Maelstrom 2010 - 2020
As long-time readers know, Maelstrom was my publishing imprint through Thunderstorm Books.
Paul Goblirsch and I founded Maelstrom a decade ago with a simple mission statement — each year we would produce three books: a novel length work by me, a novella length work by me, and a novel length work by an author that I thought more readers should know about. And over the years we did just that, shining a spotlight on authors such as Rachel Autumn Deering, Chesya Burke, Michael T, Huyck Jr., John Goodrich, Livia Llewellyn Bracken Macleod, Geoff Cooper, John Urbancik, and many more. You can click here to see a gallery of them all.
For seven years, we never missed a package. Then I got injured and nearly killed in 2018, and then Paul had some stuff happen, and that knocked us off schedule, but we got back on schedule late last year.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Paul and I talked about how both f us were feeling, and how our priorities were changing, and how both of us felt it was time to retire Maelstrom and build the next part of the future. We decided this for a couple of reasons.
The first reason was that Paul didn’t need me to help find new authors anymore. Probably more so than any other limited edition hardcover publishing small press, Paul has his pulse on the up-and-comers in this genre. There have been many times in the past two years, where I considered someone for Maelstrom, and then suggested it only to find out that Paul was already aware of them and going to publish them. That is a great thing.
The second reason was because we wanted to make room for new imprints, like the just announced Jeff Strand Gleefully Macabre imprint, and Mary SanGiovanni’s Tempest (which Paul is prouder of than anything he’s ever published).
And finally, I wanted to ease up on myself. In the last year, I’ve gotten my groove back, as far as writing and output goes, but at the end of the day, I’m 52, and at 52, I don’t write as fast or as furiously as I did at 32 or even 42.
So…Paul and I agreed to end Maelstrom. We intended to announce it before the pandemic, but then we decided to wait until he was able to get Tempest primed and ready, and announce some other things (most of which you now have heard about).
There are two final books I had intended to release under the Maelstrom imprint — a novel by Errick Nunnally, and a biography of Ruby Jean Jensen by Regina Garza Mitchell. If the authors want, those books will still be published by Thunderstorm — just not under the Maelstrom imprint.
It’s also important to note that this does not mean I’ll no longer be publishing with Thunderstorm. Quite the contrary. Paul and I have big plans for the future — THE LABYRINTH series, and SUBURBAN GOTHIC, and a bunch of things I’m not allowed to tell you about yet. But for now, consider NEMESAI by myself and John Urbancik (which you can pre-order here) a sort-of Maelstrom coda.
My thanks to Paul Goblirsch and the rest of the Thunderstorm Books team for ten years of Maelstrom, and to all of the other authors and cover artists who participated in this then-new experiment, and to all the readers and collectors who bought the books.
— Brian Keene
