Redundant Flesh

After finishing five short stories in the past month (Sir Hector's Quest, A Grim God's Revenge, Boat Trip, Lem, and Dead Ronnie and I), I've restarted writing a novella (or maybe a short novel) called Redundant Flesh, which I worked on a couple of years ago, but dropped by the wayside. Reading it again this week, I found my interest in it reignited. I'm looking forward to finishing this story of a serial killer.

The Appeal of the First Person Narrative

I'm halfway through a fairly large anthology of new stories and have been struck by how overwhelmingly many have been written in the first person. It's so prevalent in fact that when I see an opening sentence with the inevitable "I", I begin to shudder.

Now, let me be clear, I have nothing against first person narratives. But in my own writing I have only ever used it thrice - and then only in some of my earliest stories. I haven't used it in decades.

Which is perhaps why I am puzzled why so many writers in this anthology have chosen this form of narrative. Is it because this is now more popular, at least amongst younger writers? Have I missed spotting a new trend? Or is it because many of these writers, being new, feel it is easier to use this viewpoint?

For a horror story, it has always struck me that the first person has distinctive limitations, particularly for the climax. Not to mention limitations in characterisation. It takes a particularly good writer to be able to give a distinctive character to the narrator when theirs is the only voice.

As I would automatically start a new story in the third person singular, I am interested to know why there are so many first person viewpoints in this anthology, all but to the exclusion of any other. It's something I'll probably feel obliged to look out for in other anthologies too now that I've noticed it here to see if this is prevalent today.

An Exciting New Project

A big new project unexpectedly presented itself this week, which has involved a quick learning curve on an aspect of writing which I haven't touched on for nearly twenty years and has changed in all aspects since I last delved in it. More later, but it is something I find extremely exciting to have a go at. Fingers crossed that everything works out, as I have had a very tight schedule forced on me.

More within the next few weeks.

Demons and Nightmares

I have a small group of my longer stories off with a publisher at the moment for a possible collection. Am toying with the title of Demons and Nightmares. I don't know of any other collection with that title and have made a quick search online without success. My thoughts are to aim at a possible series, with the next called, obviously, Demons and Nightmares 2.

The Farmhouse - Two previously unknown publications in Italy

Dave Sutton is reprinting one of my earliest short stories, The Farmhouse later this year in the retitled New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural, Horror! Under the Tombstone. What I didn't know till today is that this story was translated into Italian and published there in two anthologies in 1989 and 1994 as La fattoria.

Horror Story 2

Horror Story 16

Ralan.com

Used Ralan.com last night to look up some markets for stories. As a result I sent two off online, one a brand new unpublished story, the other one that was previously published. What struck me was how difficult some of these markets are to submit stories to, mainly as a result of cumbersome online forms and others, usually the lowest paying, for their pernickety formatting guidelines. Why do some have offbeat formatting requirements? Is it essential for their well being or some kind of ego trip? I really do wonder.

Regardless, Ralan.com is a brilliant source for uptodate information on the pro, semi-pro, paying markets.

The Lurkers in the Abyss & Others

Just a brief update on my collection, which may be delayed till the end of the year for reasons out of the control of my publisher. The first story in the collection will be the title story, which first appeared in the 11th Pan Book of Horror and was recently reprinted in Cemetery Dance's massive 2-volume anthology The Century's Best Horror Fiction, edited by John Pelan. The final story, and the only one not previously published, will be Lurkers, which is a sequel to The Lurkers in the Abyss (and just over twice its length).

Extreme Zombies edited by Paula Guran

Pages: 384
Size: 6" X 9"
ISBN: 9781607013525
Publication Date: August 8, 2012
Price: $15.95

[This book will be published August 2012]
It's too late! The living dead have already taken over the world. Your brains have been devoured. Nothing is left but spasms of ravenous need—an obscene hunger for even more zombie fiction. Forget the metaphors and the mildly scary. You want shock, you want grue, you want disturbing, gut-wrenching, skull-crunching zombie stories that take you over the edge and go splat. You want the bloody best of the ultimate undead. You have no choice...you...must...have...Extreme Zombies!

• “Charlie’s Hole” by Jesse Bullington
• “At First Only Darkness” by Nancy A. Collins
• “The Blood Kiss” by Dennis Etchison
• “We Will Rebuild” by Cody Goodfellow
• “Dead Giveaway” by Brian Hodge
• “Zombies for Jesus” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• “An Unfortunate Incident at the Slaughterhouse” by Harper Hull
• “Captive Heart” by Brian Keene
• “Going Down” by Nancy Kilpatrick
• “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks” by Joe R. Lansdale
• “Susan” by Robin D. Laws
• “Makak” by Edward Lee
• “The Traumatized Generation” by Murray Leeder
• “Meathouse Man” byGeorge R.R. Martin
• “Abed” by Elizabeth Massie
• “For the Good of All” by Yvonne Navarro
• “Home” by David Moody
• “Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David J. Schow
• “Aftertaste” by John Shirley
• “Viva Las Vegas” by Thomas Roche
• “In Beauty, Like the Night” by Norman Partridge
• “Romero’s Children” by David A. Riley
• “Tomorrow’s Precious Lambs” by Monica Valentinelli
• “Provider” by Tim Waggoner
• “Chuy and the Fish” by David Wellington

Goblin Mire

After several years of dissatisfaction with how they have handled my fantasy novel, Goblin Mire, I finally emailed Renaissance eBooks, asking them to cancel my contract with them. So far they haven't bothered to reply. On checking today to see if the ebook is still available I find, to my surprise, that it isn't, either at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It's what I wanted, but wouldn't it have been a little more professional if Renaissance eBooks had taken the time to let me know?

