And what a joy it's been, as always ... working with some amazing writers, with the amazing artist, NEIL WILLIAMS, and the amazing publisher/author GARY FRY at GRAY FRIAR PRESS.
TERROR TALES OF YORKSHIRE (which can't be pre-ordered just yet, hence there's no link - but watch this space constantly), is the seventh in the TERROR TALES series to date. I find that incredible given we only started this ball rolling in 2011, and it's being brought out, as you'll probably realise, to coincide with this year's FANTASYCON, which is being held in York on September 5,6 and 7.
Anyway, enough of my gibberish for the moment. The front-cover image is above, while the full wrap is posted a few paragraphs down. So from here on, why don't I let the actual blurb do the talking:
Yorkshire – a rolling landscape of verdant dales and quaint country towns. But
where industrial fires left hideous scars, forlorn ruins echo the shrieks of
forgotten wars, and depraved killers evoke nightmare tales of ogres, trolls and
wild moorland boggarts...
The stalking devil
of Boroughbridge
The murder machine
at Halifax
The hooded horror
of Pontefract
The bloody meadow
at Towton
The black tunnel
of Renfield
The evil trickster
of Spaldington
The shadow forms
at Silverwood
And many more
chilling tales by Alison Littlewood, Mark Morris, Stephen Laws, Simon Clark,
Mark Chadbourn, and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre.
In October We Buried The Monsters by Simon Avery; The Decapitation Device; The Coat Off His Back by Keris McDonald; Haunting Memories of the Past; They Walk As Men by Mark Morris; The Yorkshire Witches; On Ilkley Moor by Alison Littlewood; The Black Monk of Pontefract; The Crawl by Stephen Laws; The Woman in the Rain; Ragged by Gary McMahon; The Hobman; A True Yorkshireman by Christopher Harman; The Town Where Darkness Was Born; All Things Considered, I’d Rather Be In Hell by Mark Chadbourn; A Feast For Crows; The Demon of Flowers by Chico Kidd; City of the Dead; The Summer of Bradbury by Stephen Bacon; Radiant Beings; Random Flight by Rosalie Parker; Death in the Harrying; The Rhubarb Festival by Simon Clark; The Alien; The Crack by Gary Fry; The Boggart of Bunting Nook; A Story From When We Had Nothing by Jason Gould.
As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, you can't yet order TERROR TALES OF YORKSHIRE (all retail outlets, online and otherwise, will be posted everywhere, as soon as you can). It's still in production as we speak, but we're very hopeful that it will be available at the Fantasy Convention in York, probably from the PENDRAGON PRESS table in the book room, along with other titles, such as our last one in the series TERROR TALES OF WALES.On the subject of Yorkshire, and York in particular, I was recently very impressed to hear the superbly rendered audio version of my International Horror Guild Award-winning short story of 2007, THE OLD NORTH ROAD, as read by Jonathan Keeble of The Archers fame, published by WHOLE STORY AUDIO.
This story, first published in Alone on the Darkside in 2006 (for which, as I said earlier, it won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Medium Length Story in 2007), and republished in One Monster Is Not Enough in 2010, is hopefully the first of quite a few of mine to get the glossy WHOLE STORY AUDIO treatment, but it's very timely, as York - or more specifically, York Minster - is the location that originally inspired it.
THE OLD NORTH ROAD, which is about 10,000 words long and comes to roughly an hour's listening time, is a horror story describing a quest to find the origins of the mystical Green Man. Prior to my first visit to York Minster, the Green Man was no more to me than a background character I'd grown up with but had never really noticed: a figure on pub signs, or a clown at country fairs. What I certainly hadn't realised was just how much he figures in the architecture of our old and venerable religious buildings, York Minster being a classic example. And that's a curious thing given so many of us assume the Green Man to be a pagan icon - a fertility symbol or the representation of an ancient, long forgotten god.But the fact is, he isn't ... at least, not according to the researches I made following my last trip to York. The real origins of the Green Man, are far stranger, and lie in ...
Well, perhaps that would be telling. Maybe it's better if you guys download the audio version, or buy the CD, and find out for yourself. (Sorry to be so mercenary ... but I've got to make a living, you know).
Of course, you don't have to go to all that trouble if you happen to be paying a visit to FANTASYCON in York in September. If so, just pop across to the Minster and check it all out for yourself. I'll be doing that for sure. It's now ten years since I was last there, and the mysteries of the Green Man, among many others, are calling ever louder.
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