Horrors of war meet the horrors of winter

In the midst of all this recent chatter about novels, novellas, TV series and themed anthologies, here's a little bit of info from the slightly less glamorous (though equally dear to my heart) world of the short story. It's a bit belated, in actual fact - both these bits of info have being doing the rounds for the last couple of weeks, but I've now at last made space to mention them.

First of all, I should offer my congratulations to US editor, Danel Olson, for the incredible success enjoyed by his anthology EXOTIC GOTHIC 4, which won the World Fantasy Award for 2013 in the capacity of Best Anthology at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton two weeks last Saturday. Danel is a smashing bloke and a thorough and meticulous editor, and this award couldn't have found a more deserving winner.

I'm also pleased about this news, because a story of mine features in EXOTIC GOTHIC 4, from PS PUBLISHING. Oeschart is a tale of mystical and supernatural terror set just to the rear of the Allied front-line during the Passchendaele advance in 1917. Of course, the book contains a host of other cracking stories as well. Check out some of these names - Adam Nevill, Robert Hood, Steve Rasnic Tem, Terry Dowling, Anna Taborska, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Reggie Oliver and Stephen Volk - and they are not by any means alone in there. Well worth taking a chance on, this antho, trust me. And in fact, the more of you who go for it, the more chance there is Danel will be persuaded to do EG6 and maybe EG7. Who knows? EXOTIC GOTHIC 5 is already out, in two volumes no less.

In other short story news, but still on the subject of wartime horror, I'm happy to brag that another short story of mine, Reign Of Hell, has been published in the e-anthology, WORLD WAR TWO CTHULHU from games company Cubicle 7 this last month, and edited by living legend Jonathan Oliver (the book is pictured above right). As you can imagine, these are Lovecraftian mythos tales, but each one with an authentic World War Two setting. My own tale is set in Peloponnese, when fascist forces were terrorising the Greek populace. But the entire panorama of WWII is covered. Among a variety of other stories, we get glowing efforts from such luminaries of the pen as James Lovegrove, Weston Ochse and Lavie Tidhar. Again, get in there. If you like short, terrifying tales, you won't be disappointed.

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For those still toying with the idea of buying the e-version of my Victorian Christmas novella of 2011, SPARROWHAWK, it is available for only 99p for another four days. At midnight on Sunday 24^th November, it reverts to its normal price of £2.07. If nothing else, it it ought to get you in the mood for the festive season, especially if you like your Yuletide ghost stories. But don’t take my word for that. Online reviewers have thus far called it “a paradox from history, beautifully crafted” and “a perfect Christmas read”.

Here are a couple more excerpts, today with less of a Christmassy feel and more of the ghoulish (after all, SPARROWHAWK is also a tale of love, hate, war and, hopefully, redemption):

LETICIA turned to face him. She smiled again, but it was a wintry smile. “This is my lot, John. My eternity. But it consoles me that I earned it in your service.”
     “My service? I … I don’t understand.”

     “You wanted me to die, and I wanted you to be happy. So this is the price I paid.”

     “What are you talking about?”

     Her smile faded. The green eyes lost their lustre and receded into their sockets; her teeth became prominent, skeletal. “You know why my parents never revealed my resting place to you, John? Because suicides can only be buried in unmarked graves.”

HE STRUGGLED violently and gibbered for mercy as he was wrestled onto the trapdoor. Up close, for Sparrowhawk and Miss Evangeline had managed to get a good position, Keggs was rather simple looking, with a low-slung brow, buckteeth and jug ears. He croaked in despair, his terrified eyes flirting left and right as the white hood was pulled down over his head. The executioner fixed the noose in place and, as the tolling bell ceased, stepped back and pulled the lever. The baying of the mob rose to a crescendo as the trapdoor swung down and the prisoner dropped.
     He tilted sideways as he descended, smashing his face against the edge of the trap, before spinning down to the end of the rope and jerking to a halt – he twisted and gurgled for several minutes, the front of his white hood turning slowly crimson, but eventually hung still.

Putting the spirit into the season of chills!

