Wednesday 31 December 2014

Craig Herbertson's The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales now available as a trade paperback from Parallel Universe Publications

Craig Herbertson's collection, The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales is now available to order. The 274 trade paperback is available for £11.99 including UK postage from Parallel Universe Publications (email me at rileybooks@ntlworld.com for a paypal invoice) Overseas orders Europe add £3. Outside Europe add £4.



Tuesday 23 December 2014

Craig Herbertson's The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales almost ready from Parallel Universe Publications

Craig Herbertson's The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales is almost ready from Parallel Universe Publications. All we are waiting for now is the proof copy from the printer and it will be available, both from us and from Amazon, etc. Price will be £11.99.


Great review for The Return

There is a great review for The Return on Amazon by Douglas Draa:

  "The Long Good Friday" meets "the Mythos",
December 23, 2014
This review is from: The Return (Kindle Edition)
Folks, if you are only going to buy one book right now then this is it!
 
You don't even have to be a "Mythos" fan to receive maximum enjoyment!

David A. Riley's "The Return" is an amazing read. Do you like gritty noir? Brit Horror? Masculine (but not macho) protagonists? Eldritch Horror in bleak industrial slums? "The Long Good Friday" meets "the Mythos"? The writing is dense and sleek. Never boring enthralling page turners. Do you like to read just a few more pages even though you need to sleep? Then this is THE BOOK!

I read this in record time. What is amazing is that you get over 270 pages of story. There's no fluff or padding. Every single word is dedicated to moving the plot along. Mr. Riley doesn't waste one single word.
And what a plot it is.
Gary Morgan, a mob enforcer on the run, returns to his hometown of Edgebottom to visit the neighborhood he grew up in. The now abondoned mill quarter of "Grudge End". "Grudge End" was a nest of dispair, pain, deprivity,violence, and eldritch horror.

I won't give anything away, but once Gary returns homes, things go from being bad, but managable, to becoming a waking nightmare as forces from beyond both the law and reality as we know it set their sights on Gary.

THIS IS ONE FINE HORROR NOVEL!

Monday 22 December 2014

British Fantasy Society - membership renewed for another 12 months

Well, that's my membership of the BFS renewed again for another 12 months. After a few hiccups, the society appears to be on course again.

Submissions Call for The Fall of Cthulhu

Check out this great call from new Horrified Press editor Douglas Draa.
2015 is indeed going to be a great year!
The Fall of Cthulhu
Deadline: February 28th, 2015
Payment: Exposure and Royalties
Short Stories - 3,000 - 5,000 words
H. P. Lovecraft never stuck to any serious continuity with his Mythos. It has always been simply accepted that the return of Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods was an inevitability.
So a while back I was rereading Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time” and came across the following passage….
“I shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal, and trembled at the menaces the future may bring forth. What was hinted in the speech of post-human entities of the fate of mankind produced such an effect on me that I will not set it down here. After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth’s span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space—to another stopping-place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.”
Now this can easily be interpreted as stating that Cthulhu and the Others do not return during Humanity's time on Earth!
Why don’t they return? What happens that stops them?
This is a focused idea that leaves lots of room to the imagination.
Did we stop them?
Did some one else stop them?
Were the stars never right?
They decided not come?
Did Cthulhu over sleep?
It's all up to you!
So get your writing caps on and let those eldritch juices flow!
We're open to all styles of writing. Be it Pulp, Noir, Literary, SF, Gothic or what ever you feel appropriate.
Just make it entertaining!
Submission guidelines:
Please submit your manuscript as a *.rtf, *.doc or *.docx file (all other formats will automatically be rejected. Contact me prior to submitting if this presents an issue for you.)
Font and formatting: Please submit in Times New Roman, 12 point font; single line spacing. Please format the document to 1st line indentation of 1″. The page margin should be set to .1″ on all sides.
No headers, footers or page numbers.
Please check grammar.
Upon acceptance into the anthology, we ask that Horrified Press holds exclusive publishing rights for six months from the date of publication; after that date has passed, all intellectual property rights revert to the author with the proviso that Horrified Press retains distribution rights in the format of the contracted anthology.
This title will be available as an e-book and trade quality paperback.
Douglas Draa will be presiding over this anthology.
Email your submission as an attachment to: weirdaether@t-online.de
The email subject line must read “SUBMISSION – The Fall of Cthulhu – ‘your story title’” or your submission will not be considered for this anthology.
Successful applicants will be notified before the deadline has expired.

Sunday 21 December 2014

Thursday 18 December 2014

A Great Write-up about The Return on the Weird Tales Facebook Page

There have been two great write-ups about my Lovecraftian crime noir horror novel, The Return, on the Weird Tales facebook page.


