Author Priya Sharma has picked a selection of 'Halloween Reads' over on her site. Lots of great suggestions to add to your 'to read' pile if you're a fan of the spooky and horrifying (and there's a nice shout out for The Quarantined City, too).
Priya is a superb writer of the spooky stuff herself; her debut collection is out from Undertow Publications in 2018.
Showing posts with label The Quarantined City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Quarantined City. Show all posts
Thursday, 12 October 2017
Monday, 10 July 2017
Background Fears #1
I've recently been rereading a whole bunch of my stories with a view to selecting those that will work best together as a third collection. Such an activity is interesting, because it reveals connections, motifs, and repeated/recycled imagery & ideas in my work that I've never noticed before.
And one thing I spotted is... I obviously can't stop worrying about climate change.
I mean, I kind of knew it was there in the background of my fiction, because it's in the background of every thought I have, so it seems. That little niggle, that little voice that doesn't let you forget where we're heading unless we do something. But I've only written about the subject directly once (in an as yet unpublished story) and I unthinkingly assumed I'd only mentioned obliquely in a few of the others that have seen the light of day.
As a horror writer, I should have known we can't bury our fears as deeply as that. Reading back, I'm constantly hinting at it. Trying to give voice to those moments of anxiety whenever something reminds me of climate change (which given it's in the background of everything, could be almost anything).
An incomplete list of the more obvious places it occurs in my work:
Pretty obviously, it's part of a whole set of background worries abut the future for the narrator in 'Falling Over'.
It's part of the world building in 'He'. Same with 'Mirages In The Badlands', too, with its "dreadful heat".
'Across The Water' alludes to it, although of course the central character of that story probably doesn't believe in climate change. (He doesn't believe in a lot of things, but if horror teaches us anything it's that disbelief can't save us.)
Looking back, I see that 'The Place Where It Always Rains' is totally a metaphor for climate change - how could I not realise that? - and similar 'strange weather', for want of a better term, drives the action of both 'Snow' and the 'Into The Rain' section of The Quarantined City.
It's a constant, now I look for it. It's hiding in both the haunted house tale I'm currently writing and the first story I ever had published, 'Feed The Enemy'. It's quite obviously something which haunts me but which I cannot exorcise, not even through fiction.
It's in the background, of everything. But like all monsters in the background, it's not going to stay there forever.
It's coming for us.
And one thing I spotted is... I obviously can't stop worrying about climate change.
I mean, I kind of knew it was there in the background of my fiction, because it's in the background of every thought I have, so it seems. That little niggle, that little voice that doesn't let you forget where we're heading unless we do something. But I've only written about the subject directly once (in an as yet unpublished story) and I unthinkingly assumed I'd only mentioned obliquely in a few of the others that have seen the light of day.
As a horror writer, I should have known we can't bury our fears as deeply as that. Reading back, I'm constantly hinting at it. Trying to give voice to those moments of anxiety whenever something reminds me of climate change (which given it's in the background of everything, could be almost anything).
An incomplete list of the more obvious places it occurs in my work:
Pretty obviously, it's part of a whole set of background worries abut the future for the narrator in 'Falling Over'.
It's part of the world building in 'He'. Same with 'Mirages In The Badlands', too, with its "dreadful heat".
'Across The Water' alludes to it, although of course the central character of that story probably doesn't believe in climate change. (He doesn't believe in a lot of things, but if horror teaches us anything it's that disbelief can't save us.)
Looking back, I see that 'The Place Where It Always Rains' is totally a metaphor for climate change - how could I not realise that? - and similar 'strange weather', for want of a better term, drives the action of both 'Snow' and the 'Into The Rain' section of The Quarantined City.
It's a constant, now I look for it. It's hiding in both the haunted house tale I'm currently writing and the first story I ever had published, 'Feed The Enemy'. It's quite obviously something which haunts me but which I cannot exorcise, not even through fiction.
It's in the background, of everything. But like all monsters in the background, it's not going to stay there forever.
It's coming for us.
Sunday, 2 July 2017
The Quarantined City real-time reviewed...
 |
| Only connect... Wait, no, that's another book |
One of the distinguishing features of these reviews is the connections Des makes between different stories... so given this novel's stories-within-stories structure, it's no surprise he found plenty illuminating to say (including comparing it to Timothy J. Jarvis's wonderful The Wanderer). Indeed, one of the buried inspirations for The Quarantined City was Malcolm Lowry's masterpiece Under The Volcano and a half-remembered university seminar about it, in which the lecturer said that paranoia was the act of a mind making too many connections. Another one of which would be that Under The Volcano is a story about a man wandering around a city, having too much to drink, which might sound familiar...
