You thought we’d forgotten you. You thought we’d forgotten how to update the website. O ye of little faith.  We were just waiting for Halloween. Or do you prefer Hallowe’en? When we published Nicola Freeman’s ‘Halloween’ in 2019, that’s what we called it. So, Halloween it is. And here come eight new Nightjars for Halloween. As always, they are published in pairs, but you may order them singly (although we would rather you ordered them in pairs, four pairs ideally). ‘The Grandchildren’ by Megan Taylor and ‘Water People’ by Carolyn Stockdale. ‘Only Animals Can Make Me Smile’ by Alex Older and ‘Snake Tale’ by Philip Terry. ‘Topsoil’ by JG Lynas and ‘Dream of the Cactus Garden’ by Kirsten Norrie. ‘Fabrication’ by Imogen Reid and ‘Old Tutor, New Tutor’ by Arthur Mandal.

The cover images are by Nicholas Royle and the design, as ever, is by John Oakey of John Oakey Design, whom we thank for all his hard work. ‘Fabrication’ is Alison Reid’s second Nightjar, while Megan Taylor had a story in The Invisible Collection. The other writers featured this time are all new to Nightjar and we are very excited to publish all of them.

Even though Royal Mail have hiked their prices yet again – a first class stamp went up from £1.35 to £1.65 in October – our postal charges have remained the same. We use Royle Mail where we can, to save money and because we like a long walk, and we are becoming increasingly creative with packaging materials.

Thanks, as always, to excellent printers H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

We have not joined the exodus from Twitter – although clearly it’s not as fun and nice as it was – and it’s there you’re likely to find occasional offers and competitions, as well as on Instagram. Please get in touch to enquire about ten-title subscriptions, which offer a small saving over ordering via the website and mean you never miss out.

The first new titles of 2024 come as a pair. In other words, there are two of them. They are ‘The Junction’ by Alison Moore and ‘Removals’ by Ian Critchley. The cover images are by Nicholas Royle and the design, as ever, is by John Oakey of John Oakey Design, whom we thank for all his hard work. Alison Moore’s story is her fifth Nightjar and Ian Critchley’s is his first.

Readers who had been advised that author signatures were being phased out might be confused by the presence of author signatures in these publications. They are the last ones and had already been signed before the decision was taken, late last year.

It has become something of a tradition to have a bit of a moan here about Royal Mail – their ever-rising prices, the expensive gamble that posting overseas has now become etc – and, while we at Nightjar Press love innovation, we also respect tradition. If you order both new titles and they arrive in separate envelopes, you might think we have lost our minds. We might have done, but there is actually a good reason for sending ‘The Junction’ and ‘Removals’ separately and that reason is 90p. It costs £2.40 to send them in a single envelope and £1.50 to send them in two separate envelopes. Best of all is if you are in London or Manchester and we can deliver via Royle Mail instead. The cost to you, of Royle Mail, remains the same, while to us it is incalculable. But we like a good walk.

Thanks, as always, to our excellent printers, H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

We persevere with Twitter. Look out for occasional offers and competitions. Ditto on Instagram. Please get in touch to enquire about subscriptions, which work out slightly cheaper and mean you never miss a title.

Did Darwin not say that it was neither the strongest nor the most intelligent that survives, but the one most adaptable to change? He may not have been talking about small press publishers, but still. There have been some changes here at Nightjar Press. Gone is the cover quote. They don’t use cover quotes in French publishing and we are big admirers of French publishing, alors, au revoir to the cover quote. It was a time-consuming stage in the process that did not add a great deal, we realised, and so we have tweaked the cover design so subtly that, had we not mentioned it here, you would not know we had cut it out. Thank you, as ever, to John Oakey of John Oakey Design for that and all the rest of his hard work.

