Okay, we’re almost there. One week to go and it’s the scariest date in the calendar. Yes, Halloween is only seven days away. That’s relevant to today’s blog for a couple of reasons. First of all, it means that I’ve only got two more of my GALLERIES OF DARKNESS to post. Today’s will be the fourth, while the fifth and final one will appear on October 31 itself. As always, there’re some some cracking if terrifying images here. All you need to do is scoot on down the column and check them out.
The second
reason is because I’m now giving you a week’s advance warning that on the
evening of October 31, I’ll be at Waterstones, Kendal, partaking in HORROR STORIES FOR HALLOWEEN. More about that shortly, as well.
In addition
this week, and again because we are now encroaching on the spookiest night of
the year, I’ll be reviewing and discussing the engrossing horror anthology, NEW FEARS, as edited by Mark Morris.
If you’re
only here for the NEW FEARS chat, no problem. Just zoom on down to the lower end
of today’s blog, which is where I usually post my book-talk, and get on with it straight
away. However, if you’re interested in other things I might have to say, I’m going
to talk a little bit first about …
Halloween Night, Kendal style
By the sounds of it, we’ll be kicking things off at 7pm (though the shop doors actually open at 6.30pm), and proceedings will commence with me and Messrs. Cluley and Unsworth giving a 15-minute reading each from our own work, all pieces selected for their sheer scariness, I understand. After that, there’ll be questions and answers and, if we’ve hooked enough folk with our blather, some selling and signing of books.
From my own
point of view, the event will also be a kind of unofficial launch for my two Autumn
titles, SEASON OF MIST and TERROR TALES OF NORTHWEST ENGLAND. I’m hopeful that a few of my crime titles will be there as well; they are pretty dark, verging on horror in many cases, so I don’t think they’ll be inappropriate for Halloween Night. The other guys’ works will also be on sale of course.
So, if you’re
interested in this kind of thing, there’ll be lots of books to buy and get
signed. If you live in the vicinity of Kendal – Cumbria, Westmorland or Lancashire
– this is undoubtedly one that you won’t want to miss. Just follow the links for more details and, if you decide you’re keen, make sure to get yourself down there for 7pm.
And now, in
keeping with the season …
Images of Darkness
Hopefully, regular
visitors to this page will now be aware that all through October, in recognition
of the approaching date, I’ve been posting galleries of artists who’ve dabbled
in the darkness. In short, each Thursday, I’ve focussed on 20 painters,
illustrators and the like who have shared some of their deepest nightmares with
us, the idea being that when the final gallery goes up on October 31, we’ll
have checked out 100 in total.
A quick bit
of info before you dive in. Despite my enthusiasm, I’m not qualified to talk in
detail about any of these men and women. So, I’m going to let the pictures do
the talking. However, what I will say is that most of them are contemporary. I
mean, there’ve been some great images of horror painted in the long-ago past; check out The Temptation of St Anthony by Matthias Grunewald (1516) at the top of today’s blog. But those are mostly well known already. By focussing
on more recent practitioners, I’m hopeful there’ll be something a bit new here for
everyone.
But if you want further detail on any of these individuals.
And if you want to enquire about prints, originals, commissions and the like, I’ve
posted links wherever possible. Just follow those; some will take you to the artists
themselves.
And now my customary last-minute warning.
I’ve not selected any image that I consider to be offensive
or plain disgusting. But these pictures were chosen because of their power to
disturb and terrify, and the immensely talented individuals responsible for them do NOT
hold back. Those of a nervous disposition should tread warily from here in …
1. KEN CURRIE
2. STEVE UPHAM
4. BACIUS9
5. KIM MYATT
6. DAVE CORREIA
8. LEO PLAW
9. MARK MADDOX
10. MICHAEL HUTTER
11. DADO
12. BORJA GUILLOT
13. EMILE NOLDE
14. ERIC LACOMBE
17. ALEX KONSTAD
18. ANNA PAVLEEVA
19. PAUL GUSTAV DORE
20. GLENN CHADBOURNE
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime,
thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and
enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly
be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the
definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in
more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly
enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces
of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will
not be your thing.
The first volume in a sadly short-lived series of horror
anthologies from Titan, in which editor Mark Morris attempts to bring together
a wide range of original and contemporary scary fiction, and for the most part
is very successful.
