News Update

So on Sunday I ran in the Leeds half Marathon. My time was a respectable 02:04:58. I could have broken the two hour barrier, but I was running with a severe head cold. Initially I was disappointed, but now I'm just glad I took part despite feeling ill. My boy was proud of me anyway...

It feels strange to have got the race over and done with after training so hard for four-and-a half-months. There's this weird conceptual gap in my life. Once this cold is out of my system, I'll get back to the running and decide which race to do next.

Meanwhile, I need to finish The Quiet Room. This novel seems to have been hanging round for an eternity. I started work on the project at least three years ago. It should be finished by now, but it isn't. As usual, I'm finding it fifficult to write. Real life problems keep getting in the way, and believe me this year there seem to be a lot of them to get in the way. But I'll get there in the end. I always do. I endure. And hopefully it'll be my best novel to date.

This year will see the release of two short novels, The Bones of You and The End. The former is a modern ghost story and an exploration of love, guilt and duty; the latter is a London-set apocalyptic story about a "suicide epidemic". I'll have more news on both of these titles soon.

There isn't much else to report on the writing front. I've been keeping my head down, keeping out of trouble, and trying to maintain some kind of focus.

Insides Out

The latest issue of Strange Aeons magazine includes my story Insides Out.

Check it out here: Strange Aeons

Nightsiders

My new novella, Nightsiders, has just been released by those wonderful people at DarkFuse Publishing.

I'm very excited about the book being available. It's the one I had no idea what to do with, the story that took on a life of its own and became something very unusual. I wrote the novella a few years ago and had no idea where to send it until the DarkFuse thing came up. I think it's found a good home.

The signed, limited hardback edition seems to be sold out already (to the DarkFuse book club), but it's available as an eBook. Exclusive to Amazon for the first 90 days, and then on other platforms after that.

Here are the links:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

The Bones of You

Here's the blurb for my latest novel, The Bones of You. Keen-eyed readers might spot a cunning homage to a couple of good friends of mine...

I love you…I love the bones of you.

This is a story about ghosts, a dead serial killer, and a man struggling to be a good father to his young daughter. There’s pain and pathos, love and hate, abuse, addiction and desire. It’s about love, duty, and the ties that bind people together.

It’s also the story of Little Miss Moffat and the Radiant Children…

Adam Morris moves into a cheap rental property in the suburbs. He’s divorced and gets to look after his daughter, Jessica, every other weekend as part of the deal. He’s a broken man trying to start a new life.

But when strange events start to occur in the run up to Halloween, Adam suspects there’s a link to the old, abandoned house next door. Soon he learns about a dead killer named Katherine Moffat and the terrible things she did to her victims in the cellar.

When Jessica starts talking in her sleep and shows signs of abuse – marks and bruises on her body – he isn’t sure if it’s his ex-wife’s junkie boyfriend or something more sinister causing her harm. And just who is the troubled young Goth girl who watches silently from the street outside his house?

As Adam uncovers more details regarding past events in the shunned, graffiti-covered house next door, he realises that he and Jessica might be in real danger. And before long he is caught up in a mortal struggle to prevent Little Miss Moffat’s lingering influence from destroying everything he is trying so hard to protect.

Some Bones

So this week finally saw me finish - all bar some last-minute tweaks - the final draft of The Bones of You. My agent loved it, her editorial comments were brief and merciful, and at the end of this week I'll be sending it off to the publisher.

Then it's time to forge ahead with The Quiet Room, which I hope to finish before the summer. I also have a few shorter projects to fit in, but I don't intend to stress myself out by taking on too much. Fuck that shit; life's too short to kill yourself through stress.

Which neatly segues into another subject:

Over the past few weeks I've seen a few blogs written about the subject of being a full-time writer. People taking the plunge, giving up the day job.

Good luck to them, I say, but that's a dream of mine that's lost its gloss.

I have a family to support, a mortgage to pay, and I'm not prepared to readjust to a life of low and unreliable income and massive pressure. I don't want to write tie-in novels, I don't want to have to take on editing or proof-reading jobs as an alternative income stream. I want to write the stuff that I want to write, and I'll never get rich doing that. So I'll continue with my career, and write on the side, just like a lot of writers do. The money I make from writing is a welcome bonus. It's taken a while, but I've finally come to terms with this lifestyle choice and have adjusted my writing schedule to suit. I feel a lot less stressed now.

Cancellation

Due to an illness in the family, I'm afraid I've had to pull out of this Saturday's (30th March) "This Is Horror" event in Edinburgh.

Sincere apologies to Ellie Wixon, Michael Wilson, David Moody, Joseph D'Lacey, Jasper Bark, and to everyone who'll be attending the event. I'm sure the other guys will fill the small gap brilliantly, and it'll be a splendid evening.

Have a drink for me.

James Herbert

So James Herbert is dead. I heard the news last night, as I was listening to my son read before bed. My wife came up and told me she'd seen it on Facebook. He was only 69. That's young, these days. Far too young to die, anyway.

Herbert meant a lot to me when I was in my early teens - I read his stuff obsessively back then. He was out very own UK version of Stephen King, only ruder, cruder, and funnier. I loved - and still love - those early novels: Rats, Lair, Domain, Survivor, The Spear, Fluke, Shrine, The Fog, The Dark, Moon. They were bloody and they were brilliant.

I lost touch with his work when I was older; those later novels somehow didn't have the same kind of magic. But I always had a soft spot for Herbert. His stuff had a massive impact on me when I was young, and probably led to me trying to write my own horror.

I wish I'd taken a few minutes to speak to the man at World Horror a few years ago, or at FantasyCon last year. I wish I'd shaken him by the hand and thanked him for the entertainment his books gave me. But I didn't. I'm not one for approaching the big guns.

Rest in peace, James Herbert. You inspired a generation of horror writers to give it a go, and for that we salute you.

Now I'm off to choose which of his novels I'll re-read in his honour.