From 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, the e-version of my 2011 Christmas ghost novella, SPARROWHAWK, will be available at the one-week-only price of 99p. The truth is, it isn’t hugely expensive now at £2.07, but it only seems fair, with Christmas at last in the offing, that we try to make it even more affordable – if only for a relatively brief time.

For those not in the know, SPARROWHAWK tells the tale of damaged Afghan War veteran, John Sparrowhawk, who returns to London in 1843, to find his wife dead of a broken heart and his bank accounts empty. Struggling with shellshock and tortured by regret, lonely soul Sparrowhawk attempts to make good, but is soon incarcerated in the debtor’s prison, from where there appears to be no escape. His life is all but over, until December arrives, and he is visited in jail by the beautiful and enigmatic Miss Evangeline, who offers to pay his debt in return for an unusual favour – he must stand guard over a house in Bloomsbury for the duration of the Christmas period, and yet at no stage alert the family living there to his presence.

Sparrowhawk undertakes the odd but seemingly simple work, until it becomes apparent that a unseen foe is slowly encroaching on the address in question. As the coldest Christmas in living memory descends on London, Sparrowhawk finds himself pitted against a deadly and relentless enemy, who apparently has supernatural forces as his beck and call, and will not hesitate to use the most personal methods by which to torment and persecute his opponents.

That’s enough for now. No more spoilers, but expect angels and demons, ghosts and goblins, monsters and murderers – all wrapped up in festive Victorian packaging.

As I say, the SPARROWHAWK ebook (some 40,000 words in length, so hopefully you’ll feel you’re getting your money’s worth) will be available at 99p from tomorrow morning at 8am, for one week only.

Here are a couple of snippets:

SPARROWHAWK returned to his rooms, closing and locking the door behind him. He wondered briefly about the assailant in the bathhouse and how strange it was that he too had vanished without trace. And then he spotted the large bold message, which, in his brief absence downstairs, had been inscribed on the wall above his fireplace. He approached it slowly, eyes goggling – before going around the rest of his rooms like a whirlwind, searching every nook and cranny but finding nothing. He checked all his windows, but they too were locked. Outside, the streets were deserted. Scarcely a track – either of man, animal or cartwheel – was visible in the crisp new blanket of snow.

     On legs so shaky they could barely support him, Sparrowhawk moved back to the fireplace. The message had been made by a finger dipped in ordure or blood, or a foul mixture of both …

A MARBLE font, filled with ice, was clasped in the hands of a life-size marble angel. Both objects were scabrous with age, riddled with fissures. The angel, who, by her shapely form, was intended to be female, had suffered the most. 
     Her face was black and had crumbled to the point where it was unrecognisable – though, just fleetingly, Sparrowhawk fancied there was something familiar in it. He shook his head, baffled by the illusion. In the cathedral meanwhile, the choir had switched to another carol:

God rest you merry Gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay;

Remember Christ our Saviour,

Was born on Christmas-day …

(PS: If anyone hasn't guessed, the image of the two zombie snowmen at the top is in no way connected to SPARROWHAWK, though the book does have a demonic snowman sequence in it).

So who's gonna play Heck on the screen?

Here is something that may amuse a few people, particularly those who've become regular correspondents on the subject of my two crime novels, STALKERS and SACRIFICE, published earlier this year.

On and off since those novels hit the shelves, I’ve been approached by readers about whether there will be a TV or movie adaptation, and in that event, who I would like to see cast in the lead roles of Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg and Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, former boyfriend and girlfriend, now turned fire and water as they work together in the Serial Crimes Unit, an elite Scotland Yard division charged with pursuing repeat violent offenders across all the police force areas of England and Wales.

Well, I must stress that to date there is no screen adaptation in the works. There have been whispers at a semi-official level, but as we speak there is no development money on the table and nobody as yet is talking about whether it would even be possible, never mind who we’d like to see in the roles of the two lead characters. So this is nothing more than a bit of FUN. It’s just me casting my eye over the various names suggested to me by readers, and my own thoughts on the matter.

