2012: Looking Back...

So, 2012.

Like everyone else I guess, my year was one of ups and downs, small triumphs and minor setbacks. Writing is an odd thing, emotionally, because it provides an alternative set of feelings running alongside whatever is happening in 'real-life': struggling with a story can sour on an otherwise sweet day (if you let it) but conversely during times when everything seems to be the same shade of shite writing can be a refuge, a source of achievement when nothing else seems to be.

But anyway, here's some personal writing highlights from the year just ending:

Being Asked To Provide A Story For Off The Record 2:

At some point in May I got a mail from Luca Veste asking if I'd like to contribute a story to his charity anthology Off The Record 2. That might not sound hugely dramatic but this was the first time ever that someone had got in touch and asked me for a story just like that - I like your stuff and I want you to write something for me. Quite a thrill, and doubly so from someone with as many writer's names in his address book as Luca. Predictably, he pulled together a great collection of stories and I'm chuffed to be a small part of it.

Edgelit 2012:
I'd never attended a convention before, so Edgelit was a first for me. Books, books (beer) and more books - what's not to like? From one of the workshops I came away with a piece of flash fiction called The Men Who Value Everything In Money which I revised on the train journey home, and it is to be published soonish by the editor of a magazine that I met on the day (more details soon hopefully). I'm a bit disappointed with myself for not talking to more people whilst I was there, but that social failing was my fault not Edgelit's (and one I feel in any social situation involving strangers). But I enjoyed ever minute of the day nonetheless and will definitely be back.

Penny Dreadnought Anthology 1:
Sod the Mayans - the Abominable Gentlemen know when the world will really end, because it will be our fault. The first Penny Dreadnought anthology looks great and having my stories sitting alongside those by my fellow Horsemen Alan Ryker, Aaron Polson and Iain Rowan was a real high-point of my year. But it's nothing compared to Stage 2 of our plans...

Selling A Few Books...
This year I actually started selling a decent amount of books. Not a life changing amount, at least not in the financial sense. But the knowledge that thousands (low thousands, but still) of people have now read some of my stories or at least intend to is life changing in a sense, because I never would have dared hope for such a thing even this time last year.

Writing Drones:
But the sales and the money, the little boosts to my ego and the low-level insecurities I've revealed above aren't really the important thing. The important thing is the writing, the stories. I'm using Drones (which was published in Sirens Call) as an example, but really this one is for everything I wrote this year. Drones just stands out because of how it was written - all in one go, one Sunday morning whilst I was still drowsy with sleep. And by the time the coffees had kicked in and I was fully awake there was a new story on the paper in front of me. It hadn't existed before, but now it did, flaws and all.

And that's the best feeling in writing, whatever the damn year.

(Yet More) Favourite Books Of 2012

So... If you're playing catch up,I wrote this post on Luca Veste's site listing my favourite books published in 2012, and this post  listing the favourite novels and anthologies I read in 2012 regardless of when they came out.

Finally, I've done the same things for novellas short story collections below...

Short Story Collections

Just Behind You - Ramsey Campbell

Welcome To The Underworld - I.F. Rowan

From Dark Places - E.J. Newman

Martyrs & Monsters -  Robert Dunbar

Worse Than Myself - Adam Golaski

Novellas/Individual Stories

The Mill - Mark West

They're Waiting - Tony Rabig

The Death Trip - Marion Stein

In The Skin - Gary McMahon

Sandy DeLuca - Death Moon

(More) Favourite Books Of 2012

When Luca Veste asked me for my Top 5 Books Of 2012, I picked my favourite books published in 2012. Because this ruled out plenty of good books I read this year, I thought I'd do a couple of follow on posts - this week some more of the favourite novels and anthologies I read this year, and next week the same for novellas and short story collections.

Novels:

Knock Knock - S.P. Miskowski

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

Claire Obscure - Billie Hinton

Black Flowers - Steve Mosby

Dark Matter - Michelle Paver

Anthologies/Magazines:

House Of Fear

A Book Of Horrors

Off The Record

The Weird

Supernatural Tales

Very quickly: you should all head over to this post on Luca Veste's Guilty Conscience site, where I reveal my favourite 5 books published in 2012. (I'll be doing a list of my favourite books & stories I read in 2012 on here at some point.)

