I’m thrilled to announce that Ellen Datlow has acquired her first novella for the Tor.com imprint. Coming in 2016, Victor LaValle’s novella The Ballad of Black Tom is a chilling tale in the Cthulhu mythos, set in Brooklyn and Harlem in the early 20th century. Ellen Datlow, winner of the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and many others, has been a consulting editor for Tor.com for 2013, and we’re thrilled to have her bring such a fantastic book to us.
From Ellen Datlow:
“I’ve been a fan of Victor LaValle’s fiction for several years, being dazzled by his novels Big Machine and The Devil in Silver, so it’s with great delight that I’m privileged to be working with him on The Ballad of Black Tom.”
From Victor LaValle:
“I’m incredibly happy to be part of Tor’s novella program, and to be working with Ellen Datlow as my editor. The Ballad of Black Tom was written, in part, during the latest round of arguments about H.P. Lovecraft’s legacy as both a great writer and a prejudiced man. I grew up worshipping the guy so this issue felt quite personal to me. I wanted to write a story set in the Lovecraftian universe that didn’t gloss over the uglier implications of his worldview. I also wanted it to be a hell of a lot of cosmic doom-filled fun.”