For Heck …

Damien Molony is best known for his recent roles in BEING HUMAN and RIPPER STREET. He’d be a good choice in my view. It has been pointed out to me that Damien is only 29, whereas Heck is 37. Could we age him a little? Could we rough him up sufficiently? I think so. Damien isn’t the biggest guy, but I’ve never envisaged Heck as a brawny bruiser. To me he’s more an everyman figure, who gets knocked around at least as much as the bad guys do, but as Damien showed in BEING HUMAN, he can do ‘deadly’ when he wants to.

Tom Hardy is an actor I have a great fondness for, particularly as he was approached to play a character of mine in a low-budget horror movie called VOODOO DAWN, which was on the brink of preproduction a couple of years ago, only to fall by the wayside for various insurmountable reasons. On top of all that, age-wise, he’s bang-on. The trouble is that Tom’s a big name these days, having appeared in numerous Hollywood movies, and we couldn’t possibly afford him for a TV production. How would I feel if we could? I’d be over the moon. Some have said he’s a touch on the 'brawny bruiser' side, but with an actor like this, who’d complain?

Thomas Barrow is best known for his appearances in CORONATION STREET and DOWNTON ABBEY – neither could be further from the in-yer-face antics of Heck. But you know what – good call! The right age, the right look, the right place of origin (the northwest of England). After the Machiavellian but sedate goings-on in Downton, this would be a big change of pace for Tom Barrow, but I reckon he’d do it. Anyone fancy asking him?

For Gemma …

Melissa George is an Aussie screen siren of high-standing across the movie-making world. She’s the right age, and has exactly the right look. She can also act, and would easily be able to handle the English accent; she can do the action stuff too – as she has proved in umpteen movie and TV horrors and thrillers. Whether we can afford her would be another matter, but quite simply, I’d be over the moon if Melissa signed on the dotted line.

Kym Marsh is the former pop singer turned soap star. But she also hails from my home town of Wigan, which is already massively in her favour, plus she’d be exactly the right age, and boy, would she have the right no-nonsense attitude. Could she convince us all that she’s a senior police detective running one of Scotland Yard’s most elite but also most rumbustious special investigation units. I’d be happy to give her the chance (course, were it to actually happen, it wouldn’t ultimately be my choice).

Rhona Mitra can currently be seen in the explosive military action series, STRIKE BACK, in which she plays a real tough cookie and a highly organised spec-ops supervisor who can never be outwitted. Well, on that basis what is there not to like? That is Gemma all over, especially as Rhona is a native Londoner (like Gemma) and is exactly the same age (37). A big thumbs-up for me on this choice.

Various other suggestions have been made, but none of them really work for me. For Heck: Phil Glenister (too old, too associated with Life On Mars), and Ken Stott (way too old!). For Gemma, Gwyneth Paltrow (sorry guys, but Gemma Piper is working-class Cockney, not Los Angeles high society. “Yes of course, Gwyneth, we’d love for you to be in this new series. Would we mind if you played it as an American? Anything for you, dear.” Not on my watch … of course, I can afford to be so harsh with one of the best and sexiest actresses on the planet because I know there isn’t a cat in Hell’s chance of her ever wanting to appear in a role like this, mainly because it’s only ever likely to appear on British television. In the unlikely event she did, I’d snatch her bloody hand off).

(By the way, the amazing image at the top, the one in the subway, obviously and in no way represents any Heck movie or TV series. Unfortunately, I can't even offer a credit for it as I have no idea where it originates from. Needless to say, if its owner has an issue with it appearing here, he or she need only let me know and I'll take it down).

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On a slightly different matter, another question folk keep asking me is which of my pieces of written work most gives me satisfaction. The answer is always the same: SPARROWHAWK, my ghostly Christmas novella of 2011.

I'm not going to give you the outline, because you can find that all over the internet, but suffice to say that it's a tale of love and war, angels and demons, ghosts and goblins, all of which, I hope, are flavoured by the Yuletide aura. It was born from my childlike love of Christmas, my lifelong interest in the Victorian era, and my fascination with the human condition in relation to the afterlife, religious and non-religious beliefs and our mysteriously universal notions about right and wrong. And hell, I'd be lying if I didn't also mention that it also stems from my utter adoration of the traditional Christmas ghost story.