A Des Lewis review of Under the Volcano would no doubt be amazing. Meanwhile, you can read his review of The Quarantined City here.
The Quarantined City (UK | US)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
A partial & subjective list of the influences, inspirations and random thoughts behind The Quarantined City:
The short stories of Charles L Grant
My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Twin Peaks
The decades old associations of the smell resulting from an accidentally smashed jar of paprika
A school trip to Eyam circa 1985
The short stories of Jorge Borges
The experience of deja-vu
The baby from Trainspotting
Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
My stag do, Cork
Six Characters In Search Of An Author, Pirandello
My cat (George)
The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
The second-hand book-stall in the covered market, Oxford
The Dark Tower novels, Stephen King
What I think A Tale Of Two Cities is about, despite having never read it
The arboretum park, Nottingham
Invisible Cities, Calvino
Gremlins
Friends (no, really)
The drawings of Escher
It Only Comes Out At Night, Dennis Etchison
The music of Mogwai
Descriptions of real-life ‘near death experiences’
L’Auberge bar (Le Crotoy, France)
Weekend break to Rome
Memento & Inception
The Double, Jose Saramago
The feeling of disorientation when visiting somewhere you've never been before, where the layout of the streets makes little sense
Auto De Fe, Elias Canetti
The Beautiful Strange, Shirley Jackson
The Exorcist, William Peter Blattey
The experience of deja-vu
Desolation Row, Bob Dylan
Northern Exposure
What happened to me the day my drink was spiked
The Plague, Albert Camus
Hard-Boiled Wonderland & The End Of The World, Haruki Murakami
The Orphanage
Ultraviolence, Lana Del Ray
The novels of Philip K Dick
Hempel’s Ravens paradox
The short stories of Ramsey Campbell
My hazy & no doubt woefully inaccurate understanding of modern physics & cosmology, especially quantum entanglement & parallel universes
The City Of Glass, Paul Auster
The Information, Martin Amis
The lines from TS Eliot's Four Quartets I can remember
Black Flowers, Steve Mosby
One specific scene in The Shining
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Ghost Story, Peter Straub
That drawing which is a young girl looked at one way, and an old woman the other
That drawing which is a rabbit looked at one way, and a duck the other
Thursday, 21 July 2016
The Quarantined City reviewed at Dark Musings
Many thanks to Anthony Watson who reviewed The Quarantined City on his Dark Musings site:
"All that has gone before is masterfully tied up in a brilliantly constructed conclusion. There is great joy to be had as each revelation is made; as each of the perplexing riddles seeded throughout the narrative are answered; as sense is finally made of the skilfully created confusion... It’s a masterclass in technique...I was blown away by The Quarantined City, loved its structure and its intelligence."
"All that has gone before is masterfully tied up in a brilliantly constructed conclusion. There is great joy to be had as each revelation is made; as each of the perplexing riddles seeded throughout the narrative are answered; as sense is finally made of the skilfully created confusion... It’s a masterclass in technique...I was blown away by The Quarantined City, loved its structure and its intelligence."
Friday, 15 July 2016
The Quarantined City reviewed by The Guardian
Even better, it was a good review. A great one in fact - I'm slightly gobsmacked. After comparisons with a number of my favourite authors and inspirations, it ends like this:
"The triumph of Everington’s first novel is that, while hinting at lofty literary precedents, it cumulatively takes on an unsettling voice all of its own." The Guardian
Ebook: Amazon US; Amazon UK; Amazon Canada; Barnes & Noble; Kobo;Apple; Smashwords
Paperback (ISBN: 1533255660): Amazon US; Amazon UK; Amazon Canada; CreateSpace
Saturday, 9 July 2016
The Quarantined City - Out Now
So, the complete story can finally be told. The Quarantined City is out now from Infinity Plus, who I couldn't be happier working with again. Big thanks to Keith Brooke for taking on the book, his spot-on editing, and for the excellent cover.
