Year One Wrap-Up

The leaves are falling, the skies are gray, and the heaters are struggling back to life, so it’s just about time for this traveling sideshow to pull up our stakes and fold down our tents for the season. The next six to eight weeks are what we in the internet business refer to as “garbage time,” so we’re gonna take a breather, huddle up with our blankets and puppies and cocoa, and start preparing for next year.

But first!

Thank you all so much for your support this year. This all started with half an idea in April, and, like any good carnival, involved a lot of duct tape and chewing gum along the way, but, with your unwavering support and looking-eyeball emojis, we turned out two pretty great books — and that’s not just us saying that. The first reviews are starting to come in, and everyone seems to love what we’ve put together.

Feel free to check out the Goodreadses for Open All Night and Greater Than His Nature to see the rest of the kind words pouring in, and add your own, too! If you’d like your own review copy, hit us up.

And, while we’re on the subject of how great all the anthology stories are, let’s also go ahead and consider this an awards eligibility post. If you are a person who votes on one of those, or makes reading lists, or whatever, please do consider all the amazing work in Greater Than His Nature and Open All Night. Use the link above or email us — CarnivalAtomic [at] gmail [dot] com — to get your hands on a copy.

If you’re not a reviewer or award-granter but would still like copies, well, then, say hello to …

The ACB Emergency Gift Pack

From now until December 1, 2023, all paperbacks ordered through our store will come nondenominationally gift-wrapped, and will include a blank holiday card and candy — aka the Atomic Carnival Books Emergency Gift Pack. Our way of wishing you a happy whatever you’ve got going on this winter season. Grab one for yourself, your friends and family, or just keep one stashed in your cubicle for when you totally forget you were supposed to get something for the office gift exchange.

We can guarantee that all orders received by Dec. 1 will be gift-wrapped and shipped by Dec. 2. After that, it’s the post office’s problem. That should be enough time for delivery by all the major holidays in the U.S., but, well, you’ve seen the world. There’s a very real chance we’re going to learn Godzillas are real in the next six weeks.

Open All Night is also available from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your local bookseller. Greater Than His Nature is also also available from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your local bookseller. Both books are distributed by Ingram, if that’s a thing they need to know.

And now, to end this year properly, gather round our crystal ball and let’s take a quick look into the future!

Atomic Carnival Books, Year Two

Things were very good this year, but, like that old Pedro Pascal meme, they could be better. So we’re going to spend the next six or so weeks figuring out a lot of things — our internet presence (i.e. whether selling our moral integrity to Twitter and Substack is really worth it), a possible website redesign, Moksha vs. Submittable vs. our bank accounts, and, of course, how hard we’re gonna keep leaning into the traveling circus shtick.

But! We do know our three titles for next year.

Eat the Rich: an Anti-Capitalist Anthology. Every story will include a millionaire/billionaire being literally eaten, by animals, cannibals, monsters, sentient buildings, whatever. Get gory, get gross, get weird, get vengeance.

Watch the Skies: an Alien Invasion Anthology. We’re gonna be looking for campy B-movie, extraterrestrial goodness like The Thing From Another World or Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Kill the Messenger: an Anthology of Bad News. The say bad news travels fast, so this is going to be a free e-book that we’re going to encourage people to give away, but, uh, beyond that, we’re still noodling.

When will submissions be open? We don’t know. Are we going to do one Kickstarter for next year, or one for each book? We don’t know. We’re still figuring out a lot of stuff, but we’ll hopefully have answers for you early in 2024.

In the meantime, if you want to get involved as a slush reader or maybe a co-editor—or if you’ve got any constructive feedback for us about our first year—please reach out at CarnivalAtomic [at] gmail [dot] com. If we learned anything this year, it’s that one man, no matter how handsome and talented, can’t run an entire circus all on his own.