Some Recent Things

Some recent things:

I was asked to contribute to Mark West's Brit Horror Mixtape, where he invited a number of writers to write liner notes about their favourite British horror story. There some fantastic selections, plus some I've not read but which I mean to check out. My own selection was Ramsey Campbell's The End Of A Summer's Day. You can listen to the Mixtape here.

I reviewed S.P. Miskowski's excellent new chapbook Stag In Flight for This Is Horror.

And finally, thanks to Kit Power and Jim McLeod for this interview over on The Ginger Nuts Of Horror site; I spoke to Kit about Falling Over and the stories inside. Hope you enjoy.

Hyde Happenings

As readers of this blog will know, The Hyde Hotel (edited by myself and Dan Howarth) was released by Black Shuck Books last week. It seems to be doing well so far, hitting several Amazon top tens and also getting it's first review over on Anthony Watson's Dark Musings site:

"... this is an impressive collection of stories and one that provided an excellent start to 2016... a hugely satisfying anthology." (full review here)

Dan and I also recorded an interview talking all things Hyde with Michael Wilson over at This Is Horror, which you can listen to here. We're grilled on the genesis of the idea, the practicalities of seeing it to fruition, and I also get asked which author most intimidates me...

The Hyde Hotel is available now from Black Shuck Books.

A quick note about two new reviews I've written that have gone up at This Is Horror:

Carus & Mitch by Tim Major, which is an exceptionally good novella from Omnium Gatherum.

And the somewhat uneven new collection from Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning.

Gifts For The One Who Comes After by Helen Marshall

Gifts For The One Who Comes After by Helen Marshall is a collection of short stories as good as it's title, and I recently had the pleasure not just of reviewing it, but of interviewing Helen as well. Links to the relevant This Is Horror pages below:

Gifts For The One Who Comes After - Review

Helen Marshall Interview

Recommendation: Water For Drowning by Ray Cluley

Water For Drowning by Ray Cluley is the latest chapbook in the This Is Horror series. It’s a dark and brooding tale that is Cluley’s own interpretation of the mermaid myth – not of our sanitised, cartoonish modern versions but the original fables of doomed love, glass underfoot, and death. It’s told in the first person by Josh, who plays with a local rock band around the south coast - a big fish in a small pond. Josh is, at least at the start of the story, a bit of a cock. One night at one of his gigs, he meets Genna, a girl who seems smitten with his lyrics of water and rebirth as much as with Josh himself. Josh, normally a one-night stand kind of guy, starts to fall for Genna. (This doesn't, however, stop him acting like a bit of a cock.) Genna, meanwhile, has dreams and aspirations far wilder than Josh’s clichéd rock-god ones…

The story crams in as many references to mermaids as it can, from the sublime The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock to the, uh, not-sublime Tom Hanks film Splash, to the fake mermaid bodies exhibited in Victorian times. (Although there’s no allusion to Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and it’s lovely mermaids between the windows of the sea.) In doing so, it builds a backdrop of allusion and history behind Josh and Genna’s tentative romance, and the gradual revelation of the depths of Genna’s obsession. And leaves open, too, the interpretation that maybe, just maybe, Genna isn't deluded at all.

Water For Drowning is one of those books where, as you read it, you realise what the author is going to attempt & what risks they are taking and you think – oh god. It’s like watching someone on a high-wire: what if he wobbles? What if he falls? Because don’t let the length fool you, this is an ambitious story, very much more than the sum of its parts. As such the slightest mistake could ruin its hard-won balance. Fortunately Cluley never puts a foot wrong, never falters, and makes crossing the wire look easy. He even does back-flips. It’s a fantastic achievement, a fantastic story that’s among the very best I've read this year.

In addition, the chapbook also includes a bonus story, the award winning Shark! Shark! – probably some of you will have read it in Black Static. It’s a very clever, genuinely funny, and unsettling story, that’s well worth another read. There’s also an interesting introduction to Water For Drowning  by the author himself. Whilst I've enjoyed all the This Is Horror chapbook stories to date, they seem to have upped their game in terms of production quality and extra content with this one.

 A must read. Preferably after a big plate of fish and chips like I did.

Ray Cluley on Short Stories

Regular readers (hello you) will know of my love for the short story form, and in particular its suitability to horror and strange fiction. So it was a pleasure to listen to this interview with Ray Cluley, where he talks about short stories with This Is Horror.

(There's also some filthy stuff about mermaids, too.)

Look Out For...

Just a quick note to say I'm now writing a regular column for the This Is Horror website called Look Out For...It's essentially me spouting on each week about forthcoming horror books that I'm excited about or interested in or intrigued by, and that I hope others will be too.

You can read the first Look Out For.... here.

Recommendation: The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones

As regular readers will know, I'm fascinated by how many good horror stories are set in hotels, and the latest This Is Horror chapbook is another one to add to my list. The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones is a gripping story about a psychic researcher who stays in many such strange hotels, investigated the so-called 'Elvis Room' effect - all hotels, he's learnt, nearly always hold back one room even when they say they are full, just in case a celebrity should turn up - and rumour has it that if that room is taken by a guest, someone in the hotel will die during the night...

It's an intriguing concept, and enough for most writers to hang a whole story off, but here it's just one idea amongst many. From the researchers initial fall from academic grace (triggered by finding evidence of the supernatural that he was trying to refute, but being treated like a crank by his colleagues anyway), to why passing strangers in hotels might be more sinister than you suspect, to the conflict between science and the supernatural, to just why the narrator might be on his third wife already.... there's a hell of a lot going on here, and it's a tribute to Jones skill that it never feels strained, that all the ideas dovetail naturally with each other and tie together at the story's end. Like the TARDIS, this one feels bigger when you're inside reading it than when outside observing it's slim page count. And like the TARDIS there's a kind of magic to that.