We are publishing three pairs of new titles. The first pair – ‘Let’s Hang Out’ by Charlotte Turnbull and ‘Hole’ by Robert Stone – are out now, squeezing into the dying days of November, with covers by Leah Leaf. It’s Robert’s third story for Nightjar, but Charlotte’s first. Welcome, Charlotte. The other two pairs – ‘Signals’ by Amanda Huggins and ‘The Judgment’ by Tim Cooke, and ‘The Little Ghost’ by Giselle Leeb and ‘Snowdrops’ by Cliff McNish – are officially published in December, but what the hell. They are also available now. It’s Cliff’s second appearance, but the first time we have published Amanda, Tim or Giselle, who are not likely to be strangers to Nightjar readers.

Another change: in the light of the climate crisis, it has become impossible to justify the amount of travel required to secure author signatures. The few times we used courier services to transport Nightjars, boxes were mishandled and contents damaged, so there was a certain amount of moving boxes around the country by private car, where the option of rail travel was either too challenging or unavailable. We considered inserts, book plates, changing the way we print etc, but we were not excited by any of these alternatives. We are therefore phasing out the author signatures. Two pairs out of the three new pairs of titles are signed – as is a pair of titles due to be published in January – but one pair of titles is unsigned, as all of our new titles will be after January 2024. What we are excited about is the possibility of becoming more international, by publishing more writers based overseas.

Having said that, Royal Mail continue to make life interesting by increasing charges, for both inland and international post, with bewildering frequency and to eye-watering levels. We are keeping our p&p charges the same, for now, while becoming increasingly innovative with packaging and using our bespoke personal service – Royle Mail – wherever possible, eg Manchester and London and occasionally elsewhere.

Thanks to our excellent printers, H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

We are still on Twitter, in spite of the best efforts of Elon Musk & the Sexbots to make us go away. Look out for occasional offers and competitions there and on Instagram. Please get in touch to enquire about subscriptions.

It is our great pleasure to announce four new stories from authors all new to Nightjar, but by no means new to publishing. Jim Gibson made a splash last year with his debut collection, The Bygones (Tangerine Press). His story – ‘A Symbol of a Memory’ – is paired with ‘Styx’ by novelist, poet, musician and Brixton Review of Books columnist Will Eaves. Best known, perhaps, as a poet and non-fiction writer, Jean Sprackland showed with her contributions to Ellipsis 1 (Comma Press, 2005) what an excellent short story writer she is; ‘Death Cookies’ offers further evidence. Cynan Jones is well known for writing outstanding short novels, but, as a past winner of the BBC National Short Story Award, he is no stranger to the short story. His ‘Stock’ was commissioned as a creative response to the work of the Narrating Rural Change network, but is published in the first instance by Nightjar.

Thank you, as ever, to John Oakey of John Oakey Design. John designs and typesets all our publications. Without him we could not function. Any technical issues with the website will be down to the technical deficiencies of the publisher, who wishes to thank his daughter, Bella Royle, for bailing him out again with invaluable help at the last minute. He much prefers taking the photographs that often appear on the covers – including these four new images – to wrestling with the website. Thanks, as always, to our excellent printers, H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

We still send off international orders without any degree of confidence that they will arrive in one piece, if at all. To increase the chances of success in this area, we now routinely visit the Post Office and get a tracking number for orders going overseas. 

Elon Musk has had a good go at ruining Twitter but we persevere with it. If you're persevering with it, too, look out for occasional offers and competitions.

Uploading these new releases on the afternoon that Liz Truss resigned as UK Prime Minister, it occurred to us that we have published more stories this year than there have been Tory leadership elections – although not by many. Had we been able to publish yesterday, we could have wished Maxim Jakubowski a happy birthday. Let’s wish him one anyway – and many more to come. His story – ‘The Photographer’ – is paired with ‘The Birthday Presence’ by DF Lewis, making a most welcome return from reviewing fiction to writing it. Although fans of his ‘gestalt real-time’ reviews should be reassured that he continues to produce them, prodigiously. Indeed, we hope he will review his own Nightjar story alongside the other new titles. 

Let Andrew Hook’s new story be a warning to drivers who look away for too long – like careless film actors – from the view through their windscreen. His ‘Throttle Body’ is paired with ‘Imber’, an unsettling debut short story by musician and music journalist DH Thomas. 

