Alice - The Musical

It's the dress rehearsal tonight. The show starts tomorrow, running through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, with a matinee on Saturday.

I've been "volunteered" to act as promp, which is something I've done once before and swore never to do again. So much for never. Ha ha.

Linden will be in one of the dressing rooms, helping the girls into their costumes. there are some quick changes during the performance.

Linden and I were both up till three in the morning Saturday night. I was making a three and a half foot tall mushroom while Linden was doing a caterpillar costume. Then Sunday afternoon till early evening we were both across the road at the Civic Arts Centre for the technical rehearsal.

Anyway, fingers crossed but everything seems to be going okay so far.

Cassie's husband, Allan, is a professional light and sound engineer and is in charge of those aspects of it. So there are no worries there. Luckily he will be available throughout the show - he travels all over the place with his job. Not long ago he was in Albania!

One of our other daughters, Christy, is involved too as assistant director. As a schoolteacher by profession she's great at helping with discipline - and has a great sense of humour. Our son, Dharamn, has helped out too, providing various things, and his girlfriend Leesa has volunteered to help backstage in the dressing rooms too. Lots of family support!

If anyone would like to order tickets and access a map of where the Arts Centre is, they should use this link .

Malicious Deviance

This is a banner that's been provided for this anthology, in which my story They Pissed on My Sofa will appear.

Lovecraft - Fear of the Unknown - Documentary

This is a fascinating 90 minute documentary about H. P. Lovecraft, with contributions by people like Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, John Carpenter, Neil Gaiman, S. T. Joshi, etc. Not to be missed!


Watch more free documentaries

Ingrid Pitt

Sad to hear that Ingrid Pitt has died. We saw her earlier this year at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, when she looked far from well then. She was in a wheelchair, but showed great spirit.


My favourite movie of hers has got to be The House That Dripped Blood, where she played opposite the late John Pertwee, hamming it up as a horror "actor" for all he was worth. She joined in with gusto.

Alice the Musical - Lancashire Evening Telegraph article

Youtube video of Cassandra dancing at the ReAct studio

You wouldn't think she was six months pregnant (baby due in February)! This was a practice run for the Flash Mob event held in Accrington town centre on Saturday.





This was her comment for this practice video: "Hi... this is me, (pregnant dancing girl on vid)... if you are interested in learning the routines for the Flash Mob event please use these to learn from. I am performing them the correct way, (not a mirror image) so you will have to think and not just copy. I punch my left arm first for instance.

If you have any questions post them on here.

Cassandra"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZWkilPyKJo

Chris Barker

Word from Des Lewis is that Chris Barker is seriously ill. I hope that he isn't but, if he is, I also hope he recovers quickly. I have only ever met him face to face once, which was at Fantasycon earlier this year; we ended up shaking hands. He is a well read, intelligent and oftentimes amusing literary critic. His story, The Melancholy Haunting of Nicholas Parkes, is also one of the best ghost stories I've read in years, and I look forward one day to having the opportunity to read the rest of his collection, Tenebrous Tales. A very favourable review of this collection by Des Lewis is included in the forthcoming December issue of Prism.

Flash Dance - Accrington

My daughter, Cassandra Webster, is at it again. This is from tonight's Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Alice the Musical - photos

Photos were taken of the cast for Alice the Musical, the first production of my daughter's new drama academy, ReAct, which will be held from the first till the third of December at the Oswaldtwistle Civic Arts Centre, Union Road, Oswaldtwistle.

photos

My wife, Linden, has done the costumes - and I provided the teapot and cups.

The Eighth Black Book of Horror

I can now reveal that my story, The Last Coach Trip, will be published next year in the Eighth Black Book of Horror.

I am particularly pleased with this story as some aspects of it are autobiographical. Until I got married I used to go on coach trips like this from the Bold Street Working men's Club to Ripon Races every August. Some odd things happened at times (they were one long drinking, gambling and eating bout) - though nothing quite so odd, thankfully, as in this tale!

The Seventh Black Book of Horror

A nice review of the anthology here on hellnotes.

Naturally, I liked the comments on my story in particular: "Much as I may be used to zombie tales I found David A Riley’s “Romero’s Children” as scary as hell with its final paragraphs oozing pure, malevolent horror."

What every horror author wants to hear!

Strangely enough, though everyone seems to view this as a zombie story, the creatures are not dead and never have been, but have been preserved in time. They are as youthful as when they first changed. The only things zombie-like about them are their murderously cannibalistic natures and the years of dirt that cover them.

E. F. Benson

Came across this on another blog: Nick Mamatas's. It's a copy of a rejection letter received by E. F. Benson back in 1907. I wonder which story this refers to.

I once had a story rejected for being too horrible. And from a charity anthology at that! It was subsequently published in a mass market paperback by John Pelan. 

The Walking Dead

trailer

I've waited till I've managed to watch the second episode of this new TV series before commenting on it. It's all too easy to get carried away by an opening episode, only to find that was the best you're going to get.

Thankfully, The Walking Dead looks to me so far as if it's not going to be like this at all. Instead, it looks to be shaping up to being an engrossing show that could - I stress could - be one of the best to have started for the past few years. It's not up to the quality of Dexter (how many are, though?), but it has a lot going for it, not least being an interesting group of characters. The production values are high and the apocalyptic situation in which the world has fallen is credibly mirrored by the scenes, particularly those set in the city, which are every bit as good as depicted in movies such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, etc. And, unlike some of George Romero films, so far at least the characters don't act stupidly and do obviously stupid things - one of my main bugbears of the Romero zombie films, from Night of the Living Dead onwards. The acting is excellent too.

It will be interesting to see how this series develops. At the moment things are looking good, at least for the viewers, if not for the characters in it! I look forward to seeing episode three.

Sub Rosa by Robert Aickman

I'm currently reading the Tartarus Press edition of Sub Rosa by Robert Aickman, which I picked up at a discount at the Halifax Ghost Story Festival.

Although I have always liked a couple of Aickman's stories in the past, I don't think I have ever given him a fair crack of the whip, perhaps because I expected the wrong things from him. He is not a horror story writer, nor does he write straight ghost stories. He is definitely something unique and perhaps a classification all to himself.

I would add, also, he is not someone you can breeze through. To appreciate his stories, they have to be read slowly and carefully.

Anyway, I must admit to having enjoyed what I have read so far and will do a more detailed write-up on the book later. I have just read Never Visit Venice, which is very evocative of that strangely atmospheric, decaying city, about which several writers have written outstanding stories, including Daphne du Maurier and David Sutton. This is both, obliquely, a ghost story, with tinges of horror, but many more emotions too, including a kind of sadness.

I am just about to embark on The Cicerones. I watched a short film adapted from it at Halifax, starring Mark Gatiss and directed by Jeremy Dyson, who read one of Aickman's stories at the festival. I believe the original is much better than the film, though that had its moments.

Jeremy Dyson reading Aickman's The Inner Room, with Tartarus Press co-owner, Ray Russell, at the Halifax Ghost Story Festival.