Boo Books and Trying To Be So Quiet

Well.
 
I'd planned to do a brief blog post today about some new reviews for my Boo Books novella Trying To Be So Quiet - and I still am going to mention that - but they've been slightly overshadowed by the sad news from Alex Davis that Boo Books is to close. Boo Books have released some fantastic books and I'm proud to have been part of their rosta. And I'd like to thank Alex for all his hard work and encouragement, and wish him good luck with his future ventures.
 
The good news is that Boo Books titles are all still available as we speak, and I can personally recommend Andrew David Barker's The Electric and Dead Leaves, the Haunted anthology, and, based on her reading at Edge-Lit, Tracy Fahey's collection The Unheimlich Manouver.


Oh yeah, and those Trying To Be So Quiet reviews:
 
"If you like your quiet, stealthy, and throat-achingly sad, this one is for you." Tracy Fahey
"A must read, wonderful.", Yvonne Davies, Terror Tree


Trying To Be So Quiet is available as a hardback and ebook (UK | US). 

Trying To Be So Quiet - Ebook Release

Trying To Be So Quiet is released as an ebook today (UK | US); the  limited edition hardback is also still available from the publisher, Boo Books.

I'll be doing a reading from the book as part of a launch event at this Edge-lit 5 this Saturday.

The blurb and a few review quotes are below...

"...a deeply moving story, emotionally charged,with a powerful and rich narrative, it is an exemplary example of ability for quiet horror to chill a reader to the core." Gingernuts Of Horror.

 "I really enjoyed this short, condensed novelette, which is packed full of bitterness and yearning, defeatism and aspiration. It’s what loss actually feels like... It’s a fine piece of work." Gary Fry

"I literally had goosebumps when I finished reading" Anthony Watson, Dark Musings

Trying To Be So Quiet by James Everington, with an introduction from Simon Bestwick.

The day they buried her was the first day Lizzie’s death seemed real…

With death comes a journey: a journey of silence, of ghosts and not-ghosts. Life begins to break, the cracks appearing, the meaning lost in the static of existence. And you find out whether you can come to a resolution with the absolute…Trying to be So Quiet is an incredibly powerful story of bereavement, of mourning, of finding something amidst nothingness.

Edge-Lit 5 / The Thirteen Signs

I'll be at Edge-Lit 5 at the Derby Quad on Saturday 16th July. I'll be part of the Boo Books launch event, where I'll be talking about, and reading from, Trying To Be So Quiet, alongside Tracey Fahey who will be doing the same from her forthcoming collection The Unheimlich Manoeuvre. The launch takes place at 11am, which means I'll then have the rest of the day free for socialising, buying books, and attending panels and launches. Hope to see a few of you there - say hello!

One event I'll definitely be attending is the legendary Edge-lit raffle, hosted by Sarah Pinborough and Conrad Williams. Can't wait for the irreverent, abusive and foul-mouthed descriptions of the prizes... even though one of my books is up for grabs this year. *Gulp*


In other news, I'm pleased to say my story Hooked will be appearing in the anthology The Thirteen Signs, in which each author has written a story based on a sign of the zodiac. Mine was Pisces; just for the record, I hate all that astrology bumpkin, a view I've tried to subtlety work into my tale...

The anthology is edited by Dean M Drinkel and the full lineup is below:

The Order Of Aries - Mark West
Come Join The Blood Parade - Lily Childs
Seven For Eight - Romain Collier
Carapace - Raven Dane
Leo - Tim Dry
Solomon Carson And The Death Of A Virgin - Trevor Kennedy & Robert E. Tate
Leeber - Christine Dougherty
The Scorpion Dance - Amelia Mangan
One in Twelve - Steve Byrne
A Sorrow Of Sweet Pipings - Jan Edwards
Ganymede - Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet
Hooked - James Everington
Worshipping The Snake- Dean M Drinkel

Shouting About Trying To Be So Quiet

More reviews for Trying To Be So Quiet recently which have made my day.

Des Lewis conducted one of his fabulous 'real time reviews' here, concluding with

"This work felt both devastating and uplifting to me. But how can that possibly be? And a great ghost story, to boot."

