Thursday 27 February 2014

Tiny Windows

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” - Neil Gaiman.

Regular readers will know that the topic of short fiction, and especially it's relation to the horror genre, is close to my heart. So no surprise that I was so pleased to be asked to be the first interviewee on a new feature on the Horrifically Horrifying Horror blog called Tiny Windows; the brainchild of Anthony Cowin, it's a series of interviews on all features of short horror fiction. 



Saturday 15 February 2014

Coming Soon! (Well, soonish. Very ish.)

Delighted to announce that a new story, Dark Reflections, will be published as a standalone chapbook by Knightwatch Press in March 2015. It's part of a new series of horror chapbooks with some brilliant authors involved; the full line up so far is:

April 14: The Girl With The Dark Hair - Sean Page
July 14: The Night Just Got Darker - Gary McMahon
Sept 14: The Offering - Alison Littlewood
Dec 14: The Final Cut - Jasper Bark
Mar 15: Dark Reflections - James Everington
June 15: ???? - Christine Morgan

... with more to follow after that. Full details on Theresa Derwin's announcement here.


Tuesday 11 February 2014

Some Recent Horror Recommendations...

Three recent horror novels that I've read; all very different but similar in the fact that I ruddy loved them.


Alan Ryker latest release is an early contender for my favourite book of 2014, and one of the best books I've read from Darkfuse (which is saying something!) Dream Of The Serpent is a story about Cody Miller, who suffers a horrifying accident at work. During his recovery he has vivid dreams about what his life would have been like if he'd not been so horrifically burnt... Very vivid dreams. I won't describe any more of the plot so as to not ruin it, but I will say this is one of those books where the twists completely blew me away. And plot-twists there are - this book does indeed writhe like a serpent. An original, ambitious, compulsively readable book that deserves your time. 

This is a “children’s horror book” – I'm not sure exactly what age ranged this is aimed at, but I do know my twelve year old self would have loved this. And my thirty-seven year old self thought it was pretty neat as well. An interesting, alternative-world take on the vampire story – Ben is transported from our world to a one which seems almost the same but where vampirism is normal, and the non-vampires are the outcasts. What follows is a fast-paced adventure as Ben finds out more about the society of the vampires , and there’s some pleasingly disturbing scenes towards the end which some parents will no doubt hate and kids love. Well worth your time even if you don’t normally read children’s fiction.

The Elementals – Michael McDowell
I read this book because of a Facebook conversation where I somewhat flippantly posted that I couldn't think of a decent horror author who wasn't also a decent short story writer. Gary Fry and Gary McMahon both suggested Michael McDowell as proof otherwise, and recommended this as his best book. And Amazon were selling a second-hand copy for 1p so I couldn't really back-out of seeing if they were right… 
And they were; The Elementals is a subtle, slow-burn horror novel; a Southern gothic about the rich Savage family on holiday at their summer home on the Alabama pan-handle. It builds up slowly, almost lazily, as befits a story of characters lethargic in the intense heat around them. This mode is punctuated, for them and us, by moments that hint at the hostile forces building up around them. The book switches gear in its final third, as events speed up and become positively hellish. You realise how cleverly McDowell has constructed the house of cards he has been building in the earlier chapters, and how brutal he is going to be in knocking it down.