Okay, as you were.

Strange Story #19: The Beautiful Stranger

Strange Story #19: The Beautiful Stranger
Author: Shirley Jackson
Collected In: Come Along With Me
Anthologised In: The Dark Descent

What might be called the first intimation of strangeness occurred at the railway station...

For me, the best of Shirley Jackson's novels and short stories are among the very best the genre has to offer. (Frustratingly, not all her books are easily available in the UK, although I believe Penguin is rectifying that in 2013.) The Lottery is by far her most famous story but she wrote many others equally as good if not better. The Beautiful Stranger is one such tale, a mini-masterpiece in a few thousand words. Warning: it's hard to describe without spoilers.

It begins with the words I quoted above, but then proceeds to describe a rather mundane, humdrum situation: a wife waiting at a train station for her husband, who is returning from a work trip to Boston. Margaret is slightly worried because she argued with John before they parted, but other than that everything seems normal. (Jackson is always spot on when writing about families and their interactions.)

But back at home, Margaret looks at John and thinks:

Who? .... Is he taller? That is not my husband.

The story describes Margaret's conviction that the man who has returned from Boston is not her husband, (despite his acting the same, speaking the same, dressing the same) but the beautiful stranger of the title. Beautiful - for this isn't a body-snatcher tale of paranoia and fear; Margaret doesn't want the man to be her husband. And whether he is or not (somehow it almost seems a moot point to the story itself) there does seem to be a genuine relief and happiness felt by Margaret; a genuine, albeit small, realignment of their marriage that was perhaps troubled. How could that be, if 'John' wasn't actually the same person? But then, how could it be if he was? 

It is he reader, not Margaret, who is unnerved - how much of what is happening is in Margaret's head? Her own behaviour to 'John' changes when she thinks he is someone else; is that the cause of his supposed differences? Who changed first?

The ending of the story is troubling and ambiguous - it's probably no surprise that Margaret's new happiness was more fragile than she might have supposed. The last few sentences seem to hint at a whole different explanation for the proceeding events, without being quite clear what that explanation is. Certainly the tale as a whole seems to be a (feminist) warning about the dangers of living your life through and for other people and of the seductive danger of fantasy (many of Jackson's heroines are dreamers). But there's room for endless interpretations here, and endless rereading. It truly is one of those tales that can be read again and again; one that despite its short length is bottomless.

Review: Just Behind You - Ramsey Campbell

It's hard to know quite where to start reviewing a new collection of Campbell's short fiction (I say new - this came out in 2009). I must have read over a hundred of his stories by now and for a writer with such a distinctive style as Campbell's, that's bound to led to some slight diminishing returns, no matter the quality of the stories.

I suppose I started thinking along these lines because the first two stories in the book were somewhat disappointing; Fear The Dead being a second-rate rehash of previous Campbell ideas, and Digging Deep seeming to exist only as a means to getting to its weak punchline.

But then, just as the doubts were starting to set in, Campbell follows with two excellent tales - Double Room, a disturbing story of a man alone in a hotel room at night who starts hearing voices (I was initially worried it was going the same way my own The Other Room...). And then The Place Of Revelation which is even better, a homage to Machen's The White People (I think) - something genuinely new and intriguing in Campbell's fiction and one for any future 'best of'.

So the score at this point, two all.

Fortunately, most of the rest of the stories in the collection were better than the first two, with only a few others I didn't particularly care for. (I should say, even the weaker tales in the book are still well-written and interesting, second-rate Campbell still being better than a lot of writer's best work.) Amongst the most compelling were Unblinking, a disturbing story about an academic's jealous descent into madness; The Unbeheld; and the Lovecraft influenced Raised By The Moon.

My favourite story of all was the titular one, a typical Campbell master-class in making the mundane creepy. This is the kind of thing he does so well, something I'm sure most readers of this blog don't need to be told.

So despite some initial misgivings, Campbell's place in my own personal 'Top Five Horror Short Story Writers' chart has been retained. Just Behind You has just been re-released in paperback from PS Publishing (although I bought a snazzy signed copy of the limited hardback) and Campbell fans would be well advised to pick up a copy, along with the other new PS paperbacks.