Anthony Watson praised by the production design and the story itself on his Dark Musings site.

And even one of my favourite current writers, Gary McMahon, had some kind words to say about it on Facebook:

"A small, quiet, poignant novella about grief and significance... No noise, no fuss, just good, honest writing about the things that matter. Recommended."

If any of these reviews have piqued your interest about TTBSQ, you can order it here.

What Horror Writers Talk About When They Talk About Love: Holly Ice

I thought I'd have some guest pieces to celebrate the release of Trying To Be So Quiet, and I wanted to feature some writers that I've not had on the blog before. The theme came to me when Claire, who works for Boo Books, was interviewing me about TTBSQ and said she thought it was a love story as much as a ghost story. So a plan was born: I'd ask some horror writers who I especially admire to write a piece about their favourite love story. It could be a novel, poem, song; it could be happy, sad or despairing. Today's piece is by...

Holly Ice. The first thing I read by Holly was the story 'Trysting Antlers' in the NewCon Press anthology La Femme. It was one of my favourites in there, and I was surprised to learn it was one of the author's first publications. She's followed it up with further short stories and the novella The Russian Sleep Experiment. 

Take it away, Holly:

What’s in a Love Story?

It’s impossible for me to choose one love story which has stayed with me to shape my writing and my personality. There are simply too many. My parents have been together for over 25 years and rarely argue, and I grew up with an abundance of Mills and Boon books to pilfer and read in the dark. Now, ebooks offer the chance to sneak a romance book onto trains without judging stares and the awkward conversation about what the book is about.  

Love is a great starting point for any story from chick lit to the darkest of horror. It is one of the strongest emotions a human being can feel and it branches from the strongest positivity to the sickest depths of despair, hurt, bitterness, and anger. It’s one of the great building blocks of the world: love, sex and death.

In terms of fiction, the most memorable stories to me are the ‘Merry Gentry’ and ‘Anita Blake’ series by Laurell K Hamilton, and the book ‘Lavender Blue’ by Lorna Read. These sets of books came before my eyes when I was still in secondary school, and I loved both for different reasons. In Read’s, we see the nostalgia of yester-year, and witness a cross-class relationship pay off despite the odds. He’s even a musician to boot! With Hamilton’s series, we see love being worked at day to day and lovers respecting each other beyond all else (at least they are when her characters aren’t up shit creek). As much as I love a great romance, the dark side in me delights in the grey, and Hamilton’s series have this in spades.

If pushed, romance is what I’d talk about if asked about love. I love reading stories where one partner fights for the other and the couple comes out on top, happier than before. I enjoy reading about their struggles, only to have their struggles pay off. The idealist in me enjoys the comfort of a happy ending. 

But if you know me well, I’d tell you I hate endings involving weddings dresses and the cries of children. I’d much rather see love, warts and all, than the cherubic front often paraded before the public, and I’m inclined to think one size does not fit all.

What Horror Writers Talk About When They Talk About Love: Chloe N. Clark

I thought I'd have some guest pieces to celebrate the release of Trying To Be So Quiet, and I wanted to feature some writers that I've not had on the blog before. The theme came to me when Claire, who works for Boo Books, was interviewing me about TTBSQ and said she thought it was a love story as much as a ghost story. So a plan was born: I'd ask some horror writers who I especially admire to write a piece about their favourite love story. It could be a novel, poem, song; it could be happy, sad or despairing. Today's piece is by...

Chloe N. Clark, a writer whose work I first read in Supernatural Tales #25, where I thought her story Who Walks Beside You was fantastic; I voted for her in the ST best story poll for that issue. Additionally she's had work published in Apex, Bartleby Snopes, Diabolical Plots, and Menacing Hedge. She also writes for Nerds of a Feather and Ploughshares. She can be followed on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes.

Take it away, Chloe:

Trying to think of the single love story that has the most impact on me is hard. It’s hard because I’m maybe more of an anti-romantic (and read “maybe” as “positively”) and also because while I certainly can name love songs/poems/stories/films that are meaningful to me, I’m not really sure that I find them meaningful because they are love stories. So I decided to tackle the roundabout way of thinking about this subject. What love story really meant something to me because of the love story at its center?

