The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

Just discovered The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp on amazon prime, a TV series from 1956. It's surprisingly good, with some excellently written scripts, some good acting and, probably unusual for that time, a continuous story that moves along and develops, with occasional references to previous episodes.

At the beginning of the series Earp becomes marshall for the small, unruly, cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas. Several episodes later, when his reputation as a lawman has started to spread, he is offered the job of marshall in the city of Wichita. I dimly remember watching this program when I was a kid, though it was probably by that stage up to the sixth series in 1961.

I very much doubt the strict historical accuracty of the series, but I don't mind that. It's still great television - and much better than many western series that came later.

Phantasmagoria Magazine - next issue

The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors - reviewed in Phantasmagoria Magazine

Below is my review of The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors which has been published in the current issue of Phantasmagoria Magazine.

 

THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS

Edited by Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards

Anthologies like this used to be commonplace once, back in the day when they were a regular part of the output by major publishers like Pan, New English Library, Sphere Books and Corgi, etc., often by editors like August Derleth, Peter Haining, Kurt Singer, Michel Parry and others. Today it is virtually only the small independent presses that keep the flag flying, though few come close to The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors for giving us such a bumper crop in nearly 400 pages of 25 outstanding stories. Congratulations must be offered to the editors for achieving this!

It would, I’m afraid, be too lengthy a task to discuss every single story, and some worked for this reader better than others, though I would vouch for there not being a single dud amongst them, so I will just highlight a few that I particularly liked. Ramsey Campbell reliably opens proceedings with Some Kind of a Laugh, which is different to but inevitably brings to mind his brilliant novel The Grin of the Dark, where laughter becomes menacing and the make-believe world of entertainment hides a terrifying horror. Samantha Lee goes visceral with a vengeance with The Worm, which would have been a worthy entry into any of the old Pan Books of Horror (of which she was once a contributor!) Marie O’Regan’s Pretty Things very soon belies its name, where masks play a key, sometimes gut-wrenching part. I’ve always enjoyed Mike Chinn’s stories, and Her Favourite Place, which is SF horror,  is one of his best, set in an undersea farm. Tony Richards’ The Garbage Men has an engrossingly claustrophobic nightmare effect and a great climax. It’s a while since I read anything new from Stephen Laws but Get Worse Soon is a cleverly plotted tale about an overly thrifty pound shop customer who literally gets more than he bargained for! It’s a very cleverly told tale. Scarecrows are often frightening creations, and Adrian Cole’s Broken Billy uses one to great and horrifying effect. John Grant’s Too Late shifts reality and perception of what is going on to great effect – and has a truly grand guignol twist at the end. These are just a few of the stories which for me stood out, though the standard throughout is consistently high. It is definitely one of the best anthologies I have come across for quite some time and I would highly recommend it. 

If the stories weren’t enough, the book is also illustrated throughout with finely drawn headers for each of the stories by the talented Jim Pitts, adding that extra touch of quality to this book, which concludes with an informative set of Contributor Notes.

Into the Dark - price reduced to £5.50 for limited period

I have changed the cover of Into the Dark to show that it is actually written by me "as Andrew Jennings".

For a limited time only paperback copies can be bought from Amazon for only £5.50 (or only £1.99 on kindle).

Paperback: £5.50

Kindle: £1.99

"There's a serial killer at loose in London. Janice, who has a chronic fear of the dark, stumbles into a relationship with the man who may secretly be the murderer. Nedither know that in the North of England, in a place previously owned by his dead mother, activities are taking place that may unleash a horror that could spell the end of civilisation in Britain - an ancient evil that would make the activities of any serial killer look like child's play by comparison. Could a psychotic killer be the only man capable of ending this?"

'No Sense In Being Hungry, She Thought' reprinted in Russia's Darker Magazine

Great to have a second story in the Russian Darker Magazine, edited by Artem Ageev. This time it's No Sense In Being Hungry, She Thought. This story originally appeared in Peeping Tom in 1996 and is included in my collection Their Cramped Dark World and Other Tales.
 

Charles Black RIP

I was shocked and saddened to be told today by a nurse at St Michael's Hospice in Hereford, where he was staying, that my friend Charles Black (real name Michael Duggan) passed away yesterday, peacefully, surrounded by his relations. I was planning to drive there to visit him, knowing it would be for the last time, as he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but the end came sooner than expected.

Charles was a writer, editor and publisher, who ran Mortbury Press, who brought out eleven volumes of his brilliant anthology series, The Black Books of Horror, which published some of the best names in the horror genre in the UK. He also had two collections of his own stories, the first, which I published under my Parallel Universe Publications imprint in 2015, was Black Ceremonies. The second appeared under his own imprint, A Taste for the Macabre (2018). He also brought out a collection of tales by Anna Taborska, For Those Who Dream Monsters 2013), illustrated by Reggie Oliver.

Charles on a panel of fellow editors at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, 2010

Charles, second from the right, enjoying a drink with friends

Charles at Fantasycon in Nottingham shaking hands with Johnny Mains

Some of The Black Books of Horror

 

Into the Dark

I can now reveal that the horror novel Into the Dark, which I published under my Parallel Universe Publications imprint as by Andrew Jenning is in actual fact by me. I wanted to see just how well it would do under an unfamiliar name. The answer is, alas, not so well - it has pretty well been completely ignored by everyone. Which is why I have abandoned this experiment and am admitting the true authorship.
No more games!
The details will be altered online in places such as amazon, etc over the next few weeks. 