There would only be one other in the series, New Fears 2, which we’ll review at a later date, but that’s a sad story in itself because the quality of writing on display here indicates that the New Fears project could have gone on to make a big and prolonged impact in the world of short spooky stories.
There would only be one other in the series, New Fears 2, which we’ll review at a later date, but that’s a sad story in itself because the quality of writing on display here indicates that the New Fears project could have gone on to make a big and prolonged impact in the world of short spooky stories.
First of all, rather than simply hit you with a succession of brief short
story outlines, I’ll let the publishers of this first volume give you their own
official blurb, which neatly lays out the varied and cerebral chills in wait
for you:
The horror genre’s greatest living practitioners drag our
darkest fears kicking and screaming into the light in this collection of
nineteen brand-new stories. In ‘The Boggle Hole’ by Alison Littlewood an
ancient folk tale leads to irrevocable loss. In Josh Malerman’s ‘The House of
the Head’ a dollhouse becomes the focus for an incident both violent and
inexplicable. And in ‘Speaking Still’ Ramsey Campbell suggests that beyond
death there may be far worse things waiting than we can ever imagine...
It seems like aeons since non-themed horror anthologies were a
regular fixture on our British bookshelves. The golden age of such appears to
have been the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, when Pan and Fontana each brought out an
annual volume, their two series eventually running to 30 and 17 books
respectively and introducing a whole host of new talent to the scare fare
spectrum. With the supposed change in reading fashions since then – which
dubious proposition is a whole new blog on its own! – it’s become increasingly
difficult for professional publishers to sell collections of original short
horror fiction (or so they’ve convinced themselves), so the onus has fallen on
the independent market to keep the flag flying, and though a wide range of
smaller imprints have done a heroic job, much of their output has sadly flown
way under the public radar. Every so often, however, a new title emerges with
serious mass-market potential.
The New Fears project was certainly one of these, especially
as it had Mark Morris at the editorial helm, a skilled and experienced horror
and fantasy author in his own right. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned,
such hopes would be unfulfilled, the series only hitting us with two volumes
before folding. However, if nothing else, that gives us another two book-loads
of intriguing and chilling fiction from the multinational pens of some of the
genre’s most exciting names: from some of the all-time old reliables like
Stephen Gallagher, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen Laws to relative newcomers like
A.K. Benedict, Sarah Lotz and Josh Malerman.
As you’d expect with such a wide range of voices, we get an
eclectic procession of stories, the editor consciously and wisely, in my view,
looking to draw in every aspect of the current horror scene, though he eschews
anything that I’d describe as gratuitous or extreme.
Possibly the most gruesome tale in the book is Brian Keene’s
Sheltered in Place, which, as it concerns a mass shooting at an airport
baggage-handling depot, horrifyingly underlines a big issue that is currently
causing arguments and disputes all across North America today. A less serious
tale, though no less blood-soaked, is Stephen Laws’ The Swan Dive, in which a potential suicide is rescued in mid-fall from the Tyne Bridge by a mysterious
winged being called Swan, who takes him on a wild, carnage-strewn journey of
revenge across the whole wretched city.
Meanwhile, macabre rather than gory – and perhaps an heir to
some of those Pan Horror contributions that I referenced earlier – is Sarah
Lotz’s mischievous The Embarrassment of Dead Grandmothers, in which young
Stephen takes his obnoxious grandma to the theatre, only for the old lady
to die half way through the performance, a fact Stephen must conceal when he
notices that good-looking Liz from work is also in the audience and chatting her up
becomes a higher priority. Also cut from the old Pan Horror cloth, and one of
the best and most unsettling stories in the book for my money (with a real jolt
of a twist), is Kathryn Ptacek’s Dollies, in which a disturbed child names all
her dolls Elizabeth, every so often inexplicably pronouncing that one of them
has died from smallpox and placing it on a dusty old shelf. Her parents
struggle with this weirdness, but then their daughter is raped, and a real baby
is suddenly on the way, and yet again, it seems, the child will be called
Elizabeth.
In sharp contrast, subtlety is the order of play with
several other contributions. First off, Alison Littlewood delivers an excellent
low-key study of a relationship undermined by the merest hint of supernatural
evil in The Boggle Hole, while in Nina Allan’s soulful and rather literary Four
Abstracts, an art historian travels to an isolated Devonshire cottage, where
she must sort out a deceased artist’s various unsold paintings, only to learn
that the former occupant had an unhealthy obsession with spiders.
