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."

The Quarantined City reviewed by The Guardian

The Quarantined City was reviewed today... in The Guardian. THE Guardian. Fucking hell.

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

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 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.

A fantastic review of The Hyde Hotel over at Matthew Fryer's Hellforge site:

"This book succeeds on both premise and delivery. It plays on the fact that inner-city hotels are a functional if soulless segment of many people’s lives, and uses this familiarity as a canvas for horror. Anything could be hiding in all those empty rooms..."

It then goes on to praise all of the authors' contributions. It's a really well-written and perceptive review, too – even I learnt something new about The Hyde...

You can read the full review here.

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.

The Quarantined City Parts 1 & 2 Reviewed...

Daniel Ausema reviews the first two parts of The Quarantined City on the Geekiary site.

"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.

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

Falling Over reviewed for the British Fantasy Society

"There are times when you read a new author’s work and you simply sit back and admire. This is one of those times." 

Got to say, when you read a review as good as this new one from Phil Sloman on the British Fantasy Society website, it makes all the days when the writing is like pulling teeth seem worthwhile. Made my day.

Have a read here, if you're so inclined.

Falling Over ebook (UK | US) & Paperback (UK | US),

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:

Some Recent Horror Recommendations...

Three recent horror novels that I've read; all very different but similar in the fact that I ruddy loved them.

Dream Of The Serpent– Alan Ryker

Alan Ryker latest release is an early contender for my favourite book of 2014, and one of the best books I've read from Darkfuse (which is saying something!) Dream Of The Serpent is a story about Cody Miller, who suffers a horrifying accident at work. During his recovery he has vivid dreams about what his life would have been like if he'd not been so horrifically burnt... Very vivid dreams. I won't describe any more of the plot so as to not ruin it, but I will say this is one of those books where the twists completely blew me away. And plot-twists there are - this book does indeed writhe like a serpent. An original, ambitious, compulsively readable book that deserves your time. 

Piggies – Nick Gifford

This is a “children’s horror book” – I'm not sure exactly what age ranged this is aimed at, but I do know my twelve year old self would have loved this. And my thirty-seven year old self thought it was pretty neat as well. An interesting, alternative-world take on the vampire story – Ben is transported from our world to a one which seems almost the same but where vampirism is normal, and the non-vampires are the outcasts. What follows is a fast-paced adventure as Ben finds out more about the society of the vampires , and there’s some pleasingly disturbing scenes towards the end which some parents will no doubt hate and kids love. Well worth your time even if you don’t normally read children’s fiction.

The Elementals – Michael McDowell

I read this book because of a Facebook conversation where I somewhat flippantly posted that I couldn't think of a decent horror author who wasn't also a decent short story writer. Gary Fry and Gary McMahon both suggested Michael McDowell as proof otherwise, and recommended this as his best book. And Amazon were selling a second-hand copy for 1p so I couldn't really back-out of seeing if they were right… 

And they were; The Elementals is a subtle, slow-burn horror novel; a Southern gothic about the rich Savage family on holiday at their summer home on the Alabama pan-handle. It builds up slowly, almost lazily, as befits a story of characters lethargic in the intense heat around them. This mode is punctuated, for them and us, by moments that hint at the hostile forces building up around them. The book switches gear in its final third, as events speed up and become positively hellish. You realise how cleverly McDowell has constructed the house of cards he has been building in the earlier chapters, and how brutal he is going to be in knocking it down.