Okay ... I can already hear a couple of you muttering that you've already read SPARROWHAWK and know what it's about, and that I've endlessly plugged it in this column. Well, sorry guys, but you're going to have to indulge me just a little bit longer, because I'm now about to take advantage of a new promotional deal with Amazon, and from 8am on the morning of Monday November 18, the  e-version of the book will be available at the one-week-only price of 99p (though it's not uber-expensive now at £2.07)..

Even if I say so myself, if anyone hasn't yet sampled SPARROWHAWK, I think you'll enjoy it, especially now, with the season of good cheer just around the corner. Here're a couple of teensey snippets to hopefully set the atmosphere:

CHRISTMAS WEEK was approaching, of course, and London was dressing itself properly for the occasion. The markets and bazaars, particularly around Soho Square and the Pantheon, were decked with evergreens and crepe paper, and laden with wares of even more questionable quality than usual – from the feathers of rare birds to artificial flowers, from second-hand books to alabaster ornaments, from hand-me-down trinkets to hand-me-down clothes. On the great shopping boulevards like Oxford Street and Bond Street, a higher standard of commodity was on offer; the perfumeries boasting an array of exotic oils and creams; the tobacconists replacing their commonplace clay pipes with cigar cases, meerschaums and snuff boxes; the milliners, the lace sellers, the glovers, the hosiers, the drapers all displaying their most sumptuous finery. 
     

William Hamley’s toy shop, the famous Noah’s Ark of High Holborn, was a particular wonder to behold, its candle-lit windows filled with ornate figurines formed from sugar and candy and wrapped with colourful foil, or made from wood and clockwork and painted in the Germanic fashion – all drawn from myth, magic and pantomime: soldiers, wizards, fairy queens, harlequins, ogres, witches. Numerous small children, buried in fur and velvet, their caps and bonnets pulled around their frost-nipped ears, their mittened hands clasped tightly by parent or governess, gazed pink-faced in wonder through the mullioned glass ...

THE ELF made no move, and when he got close he saw why. It wasn’t a real man, but a marionette. It was life-size, but its face and hands were carved from jointed wood and had been crudely painted. Its body and limbs were suspended by strings, which rose towards the ceiling but were there lost in dimness. It was also – and this was perhaps the most disquieting thing of all – a close representation of his father.

     It seemed that Doctor Joseph Sparrowhawk, the one-time academic, philosopher, publisher and pamphleteer – was now little more than a comic mannequin. Its head lay to one side; its eyes were glass baubles containing beads designed to roll crazily around. Its chin and nose were exaggerated – Punch-like, in the tradition of the season – but the lank white hair was the same, the white side-whiskers were the same, the prominent brow, the small, firm mouth …

TERROR TALES OF THE SEASIDE is here!

I'm absolutely delighted to announce that the fifth volume in my series of regional British horror anthologies - TERROR TALES OF THE SEASIDE - is at last available to order from Amazon. As usual, its cover packs a massive punch courtesy of artist STEVE UPHAM, and it contains a number of stories by some of the genre's current finest writers, including STEPHEN VOLK, STEPHEN LAWS, RAMSEY CAMPBELL, SAM STONE and REGGIE OLIVER.

At the outset of this series, I discussed its potential with Gary Fry, head honcho at the immensely supportive GRAY FRIAR PRESS, and we agreed to try for an initial five in the series, just to test the water. Well, to date the books have sold so well and have won such praise that we are in no doubt we must continue, so for the moment at least, the books will run and run; two more are now scheduled and being worked on as we speak.

Today's launch sees the first in the series that doesn't actually restrict itself to any particular locale - though location, geography, folklore etc will always be important in these books - but rather focusses on a particular cultural aspect of British life: the traditional seaside holiday. Followers of the series will guess, rightly, that its release was planned to coincide with the WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION in Brighton at the end of this month (and it will be for sale at the Con with all the others in the series). Brighton itself is therefore spotlighted in the anthology, but so are various other popular coastal resorts like Torquay, Blackpool, Southport, Rhyl, Bognor and so on. Not that in this collection they are really underlined as places you'd like to visit.