The obvious choice seemed to be the love stories about friendships that always have called to me: Aubrey and Maturin in Patrick O’ Brian’s series of novels about naval warfare or the four boys in Stephen King’s The Body. These are some of the most impactful books on my life and my writing. 

However, these choices didn’t feel quite right either and then I thought about films and then I knew what to write about. Tarsem Singh’s 2006 film The Fall is not only one of my favorite films but also one of the purest evocations of love. The love in this case isn’t a romantic one, though there is a melancholic one of those at the center, but rather the love of storytelling itself. 

The plot of the movie is a friendship between an injured stuntman and a little girl, at a hospital in 1920’s Los Angeles. However, within this frame narrative is the story told by the stuntman to the little girl: a story of betrayal and bandits. Singh’s visual aesthetic has never been better (honestly, this is the only film I truly love—or even enjoy—by him though I can appreciate the visual scope of a film like The Cell) and it’s easy to get lost in the gorgeousness of the colors and imagery here. 

However, where the film truly stands out is in its depiction of how story can shape us and change us and ultimately betray us or save us just as much as any other kind of love. Lee Pace, as the stuntman, is phenomenal and then there’s the young Catinca Untaru as the little girl—and her performance is heartbreakingly stunning. Each of them plays a character who is so enthralled by stories, whether making them up or hearing them, that the rest of the world—and the logic and morality of it—falls away. Stories can convince us to do many things. They can also bring us back from the brink—of despair, of loneliness, of hopelessness.

To me, this film does exactly what any love story should do: it convinces you that there is something worth believing in. In this case, that something is the power of narrative, of telling tales. And, ultimately, that seems the most fitting love story for any writer to get behind.

What Horror Writers Talk About When They Talk About Love: Tim Major

I thought I'd have some guest pieces to celebrate the release of Trying To Be So Quiet, and I wanted to feature some writers that I've not had on the blog before. The theme came to me when Claire, who works for Boo Books, was interviewing me about TTBSQ and said she thought it was a love story as much as a ghost story. So a plan was born: I'd ask some horror writers who I especially admire to write a piece about their favourite love story. It could be a novel, poem, song; it could be happy, sad or despairing. Today's piece is by...

Tim Major is an author and editor from Oxford (appropriately enough, as some key scenes in TTBSQ are set there). The first piece I read of Tim's was his excellent novella Carus & Mitch, which I reviewed for This Is Horror. His time-travel horror novel, You Don’t Belong Here, will be published by Snowbooks in September 2016

Take it away, Tim:

Neither of these men is Tim Major

I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, and another son due to arrive within the next couple of months. So – with apologies to my wife – right now, when I think about love, it’s often parental love that occurs to me.

Two of my favourite films concern fatherhood. Rebel Without A Cause is more about children than parents, of course, but it contains one of my favourite depictions of a father-son relationship. The pent-up rage of James Dean’s Jim Stark is often aimed at his father, Frank, played by Jim Backus. The reasons are at first unclear – the anger seems arbitrary, and Frank is as well-meaning as parents come. At the one-hour mark of the film, Jim confronts Frank in a scene in which the dialogue is less interesting than the positioning of the characters within the frame. The camera tilts to accommodate the shifting, arguing pair, granting Jim the literal high ground and forcing Frank to peer in from the bottom corner of the frame, becoming all shoulders. It transpires that what Jim really wants from his father is a role model. The moment when Jim says, without even looking at his father, ‘Dad, stand up for me’, is quietly devastating, particularly as it’s then followed by Jim physically yanking Frank to his feet, then wrestling him to the ground. He’s attempting to shake his father up and reveal the real person inside. It’s motivated by love.

At another point in the film, Jim comes home to find somebody on their hands and knees on the landing. At first he assumes thinks it’s his mother, but it’s actually his father, wearing a frilly apron, picking up a dropped plate of food. As a comment on gender roles, it’s a few decades out of date (the gist is that Frank is henpecked and meek, when he ought to be in charge; as well as the frilly apron, he’s trapped behind the bars of the banisters), but the exchange between Jim and Frank is wonderful. There’s real love there, real laughter as they joke about Frank’s clumsiness, then real frustration about Frank’s anxiety over something so trivial. I find it hard to put my finger on what I adore about this scene. I think it’s Jim’s pleading intensity as he wills his father to be something more wonderful than he really is. I find the scene a useful reminder that love goes both ways and that, one day, my sons will be vocal about how they feel about me, too.

