Happy Halloween

Tricktreat

Gary McMahon

It’s Halloween night on the Concrete Grove estate, and bored parents guide their painted children through the darkness held between the stifling tower blocks.

Trick or Treat; money or sweets. Bruce hates the fact that, despite branding him the local weirdo, these people still knock on his door and hold out their hands for offerings. For this night only, they cease their endless bullying and tormenting and come begging for whatever they can get.

He answers with a smile, pretending that he aches for their acceptance. “Treat!” he laughs, as he fills their Tesco carrier bags with chocolates, candies and crisps. “Treat!” he yells, waving as they tramp impatiently back along the narrow concrete walkway, heading for the next set of flats.

Then, closing the door on the mocking estate and cooing sweet lullabies to his beloved brood, he goes back to work before the next lot of bed-sheet ghosts and midget witches appear. 

He selects only the finest of his internet-bought babies to add to the remaining treats: a lethal rainforest spider heat-sealed into a packet of cheese and onion crisps, a small poisonous centipede coaxed gently into a carefully hollowed-out Snickers bar, snake venom painstakingly injected into penny chews.

Oh how he laughs at what tricks these treats can hide.

(c) Gary McMahon 2011

Halloween Horror Night

On Monday 31st October - that's Halloween to you and me - I'll be joining fellow authors Adam Nevill and David Moody for an evening of readings and discussion. The venue is Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, and our host will be up-and-coming genre critic Michael Wilson.

I hope to see a few of you there.

Here's the link:

Halloween Horror Night

Reading Stories

So I spent this evening reading a handful of my own stories aloud, trying to pick one for a public reading on Halloween. On Monday October 31st I'm appearing with Adam Nevill and David Moody at an event in Warwick Arts Centre. We're each doing a reading, which will be followed by a short Q&A.

I didn't want to read a novel extract because I prefer to read something in its entirity at these things; however, I only have a reading slot of around 15 minutes, so this means whatever story I chose had to be short. I hate choosing stories for public readings; I always get lost in my own thought process and worry to much about which tale to do.

Tonight I read out 3 or 4 tales and finally made a decision - the story I plan to read at the event is called "Down", and it's a traditional style spooky story about a group of schoolkids on an expedition to a local underground cave. Rather than read something experimental or psychologically disturbing, I thought I'd go with an old-school slow-burn scare. Hopefully it'll be perfect for Halloween...and hopefully it'll creep out the audience so much that they're terrified to walk home in the dark.

More Love For The Grove

The Concrete Grove gets another glowing review here:

Concrete Grove Review

This Voice Is No Longer Silent

So I've finally finished the first draft of Silent Voices for Solaris. My (slightly extended) deadline is the end of the month, which leaves me less than two weeks to edit the book into shape. It's a frightening prospect, but I have faith that I can manage the task. I always do; my work ethic gets me by.

Initially I'd expected the final draft to run to around 80,000 words - a short novel. This first draft is just under 97,000 words and when I edit I actually add to a novel rather than snipping stuff out, so I'm expecting the thing to come in at around the 100,000 words mark. That'll make it the longest piece of fiction I've ever written. Another scary prospect.

This has been the toughest book I've ever had to write. The nature of the beast meant that I wrote it organically, with no outlining, and during the sometimes gruelling process I was beset by writer's block, various health problems, and other less serious distractions. At one point I feared that I would fail, that I wouldn't get this one finished. But I continued to work at it, sitting down and writing often when sitting down and writing was the last thing I wanted to do. I've loved and hated this story, sometimes simultaneously. I've laughed and cried; I've raged and cajoled. It's been a real fucking trip.

And in less than a fortnight I shall be forced to hand the manuscript over to my publisher, where it'll begin the next phase of its existence. It's been so difficult, so very, very difficult, to get this written that I'm scared I might not want to let it go.

Here Comes the Rain...Again

PRESS RELEASE

Anarchy Books is proud to present

RAIN DOGS...
by Gary McMahon.


This is the sixth release by Anarchy Books, alongside authors such as James Lovegrove, Andy Remic, Jeffrey Thomas and Vincent Holland-Keen.

The book is available in PDF, MOBI and EPUB formats for the low low price of £2.49 www.anarchy-books.com from 15th October 2011.

RAIN DOGS
by GARY McMAHON


Guy Renford is fresh out of prison. His life in ruins, he is estranged from his wife and daughter. So he returns to the Yorkshire town of Stonegrave to try and recover what he once held dear. But a presence is watching from behind the endless rainstorm, something that wants revenge... and has not come alone.

Rosie sees ghosts. She has since childhood These sorrowful visions of drowned schoolgirls are linked to a past she fled to America to escape. But you can never run from destiny, and something is calling Rosie back to rainy Stonegrave, the home of her worst nightmares...

Slowly, the lives of these two people are drawn together in a town cut off by floods, and at the height of the storm they will be forced to battle a relentless foe that uses the deluge as cover, stalking them from within a merciless onslaught of rain...