Perhaps the back-cover blurb will explain:

The British Seaside – golden sands, toffee rock, amusement arcades. But also the ghosts of better days: phantom performers who if they can’t get laughs will get screams; derelict fun-parks where maniacs lurk; hideous things washed in on bitter tides …

  

The death ships of Goodwin

The killer clowns of Bognor

The devil fish of Guernsey

The Night Caller of St. Derfyn

The Black Mass at North Berwick

The grisly revenge at Brighton

The tortured souls of Westingsea

  

And many more chilling tales by Stephen Laws, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Volk, Sam Stone, Simon Kurt Unsworth and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre. 

Hopefully that will whet your whistles for more. But in case it doesn't, here's the full table of contents, which I'm sure you'll agree gives it added sex appeal (the italicised items are the 'true' tales with which I always like to intersperse the fictional ones):

Holiday From Hell by Reggie Oliver; The Eerie Events At Castel Mare; The Causeway by Stephen Laws; The Kraken Wakes; The Magician Kelso Dennett by Stephen Volk; Forces Of Evil; A Prayer For The Morning by Joseph Freeman; Hotel Of Horror; The Jealous Sea by Sam Stone; The Ghosts Of Goodwin Sands; The Entertainment by Ramsey Campbell; The Horse And The Hag; The Poor Weather Crossings Company by Simon Kurt Unsworth; The Devil Dog Of Peel; Brighthelmstone by R.B. Russell; The Ghouls Of Bannane Head; Men With False Faces by Robert Spalding; This Beautiful, Terrible Place; GG LUVS PA by Gary Fry; In The Deep Dark Winter; The Incident At North Shore by Paul Finch; The Walking Dead; Shells by Paul Kane; Hellmouth; The Sands Are Magic by Kate Farrell; Wild Men Of The Sea; Broken Summer by Christopher Harman.

Previous books in the series can still be purchased, and you don't need to go to WORLD FANTASY to get hold of them. They can be found at all good online retailers, such as Amazon, or at their point of origin, the GRAY FRIAR PRESS website. For those interested, they are: TERROR TALES OF THE LAKE DISTRICT, TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS, TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA and TERROR TALES OF LONDON.

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Don't forget, by the way, that my new e-collection, DON'T READ ALONE (70K words of spine-tingling horror) , is currently available for download on Amazon completely FREE of charge, and that it will remain so until midnight on October 27, from which point it will be subject to a special Halloween promotion and can be yours for only 99p, this second deal to run until November 10. 

This week only ... get your horrors FREE!

Anyone tempted by my latest e-collection of horror stories and novellas, DON’T READ ALONE, may be interested to learn that it will be FREE to download from midnight tonight, October 23, and will remain so until midnight on October 27.

From that point on, it will be subject to a special Halloween promotion, enabling those still interested to download it for only 99p. That deal in turn will run until November 10.

In case anyone is still undecided, allow me to fill you in a little on the book itself. Though I’m better known for writing crime and thriller novels these days, I have dipped into the horror market on a number of occasions, primarily to pen movie scripts but also short stories and novellas. I’m certainly no stranger to having collections of my stories published, though up until now only a handful have appeared electronically.

Anyway, all that is now set to change.

The first of these new e-collections, DON’T READ ALONE – which I repeat (because I reckon it’s worth repeating) can be yours completely FREE from midnight tonight until midnight on October 27 – comprises 70,000 words of hopefully chilling and challenging fiction.

It features five long stories in total, each one of which I’m fairly proud of – just read on for further details, snippets and such.

(I should point out that the images scattered throughout this column, while for the most part do not relate directly to these stories, should give some indication of the kind of horrors you’ll find in there).

THE OLD NORTH ROAD (winner of the International Horror Guild Award, 2007)

A disgruntled writer pursues the legend of the Green Man, only to run into trouble of a less ethereal kind on the isolated Old North Road …

“So … the Green Man, he wasn’t actually supposed to have existed then? He wasn’t like a god or spirit?”

“Well … no.” Drayton was caught on the hop: she’d clearly understood his introduction. “No, he’s more of a symbolic figure. His original meaning, if there ever was one, is lost to us now. He’s often associated with paganism of course, and fertility rites … but that’s all bollocks. It’s just New Age fantasy. In medieval times he was a representative of Nature … an embodiment of all its beauty and danger. The Church used him as an allegorical figure; an image of what Man could turn into if he didn’t stay on the straight and narrow.”

