Issue 7 of Crimson Quill Quarterly will be available soon as a paperback and kindle eBook, but this is the cover, listing all the authors whose stories will appear in it, including the second part of my serialised Horbeck the Mercenary tale, "Lies and Treachery".
This was first published on Hellnotes August 2013
By Charles Day
Blood Bound Books
Paperback version $7.43
Kindle version £2.96
Reviewed by David A. Riley
This is the first YA novel I have ever read. It’s also the first horror Western I’ve read too. In both instances I had a pleasant surprise – I enjoyed it far more than I expected.
Charles Day has a very readable style and the action moves rapidly, though not at the expense of character and some vivid descriptions. The Ghoulish Bartender himself, though completely evil in his actions, is far more than a two-dimensional villain. He has a back story every bit as tragic as any of his victims – and an awareness of what he has irretrievably lost to become what he is – a fate that not chosen by him, but forced on him as a curse.
Nevertheless he has grandiose plans to spread the curse of the ghouls on every community he comes across. In this, only Kyle McGertt, inheriting the crusade of his dead father, can hope to stop him. Robustly violent, yet with some subtle humour, this short novel is the story of how these two opponents finally come confront each other for a final showdown.
This is an old review of mine from Hellnotes back in January 2014.
The Smell of Evil
by Charles Birkin
Published by Valancourt Books
ISBN: 976-1-939140-74-6
December 2013, $16.99 PB
Reviewed by David A. Riley
Dennis Wheatley is quoted on the back cover as stating “More than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe.” Well intentioned though that comparison may have been, it is totally misleading. Birkin’s style is as far from Poe’s as it could possibly be. You’ll rarely find anything approaching the Gothic horrors of Poe within the dark tales of human evil in Birkin’s stories. Invariably set within the contemporary world, the characters in these thirteen tales are firmly based on reality. Whether they be self-deceived German gardeners working within the shadow of Second World War concentration camps or young tearaways escaping from a race riot in 1960s London, the horrors within these stories are of man’s (or woman’s) own making.
With an elegant writing style, Birkin shows his complete mastery of the conte cruel, leading the reader on to some of the most sadistic climaxes in literature. He rarely uses the supernatural, though when he does, as in “Little Boy Blue”, he is as proficient in this as in his more usual kind of story.
Born in 1907, Charles Birkin (later Sir Charles Birkin) had a long literary career, editing the Creeps series for Philip Allan in the 1930s, as well as an inaugural collection of his own stories, Devil’s Spawn (1936), before laying his writing to one side during the Second World War when he served in the Sherwood Foresters. Many of his most infamous stories stem from his experiences during and just after the end of the war when he witnessed first hand what men were really capable of doing. It was not till the 1960s, though, that he began writing again with the encouragement of his friend, Wheatley. The Smell of Evil was the first of seven collections published during that decade, culminating in Spawn of Satan in 1970. After living in Cyprus for several years he died on the Isle of Man in 1985.
Long out of print, other than several hard cover, now collectible volumes from Midnight House, it is wonderful to see Valancourt Books at last bringing an easily affordable collection to a new reading public. It would be even more wonderful if over the next few years if the rest of Birkin’s collections are brought back into print.
This volume is rounded out with an insightful introduction by John Llewellyn Probert.
I am in a writing fit at the moment which has resulted in me completing another swords and sorcery story, one I started several months ago. This is a 6,800 word Welgar story, "From the Ashes", which also reintroduces two of my other recurring characters, Ossani the Healer and his apprentice Arrenya. It also includes a dog.
Elsewhere in the book is also a reprint of David A. Sutton's story "The Bestwick Papers", again illustrated by Jim.
I created a new advert for my collection Welgar the Cursed, published by Tule Fog Press, which I have circulated online.
Confessions Press will be releasing their third volume of hard cover facsimile copies of World of Horror, a monthly magazine from the 1970s. Volume 3 will include issues 7, 8 and 9 of the magazine. Issue 7 included an early short story of mine illustrated by Jim Pitts, The Shade of Apollyon.
