Another quality day with you know WHO!

One of the great pleasures of writing Doctor Who for Big Finish, who specialise in producing original, full-cast audio dramas for download or release on CD, is getting invited down to the studio at Ladbroke Grove to sit in, and sometimes lend the odd word of advice, while the final touches are being made to the finished production.

I’ve had this joy a couple of times now, meeting such luminaries of the greatest show in the galaxy as Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. Last month saw another memorable occasion when I was allowed access to the high-tech inner sanctum for the recording of my Fifth Doctor adventure, HEXAGORA.


Fifth Doctor Peter Davison has long been a fixture in my family’s professional life as my late-father wrote many scripts for him in the 1980s for All Creatures Great And Small. I personally had never met him until now, though I still remembered my Dad’s fond reminiscences of Peter as one of the nicest guys in show-business. Happily, I can confirm that this is true, but after having a good chat with Peter, and watching him in action at close-hand, I was even more bowled over by his professionalism and also by the affection and commitment to Doctor Who that he still has, even though he is surely one of the most in-demand actors around.

I was equally chuffed to meet Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, who as Tegan and Nyssa respectively provided the other members of that hugely popular and personable Tardis trio (all three of these personal heroes of mine are pictured above with yours truly, during a break in the recording). I felt as if I knew both ladies already, having seen so much of them on TV, but also given that their real life characters were a close match for their on-screen personas; Janet fiery and determined, Sarah gentle and laid-back.

I also had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Pearce, who has a star role in HEXAGORA, but who will be well remembered by fans of cult sci-fi as Servelan, the evil administrator who terrorised the space-trekking freedom fighters of Blake’s Seven back in the 1970s. She too was instantly recognisable to me, and nice as pie, and must have been a great coup for producer David Richardson when he was looking to cast.

HEXAGORA is another of Big Finish’s ‘Lost Stories’ series, and I developed and wrote it from a brief outline by Peter Ling and Hazel Adair. I can't say anything about it yet, except that it will be released in November. Watch this space for more news as I get it.

Ready to 'Rock'! But no 'Power' this week!

Well … THE DEVIL’S ROCK is at last finished!

Yep, all the grading work has now been completed at Peter Jackson’s Park Road post-production facility in Wellington (check out the classic plaque in the entrance hall, pictured above). The 16x9 pan and scan version for DVD release is also done and dusted. The final touches are being made to the EPK deliverables, and some cutting remains on the outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage for all the ‘making of’ items, but then we’re good to go.

One final thing – I’m being interviewed early next week, snippets of said footage to be included ‘somewhere’ on the eventual DVD/Blue-Ray etc. It sounds cool, but unfortunately means that I’m going to need to get my hair cut in the meantime, and all that after I was planning to let it get even shaggier and more unruly for at least another month.

Sadly, there are no official release dates available for THE DEVIL’S ROCK yet, but you chaps will be among the first to know when they’re out.

And now, on a slightly less upbeat note, there will unfortunately be no POWER OF THREE this week. My other life as a professional sports writer has been interfering to some tune over the last few days and will continue to do so at least until the weekend, so there’s simply no option – you folks are going to have to drink this Friday morning’s coffee while staring at a blank computer screen. Sorry about that, but normal service will be resumed next week, I promise.

BFS long list published and heads severed

I’m delighted and flattered to report that I have a number of my published works from last year on the official ‘long list’ for the British Fantasy Awards in 2011.

These will now be voted on by the membership of the British Fantasy Society, and a shortlist of final nominees will be drawn up in time for the award ceremony at FantasyCon in Brighton next September.

They are, in no particular order (and apologies if I’m repeating myself in these thumbnail synopses, but it’s for the newcomers, ya know - so please bear with me on that):


In the capacity of Best Novella …

Sparrowhawk – published as an independent title by Pendragon Press.

In the 1840s, an embittered Afghan War veteran is released from the debtor’s prison by a beautiful and mysterious woman, and hired to stand guard over a house in Bloomsbury for duration of the Christmas period. An unnatural cold then descends on London, and a deadly supernatural entity emerges from the frozen mist …

The Tatterfoal – published in One Monster Is Not Enough by Gray Friar Press

The son of a pop star who disappeared back in the 1980s is invited to a ‘Resurrection Party’ in the home of his estranged step-mother. He doesn’t want to go, not least because the house occupies a bleak fog-bound moor where legends persist that a weird and murderous man-horse stalks the night …

Walkers In The Dark – published in Walkers In The Dark by Ash-Tree Press

Students excavate for Viking gold in the bowels of a derelict monastery in a part of town now overrun by gangsters and drug-addicts. But the lowlives they inevitably meet in this dangerous urban jungle are nothing in comparison to the demonic forces they are about to unleash from the pagan past …