Thank you, as always, to John Oakey of John Oakey Design. John is the designer and typesetter of all our publications. Without him we could not function. Any technical issues with the website will be down to the technical deficiencies of the publisher, who took the photographs that provide the four cover images. Thanks, as ever, to our excellent printers, H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

We still send off international orders without any degree of confidence that they will arrive in one piece, or at all. To increase the chances of success in this area, we now tend to visit the Post Office and get a tracking number for each order going overseas. We will continue to monitor the situation as we very much want to continue to accept international orders, if possible.

Follow us on Twitter for occasional special offers and relief from the ongoing nightmare.

The plan had been to publish two pairs in spring and two pairs in summer, but various things got in the way and here we are, publishing four pairs in summer. We think they’re worth waiting for and we hope you do, too.
 
We couldn’t choose between David Bevan’s two stories – ‘The Golden Frog’ and ‘The Bull’ – so we decided to publish them both, together. They share more than just their author. Joanne Done and Douglas Thompson contribute eerie crime stories – ‘Medlar’ and ‘The Dissolving Man’ – with a difference. During lockdown, the hospitality sector shut down; the protagonists of Françoise Harvey’s ‘Guest’ and David Gaffney’s ‘The Country Pub’ might wish this were still the case. Pairing stories is a big part of what we are trying to do at Nightjar, so when the opportunity came along to publish a pair stories with the same title – ‘The Lake’ by Livi Michael and ‘The Lake’ by John Foxx – we didn’t hesitate.
 
Thank you, as ever, to John Oakey of John Oakey Design, who is the designer and typesetter of all our publications. Without him we would be unable to function. Bella Royle maintained the website during a transitional phase, and we are grateful to her; she has now handed over responsibility for that role to Nicholas Royle, so expect website chaos from here on in. Thanks, also, to our excellent printers, H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 

The cover images for three of these pairs of titles were taken by Nicholas Royle, but the images for the two stories by David Bevan are details of photographs by writer and photographer Maya Sharp. David Bevan and Maya Sharp – and Joanne Done, for that matter – are all recent graduates of the MA Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

For the last year or so, as many international customers will know, we have been experiencing enormous difficulties with sending orders overseas. Well, sending is fine. We send them – and they disappear, or they come back, or they are delayed in Customs in Chicago for three months, or they arrive in pieces in a plastic bag. We have had to replace a lot of lost orders. This is not the fault of international customers, of course. If only we did know whose fault it was. Brexit – that nightmarish own goal scored jointly by David Cameron and 52% of voters in the referendum – is partly to blame, but not wholly, as the problem is not confined to Europe. We considered restricting sales to the UK from now on, but couldn’t quite bring ourselves to take that step, so for now we trudge on, into the further reaches of the unknown.
 
Please get in touch (see About page) to find out about our ten-issue subscription offer or to request a discount on bulk orders. Do check Twitter for special offers and fun stuff.

​There’s no novelty gift, paper hat or bad joke, and they don’t go bang, but these further two new pairs of stories could become exciting additions to your yuletide festivities. Ideally there would have been a longer gap between the three pairs released last week and these new stories. Last week’s releases were, regrettably, late. The last thing we want is for readers to feel pressure to buy when funds might not be plentiful. Partly for this reason – and partly because M John Harrison’s last Nightjar story sold out in a couple of days, frustrating some regular readers who were unable to get copies – his new story, ‘English Heritage’, and its partner publication, Claire Deane’s ‘Middleton Sands’, is each published in an edition of 300. We’re delighted to welcome back both Mike and Claire.
 
We are equally delighted to welcome back Robert Stone, with his very fine ‘Spoon’, and to introduce, for the first time in Nightjar, Cliff McNish, whose story, ‘The Periphery’, you will want to place right at the centre of your Christmas reading.
 
We thanked them only last week, but however many times we thank John Oakey of John Oakey Design, the designer and typesetter of all our publications, and Bella Royle, for maintaining and updating this website, it could never be enough. Merry Christmas to them and to everyone at H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith, and to all Nightjar readers and writers.