While these stories, and others like them, disconcert you
with their restraint, others revel in full-on Gothic horror of the old school.
The best example is surely Angela Slatter’s No Good Deed,
(apparently a continuation of a longer narrative, which commenced in a
different publication, though it can easily be read as a stand-alone), in which
a medieval bride awakens in the tomb where her scheming husband has interred
her, having poisoned her and mistaken her for dead, and yet, with the aid of
the previous bride, whom he successfully murdered, escapes and plots her revenge. Also on the
ghost story trail, AK Benedict’s Departures sees an alcoholic literally enter
the Last Chance Saloon in the form of a depressing airport pub where those not
yet supposed to have died find themselves gathered. Perhaps a more traditional
supernatural chiller is The Salter Collection by Brian Lillie, which sees the
ramblings of a deranged logging magnate, as captured on a collection
of wax cylinders, reveal a terrible secret.
All that said, there are three particular stories in here
that I found especially spooky.
The first two come from Ramsey Campbell and Muriel Gray –
Speaking Still and Roundabout respectively – but more about those two later in
this review.
The other one is Josh Malerman’s The House of the Head,
which is hugely original as well as chilling, and concerns a child’s love for
her lavish new doll’s house, only for her to one day notice that a broken doll
has infiltrated the happy home, a ghost doll she realises, which is the prelude
to a miniature but very alarming (if pint-sized) haunting.
I wouldn’t say that any of the stories in this collection,
and there are 19 in total, are genuinely terrifying, at least not in as much as
they caused me to lose sleep. However, they are mostly dark and disturbing, and
in all cases the quality of the writing shines through. This may officially be
a horror collection, but it’s also of strong literary interest. I drew specific
attention to Nina Allan’s story in that regard, but nearly all the rest of the
stories are exquisitely crafted and make for an all-round excellent reading
experience.
And now …
NEW FEARS – the movie.
Just a bit of fun, this part. No film maker has optioned
this book yet (as far as I’m aware), but here are my thoughts on how they
should proceed, if they do.
Note: these four stories are NOT the ones I necessarily
consider to be the best in the book, but these are the four I perceive as most
filmic and most right for adaptation in a compendium horror. Of course, no such
horror film can happen without a central thread, and this is where you guys,
the audience, come in. It could be that each segment is an unsolved paranormal
case, as handed by one retired and decrepit investigator to a young up-n-comer
(al la Ghost Stories), or perhaps they are tales told by a group of travellers
who become lost in an underground catacomb and are then confronted by a
mysterious monk (a la Tales from the Crypt). But basically, it’s up to you.
Without further messing about, here are the stories and the
casts I would choose:
Speaking Still (by Ramsey Campbell):
Recently made widower,
Daniel, is convinced that his deceased wife, Dorothy, is leaving phone messages from
the afterlife. Close friend, Bill, is very concerned because this clearly isn’t a happy afterlife. Dorothy’s late mother was a dangerous
schizophrenic, who so resented being committed that she promised her daughter
that she’d be waiting with vengeance after death. Now it seems that this has
happened …
Bill – Bill Nighy
Daniel – Jim Carter
Eumenides – The Benevolent Ladies (by Adam LG Nevill):
Stuck
in a dead-end job in a boring Midlands town, Jason is amazed when aloof but
sexy Electra agrees to go on a date with him. The only trouble is that she
wants to visit the local zoo, which has been derelict for years and has a very
dark history …
Jason – Russell Tovey
Electra – Genevieve Gaunt
The Abduction Door (by Christopher Golden):
An urban legend
becomes real when a child disappears through ‘the Abduction Door’, a mysterious
and diminutive hatchway, which comes and goes in the city’s elevators. Her
distraught father attempts to follow her, and finds himself in a nightmare
world of human-sized ovens and living scarecrows …
The Mother (because our leads can’t all be male) – Katheryn
Winnick
Roundabout (by Muriel Gray):
A stubborn council workman is
determined to clear ‘the Dark Thing’ off the overgrown Blowbarton roundabout.
This mysterious, elusive something has been there ever since a bizarre piece of
art rescued from the Afghan desert and erected as an anti-colonialist
symbol was removed for distracting motorists. But the intrepid worker doesn’t
know what it is or what terrible power his mysterious adversary possesses …
Workman – Paul Whitehouse
Artist – Tim Roth
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