“Yuk!” she interrupted, and he knew immediately what she was looking at.

Among his notes, he’d inserted a variety of cut-outs and original photographs, the majority of them depicting the so-called ‘foliate heads’, the original and most common way in which the Green Man was presented to his mystified audience. These were invariably carvings, drawings or mouldings, usually found in religious buildings, and nearly always they’d feature a humanoid head that was either peeking out through dense vegetation or which had actually become part of that vegetation. In most cases, the semi-transformed heads were quite beautiful, their normal human features melding flawlessly into concentric layers of crisp new leaves, their hair hung with fruit and flowers, though one or two – and these were undoubtedly the ones that Shirley had just found – were more gory; in their case, thick vines tended to uncurl from the face’s gaping mouth, buds hung from the nostrils, branches often sprouted from the eye sockets, having first, presumably, popped out the eyeballs. They made for a very ugly sight, and Drayton had often thought them reminiscent of rotting corpses through which natural undergrowth had penetrated.

THE POPPET

When two college friends fall out over the same girl, one of them turns to withcraft, and unwittingly unleashes a nightmarish force …

I took the kettle from the cupboard, filled it at the sink and plugged it in, then went to close the blinds and draw the curtains, and as I did I glanced out of the window – down onto the quadrangle. And for the second time that evening I stopped dead.

Someone had just vanished out of sight below. Someone who had just walked diagonally across the quadrangle.

The chill went to my very bones.

There was nobody else here, I told myself. Aside from Cheerwick, and it certainly hadn’t been him. I tried to recall who it was I’d just seen. But no answer was possible, because who could there be in Crawford House who was less than three feet tall and walked with an ungainly limp?

A child maybe?

But there were no children here. And in any case, when did you ever see a child wearing a headscarf and old, peasant-type clothing?

Downstairs, I heard the swing and bang of the door being violently opened.

     A terrible second passed, before I threw myself across the room and yanked my own door open. What sounded like heavy but strangely hollow feet were clumping up the stone stair.

GRENDEL’S LAIR

A suspected murderer leads a bunch of a cops into a network of derelict air-raid shelters to find a missing child – where a hideous evil awaits them!

“Where the fuck are you taking us to?” Brunton asked. He was still coming the heavy, but the eyes were darting about, rabbit-like, in his red, pudgy face.

“We’re almost there,” Grimwood answered, a curious half-smile twisting his mouth.

A few minutes later they entered an area of tunnel more heaped with debris than anything they’d so far seen; huge sections of its roof and walls had long ago collapsed. In consequence, this space was the tightest and dingiest yet. A black fungus coated the damp and rotted fragments of wall that were still visible – it seemed to leach away what minuscule light there was, and fuelled the sensation that the party had now burrowed to the deepest point of the air-raid shelters. In that respect, when Grimwood suddenly stopping to think, chuckled and, hunkering down, began to scoop bricks and dirt away from the piled rubble with his cuffed hands, it filled the three cops with revulsion.

“Can you imagine,” Craegan said, “this slimy little toe-rag brought a child down here!” His gun was trained firmly on Grimwood’s back; sweat gleamed on his pallid face.

Lockhart glanced warily at the firearms man. “That’s behind him now though, isn’t it? Eh … Gordon?”

Grimwood made no reply.

“Confession’s good for the soul,” Lockhart added.

“So’s prison,” Craegan said, his voice rising. “Too good. He should’ve been strung up for what he did!”

Grimwood ignored him and continued to dig.

“Easy, Craegan,” Lockhart advised.

     “Easy?” For the first time, the firearms man looked round at the chief super. “Easy? He’s had it easy … for way too long!”

HELL IN THE CATHEDRAL

When holiday-makers are marooned in a Mediterranean sea-cave, they at first think it's a joke, only to find themselves at the mercy of a relentless and voracious beast …

“We may have another problem,” Dolph said. “This cave-system is of course tidal ... it may be that with high tide, some of these passages become impassable.”

The terror of that thought gripped us like a vice.  “Let’s go now!” I said urgently. “Now!”

