Apex Book Company is delighted to announce the launch of a new imprint, Violet Lichen Books, to be headed by Editor-in-Chief Marissa van Uden. Violet Lichen Books aims to publish unique novella-length horror and dark fiction, focusing especially on New Weird, Weird, folk horror, eco-horror, and eco-science-fiction.
Inspired by the mysterious beauty of lichens growing in shadowy woods and the surreal drama of violet shades in nature, Violet Lichen fully embraces the weird, strange, and uncanny. It aims to leave readers feeling a little changed and disquieted, as if they have just emerged from under a strange spell.
Our goal is to work closely with authors in an ethical and caring way, and to get more brilliant, weird fiction into more readers’ hands.
Apex Book Company has distribution via Diamond Books Distributors. It has published award-winning titles such as Plague Birds by Jason Sanford (Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel and Philip K Dick Award Winner), Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon (Philip K Dick Award finalist 2023), and other iconic titles such as Rosewater by Tade Thompson, the The Apex Book of World SF series, and cult hit Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt.
About the Editor: Marissa van Uden is a New Zealander who is now living her best bog-witch life in rural Vermont, in a little cabin in the woods. She’s a professional manuscript editor with more than fifteen years experience, a staff interviewer at Apex Magazine, and an anthologist (Apex Magazine’s Strange Microfiction series and The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird - forthcoming). Her stories have appeared in Vastarian, Dark Matter Magazine, Los Suelos, and others. She loves weird and disquieting fiction, all the creatures, and eerie forests filled with strange fungi.
Queries: Queries will be open July 1 to July 14. Join our newsletter at https://violetlichen.com/ to be notified when the window opens.
Guidelines:
Violet Lichen Books seeks to work with authors who have a strong attachment to the themes, people, or places they’re writing about, and who sling their dark tales straight from the heart. We are especially interested in works by marginalized and under-represented authors.
We are looking for atmospheric and thought-provoking novellas that intertwine a fascination of the natural world with horror and dread, and those that explore how we, as individual humans, interconnect with our communities, other species, and whole ecosystems.
We love weird fiction that unsettles, expands perspectives, and plays with bending reality, traditions, or tropes.
Sub-genres: New Weird, Weird, folk horror, eco-horror, eco-science-fiction, surreal horror, body horror, literary SFFH
Wordcount: novellas of 20,000 - 40,000 words
Payment: Industry standard advance and royalties
Rights: World English first rights in print and electronic
Response: Please allow at least 12 weeks for a response. After this, feel welcome to query!
Not looking for:
Slasher horror, shock horror, extreme horror
Classic monsters (unless completely subverted in a new and weird way)
High fantasy, sword and sorcery, superheroes
space opera
YA or MG
Full-length novels
Short story collections
Reprints
Works written by AI in any form or at any stage. We work with human-made art only.
