"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
Showing posts with label the curse of Snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the curse of Snow. Show all posts
Hello. Very pleased to be able to say today that the anthology Pulp Ink 2 is out now from Snubnose Press. It contains my story Snow as well as a whole load of brilliance from authors such as Julia Madeleine, Andrez Bergen, and Patti Abbott. Check out the fantastically pulpy cover below:
"Pulp Ink 2’s got beautiful killers, visions of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty rats, and one severed arm on a quest for revenge. No half-assed reboots here, just some of the finest writing in crime and horror today..."
You can buy it either in paperback (Amazon US) or as an ebook (UK | US) now.
The first Pulp Ink was a cracking read and really well-received, so as you can imagine I'm delighted Snow was picked for the follow up anthology, especially as I'm not naturally a crime writer. Snow is a blend of crime and my more usual messed up horror.
And it means the curse of Snow has finally been lifted! If you've no idea what I'm on about, see here.
I'm not writing very much at the moment. I'm about halfway through a new draft of an old story, Sick Leave (which is about the plague, and scary kids, and things we don't face up to in the darkness) but I've only managed a few hundred words on it this week.
I don't believe in writer's block as such. If you encounter it, I think the best thing to do is just sit and force yourself to write something, anything. Get something down, and then look at what you've written the next day and if it's shit... well, you can rewrite shit. Or bin it. But this way of writing - of working damnit - takes effort, takes a lot more energy than those times when the words come effortlessly and writing seems so easy; fun even. These things come in cycles, but unfortunately sometimes the periods when you really need to roll up your sleeves and put some elbow grease into your writing sometimes coincide with the times when real life is tough too. Not dramatic, not scary - I'm alright. But tough and tiring and draining. Now is one of those times, and so Sick Leave is progressing in fits and starts.
Logically of course such a time would be a good one to get caught up on some reading, on some blog posts, on some submissions of stories. But they all use the same part of my brain, the same enthusiasm, as the writing itself. I feel the same weariness attempting any of them. TV and Playstation it is then.
I feel somewhat listless, but restless too, like sailors on a becalmed ship.
It will pass, as all such things do; the sails will fill with air and the words will come again, and looking back on this becalmed period it will seem as unrealistic and implausible as the idea that I'll ever write something quickly and with ease does to me now. But for now, I am drifting.
On another, more positive note, I can announce that my story Snow is to appear in the Pulp Ink 2 anthology which will be published by Snubnose Press. It's edited by Chris Rhatigan and Nigel Bird and you can find the announcement and full line up of authors here.
Regular readers (hello!) may recall I've posted about Snowbefore, and the curse that seemed to be attached to the story, causing inevitable misfortune to any publication or anthology that I submitted it to. I speculated then that maybe the only way for the curse to be lifted was for the story to be accepted by someone.
So I'm pleased to say it looks like the nightmare is finally over.
Some more of my stories are slowly winging their way from my hard drive to your grubby little paws. In chronological order:
My piece of flash fiction Haunted will be appearing in the first publication by Cruentus Libri Press - 100 Horrors will feature one hundred horror authors each with a story of one hundred words or less...
New Boy, a tale of suicide, ghosts, and office politics, will appear either in the Dark Rivers Press print edition or web edition...
The Second Wish, a modern day 'rewriting' of The Monkey's Paw will appear in a future issue of the fabulous Supernatural Tales, although likely not until 2013...
There will also be semi-regular stories appear in Penny Dreadnought, as and when the Abominable Gentlemen get their collective act together.
(Of course like always I've had my fair share of knock-backs too... Snow was rejected again, although fortunately the 'Curse of Snow' doesn't appear to have struck this time.)
All this means that I'm having to rethink my plans for my next collection of short stories, assuming I self-publish it again. I was planning to include some of the stories now tied up with other things, so I'm now under pressure to write more new stories. It's a largely self-imposed pressure, and probably a good thing; but pressure all the same. On the positive side, my third collection of stories is already half in the bag!
Check out the interviews The Man With A Skull For A Head conducted with the Abominable Gentlemen over at the Penny Dreadnought site. They were conduced in our stomping ground of the Jekyll and Hyde pub. Alcohol may have been involved. So far interviews with Iain Rowan and Alan Ryker are up, but fear not! Ones from Aaron Polson and myself are on there way...
Muriel Gray has an interesting column in The Guardian today about Christmas ghost stories. Part of the Victorians' reinvention of Christmas that we seem to have forgotten nowadays is the ghost stories of Dickens, Gaskell, MR James etc. It isn't just the famous names - the seasonal editions of various periodicals would always feature some supernatural creepiness, just begging to be read aloud around a crackling fire while the wind howled outside... (Maybe out modern equivalent tradition is sitting together to watch the creepier moments of the Doctor Who Christmas special?)
I tried my hand at this type of Christmas ghost story late last year - Snow doesn't specifically take place at Christmas, but as its title suggests the white stuff plays a prominent part. It tells of a man, on the run from his past, holed up in some crumbling and freezing cold mansion house, while outside the snow piles up at the windows... It isn't necessarily a ghost story either, although neither were many of MR James's so-called ghost stories - if it's good enough for James it's certainly good enough for me. (Probably no surprise to anyone who's read any of my stuff, but James wrote some of my favourite classic horror stories.)
I was pretty pleased when I finished Snow, which is unusual - I'm normally convinced for at least a week that I've wrote a huge pile of tripe. But it seemed to me then (and still does now) to be one of the best things I'd written. I'd kept the plot tight and the word count down, so I already knew there would be lots of potential markets to submit this one to. And I thought if any horror magazines were planning the modern day equivalent of the Victorian periodicals' creepy Christmas issues, it would fit right in. In short, I was as confident as I've ever been, sending this one out into the world...
Every magazine or anthology I've submitted Snow to so far has either gone bust or folded.
Now I know it's coincidence, and I know that the fact I've noticed it at all is probably an example of some psychological principle (most likely with the word 'cluster' in its name) - that it's no more significant than buying a new car and suddenly seeing that model every time you go for a drive. Know too that times are rough out there, with our economy being run by idiots or maniacs, and that magazines for short fiction (not exactly stable ventures at the best of times) are probably suffering as much as everyone else...
But still, the sheer number of times it's happened with Snow is odd.
So if you're reading this and you're in any way involved with the publishing world you may feel a slight shiver, for I am about to search Duotrope again for a home for poor ol' Snow and it might be about to wing its cursed way to your inbox... If you see it arrive, for God's sake don't open the mail, although by then I fear it will already be too late.... heh heh heh. (A suggestion: maybe the only way to break the curse is for someone to publish the damn thing!)
Anyway, Happy Christmas all, particularly to those of you who've offered me much encouragement this year. You know who you are and know I'm grateful. I'll leave you with one of the few Christmas songs that a) is good, and b) isn't The Pogues. Enjoy!