We moved in a group towards the tunnel, at a steady breast-stroke – but not before Dolph handed us two flares each in case any of us got separated from the rest, though we were only to use them one at a time. The two Germans were proving themselves good companions – they both took off their flippers and fastened them to their harness, so as not to get too far ahead. As we swam, Karen came up beside me and asked if I was sure I could make it. I could have laughed. What choice did I have?

I could never have imagined however, just what a feat of strength and endurance was required even to make it out of that deepest chamber. Anyone who has ever tried to swim against a rising tide, even in shallow water off some pleasant beach, will know how difficult it is. For every three yards we made towards the black crevasse that was our first exit, the current pushed us back two. We gasped and grunted and strained every muscle, yet at the same time we knew we couldn’t afford to overtax ourselves. Just thinking about the distance between us and the outer world was unbearable. Mind you, I doubt in that particular moment that any one of the four of us knew the real meaning of fear.

One second later, we did.

It was Karen who first saw it coming up behind us. She was in front of me and had glanced around, concerned that I was dropping behind, when I saw her face change. She gave a shrill, prolonged scream. I looked around too, and had a fleeting vision of some vast shape barrelling towards us, under the surface.

     Before I could cry out, a huge object – squashy, rubbery, freezing cold – bundled into me with such force that I was catapulted out of the water and into the midst of the others.

THE BALEFUL DEAD

An ageing metal band reunite to make one last album, but the country mansion they choose for a venue has a history of madness, massacre and necromancy …

“Luke! Luke …wake up man!”

But it was too late. Because suddenly they were onto me, ragged hordes of black and ragged things swarming out from either side of the path. I ploughed into them, crunched headlong into their midst as though driving through a cluster of saplings. There was a grinding of metal, a tearing and snapping of fibrous limbs, and then bodies were being hurled aside or going down flailing beneath my wheels. The next thing, the world turned upside-down: the quad bike flipped over and I was flung hard onto the verge. I took the brunt of it on the right shoulder and the right side of my head. It knocked me senseless, and for some time I lay grovelling in the leaf-rubble and what I assumed was a pool of my own vomit. But even groggy, I knew that I wasn’t alone.

With agonised dizziness, I was able to look up.

The crash had put out the headlight, so I was denied much detail, but I sensed as much as saw them standing all around me – those still capable of standing, for I had mown a good number down, and I had the distinct impression that beneath their dented plate and mildewed leather they were more bones and filth than actual flesh.

(The witch doll image is by Malcolm Lidbury, the image of the Green Man costume is by David R. Tribble, and the image of the Green Man in stone by Johanne McInnis).

Green men, maniacs and ghastly sea-beasts

To continue the horror theme from my last post, as opposed to the thriller theme I’ve concentrated on for so much this year, I can now announce that DON’T READ ALONE, a new e-collection of my stories and novellas is available for pre-order at Amazon, with an official publication date of October 11^th this year.

Here is the cover, as provided by the ever-reliable STEVE UPHAM.

There perhaps isn’t an automatic cross-cover for readers between thrillers and horrors. Some are content to indulge in both, others less so. But as a writer, I have long been fascinated by the two sub-genres and have regularly worked in both, finding many overlaps between the two. It’s only in this last couple of years, of course, that my thriller novels, the likes of STALKERS and SACRIFICE (with HUNTED due out from Avon Books in February) – action-fuelled crime tomes following the investigations of DS Mark Heckenburg – have become bestsellers and have subsequently started to occupy much of my time. But before then, I had a long history of producing horror stories and novellas for magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 300 have been published to date, going back to the early 1990s; two of these have been the recipient of the British Fantasy Award, and one of them won the International Horror Guild Award (so I like to think I knew what I was doing).

However, by the nature of the beast, many of the titles in which these first appeared are now deleted, out of print or were the work of small printing houses since defunct; either way, completists are finding them elusive to collect, and new readers can only ever find them as titles in back-lists. As such, in the age of the e-book, it seemed an obvious thing to look at the best of these again, tighten and trim where necessary, and re-issue them as e-collections.

That, somewhat loosely, is the new plan.