Cover reveal for Terror Tales of Northwest England edited by Paul Finch

This is the cover for Terror Tales of Northwest England, which will include a reprint of my story Writer's Cramp, which originally appeared in Fantasy Tales.

Terror Tales of Northwest England will be published in June by Telos and is already available for pre-order.

Fauda

Got to watch the final episode of the second season of Fauda today, which started with our hero Doron in perhaps the stickiest postion an Israel counter-terrorist agent could find himself! I love this series. The main characters actually for once look the part. In other words they're not your usual Hollywood pretty-faced heroes and action men (and women). The photography and shots of the Israeli and Palestinian areas are fascinating glimpses into what it looks like there, and I particularly liked the interplay between the many, sometimes overlapping factions at work in the area. Very much recommended - and thanks again to David Dubrow for putting me onto this.
I hope there'll be a third series eventually - though I might take some time to recover from the stress and trauma of watching the first two seasons one after the other!

Voice from the Stone - film review

Just watched Emilia Clarke in Voice from the Stone.
At first sight this looked an intriguing supernatural movie set in Tuscany. But what a boring one and a half hours it was! The direction was so wooden and so slow-paced it made its 94 minutes feel twice the length. This might have worked as a TV feature of around 50 minutes or less, though the director gave little scope for any of the characters to spring to life, so perhaps it wouldn't even then.
Definitely not a movie I would ever watch twice!

Hereditary

Just watched Hereditary on amazon prime. Excellent production values, well scripted, very well acted and definitely well cast (it was great to see youngsters in a family without the usual overly pretty Hollywood faces), but that ending really let the whole thing down. The last few minutes and the climax broke the tension entirely and were not far short of laughable. What a damn shame.

The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts reviewed by Trevor Kennedy of Phantasmagoria Magazine

THE FANTASTICAL ART OF JIM PITTS.
Review by Trevor Kennedy for Phantasmagoria Magazine.
The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts is a bumper hardback dedicated to the life works so far of the man of the title, one of the great fantasy artists of our time. On top of that, it also serves as a history of sorts of the much esteemed British Fantasy Society (and related publications) and the early days of these guys at the forefront of the movement, highlighting their good times, and quite often difficulties, over the last almost half a century. Jim Pitts and his exquisitely detailed artworks are our guides through this fascinating and hugely important period for the UK fantasy/horror scene. And I loved every single page of it!
Jim’s life, from his working class Northern English beginnings and folk band days with ‘The Jim Pitts Folk Quartet’ to the present day, is chronicled over 212 pages alongside a bonanza of his macabre works and written contributions from BFS stalwarts such as David A. Riley, David A. Sutton, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Jones, Brian Lumley, Adrian Cole, Peter Coleborn and more, fascinating real life stories concerning what really must have been a golden era for these pioneers, especially in the 1970s and ‘80s. Reading about the difficulties they faced back then just made me realise how lucky wannabe publishers/writers like myself get it these days. My first job when I left school was with a printing firm, so I know only too well how expensive lithographic printing was, and probably still is.
On the subject of Jim’s artwork itself, firstly I must state that I am no art expert, especially from a technical viewpoint. But for me, as a layman, I found his numerous pieces included on the pages to be brilliantly atmospheric, haunting and Lovecraftian. I particularly enjoyed his representations of certain M.R. James’ stories, some of his Cthulhu mythos-based creations, his cracking portrait of Vincent Price in Witchfinder General, along with a classic Universal monster or two. On a personal level, Jim’s artwork also brought with it warm feelings of nostalgia for my own childhood when I would have read some of the various publications referenced, including Fantasy Tales and the B.F.S. Bulletins, mailed to me in the 1980s by my then pen-pal cousin Dave Carson, another fantasy artist also mentioned in the book and associate of Jim and the aforementioned contributors. For me to now be just a small part of this scene is the greatest of personal honours.
This is a very special book for many reasons, so if you have even a passing interest in fantasy artwork (especially that of Jim Pitts obviously) or the recent history of the UK weird fiction scene, then you really need to grab a copy for yourself as soon as humanly possible!
A limited number of 250 signed copies of The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts have been published by Parallel Universe Publications. If you are interested in acquiring a copy you can contact them through the following:
Parallel Universe Publications
David A. Riley; Linden Riley
Head Office: 130 Union Road, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, BB5 3DR, UK.
Email: paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk or davidariley@gmx.co.uk
A future issue of Phantasmagoria Magazine (number 10, late May 2019) will feature interviews with Jim Pitts, David A. Riley and David A. Sutton.

Gruesome Grotesques #4 - Winter on Aubarch 6

Issue 4 of Trevor Kennedy's amazing anthology series Gruesome Grotesques is now out and includes a reprint of my science fiction horror story Winter on Aubarch 6, originally published in Fear magazine in 1989.

John Gilbert, who was the editor of Fear magazine, wrote the Foreword to Gruesome Groesques and had this to say about my story: "There are also shifts in tone such as David A. Riley's 'Winter on Aubarch 6' which is hard-ish Science Fiction/Horror when originally published in FEAR Magazine but could now be considered as a fable for our age of climate change."

Winter on Aubarch 6 is also included in my collection The Lurkers in the Abyss and Other Tales of Terror (Shadow Publishing).

Fear magazine 1989

A Distasteful Horror Story by Johnny Mains

Lovely surprise to find this splendid book in the post today from Johnny Mains, his first novel A Distasteful Horror Story - and for the acknowledgement he included: "Dave Riley for helping with the typesetting and championing this book from the very start." Thanks, Johnny. It was a pleasure!

The cover is by the very talented David Whitlam.