Anyway, I can now set about doing a rewrite of the novel (which could do with some cutting down in size - mainly in the use of adjectives!!!), then I'll put it back on as an eBook and POD through Amazon with a brand new cover courtesy of Joe Young.

New cover:

Old cover:

SCRAP

Just put the final touches to a story I did a draft for earlier. At 12,100 words this is quite a hefty story, but I think it needed that length. Scrap is about two boys whose mother moves from Blackburn to Edgebottom after the death of their junkie/alcoholic father. There they discover even worse horrors when they decide to go searching for scrap metal to sell to a local dealer and their travels take them to the area of Grudge End and a house with a malevolent ghost. As their family life takes a turn for the worse they try to make use of the ghost to help them out, with horrific results.

Extreme Zombies

Prime Books have just revealed the cover for Extreme Zombies edited by Paula Guran, in which she will be reprinting my story Romero's Children, which was originally published in Charles Black's Seventh Black Book of Horror.

Lurkers

I think, apart perhaps from a couple of minor alterations, I have now finished Lurkers, a sequel to The Lurkers in the Abyss, which has ended up at 9,500 words. I emailed a copy to Johnny Mains to hear his reaction; thankfully positive. Very positive.

"Ending's one of your strongest for a while, too."

Now, for the next project...

Sequel to Lurkers in the Abyss

Some time ago Johnny Mains asked if I would write a sequel to Lurkers in the Abyss. Though a bit dubious at the idea - I didn't see how I could do it - I agreed to have a go.

Since then, from time to time, I have tinkered with the project, including one attempt which reached 5,000 words before I abandoned it. I really thought it was something I wouldn't be able to do. After all, the original was written in 1969, appearing the year after in the Eleventh Pan Book of Horror, a long time ago.

Last night, though, I finally managed to finish the first draft. At 10,000 words it's two and a half times longer than the original story and goes in some very strange directions. Next I need to start work on revisions, which should take about a week.

Then think of a title.

At the moment it has the utilitarian and unsatisfactory one of New Lurkers.

These are the opening lines:

 

It had all gone wrong, Stupidly, stupidly, stupidly wrong.

And someone would suffer.

Of that, Mike was serious. He slammed the car at as tight a turn as he could manage onto the next street, careering past a gaggle of blank faced women, kids in tow, on their way from school. In the gloom of a wintery afternoon they looked as pale as putty, and with about as much attractiveness. Stupid cows! Mike pressed on the horn, scattering them as he accelerated between parked cars down the narrow street. Behind him police sirens sounded menacingly loud and he knew he would have to abandon the car soon. They’d have its details. It wouldn’t be long, either, before a police helicopter had him in sight. With their infra red cameras he’d have no chance to escape after that.

Grinding his teeth, he thought again about that idiot. Morgan had as much idea how to rob a bank as he had of brain surgery – which was something Mike would gladly perform the next time they met, though he had a feeling it would be many years before Morgan would be walking the streets again. The police must have nabbed him by now for certain.

            At the next junction, Mike spun the car in front of a large white van, sending it up onto the kerb, then saw his opportunity: a stretch of shops, a bargain-basement furniture store with a car park out front, and an abandoned church...

After Nightfall - Russian version

This Russian anthology from 1992 arrived in the post today. It contains a translation of my story After Nightfall. The black and white illustration appears to be of this story - sort of...

Other writers in the book include Richard Matheson and Ramsey Campbell. Brought out not long after the fall of Communism, it's an odd little hard cover book.

After Nightfall published in Russia 1992 - Surprise

I noticed that I've been having quite a few hits on this blog recently from Russia and, in particular, the Ukraine. Checking into this, one of the most common links was to a Russian website. Surprisingly, doing a bit of a search on it, I discovered that one of my earliest stories, After Nightfall, was published in a hardback anthology there in 1992. The stories in Tayaschiysya Horror 2 (Таящийся ужас 2) appear to have all been translated by Vladimir Vladimirova. If the details are correct the book had quite a large circulation - 100,000 copies!

It's strange what a bit of knocking about the internet can turn up.

Romero's Children

Received an email from the States last night from Paula Guran, who is editing an anthology called Extreme Zombies, to be published by Prime Books in August, and she would like to use my story from The Seventh Black Book of Horror, Romero's Children. Absolutely delighted at this.

This makes the fourth story to be reprinted in recent months: The Lurkers in the Abyss in John Pelan's Century's Best Horror Fiction (Cemetery Dance), The Satyr's Head in Dave Sutton's The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror (Shadow Publishing), and After Nightfall in Otto Penzler's Zombie! Zombies! Zombies! (Vintage).

The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror edited by David A. Sutton

Steve Upham has just revealed the amazing cover he has done for this anthology, which was originally published by Corgi Books in 1975.

Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead

For anyone interested in this anthology, edited by Otto Penzler, there is a lively ongoing discussion about it on the Vault of Evil.

Lovecraft eZine

Just received an email from the editor of Lovecraft eZine accepting my 10,000 word story Fish Eye.

The Screaming Book of Horror

Stephen Upham's Screaming Dreams will be publishing The Screaming Book of Horror later this year (cover by Steve). Included in it will be my story Old Grudge Ender, along with:

One of the Family – Bernard Taylor
Glory and Splendour – Alex Miles
What Shall We Do About Barker? – Reginald Oliver 
Cut! – Anna Taborska
The Christmas Toys – Paul Finch 
The Quixote Candidate – Rhys Hughes 
Helping Mummy – Kate Farrell 
The Iron Cross – Craig Herby 
The Baby Trap – Janine Wood 
The Club – Sara Brunsdon 
Sometimes You Think You Are Alone – Alison Moore 
The Tip Run – Johnny Mains