The Quarantined City real-time reviewed...

Only connect...
Wait, no, that's another book

Yet more thanks I owe to Des Lewis, who has now real-time reviewed The Quarantined City on his famed Dreamcatcher website.

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)

A hearty thank you to Des Lewis, for writing one of his inimitable 'gestalt real-time reviews' for my Hersham Horror novella, Paupers' Graves. Always a pleasure - you can read his thoughts here.


(Paupers' Graves ebook and paperback.)

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.

Bits & Bobs

A few bits and bobs of recent stuff:

American podcast Booked gave The Hyde Hotel a very positive review, as well as talking about hotel horror in general. You can listen to it here.

Forgot to mention this at the time, but over on Gingernuts Of Horror, the writer Kit Power picked The Shelter as one of his favourite reads of 2015, which I'm truly grateful for. "... a breathtaking piece of writing..." - cheers Kit.

Nina Allan was one of the participants on the panel I moderated at Fantasycon last year; she's expanded on her comments about diversity in the horror genre (which we only touched upon lightly on the day, unfortunately) in this essay on Strange Horizons. It's very stimulating well worth a read, not only for Allan's thoughts on the topic but also her recommendations of books and authors, some of whom are new to me.

Lastly, Des Lewis is conducting one of famed real-time reviews on my collection Falling Over as we speak, and I'm delighted at the things he's had to say about the stories he's read so far. If you've never read any of these utterly unique and idiosyncratic reviews, you might want to spend some time checking out the whole site.