FOCUS ON -

• A CHILLING REVENGE STORY

• SOCIAL REALISM

• WEIRD MONSTERS

• SCARY URBAN FANTASY

IF YOU LIKE RAIN DOGS, TRY -

THE DARK by JAMES HERBERT

TWILIGHT EYES by DEAN KOONTZ

THE MIST by STEPHEN KING

RAIN DOGS is an EBOOK novel by GARY MACMAHON, whose fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S and has been reprinted in both THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR and THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY & HORROR. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight, The Harm, Hungry Hearts, and has edited an anthology of original novelettes titled We Fade to Grey. Forthcoming are several reprints in “Best of” anthologies, a story in the mass market anthology THE END OF THE LINE, the novels Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things from Angry Robot/Osprey and The Concrete Grove trilogy from Solaris. Gary's website can be found at: www.garymcmahon.com

RAIN DOGS can be purchased from www.anarchy-books.com for £2.49 in PDF, EBOOK and MOBI formats. Artwork by Vincent Holland-Keen.

"Here comes the rain again..."
 

"Rain Dogs was the first novel I ever had published. This new, slightly revised version, sees the story presented in my "author's favoured version", with some minor edits and the original final chapter reinstated."
- Gary McMahon

Rain Dogs Redux

A few years ago I wrote my first novel, Rain Dogs. I'd never written one before, or even attempted one. Unlike most writers, I have no trunk novels; prior to writing Rain Dogs I'd only ever worked on short stories and novellas. At the time, it was a scary proposition.

Luckily, Guy Adams, who was then with an up-and-coming small press publishing outfit called Humdrumming, liked the cut of my jib, so after seeing the first couple of chapters he commissioned me to write the rest of the novel. It took me two years to complete. Back then, I was learning as I wrote. This was new territory; I was setting out into a darkness that I'd never experienced before.

Rain Dogs was finally published in 2008, in a beautiful dual-cover limited hardback edition. The book earned a handful of glowing reviews (including one from none other than Ellen Datlow) and was nominated for an award. Then, a few months after the book was released, Humdrumming sadly went into liquidation. I bought back the unsold copies (there were loads) and sold a lot of them privately, which meant I still got paid. I still have a box of them at home, tucked safely away towards my retirement plan. Ahem.

In effect, despite being well received, my "promising debut novel" wasn't given a chance in the marketplace.

I'm delighted, therefore, to annouce that a slightly re-edited version (including the reinstatement of the short final chapter, which was excised from the original edition) is being released on Saturday 15th October 2011 as an ebook through Andy Remic's wonderful Anarchy Books.

Check out the link here: Anarchy Books

Who said there was no sych thing as a second chance?

You Mean Some People Do This For Fun?

Rant Alert!

I often get pissed off when I hear writers say "I only do this for fun," or "I write for my own entertainment" or "I'll give up writing when it stops being fun." These statements (especially the last one - which assumes we have a choice in the matter), along with a host of other ones just like them, mean nothing to me. I don't understand them. For fun, I watch football, go for a run, kick a ball about in the park with my son, get pissed with my mates, have sex, eat curry...and a host of other truly fun things.

I do not write for fun. I write for many other complex reasons - many of them possibly psychotic - but never for a bit of a laugh.

There's no fun to be had from sitting up until 2am in the morning wrestling with problems of grammar and syntax when the alarm's set to go off at 6:45 to wake me up in time for work. There's no enjoyment in agonising over that comma or that hyphen - are they in the right place? Should they even be there anyway? - for hours on end, until my eyesight begins to blur and I get a bastard of a headache that stays with me all the next day.

I've heard other writers say that writing isn't hard work, that it's easy and - yes - "fun". If that's the case, then I suggest you're not doing it properly. Writing a novel is  fucking hard work. It's graft, like building a stone wall across an endless field, or hammering away at a hunk of granite to reveal the sculpture locked inside. You have to keep a whole world alive inside your head while you go about the rest of your day, pretending that you're really concentrating on what that other person's saying rather than developing the next plot point in your head, or speaking dialogue aloud as you cook the dinner or load the dishwasher... You have to sacrifice time with your family (or sleep) because you simply have to get that idea down on the page before it vanishes.

So, yeah, when I want to have fun I reach for a beer and a takeaway menu, or pick up the phone and arrange a night in the pub, or take my kid across the park. Writing's what I do because I have no choice. If I did have a choice, do you think I'd sit up all night in front of a computer screen just to get the next couple of chapters plotted out before I crawl into bed?

Would I hell.

Halloween Horror Night

Along with fellow horror authors David Moody and Adam Nevill,  I'll be reading from my work, answering questions, and signing books at Warwick Arts Centre during a special Halloween celebration of horror literature.

Details  - incuding how to book a place - can be found here: Halloween Horror Night

Oooh, check out the snazzy PR image... ;-)