It's a book I'm very proud of, despite it's troubled pre-Infinity Plus life. It's my first novel, technically, although it was never written as such. I hope readers enjoy finding out he secrets of Fellows, the reclusive writer Boursier, and the quarantined city itself as much as I enjoyed writing it. And it was a genuinely enjoyable book to write, my unnamed city being a space where so many of my favourite literary ideas could be set loose.
Ebook: Amazon US; Amazon UK; Amazon Canada; Barnes & Noble; Kobo;Apple; Smashwords
Paperback (ISBN: 1533255660): Amazon US; Amazon UK; Amazon Canada; CreateSpace
The Quarantined City: sealed off from the outside world, with only the sight of the ocean to remind its inhabitants of life beyond. No one knows why the city has been quarantined and conspiracy theories abound.
But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above.
There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn’t let himself think of that.
But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks.
Reviews:
"...There is an edge of Murakami here, we are in a world just slightly skewed from our own but all the more foreign for that. Everington has a crystal clear prose style, reminiscent of J G Ballard but, like China Mieville, twisted toward the gothic..." Damien G Walter
"There is a wonderfully surreal quality to this story so far... the writing skill here and the narrative hooks are enough to keep readers coming back to see how it will all play out." The Geekiary
"This is the kind of thing Everington does better than just about anybody: the sense of contamination across the author-reader lines, the suggestion of the double... the nameless disquiet. We have our horror authors who focus on cosmic terror, who focus on physical distress, who focus on moral revulsion, but Everington is one of the few horror bards of unease—that prickling sensation that something must be wrong, even if you can’t pinpoint it—and this story, a kind of liminal horror, is proof." Lauren James
Monday, 4 July 2016
The Quarantined City: Out Friday
For those readers who've been waiting to read the complete version for so long, I can only apologise one last time and say that I hope that it is worth the wait. Special thanks to Keith Brooke at Infinity Plus for taking on the book when it was in limbo (aptly enough given the story, maybe) and doing such a fantastic job with the editing and cover art–which you can see below for the first time.
"...There is an edge of Murakami here, we are in a world just slightly skewed from our own but all the more foreign for that. Everington has a crystal clear prose style, reminiscent of J G Ballard but, like China Mieville, twisted toward the gothic..." Damien G Walter
The Quarantined City: sealed off from the outside world, with only the sight of the ocean to remind its inhabitants of life beyond. No one knows why the city has been quarantined and conspiracy theories abound.
But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above. There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn’t let himself think of that.
But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks…
Friday, 11 March 2016
The Quarantined City redux! Coming Soon From Infinity Plus
Very, very pleased to be able to say that readers will finally be able to find out how The Quarantined City ends soon...
Infinity Plus will be publishing the complete work as an ebook and paperback this summer. For those of you who've not read any of its earlier incarnation, The Quarantined City combines elements of horror and the uncanny with the influence of writers like Borges and Haruki Marukami. Plus a bit of Twin Peaks and quite a lot of references to spicy food.
The Quarantined City: sealed off from the outside world, with only the sight of the ocean to remind its inhabitants of life beyond. No one knows why the city has been quarantined and conspiracy theories abound.
But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above.
There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn’t let himself think of that.
But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks…
But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above.
There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn’t let himself think of that.
But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks…
I'm really excited about this story again and it couldn't be in better hands than Keith Brooke and Infinity Plus (who published Falling Over). Why not check out some of their other titles in the meantime?
Sunday, 10 January 2016
A Quick Announcement On The Quarantined City
Some of you might have spotted that all has gone quiet re. The Quarantined City. The original plan was for Spectral Press to publish ebooks of parts 1-6 monthly during 2015, with a combined paperback volume following this year. However, after publishing the fourth part in July 2015 Spectral did not release parts 5 or 6 and my efforts to find out what the cause of the delay was were frustrated. A number of readers contacted me to find out what was happening, and annoyingly I was unable to tell them anything. Nor did I receive any payments for the episodes that were published.
Unfortunately, it turns out Spectral Press has run into some very serve financial trouble. The full extent of this become apparent this weekend; a rescue plan was put together by another press to published Spectral Press books under a new imprint. For various reasons I've decided not to sign with that press, meaning all rights to The Quarantined City have reverted back to me. I am speaking to publishers about getting the full story published as one volume and I hope to have some news on this soon. For the readers who have bought the original episodes and are impatient to know how things turn out for Fellows, Boursier and the quarantined city itself I can only apologise.