DON’T READ ALONE will hopefully be the first in a rolling programme of new e-publications – each containing about 70,000 words – drawing on the best of my short horror stories and novellas, and each one assembled with tales specifically chosen to complement each other but also varying in subject matter so there should always be something for everyone (the one overarching feature, if I say so myself, is fear – I prefer my stories to be as frightening as possible, or at the very least suspenseful and unnerving).

Audio versions and even paperbacks may follow in due course, though I’m not totally sure how that latter scheme will pan out at this early stage. If you’re interested in that, keep watching this space.

The table of contents for DON’T READ ALONE is as follows:

The Old North Road (first published in Alone On The Darkside, 2006, and winner of the International Horror Guild Award): A writer investigating the myths surrounding the Green Man has a terrifying chance encounter on a lonely woodland road ...

The Poppet (first published in Enemies At The Door, 2012): A self-centred student does the dirty on a college pal, only to find his fate interwoven with a mysterious faceless doll ...

Grendel’s Lair (first published in Beneath The Ground, 2003): A callous cop, a brutal criminal, a missing child - and something unspeakable in a derelict air-raid shelter ...

Hell In The Cathedral (first published in The Shadows Beneath, 2000): Brit tourists in the Med are taken on the boat-trip of a lifetime, but find themselves at the mercy of a voracious sea-beast ...

The Baleful Dead (first published in Groaning Shadows, 2009): An ageing metal band hook up at a lonely country manse to record one last album, unaware that their scheming manager has a 'foolproof plan' to summon assistance from beyond ...

Ten times the horror - Black Book is back!

Very pleased this week to announce that another volume in one of my current favourite series of horror anthologies, THE 10^th BLACK BOOK OF HORROR (the artwork to which is pictured left), will soon be published.

As many may know, penning short horror stories is one of my favourite past-times – I have a back-catalogue of such that goes back into what feels like ancient history – but given the amount of time I’ve been putting into my new series of cop thriller novels from Avon Books, I’ve had almost no time at all of late to write pieces of short fiction.

It isn’t a complete non-starter. I still manage to crank them out now and then, but they are, alas, few and far between these days. That said, the BLACK BOOK OF HORROR series (MORTBURY PRESS) is one I will always try and contribute to. The brainchild of editor Charles Black, it is very much heir-apparent to the famous PAN HORROR series of the 1960s and 1970s in that it sees the publication of an annual anthology of horror stories, which vary from the most gruesome and disturbing kind of contes cruels, to clever psychological mindwarps, to the kinds of eerie supernatural mysteries that hark back to the golden age of the English ghost story.

The 10th BLACK BOOK OF HORROR is due out very shortly, and it will the ninth one I’ve been fortunate enough to have a story included in (the only one I’ve missed thus far is BBH#2, though I sort of doubled up in BB#8, as the cover featured an image of my severed head – which was a little bit unnerving). Anyway, my contribution to BBH#10 is a story called MARSHWALL, which, without giving too many spoilers away, concerns a lonely house on the edge of a desolate, waterlogged wilderness, and its less than savoury occupants.

I can’t actually give you a date when this book will be available, but for anyone fortunate enough to have a ticket, it will most likely be getting an official launch at World Fantasy in Brighton at the end of October. If anyone still needs convincing, here’s a LINK to a rather neat little video put together to celebrate this series by regular contributor and resourceful mistress of the night, ANNA TABORSKA.

And if that isn’t enough for you, here’s the TOC for BBH#10:

STIFF by Angela Blake; THE EASTER BUNNY by Tom Johnstone; THE LAST TESTAMENT OF JACOB TYLER by David Surface; THE WAR EFFORT by Carl P. Thompson; THE PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTING by David A. Sutton; CHRISTMAS IN THE RAIN by Chris Lawton; DEEPER THAN DARK WATER by Gary Power; MARSHWALL by Paul Finch; EXPLODING RAPHAELESQUE HEADS by Ian Hunter; THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER by John Llewellyn Probert; THE PYGMALION CONJURATION by Mike Chinn; THE BOY by David Williamson; THE LAST WAGON IN THE TRAIN by Andrea Janes; DAD DANCING by Kate Farrell; GUINEA PIG GIRL by Thana Niveau.