Darker Companions

This came out a little while ago from PS Publishing but I've only just received my author copy. It's a fine-looking book, and published to celebrate 50 years of Ramsey Campbell's fiction being published. And here's to another few decades of the same!

Ramsey's work has always been a huge inspiration to me, and everything I write carries his influence. he's my favourite writer. His work has always shaded how I see the world.

My story "There, There" combines my personal experiences of house-sharing in London with the influence of Ramsey's short tales upon my own work. I didn't try to ape his prose or literary ticks - I'm not capable of doing so without the result being weak and hollow. Instead, I just sat down and thought about the man's work, how it influences my own writing, and tried to tell my own story but with Ramsey Campbell in mind.

I hope you enjoy the result.

Here's the table of contents:

• Introduction: Hymns from the Church in High Street by Scott David Aniolowski 
• Holoow by Michael Wehunt 
• The Long Fade into Evening by Steve Rasnic Tem 
• Asking Price by S.P. Miskowski 
• Author! Author?  by John Llewellyn Probert 
• Meriwether by Michael Griffin 
• The Entertainment Arrives by Alison Littlewood 
• Premeditation by Marc Laidlaw 
• A Perfect Replica by Damien Angelica Walters 
• There, There by Gary McMahon 
• We Pass from View by Matthew M. Bartlett 
• Meeting the Master by Gary Fry 
• Saints in Gold by Kristi DeMeester 
• This Last Night in Sodom by Cody Goodfellow 
• The Whither by Kaaron Warren 
• Uncanny Valley by Jeffrey Thomas 
• The Dublin Horror by Lynda E. Rucker 
• The Sixth Floor by Thana Niveau 
• The Carcass of the Lion by Christopher Slatsky 
• The Granfalloon by Orrin Grey 
• Little Black Lamb by Adam L G Nevill 

April 2018

Wow. How is it April already?

I've spent the past three months suffering from health problems - severe colds, followed by a full-blown case of the flu that put me out of action for about five weeks. So naturally my writing and fitness goals have suffered.

I've had three stories accepted for publication in forthcoming anthologies:

• Guising - The Alchemy Book of Horrors
• The Hanging Boy - The Black Room Manuscripts
• Outside - as-yet-untitled anthology project

More on these projects as and when information becomes available.

I'm slowly limbering up to restarting work on a novel called Little Red House. I have a lot of ideas and some good notes. I just need to get my aim right and find an interesting way of telling the story.

It isn't strictly horror, but it isn't not horror either (if that makes any sense). It's a dark-edged tale of absent fathers, human trauma, and the stories we tell ourselves to get through the night. Hopefully I can do it justice and finally get some words down on the project.

Writing Update

This month I've submitted three stories to different markets:

• "The Hanging Boy" to Black Room Manuscripts (accepted). 

• "Guising" to The Alchemy Book of Horror (reading period isn't over yet).

• "It Only Hurts on the Way Out" to Black Static (sent today; confirmation of submission received).

I'm hoping this strong start to the year signals a return to some kind of prolificacy for me in terms of writing short fiction. I've been too quiet for too long; it's time to get back into the game.

I'm also working on a novel, "Little red House", which seems like a summation of where I'm at creatively right now. It's a tough one to write. I've changed a lot in the past few years and my writing - at least the way I write -  has changed more than anything. It's been no secret that I've struggled for quite some time now to write with any kind of sustained routine. But at least now, I want to write. That wasn't always the case in recent times.

So, onward and upward. I hope.

Stories

Writing stories. It's a funny old thing. A contradictory thing, really.

My personal take on it is that writing stories is childish and self-indulgent, yet it's also serious and important and pretty much vital to our species.

Because writing stories is how we collectively dream; it's how we try to make sense of the world.

Sometimes art is all we have. When society is collapsing around us, and we're pinned like insects beneath the weight of the decisions of those who run the world, art is often the consolation, the solace, and the way to find a gap in the great wall of idiocy and glimpse through it someone who thinks and feels the way we do.

Writing stories. Making paintings. Shaping sculptures. Creating music.

Sometimes these things are all we have to fight against the darkness.

Time

Sometimes it's hard to stop life passing you by. The flow of time becomes like a silent river, washing everything away before you even get the chance to watch it floating past.

My son is nearly 14, on the cusp of being a young man; the last time I looked he was a child.

We've been in our current house for two years; the last time I noticed, we were still moving in.

It's been over three years since my last novel was published; the last time I thought about it, I was still an up-and-coming British horror author within touching distance of "breaking out".

They say time flies, but that isn't entirely correct. It doesn't fly, it rushes through us and over us at high velocity, like river rapids. It leaves us drenched and shivering and wondering what the hell happened.

I'm 48; the last time I noticed, I was 31.

I'm tired and middle-aged; the last time I checked, I was still an angry young man.

Everyday Thoughts

So today I've been thinking about:

The new football season, Turkish food, the eerie movement of cats' ears, beer, the paintings of Rene Magritte, short story collections, the biomechanics involved in karate kata, independent publishers, the bearing pressure of soil, my son's nostrils, the calorific content of a flapjack, the smell of rubber, bubble-wrap death shrouds, the texture of molten flesh, Building Regulations relating to the construction of roofs, the sad sight of a shelled hard-boiled egg with a smear of ash on its otherwise clean white skin, grainy silent black and white footage of water rippling in a pool, what a rock might sound like if it were to scream, my wife's thighs, a small green budgerigar, the tools required to remove a window frame, a tiny tooth flecked with blood.

Sometimes They look Like Us

                                                                      "The Lovers" by Rene Magritte