Spectral Press has published some fantastic books over the years, and I hope that the owner recovers from this setback and the health issues that have lead to it. I must also say that a number of authors and customers of Spectral have over this weekend been subject to conduct that was unprofessional to say the least–they all have my full support.
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Bad Memories
The book also features tales by Rebecca Lloyd, Tim Major, and Kelda Crich plus many others, so it is well worth a read. The interior and exterior artwork are both great as well.
Bad Memories is a slightly unusual story for me, being set in the future. Or at least, a version of the future. The future of the world outside the Other Room, perhaps? It's a story about the relationship between a psychiatrist and a patient with an unusual malady...
Dark Lane Anthology Volume 2 is available now (UK | US)
In other news, the final two parts of The Quarantined City should be out this month from Spectral Press - it will be interesting to see what people make of the whole thing...
Wednesday, 5 August 2015
A partial & subjective list of the influences, inspirations and random thoughts behind The Quarantined City #1 - 6
The short stories of Charles L Grant
My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Twin Peaks
The decades old associations of the smell resulting from an accidentally smashed jar of paprika
A school trip to Eyam circa 1985
The short stories of Jorge Borges
The experience of deja-vu
The baby from Trainspotting
Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
My stag do, Cork
Six Characters In Search Of An Author, Pirandello
My cat (George)
The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
The second-hand book-stall in the covered market, Oxford
The Dark Tower novels, Stephen King
What I think A Tale Of Two Cities is about, despite having never read it
The arboretum park, Nottingham
Invisible Cities, Calvino
Gremlins
Friends (no, really)
The drawings of Escher
It Only Comes Out At Night, Dennis Etchison
The music of Mogwai
Descriptions of real-life ‘near death experiences’
L’Auberge bar (Le Crotoy, France)
Weekend break to Rome
Memento & Inception
The Double, Jose Saramago
The feeling of disorientation when visiting somewhere you've never been before, where the layout of the streets makes little sense
Auto De Fe, Elias Canetti
The Beautiful Strange, Shirley Jackson
The Exorcist, William Peter Blattey
The experience of deja-vu
Desolation Row, Bob Dylan
Northern Exposure
What happened to me the day my drink was spiked
The Plague, Albert Camus
Hard-Boiled Wonderland & The End Of The World, Haruki Murakami
The Orphanage
Ultraviolence, Lana Del Ray
The novels of Philip K Dick
Hempel’s Ravens paradox
The short stories of Ramsey Campbell
My hazy & no doubt woefully inaccurate understanding of modern physics & cosmology, especially quantum entanglement & parallel universes
The City Of Glass, Paul Auster
The Information, Martin Amis
The lines from TS Eliot's Four Quartets I can remember
Black Flowers, Steve Mosby
One specific scene in The Shining
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Ghost Story, Peter Straub
That drawing which is a young girl looked at one way, and an old woman the other
That drawing which is a rabbit looked at one way, and a duck the other
Monday, 6 July 2015
Available Now: The Quarantined City #4: A Lack Of Demons
Fellows has finally tracked down the quarantined city’s most mysterious resident, the reclusive writer known as Boursier. A man so utterly meek and placid it seems impossible he can have written the stories Fellows has found so affecting. The stories he is convinced don’t just reflect reality but are actually changing it…
The alterations in the quarantined city, and in his own life, are getting more dramatic, but how much is that really due to Boursier and how much just caused by Fellows’s own meddling?
A Lack Of Demons is the fourth episode of the six part monthly serial The Quarantined City from James Everington and Spectral Press. (UK | US)
And of course, episodes 1, 2 and 3 are also still available. Here's what critic and blogger Damien G Walter had this to say about the first episode: "...there is an edge of Murakami here, we are in a world just slightly skewed from our own but all the more foreign for that. Everington has a crystal clear prose style, reminiscent of J G Ballard but, like China Mieville, twisted toward the gothic..."
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
'A Lack Of Demons' - Cover
There's been a bit of an unintended pause before the release of the next episode of The Quarantined City, but things are moving again and Spectral Press have revealed the wonderful cover art for episode #4, A Lack Of Demons.
Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are available now. Here's what The Geekiary site had to say about the first two: "There is a wonderfully surreal quality to this story so far... the writing skill here and the narrative hooks are enough to keep readers coming back to see how it will all play out."
Buy The Smell Of Paprika here (UK) and here (US).