Here is a small excerpt from David A. Riley's "The Return"

Gary moved as
silently as he could toward the bed. When he was close
enough to see the face of its occupant, he realized there had
been no need for stealth. It was a woman, though she looked
so ill he was sure she did not even know he was here.
Rarely had he seen anyone with such matted, unkempt,
unwashed hair or a face so ingrained with grime. Worse still
were the sores. Some were bleeding. Others were beginning
to weep. While a vile combination of stale urine, feces and
vomit surrounded the bed, so pungent it made him grit his
teeth. Had the woman been left to die? He reached down and
felt at one of the chains. There was nothing between the
manacle and her ankle and its rough metal had chaffed the
skin so deep it was bleeding. What looked like rust was
blood, caked around the manacle in solid lumps. What kind
of people were the Mallesons? Did they like to torture
helpless victims?
Gary noticed something slide beneath the blankets in
his direction. He recoiled as an open mouthed tentacle
emerged and reached toward him, a second appearing a moment later from another part of the bed. It wavered
through the air as if it could smell him. Its hideous, lipless,
toothless mouth opened and shut in his direction. Alarmed,
Gary backed away from the bed. His hand tightened on the
Beretta, though he was too far away for either of the tentacles to reach him."

http://www.amazon.com/Return-David-Riley-ebook/dp/B00FEZ8WQA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418893125&sr=8-2&keywords=riley+the+return






Folks, if you are only going to buy one book right now then this is it!
David A. Riley's "The Return" is an amazing read. Do you like gritty noir? Brit Horror? Masculine (but not macho) protagonists? Eldritch Horror in bleak industrial slums? "The Long Good Friday" meets "the Mythos"? The writing is dense and sleek. Never boring enthralling page turners. Do you like to read just a few more pages even though you need to sleep? Then this is THE BOOK!

THIS IS ONE FINE HORROR NOVEL!

http://www.amazon.de/Return-David-Riley/dp/1940250056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418880753&sr=8-1&keywords=david+a+riley+the+return

Photo: Folks, if you are only going to buy one book right now then this is it!
David A. Riley's "The Return" is an amazing read. Do you like gritty noir? Brit Horror? Masculine (but not macho) protagonists? Eldritch Horror in bleak industrial slums?  "The Long Good Friday" meets "the Mythos"? The writing is dense and sleek. Never boring enthralling page turners. Do you like to read just a few more pages even though you need to sleep? Then this is THE BOOK!

THIS IS ONE FINE HORROR NOVEL!

http://www.amazon.de/Return-David-Riley/dp/1940250056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418880753&sr=8-1&keywords=david+a+riley+the+return

Saturday 13 December 2014

My horror novel The Return is included in Holiday Sale package at the Lovecraft eZine

Package 2 includes my Lovecraftian crime noir horror novel, The Return. http://lovecraftzine.com/…/holiday-sale-20-awesome-lovecra…/


Holiday Sale: 20 Awesome Lovecraftian books, less than one dollar each!
That Which Should Not Be
For the next five days only (sale ends Wednesday, December 17), The Lovecraft eZine is offering twenty Lovecraftian Kindle books at heavily discounted prices!
Included in the sale: The Grimscribe’s Puppets, A Season in Carcosa (a King in Yellow anthology), The Sea of Ash, That Which Should Not Be, Horror For the Holidays, and many more!
This Holiday Sale benefits The Lovecraft eZine… thank you for your support, I truly appreciate it.
Choose your package below.  Clicking the link takes you to Paypal.  After you pay, your browser will be directed to the download page, so DO NOT close your browser immediately after payment.  Any problems, email me at lovecraftezine@gmail.com .
Note that I have included information on the regular prices of these books — as you can see, it’s a huge savings!  Click the link to verify, and for information on the book.
Package ONE, $4.95 (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE).  If you bought these books separately, your cost would be $18.98.  Package includes:
Package TWO, $9.95 (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE).  If you bought these books separately, your cost would be $45.37.  Package includes the books in package one, PLUS:
Package THREE, $14.95 (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE).  If you bought these books separately, your cost would be $77.78.  Package includes the books in packages one and two, PLUS:
Package FOUR, $19.95 (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE).  If you bought these books separately, your cost would be $102.65.  Package includes the books in packages one, two, and three, PLUS:
Enjoy the books… and thanks so much for your support.  HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Songs for Christmas

I honestly don't know which of these two I prefer most. Damn it, I like 'em both!





Nice to see

Nice to see one of my own collections and my novel at the top of the list of books on my Amazon author's page for a change rather than the various anthologies I've had stories in. I don't suppose it will stay that way for long, but it's great to see while it lasts.