The teller of the story, in classic unreliable narrator fashion, tells us he is just wanting to know the truth... but he might be deluding himself even more than he, or we, realise at the start. There's enough subtlety around this element to make it pleasingly ambiguous, and make the story highly rereadable.

Oh, and ace cover art, too.

I've never read anything by Stephen Graham Jones before, and if The Elvis Room is anything to go by that's been a decidedly poor choice on my part. One of the best things I've read this year.

The Elvis Room (Amazon UK | US)

Thingamabobs

Thingamabob #1: I've been interviewed by the good chaps over at This Is Horror as part of their Meet The Writer feature. Ever wanted to know who I admire in the horror world or if I prefer gore or psychological chills? Probably not, but you can find out here anyway.

Thingamabob #2: Not to be outdone, over in The Horrifically Horrifying Horror site, there's an ace new review of the anthology Little Visible Delight which has some kind words about my story Calligraphy. 

Thingamabob #3: As I write this, I realise all over again how Belle And Sebastian were so very, very good back in the day, thanks to Shuffle. And it never hurts to be reminded of that fact:

Recommendations: Two Chapbooks

I've read two impressive chapbooks recently: Chalk by Pat Cadigan (part of the This Is Horror series) and Terry Grimwood's Soul Masque from Spectral Press.

Despite being roughly the same length and both being 'horror' the two were as different as, well, Chalk and cheese. (Sorry.) Chalk starts off quietly and realistically, building up a view of the narrator's world - it's a growing up story, and tells of two girls who are best friends, and who mark their surroundings with chalk to indicate good places to hide from parents and siblings. The weird element intrudes gradually, and is subtly done - just how much should we believe of what the narrator is telling us, looking back as she is at events she can surely not have fully comprehended at the time? It's ultimately a story about the loss of the past, of the fragility of memory, and of childhood innocence so close you think you can recapture it...

By contrast Soul Masque starts with a bang; in fact it starts with an epilogue and ends with a prologue. It's a noir-ish story about shifting allegiances in the battle between Heaven and Hell, it's action driven by a cast of drug-addicts, angelic singers, and hideous demons. There's a lot of skill in the way Grimwood packs in so much unobtrusive world-building; equally so in daring to use a few different narrators in such a a short format. In contrast to Chalk's elegiac, quiet tone, Soul Masque seems to race along, driven by staccato prose and vivid one-line imagery that hit you where it hurts.

So, two excellent but very different chapbooks. Take your pick or just read both. And sorry again about that chalk and cheese joke.

Review: Roadkill by Joseph D'Lacey

Roadkill by Joseph D’Lacey is the latest This Is Horror chapbook, although this story is only loosely horror, being a sort of existential Mad Max. Although there’s plenty of back-story, the entire ‘now’ of the plot takes place over just 100 seconds; the central character is involved in a race in a presumably post-apocalyptic world, pushing a stripped-down vehicle as fast as it will go towards The Edge – possibly transcendence, possibly nothingness. The physical aspects of this race are expertly evoked – the sounds of the engines, the heat of the metal against the driver’s bare skin – but it’s clear there’s more at stake here than a mere race. The world-view and goals of the character seem as stripped back of everything inessential as the cars they are racing… But the strange visions of a fox the narrator sees as he races, and the interconnection he feels with his opponent, suggest something larger, something more expansive to life than simply carrying on the same road as fast as you can...

 

In the midst of all this, the fact that D’Lacey manages any kind of world-building at all is impressive, although even in the flashback sections the reader sees only glimpses of the wider world, as if it were all whipping by at 180mph… It’s clear from these glimpses that the drivers and the cars they drive represent something fundamental to society as a whole; the race itself has something of a ritualistic air about it. Occasionally I wished the world was fleshed out slightly bit more, and it will be interesting to see if D’Lacey returns to it in any future works. Tight, taut prose keeps the story as focussed and single-minded as it’s protagonists. An interesting, original story from D’Lacey, and one I enjoyed reading and rereading.

 

100 seconds… 180mph… and a whole philosophy of life. Not bad for a short novella.

(Available on Kindle)

Review: Thin Men With Yellow Faces

Thin Men With Yellow Faces is part of the This Is Horror chapbook series, and is jointly written by Simon Bestwick and Gary McMahon. Sometimes when two authors I like collaborate I've found they muffle each other's voice, but other times it's more like amplification. I'm happy to say this story is very much in the latter camp.

Thin Men With Yellow Faces (and let's say right away what a great title that is) is a story perfect to read in a single setting, absorbing the grim atmosphere and allowing the tension to build. And build it most certainly does.

The set-up - child in trouble and menaced by human-like monsters - is like an episode of Doctor Who gone horribly awry, written with Northern verisimilitude and pessimism, and containing horrors that are very much adults-only. As you'd expect if you've read any of their previous work, these two authors don't stint on the chilling or grotesque.

The titular monsters are truly unforgettable, with a historical background that only makes them scarier. The story has a pleasing moral ambiguity to it, and could be read as a loose allegory about many of the horrors and injustices of the modern world (or our denial of them, at least). There's no easy get out for the characters here, and none for us either.

Overall this is a great collaboration, with the two-headed Bestwick/McMahon hybrid in fine form and breathing fire. You can (and bloody should) buy it directly from the This Is Horror site.