In the capacity of Best Short Fiction …

The Doom – published in The Black Book of Horror #6

A medieval mural depicting the horrors of Hell is uncovered in an old church, and soon starts to attract the wrong kind of interest …

Fathoms Green And Noisome – published in One Monster Is Not Enough

Cryptozoologists investigate a Welsh lake which is reputedly bottomless and the home of an indescribable creature. But a greater danger lies much closer to home …

The Green Bath – published in The Black Book of Horror #7

A sexually active couple hire a Cornish cottage for the week, but the husband soon finds himself besotted by the almost impossibly alluring lady next door …


In the capacity of Best Collection …

One Monster Is Not Enough – published by Gray Friar Press
Walkers In The Dark – published by Ash-Tree Press


I’m also proud to have had stories published in the following horror anthologies, which have been listed in the capacity of Best Anthology: The Black Book of Horror #6; The Black Book of Horror #7; Where The Heart Is; Zombie Apocalypse.

But of course it’s not just about me (which you could easily be forgiven for thinking with the way I sometimes go on). The full ‘long list’ contains many other works by friends and rivals of mine inside the genre. To check it out in its entirety, go to:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dEhyMFVVZ3JzTUh4S0JKM2JxYzdQY3c6MQ#gid=0

On a completely different subject, but as a treat, I’m illustrating this post with Paul Mudie's cover art for The Black Book of Horror #8, which will be published in the near future (alas, I can’t give you an exact date). It portrays a pile of severed heads, each one belonging to one of the contributing authors. Yours truly is located in the bottom right-hand corner. But I wonder how many other wordsmiths of woe you can spot?

The Power of Three - 21st Installment

Yes, it's THAT time of the week again. It's Friday morning and it's coffee time, but don't settle down. With luck you'll soon be writhing uncomfortably as this latest trio of offerings resurrects memories you'd thought thankfully buried.

Again, this threesome was chosen entirely at random. There are no conscious connections between these choices - please don't try to tell me that there's some kind of 'girl power' thing going on here, because there honestly isn't. Not deliberately, anyway. The only real link between these three is that they are all very fine horror stories indeed and occupy prominent positions among my personal list of 'the best ever'.



Madelein by Roger Johnson

An author’s secretary makes a research trip to the Eastern Europe on a quest for the truth about ‘Bloody Countess’ Elizabeth Bathory. Friends at home only learn about her progress through regular letters, though these become increasingly bizarre and scary.

You wouldn’t have thought it difficult to weave an atmosphere of menace around the true tale of Elizabeth Bathory, who tortured and murdered over 600 young women and bathed in their blood. Yet numerous authors have tried with mixed results. However, Roger Johnson here uses the grim reality of ‘Countess Dracula’ as the backdrop for a very special story indeed. The trick is that, rather than making it purely an essay in gore, he delves deeply into the mysterious. His ill-fated heroine, Valerie, is a dreamer from the start, an idealistic lesbian who has never found true love in England. However, once she’s left the orderly, buttoned up society of pre-war London, the real world quickly seems to fall away from her. Her letters, the device through which Johnson allows us to monitor her progress, are a touch of genius, keeping us guessing every inch of the way, but constantly hinting that Valerie – increasingly starry-eyed, we imagine – is falling in with the wrong crowd and getting ever deeper into truly terrible danger. The final turn of this supernatural screw is as ghastly as they come.

First published in THE GIANT BOOK OF GHOST STORIES, 1991.


Spring-Fingered Jack by Susan Casper

A businessman makes nightly visits to a tawdry arcade, where he plays the ‘Jack the Ripper’ game but constantly fails to kill enough prostitutes or mutilate them in the correct fashion within the time allowed. Frustrated, he decides that only practise will make perfect.

You have a bad feeling where this one is going to lead right from the start, but that doesn’t make it any the less a horribly perceptive comment on the low forms of entertainment that folk will sometimes seek – maybe even folk like us, who read gruesome stories – and the potential this has for creating even more mindless carnage in our society. The interesting thing is that this story was written way back in 1983, long before almost every teenage boy in the western world had developed an unhealthy obsession with the screen in the corner of his bedroom, where fantasy lifestyles filled with limitless amounts of violence and profanity, and of course lacking any consequences, moral or otherwise, could be lived out as if they were actually real. In that respect, Ripper expert Susan Casper was making a very eerie prediction. The worrying irony is, she thought that she was writing a horror story about an improbable game that no-one would ever be irresponsible enough to invent, let alone play – she probably had no idea that all of this, and worse, would soon come true.

First published in FEARS (pictured), 1983.


Grauer Hans by Helen Grant

In a rural town in western Germany, a little girl is troubled by the regular appearance of a mythical night-goblin at her bedroom window. Is he real or is he a dream? The terror only ends when she moves to Britain. However, in later life, when she has her own daughter to look after, she moves back to the same old house.