Buy Into The Rain here (UK) and here (US).
Buy Spot The Difference here (UK) and here (US).
Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are available now. Here's what The Geekiary site had to say about the first two: "There is a wonderfully surreal quality to this story so far... the writing skill here and the narrative hooks are enough to keep readers coming back to see how it will all play out."
Buy The Smell Of Paprika here (UK) and here (US).
Buy Into The Rain here (UK) and here (US).
Buy Spot The Difference here (UK) and here (US).
Monday, 13 April 2015
The Quarantined City Parts 1 & 2 Reviewed...
"There is a wonderfully surreal quality to this story so far... the writing skill here and the narrative hooks are enough to keep readers coming back to see how it will all play out."
Nicely balance review, with the odd worry that I'm attempting to spin too many plates at once with this project... Hopefully they'll still all be spinning at the end, and it won't end with me weeping into a mound of broken china... :)
You can read the full review here.
Friday, 3 April 2015
The Quarantined City #3 Out Today!
And as a bonus, the previous episodes The Smell Of Paprika and Into The Rain, are available at a knocked down price at the moment.
But his search of the quarantined city for the reclusive writer takes him deep into the heart of the protest movement, which is stranger than he ever imagined. What kind of methods are they prepared to use to end the quarantine, and at what price? And how far will Fellows have to go helping them if he is to get the information he needs?
Monday, 23 February 2015
The Quarantined City Episode 2: Into The Rain
Blurb and links below.
For Fellows, life in the quarantined city is getting stranger.
The previous day had been a normal one, spent walking the streets and hunting rare books. But then Fellows had read a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, and things changed. His memories of the city no longer seem to tally with the streets around him, and the ghostly child in his house seems to have redoubled its efforts to touch him. The protestors against the quarantine are getting more vocal and the unity government more intolerant.
Fellows just wants to ignore these complications and concentrate on finding further stories by Boursier, but his efforts to do so just entangle him further in the secrets of the quarantined city.
Into The Rain is the second episode of the six part monthly serial The Quarantined City from James Everington and Spectral Press. (UK | US)
The previous day had been a normal one, spent walking the streets and hunting rare books. But then Fellows had read a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, and things changed. His memories of the city no longer seem to tally with the streets around him, and the ghostly child in his house seems to have redoubled its efforts to touch him. The protestors against the quarantine are getting more vocal and the unity government more intolerant.
Fellows just wants to ignore these complications and concentrate on finding further stories by Boursier, but his efforts to do so just entangle him further in the secrets of the quarantined city.
Into The Rain is the second episode of the six part monthly serial The Quarantined City from James Everington and Spectral Press. (UK | US)
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Do As I Say...
I'm guesting on the brilliant Gingernuts Of Horror site today, with a post entitled Do As I Say Not As I Do - Some Hypocritical Advice On Writing Episodic Fiction.
There's also a picture of me eating a sausage, for some reason.
And whilst we're here, want to see a sneak preview of the cover for the second episode of The Quarantined City? Oh go on then.
There's also a picture of me eating a sausage, for some reason.
And whilst we're here, want to see a sneak preview of the cover for the second episode of The Quarantined City? Oh go on then.
Thursday, 5 February 2015
The Story Behind The Quarantined City
"It was a really bad time to begin writing a monthly serial..."
I've a guest post up at the Upcoming4me site, as part of their 'The Story Behind...' series. Find out about the slightly hectic gestation of The Quarantined City serial here.
I've a guest post up at the Upcoming4me site, as part of their 'The Story Behind...' series. Find out about the slightly hectic gestation of The Quarantined City serial here.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Out Today! The Quarantined City: The Smell Of Paprika
So, at some point overnight whilst I slept, The Smell Of Paprika, the first episode The Quarantined City, went live...My thanks to Simon Marshall Jones from Spectral Press for the invite to do a monthly serial and to Iain Rowan, Mark West, Phil Ambler and Martin Cosby for help, proof-reading and general encouragement along the way.
You can download The Smell Of Paprika here (UK) and here (US).
The next episode, Into The Rain, is already in the hands of the publisher, and all being well will follow in a month's time...
The Quarantined City: sealed off from the outside world, with only the sight of the ocean to remind its inhabitants of life beyond. No one knows why the city has been quarantined and conspiracy theories abound.
But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above.
There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn't let himself think of that.
But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)