The other film is simpler, but stranger. We never find out much about the child in Stalker. We don’t know why she’s called Monkey. We don’t know the nature of her illness or whether it’s linked to her telekinetic powers, which we witness only at the end of the film. We don’t know for sure whether the Stalker keeps re-entering the bewildering and psychologically damaging area known as ‘the Zone’ for the sake of the child, although I suspect that’s the case. Following a bleak, monochrome scene when the travellers return from their ordeal in the Zone, we see Monkey, in jarring, alarming colour, her expression sombre, her hair hidden under a bright yellow shawl and her head bobbing as she walks. Then, slowly, the camera pulls out. As Monkey moves away from us, we see that she’s actually being carried on her father’s shoulders. They plod towards a filthy lake. I don’t know why. But it’s heartbreaking. We can’t see the Stalker, and we don’t need to, to understand that he loves the child more than anything in the world. He carries her, and that’s all.

What Horror Writers Talk About When They Talk About Love: Kristi DeMeester

I thought I'd have some guest pieces to celebrate the release of Trying To Be So Quiet, and I wanted to feature some writers that I've not had on the blog before. The theme came to me when Claire, who works for Boo Books, was interviewing me about TTBSQ and said she thought it was a love story as much as a ghost story. So a plan was born: I'd ask some horror writers who I especially admire to write a piece about their favourite love story. It could be a novel, poem, song; it could be happy, sad or despairing. First up:

Kristi DeMeester is a short story writer who's appeared in the likes of Black Static,  Year's Best Weird Fiction and The Dark, and deservedly so because her stories are always bloody ace. (She had entries in both my 2014 and 2015 favourite short story lists).

Take it away, Kristi:

“Walking the Haunted Wood” by Kristi DeMeester
My first literary crush was Gilbert Blythe. With his acidic and then apologetic teasing of the future red-headed knock out Anne Shirley, he reminded me very much of the boys in my own elementary school classes. We fought over who was the fastest runner and spent ourselves racing across the concrete parking lot of our school and ignoring skinned knees and aching lungs. We competed for the highest grades, for accolades, for smiles from our teachers when we stood and teased Bible verses from our memories and delivered them with perfect inflection. During the day, we’d insult each other in the only way Fundamentalist Christian children know how.

“Not even dogs like you,” I said once.

The boy’s lip quivered before he hissed back. “You look like you don’t wash your hair.”

We spent our days fighting and competing, but at night, I’d lie awake and burn and burn, wondering what it would be like to touch their hands, their faces. What it would be like if we grew up and one of them decided to marry me.

More than anything, however, I loved Gilbert Blythe because he was good. The streak of cruelty that was the underlying chorus of my childhood was absent from his life in Avonlea. He and Anne belonged to an alien set of people who were genuinely kind and should they do wrong, they’d stew in regret, apologize, and mean it. He did not scream or push or threaten or raise his hand in anger. Gilbert and Anne were everything my mother and father weren’t.

And so I fell in love with Gilbert and his dark, curling hair and his hazel eyes and boyish charm. More than anything, I wanted him to show up at my doorstep, his arms full of starflowers, and take me away from the nightmare world my parents had spent their lives building and then forced their children to occupy. His hands would be gentle, and he would sweep my hair behind my ear, and press his lips to my cheek, and our love would be pure, and chaste, and sweet.

I grew up. My parents divorced, and I saw firsthand the ramifications of what it meant to love someone. The brokenness that follows. I longed for Avonlea. Longed to pull those flowing dresses over my head and to go traipsing through Hester Gray’s garden while Gilbert ran ahead of me, everything sun dappled and smelling of dust and overripe apples. Longed for a love that was so simple that it felt like breathing instead of like razor blades pressed to thin skin.

