Permuted Press: Making the Apocalypse Fun

It’s all very well to be critical of the output of publishers and movie studios, but sometimes some simple praise is needed. Permuted Press deserve some kudos for what they’ve been doing in recent times for horror fiction. Be they printed or ebooks, the releases from Permuted Press offer a different take on the apocalyptic fiction which has seeped into the horror genre over the past decade.

Zombies have been all the rage for a while now, but it’s very easy for zombies to be done badly, or even worse, just mediocre. Permuted Press have found a bunch of authors who take well-worn tropes of the horror and zombie genres and use them in new ways, be it in terms of storytelling, setting, character or theme.

Of course, the general central premise of a lot of their releases is the notion of a zombie apocalypse or something similar, but it’s how their authors deal with that very well-worn idea which sets them apart.

Be it in titles such as Z.A. Recht’s Plague Of The Dead, Jessica Meig’s The Becoming: Ground Zero, Sue Edge’s Dead Tropics, Gareth Wood’s Rise, Pavlov’s Dogs by D.L. Snell and Thom Brannan or any of their other titles, they offer something fresh for genre fans. That’s no mean feat in this day and age, where originality is something that a lot of genre releases are sorely lacking (come on, it’s true).

The consistent quality and ingenuity of their releases has got to a point where, whenever a book turns up to be reviewed from them, I know I’ll be in for something I haven’t seen before. Mind you, there are times when the premise of a title may initially seem a little hackneyed, but the handling of those stories is such that they feel fresh.

Granted, the titles aren’t perfect, but which ones are? You can’t please everybody, but Permuted Press are trying to do stuff which is different and exciting within a genre which is notoriously stuck in its ways. Hat’s off to them. They’re doing it right. If there’s a publisher you love, let us know in the comments and spread the word for the advancement of the genre and for greater enjoyment of the things we love.

Visit Permuted Press for their full range.