Better late than never – these three – yes, three! – pairs of new stories were meant to be published in November, but various things went wrong or got in the way. Here are five writers who are new to Nightjar and one returning to the press with his third story for us. Christopher Burns’ previous Nightjar titles were ‘Lexicon’ and ‘The Numbers’; the author of ‘A Visit to the Bonesetter’, he is partnered with Jordan Harrison-Twist and ‘A Few Alterations’.
 
Ben Tufnell and David Frankel both know the art world. Their paired stories – ‘On Mirrors’ and ‘Return’ – are graced with cover illustrations by the late, great book-cover artist John Holmes. Book collectors might recongise these images from the covers of 1969 Panther editions of novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Ivy Compton-Burnett. We are very grateful to John Holmes’s family for permission to reproduce them and to Johnny Mains for putting us in touch.
 
Shirley Stephenson (‘Bat Walk’) and Justine Bothwick (‘Static’) have each gained an MA in creative writing, from York St John and Manchester Metropolitan universities respectively. This pair of stories was originally supposed to appear some time ago (‘Static’, optimistically, has ‘March 2021’ on its imprint page) but lockdowns and travel restrictions presented insurmountable difficulties.
 
Thank you, as ever, to John Oakey of John Oakey Design, who is the designer and typesetter of all our publications, and to Bella Royle, for updating this website. Without them we would be unable to function. Thanks, also, to the ultra-reliable and delightful H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 
 
Please get in touch (see About page) to find out about our ten-issue subscription offer or to request a discount on bulk orders. Do check Twitter for special offers and fun stuff.
 
One reason why the delayed publication of these three pairs of stories is frustrating is that it means there will be considerably less of a gap between them and any surprises we might have planned for Christmas…

Only a month has gone by since we published a pair of stories by Melissa Wan and Ailsa Cox and yet here we are again, with two pairs of new releases. We just couldn’t wait any longer.
 
We are thrilled to be publishing a new short story by playwright David Rudkin and are grateful to Gareth Evans and Jack McNamara for putting us in touch with David, whose story, ‘The Keeper’, is paired  with ‘Tower Block Ghost Story’ by TSJ Harling, a somewhat newer author we are equally excited to welcome to the list.
 
Imogen Reid came to our attention thanks to the wonderful Gordian Projects who in 2018 published her Losing Track fiction/script/essay hybrid, which has just been reprinted. Her new story, ‘The Elevator’, is paired with ‘Two Degrees of Freedom’ by novelist Simon Okotie. We’re excited to be publishing these two authors and in particular these two stories, as we are interested in exploring further the mysterious territory where the uncanny story and experimental fiction intersect, or overlap, or whatever it is they might do. We imagine that Giles Gordon, whose fiction ranged from traditional ghost stories to boldly innovative experimental writing, might have approved.
 
Thank you to John Oakey of John Oakey Design, who is the designer and typesetter of all our publications, and to Bella Royle, for updating this website and keeping the show on the road. Thanks, also, to the always-reliable H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 
 
Please get in touch (see About page) to find out about our ten-issue subscription offer or to request a discount on bulk orders. Do check Twitter for special offers and fun stuff.

As cautious optimism takes the country in the gentlest of holds – you could hardly call it a grip – it is our pleasure to announce a new pair of Nightar releases, ‘Cocky Watchman’ by Ailsa Cox and ‘This Must Be Earth’ by Melissa Wan. Both authors, one the world’s first professor of short fiction and the other a new writer with a handful of stories to her name, are appearing in Nightjar for the first time with new stories set in the north-west of England.
 
Thank you to John Oakey of John Oakey Design, who is the designer and typesetter of all our publications. A huge thank-you to Claire Dean who designed and maintained the website for more than ten years and a warm welcome to Bella Royle, who has kindly agreed to take over that role. Thanks, also, to the always-reliable H&H Reeds Printers Ltd of Penrith. 
 
Please get in touch (see About page) to find out about our ten-issue subscription offer or to request a discount on bulk orders. Do check Twitter for special offers and fun stuff.