The Outcast Hours

The new anthology of original stories about night

Author

Jared Shurin
October 12, 2018

This news has been two years in the waiting.

“We live our lives in the daylight. Our stories take place under the sun: bright, clear, unafraid.”

This is not a book of those stories.

These are the stories of people who live at night; under neon and starlight, and never the light of day.

These are the stories of poets and police; writers and waiters; gamers and goddesses; tourists and traders; the hidden and the forbidden; the lonely and the lovers.

These are their lives. These are their stories. And this is their time: The Outcast Hours.

The Outcast Hours

Now try to imagine that in TRAILER GUY VOICE.

Or, better yet, try to imagine the amazingness of brand new stories from Marina Warner, China Miéville, Frances Hardinge, Will Hill, Sally Partridge, Jesse Bullington, Jeffrey Alan Love, Kuzhali Manickavel, Amira Salah-Ahmed, Cecilia Ekbäck, Celeste Baker, Karen Onojaife, Daniel Polansky, Genevieve Valentine, Indrapramit Das, Leah Moore, Sam Beckbessinger, Sami Shah, Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen, Yukimi Ogawa, Lavie Tidhar, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Genevieve Valentine, Maha Khan Phillips, William Boyle, S.L. Grey, M. Suddain and Omar Robert Hamilton.

Also a sexy cover by Sam Gretton.

Mahvesh and I are very proud of this beast. Outcast has been a while in the making; I think we began assembling it before Djinn was even published. The authors come from backgrounds in crime, romance, young adult, literature, horror, science fiction and fantasy - as well as journalism, comics, art and film. Outcast includes winners of major awards in a half-dozen different genres and categories, as well as a few 'first ever short story by...' contributions. Plus, if I'm counting correctly, it represents over a dozen different countries on six continents. Outcast tries to address a theme - 'night' - that's (literally) universal and deeply personal. Feeling out the edges requires a lot of different voices and approaches.

Assembling an anthology is always a gamble, and this one feels more high risk/high reward than most. No one will like all of it, but we're betting everyone could love some of it. That feels the right way around.

Anyway, if you liked Djinn - or if you like global writing, or differing takes on urban fantasy, or noir, or strange parables, or scary stories... or simply fancy yourself a night person. Give it a shot. The Outcast Hours publishes in February 2019, but pre-orders are worth their weight in gold.* 

*Not really. I think this is a fairly heavy book, and that'd be quite valuable. Let's not get carried away.

Rawther conveniently, the Museum of London are hosting an exhibition about London Nights. Inconveniently, it ends before The Outcast Hours is published, but we're still hopping on board with some sneaky preview content. On Friday, 26 October, Karen Onojaife and Will Hill be at the Museum's Late Night, helping out the 'Night London Council' with readings, interviews and a discussion of cities at night. The evening is free to attend, has lots of cool stuff going on, and we might even have some very, very, very early copies to give away.

Other events: I'm talking Literary Landscapes on 23 October at Lutyens & Rubinstein; I'll be doing something or another on 27 October at MCM ComicCon; I'll be speaking at the Self-Publishing Exchange on 3 November at King's College London; and I've got talks at both Oxford Brookes and (another part of) King's College London on the horizon. 

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