You may have heard about Syntagma Media’s short story collection, Naked Tales: Stories by Writers Who Blog, which is being put together by our Writers Blog Alliance. It will be published by Humdrumming early in 2007.

Another title from the Humdrumming list that caught my eye to share with you is a fantasy novel, More Than This by Senior Editor, Guy Adams. And, boy, does the synopsis make you want to read more. Judge for yourself:

More Than This, a novel by Guy Adams

Kiss me quick and squeeze me slow, there’s something amiss in the crumbling seaside resort of Gravestown: Children are vanishing and nobody can understand how.

Gregory Ashe watches them go, sees them hanging from their tatty ‘wanted’ pictures and the wilting bouquets of flowers left by well wishers. Like most thirteen year olds he feels it’s nothing to do with him, he’s far too busy with his face in a book and a head full of dreams.

Then, amongst the seaweed and shingle, a solitary foot is washed up and the violence begins.

Gravestown is infected. People are beginning to lose their minds, changing, becoming other. Blood is spilt, over and over and over…

Through it all the waves roll and, in the dark building on the cliff tops, the lunatics howl by the light of their moon.

Slowly the safe walls of reality are crumbling and it seems nobody can stop it.

Nobody that is except The Magician, a man who takes young Gregory under his wing and shows him how hollow those dreams of his really are, a man with more than just spare decks of cards hidden up his sleeve.

Gregory’s never been in so much danger …

A dark fantasy laced with humour and terror. More Than This is a fast paced journey from innocence to maturity, fear to hope, heaven to hell. Exciting, horrifying and filled with the sort of imagination, escapism and, above all, magic you remember from books you read as a child — magic you thought lost.

Buy it from here.