This is a simple tale, but it is nonetheless evocative and chilling. In essence it concerns the relationship between an innocent child and a character from fairy tale, who, as the child grows older and more angst-written, slowly transforms into something malevolent. There is a masterly progression of thought in this piece. When we’re very young, we feel perfectly safe in the bosom of our family. The horrors of the real world, even though they may only just be outside our bedroom window, are no threat to us. But when we become parents ourselves it’s a different ballgame. We try to keep unpleasant reality from our young, but it often takes everything we’ve got, and if we fail the cost may be catastrophic. But there are other potent forces at work here: hints of vampires, not to mention the Brothers Grimm and their fables, which deep down were also grim metaphors for real life. Further proof, if it were needed, that dark truths and even darker fears live on in the guise of fairy tales.

First published in SHADES OF DARKNESS, 2008

I'm about to get MEDI-EVIL on your ass!

It’s difficult not to be impressed by some of the sales figures being reported from the ebook market – I say ‘some’ of course, because I know that isn’t the story across the board – but I’ve now made the decision to test the water myself.

In the next few weeks I’ll be releasing three volumes of my historical stories and novellas in ebook format (with a possible print-on-demand facility for those who still aren’t so sure about the electronic medium). The series will be called Medi-Evil, though it won’t be set exclusively in the Middle Ages. Over the years I’ve written in and about almost every period of history, so I’ll be including tales from as far apart in the past as the Romans and the Victorians.

As usual, there will be a strong emphasis on fantasy and horror, but those who know me will also know that I pride myself on getting details right and creating an authentic atmosphere. For example, I like my medieval streets to be narrow and crowded, and strewn with festering offal. I like my medieval castles to be dark, smoky and filled with drunken knights and cackling prostitutes. I like my battles to be explosively violent and drenched with blood.

(If you have any doubt about that latter detail, check out the amazing artwork above, which was provided by Bob Covington to accompany my novella of the crusades, The Destroyers, when it was first published in F20 #1 back in 2000).

As I say, I hope these books will be available for purchase within the next couple of weeks. Obviously there is the possibility of delay – ebook is still a relatively new medium for us all. But I’ll keep you posted on progress. So watch this space.

Gods or demons - who haunts Haigh Hall?

This Friday sees my first rehearsal at the menacing mansion that is Haigh Hall (the ‘Borley Rectory of the North’, as it is locally known).

For those who are just tuning into this blog, I’ll be holding a special ghost story night there on April 26th and reading my new novella, THE UPPER TIER, which is based on real events that once occurred in this deceptively innocent looking country house on the outskirts of Wigan, Lancashire.

Haigh Hall has a reputation for being haunted by particularly grisly and frightening spirits. There has been very violent poltergeist activity in the past, particularly on the top floor (aka ‘the Upper Tier’), which has subsequently been sealed off for decades. Injuries and nervous breakdowns have been reported by visitors, particularly among paranormal investigators. The last of these enquiries had such a disastrous outcome that one member was sectioned in a mental hospital. After this upsetting event, a ruling was made, declaring Haigh Hall’s top floor a no-go zone for amateur ghost-hunters.

Attempts have also been made to keep news of these incidents out of the public domain. Haigh Hall’s ornate downstairs area is still used for official functions, and its local authority owners did not want it to become famous for the wrong reasons. However, ghoulish stories have continued to leak out.

The hauntings at the Hall have taken a variety of forms. Many physical manifestations have been reported – from nightmarish hooded figures to the recognisable spirits of witnesses’ own deceased family members (though there is evidence to suggest that these are not those persons at all, but malevolent dopplegangers seeking to cause mischief). Shrieks, cries and insane laugher have been heard, while brief terrible smells have been noted – “like the stench of a pit filled with dead animals,” one former caretaker told me – with no earthly source ever traceable. (For more detailed accounts of these individual events, look to earlier postings on this blog).

Spirits are also believed to roam the woods around the building. One in particular is Lady Mabel, a faceless medieval-era spectre who spent her final days of life serving a torturous barefoot penance for the crime of bigamy. More recently, evidence has come to light than an underground passage may lead from the Hall – a priest’s hole connecting with old mining tunnels (of which Wigan borough is riddled), finally linking to an subterranean excavation beneath Wigan Parish Church, where archaeologists in the 1930s uncovered the remains of an altar to the Roman god Mithras.

If this sounds like something from one of my novels or short stories, I assure you it isn’t. By origin, Wigan was a medieval market town, but it was built on the site of a Roman military camp called Coccium. The camp itself occupied the part of the town where the Parish Church now stands. (Wigan Parish Church itself had a strange history – local folklore told how, in 1485, Richard III’s infamous boar-headed banner was taken from the battlefield at Bosworth by Lancastrian soldiers, and hung bloodstained over the Wigan church altar – though no physical trace of it has ever been found).

