Demonic adversaries are never far from us

Well ... I can safely say that the monstrous adversaries we created in THE DEVIL’S ROCK will shortly be back. I've now received official notification regarding a sequel to the movie, which hopefully may be made as early as next year.

It's too early to give any details of course, but the first installment continues to do well and to attract plenty of publicity, so the second one will have much the same atmosphere, though it will be bigger in so many ways. I have the first draft synopsis in front of me as we speak courtesy of director Paul Campion, and though I’m sorely tempted to give some of it away, I can’t. Just trust me when I tell you that it contains some amazing ideas, which on camera will be quite fantastic.

I received a very nice fillip the other day, when a friend’s daughter came home and told her dad how her date had been waxing lyrical about a new movie he’d just seen – THE DEVIL’S ROCK – without knowing anything about our connection to it. Thanks to Steve and Becky Lockley for passing on that pleasant little gem. These sorts of developments are small, but they helps you realise, more than anything else, that your work is out there and being appreciated by the masses.

Unfortunately, in the case of THE DEVIL’S ROCK, it’s being appreciated in ways that it shouldn’t be – in less pleasing news last week, I was given a figure totalling how many sales we’ve now lost as a result of illegal downloading.

I’m not going to repeat the figure here, but it’s astonishing. This is the first time that movie piracy has ever hit me in the pocket personally. I know the temptation when there are so many online facilities for free access for new movies, to just press a button and settle back – but I’d urge fans to think twice about this. Don’t be lulled into assuming that everyone involved in the movie industry is stonking rich and can easily absorb the losses. Most are just hard-working folk whose earnings, which are rarely as extravagant as the public may believe, depend on the product they’ve laboured on for so many months performing well in the market place.


But now to more edifying matters (as the image on the left amply illustrates).

You’ll notice that I’ve sprinkled this week’s blog with new images of THE DEVIL’S ROCK. These are the latest posters being utilised to promote the film in territories where we’ve yet to take root. (Ignore the top one – that’s a generic if impressive image from an original medieval window, which I craftily used to make you think that a Satan-inspired Armageddon is upon us – heh heh heh!).

I reckon all these new posters are pretty cool. They take a very different approach to the ones we used when selling the movie in the UK, the US and New Zealand, though yet again I see that we’ve managed to incorporate an image of Gina Varela in ‘murderous minx’ mode – well, there’s no sense pretending this movie is something it isn’t.

In news unrelated to my movie endeavours, KING DEATH , my impending short novella from Spectral Press, is due to be released later next month. Apparently it was scheduled for publication in December, but it sounds as if the product is already virtually sold out. Simon Marshal-Jones, the man behind Spectral Press, advises me that only four copies remain unsold. Check out the link to his blog for further info. KING DEATH features devils of a different sort as Rodric, a vagrant knight crosses an England so devastated by the Black Death that the lines between horrible reality and hideous fantasy appear to have blurred.

Peter Tennant, reviewing the novella in BLACK STATIC, says of it:

King Death is a well told tale, engendering the necessary shudders for the reader and with an ending you don't quite see coming but which, in retrospect, seems entirely appropriate and to have much of poetic justice about it. Vonnegut would have approved.

In other non-movie news, the next volume in my TERROR TALES OF … anthology adventure is well under way to production. I’ve had a lot of fun these last two weeks sorting out the anecdotal ‘true tales of terror’ which I intend to become a trademark of this series. Already I’ve had several responses to TERROR TALES OF THE LAKE DISTRICT (also available from Amazon) focussing in particular on these anecdotes, which the readers in question say they’ve found fascinating and ghoulish in equal measure. The district I’ve chosen for the next volume seems to prove the old adage that still waters really do run deep. On the surface it’s as peaceful and picturesque as they come, but down below, in the depths of its history and folklore, there is a world of chaos and horror that would astound modern-day visitors. Of course, it isn’t just the anecdotes – we’ve also recruited some excellent writers who even now are busy scratching out their fatal fictions.

I’m not going to reveal any more at this stage – not until you’re all salivating! – but here’s another clue: the original of the demonic image at the top of this blog is located there. Yes, this is definitely a space to keep watching.