rid her city of the homeless…

These are just some of the characters you’ll meet in this collection of dark offerings.

From the harsh terrain of the Outback, to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the wilds of Tasmania, dystopian futures, enchanted lands, and the familiarity of suburbia, Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and Distract takes readers on a journey into unsettling, unforgiving, and unforgettable territory.

Rebecca Fraser is an Australian author who writes genre-mashing fiction for both children and adults. Her short stories, flash fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous award-winning anthologies, magazines, and journals, and her first novel Curtis Creed and the Lore of the Ocean was released in 2018 (also with IFWG Publishing Australia). Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and Distract is her first collection.

Rebecca holds an MA in Creative Writing, and a Certificate of Publishing (Copy Editing & Proofreading). To provide her muse with life’s essentials, Rebecca copywrites and edits in a freelance capacity, and operates StoryCraft Creative Writing Workshops for aspiring authors of every age and ability. However, her true passion is storytelling.

Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and Distract is available now in all good print and ebook stores and online stores.

New Acquisition: The Turning Of The Seasons – A Dark Almanac by J.S. Breukelaar & Sebastien Doubinsky

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It is with great excitement that IFWG can now announce the acquisition of a collection of fiction and poetry by J.S. Breukelaar and Sebastien Doubinsky, titled The Turning Of The Seasons – A Dark Almanac. This is a truly international collaboration and both authors are highly respected in the speculative fiction community.

Seasons have always been connected with the passing of time and the changes of life, inspiring myths, folklore, poems and songs. In this short collection award-winning J.S. Breukelaar and Seb Doubinsky have decided to pay tribute to the old tradition of yearly almanacs, which contained short pieces of lore and traditions. Keeping with the short format, they have renewed the genre by infusing it with a modern day setting, pushing the boundaries of the folk-horror uncanny into the borders of our cities. A succession of disturbing stories and vignettes, sometimes poetic, sometimes funny, but always gruesome, The Turning Of The Seasons will surely be an almanac you will never forget.

J.S. Breukelaar is the author of Collision: Stories, which was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, and won the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards for Best Collection, 2020. Her previous novels are the Aurealis-nominated Aletheia, and American Monster, a Wonderland Award finalist. Her new novel, The Bridge is scheduled for early 2021. She has published stories, poems and essays in publications such as Gamut, Black Static, Unnerving, Lightspeed, Lamplight, Juked,  and anthologised in Tiny Nightmares, Gordon Van Gelder’s,  Welcome to Dystopia, and Years Best Horror and Fantasy 2019. A columnist and regular instructor of Weird Writing at LitReactor.com and elsewhere, she currently lives in Sydney, Australia with her family, and you can also find her at www.thelivingsuitcase.com and twitter.com/jsbreukelaar.

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual French dystopian writer and poet. He is the author, among others, of The Babylonian Trilogy, The Song Of Synth, White City, Missing Signal and The Invisible. His novels are set in a city-states parallel universe which mirrors our own. His novel, Missing Signal, published by Meerkat Press, won the Bronze Foreword Reviews Award in the sci-fi category. He lives in Denmark with his family and teaches literature, history and culture in the French department of Aarhus University.

The Turning Of The Seasons – A Dark Almanac will be released in 2022 as part of IFWG’s well-received Chapbook series.