Mithras (pictured above, slaughtering a sacrificial bull) was not viewed as an evil deity. In fact, quite the opposite. But he was strongly associated with animal sacrifices. Could this go some way to explaining the curious sounds and smells that are heard at the other end of that underground tunnel – in other words at Haigh Hall?

There are more questions than answers, though I hope to at least gain some insight over the next few weeks. As I said at the start of this missive, I’ll be holding my first official rehearsal this coming Friday, so it’s fingers crossed that we aren’t too spooked to do a professional job. When I was last up at the Hall it was the middle of winter. There was deep snow and a gnawing chill. The Hall was a gloomy, fog-enshrouded edifice, which bade no one enter. Things are somewhat different now. The trees are in bud, the grass and flowers growing, and the sun shining. It looks far more welcoming, but I for one am not fooled. It surely owes to more than mere superstition that at the heart of this house there is utter darkness.

The Power of Three - 20th Installment

Well, it’s Friday morning again, and before you get too cheerful about that, here’s another trio of classic chillers with which to darken your first coffee break of the day.

I had an interesting email the other day from a pal who acknowledged that these stories are always drawn from a hat, but said that it might be more fun to try and find connecting threads between them each week. They’re there, he insisted – even if I don’t notice them.

I still didn’t think we could play that game. But just out of interest – and working on the basis that, if nothing else, the three stories I chose last week all came from the 1980s – I looked more closely at this week’s selections. And lo and behold, the first two stories dated from the 1970s. I almost got excited. But then the third one was first published in the 1990s. Ah well, maybe next time …


The Viaduct by Brian Lumley

Two boys dare each other to cross the old viaduct near their home by swinging hand over hand across the iron bars that run alongside it. Half way over they decide that it’s tougher than they expected. And there’s another problem. A local mentally ill man, who they tormented earlier on, is up there waiting for them.

If you offered this story today it would be seen as the embodiment of political incorrectness. But that doesn’t make it any the less an effective chiller, mainly because it’s so believable. Brian Lumley is often associated with cosmic horror concepts, usually in the Lovecraftian vein. By comparison this one is almost ‘kitchen sink’ in its simplicity. There are no supernatural elements here; there isn’t even anyone you could really call evil. It’s just a series of unfortunate events. But the air of authenticity is tangible. The story is set in Lumley’s native northeast England. You get the feeling he might even have known the central characters. Is it conceivable this thing actually happened? You certainly imagine that it could have back in the 1970s, when relics of the industrial past still scarred the landscape and youngsters could explore them unsupervised. This is one grim and ugly tale, and if it doesn’t scare you to death, nothing will.

First published in SUPERHORROR, 1976.


Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair by Chelsea Quinn Yarbo

Diedrie is a ghoul, working her way through the California graveyard system. With fresh food increasingly hard to get, she one day she applies for the job of morgue attendant. Unfortunately, another ghoul is already employed at the same facility, and he doesn’t like competition.

This one will put a smile on your face, though we’re not exactly talking comic relief. If you think ghouls don’t exist in the modern world, think again. The only difference between now and the Middle Ages is that now they have to be a bit more ingenious, and boy, is Diedrie ingenious. There is plenty of dead flesh around for someone as smart as her. When it comes to it, there is quite a bit of living flesh as well. It’s not difficult to get hold of when you can emerge from cemeteries in the dead of night looking pretty and dishevelled, and are able to convince the first concerned citizen you meet that you’ve been attacked. But the best moments are saved for the story's finale. When you can’t be killed or even hurt by mortal hand, and when being buried six foot under isn’t really a problem, there’s no limit to the tricks you can play or the tables you can turn – even on your fellow ghouls. A gory but light-hearted classic.

First published in CAUTIONARY TALES, 1978.


Office Space by Richard Lee Byers

A white-collar worker finds himself trapped in a nightmarish office building, where he has to maintain a semblance of work during the day and sleep at his desk at night. He doesn’t know who brought him here or why, but an ogre-like guard prevents him leaving. Then a female prisoner turns up with a plan to escape.

A clever little slice of ‘Hell on Earth’ horror, with no beginning, no middle and, unfortunately for its hapless hero, no end. The torturous devices to which he is subjected daily will be familiar to many readers: reams of semi-meaningless data, which he must peruse; endless phone-calls from a mindless croaking voice; and a cruel, faceless management who have a wide range of means by which they can punish you. But this isn’t just a parody of nine-til-five existence; this is a horror story with a capital H. Has the increasingly desperate office guy been kidnapped as part of some devilish plot? Has he gone insane at work? Has he died and gone to Hell? Or is it something worse – have the dozens of empty office buildings in downtown Tampa developed a fiendish life of their own and are they now seeking to fulfill themselves? The most important question is does it really matter? The answer – not much. In the end, all that matters is getting out.

First published in DANTE’S DISCIPLES (pictured), 1995.