By the time boys were interested in me, I’d pushed Gilbert Blythe to the back of my mind in favor of the feeling of warm hands against the curve of my back and lips pressed too hard against mine. There was a feeling I was trying to capture, a romantic ideal that faded like smoke, and when I couldn’t find it, I found other things. Other ways of chasing after the sense of breathlessness and desire I thought meant something greater than the sum of its parts.

I got older. I married a wonderful man, and he is everything I need when life is easy. He makes me laugh in a way I didn’t know I could. He’s held my hand and pulled me out of dark water.

But he isn’t Gilbert Blythe. He’s real, and he’s honest when I don’t want him to be. He does stupid things like buying yet another project vehicle to “fix up in his spare time.” He argues, and he’s stubborn, and he keeps his dirty laundry piled neatly next to our bed instead of putting it in the hamper. He throws our child into the air high enough to give me heart palpitations. He rolls his eyes when I start crying. Again. For the thousandth time that week.

And I love him. Oh, oh! How I love him.

"What loss actually feels like... "

Many thanks to the author Gary Fry for his advance review of Trying To Be So Quiet which is out very soon. Gary's an author whose work I enjoy and admire very much, so I was very pleased (not to mention surprised) that he has such good things to say about it:

 "I really enjoyed this short, condensed novelette, which is packed full of bitterness and yearning, defeatism and aspiration. It’s what loss actually feels like... It’s a fine piece of work."

You can read the whole review here (and while you're there, do yourself a favour and buy one of Fry's books too). Trying To Be So Quiet is available to preorder from Boo Books now.

Double Ginger Nuts

Big thanks to the Ginger Nuts Of Horror site for not just one but two fantastic reviews recently. Firstly, head honcho Jim Mcleod reviewed my forthcoming novella Trying To Be So Quiet. Jim's a massively respected reviewer in the UK horror scene, so I was naturally relieved that he liked it so much:

"Everington has always been one of those writers to watch out for, a gifted writer with a keen eye for refined horror, Trying To Be So Quiet doesn't so much as cement his place as a great writer, as but catapults him into the ranks of exceptional writers." (Review here.)

Then author Kit Power reviewed my collection Falling Over, which he claimed was his short story read of 2016 so far... He also said:

"...this is a masterful collection from a writer with an incredible deftness of touch. Note perfect grasp of character, the ability to render the mundane strange with a turn of phrase, deeply literate yet not an ounce of pretension, Everington is a quiet but potent voice in horror fiction." (Review here.)

Trying To Be So Quiet - Release Date & Preorders

My novella Trying To Be So Quiet* will be released 16th May 2016 from Boo Books. It will be available both as an ebook and a limited edition hardback, which you can preorder now (hint, hint). I'm sure I'll be talking about this story more before the release date (and expect some news on launch events, too) so for now I'll just post the cover and blurb taken from the Boo Books site:

Trying To Be So Quiet by James Everington, with introduction from Simon Bestwick**

The day they buried her was the first day Lizzie’s death seemed real…

With death comes a journey: a journey of silence, of ghosts and not-ghosts. Life begins to break, the cracks appearing, the meaning lost in the static of existence. And you find out whether you can come to a resolution with the absolute…
Trying to be So Quiet is an incredibly powerful story of bereavement, of mourning, of finding something amidst nothingness.

Pre-order now to secure your copy of this stunning novella from one of the UK’s most exciting new voices in supernatural fiction.

Preorders here.

* Yes, I'm a big Bob Dylan fan...
** Thanks Simon!

Announcement! Trying To Be So Quiet from Boo Books

News!

Delighted to say that Boo Books are to release my novella Trying To Be So Quiet, a story about ghosts and grief and how we manage to go on despite the fact of death. When Alex from Boo Books emailed me to say he wanted to take it on, he said it reminded him of Sarah Pinborough's superlative The Language Of Dying which is one of the best, and most surprising, things anyone's said about my writing so far.

The e-book edition of Trying to be So Quiet will be out at the end of October, followed by a limited edition hardback in Feb 2016, which will include artwork and bonus content and a cuddly toy*

Here's a picture of myself and Alex sealing the deal:

* actual contents may vary