Black Mountain #4: The Beast Of Maes Carnedd

Not had time to get a new website organised yet - I'm still unpacking my crates of books - so this one will have to stay in service a little longer, in order to let you know that the latest instalment of the Black Mountain saga, The Beast Of Maes Carnedd, is now available on Amazon, with - as you can see - yet another awesome cover by Neil Williams.

Maes Carnedd lies in ruins now. It’s more than a hundred years since the Welsh mining village, in the shadow of Mynydd Du, was abandoned by its inhabitants.

In the summer of 1903, terror came to Maes Carnedd, and left a trail of corpses in its wake.

Something that killed with the strength and savagery of an animal, but the cruelty and sadism of a man. Something that brought death to its victims in the heart of the woods, in the tunnels of the mines, or behind the locked doors and windows of their own homes.

Only one man knows the truth of the events that doomed Maes Carnedd.

And now it’s time to tell.

'We could all hear Bert Williams' screams, fading away as it dragged him off. And we could have gone after him, but we didn’t. No point. We’d have been dead too. You didn’t see what it did to those men. 

They were torn to pieces. I mean literally. Limb from limb. Like you’d pull a roast chicken apart – rip off the drumsticks, gouge and tear off the breasts. Strip the carcass. We could recognise the faces, just – and by Christ, I wish I hadn’t – but as for the rest? You couldn’t tell which bits were Bill’s and which were Jack’s.
 
As for Bert Williams - no-one ever saw him again, living or dead.'


The first three episodes of Black Mountain, The Red Key, The Ghosts Of Hafan Deg and The Strange Death Of Britt Nordenstam, are all available for download too.

American readers can download the saga here.

And The Birds Fly South For Winter

This is my last morning in the house I've lived in for twelve years. I moved in at the end of 2001, halfway through writing a novella called Until My Darkness Goes, which appeared in my first story collection. I remember that because it's a ghost story, and on my first night alone in the house, as I was writing a suitably creepy scene, a floorboard creaked somewhere and terrified the bejazus out of me. The next night I put some music on, only to switch it off when other sounds intruded. After a moment I realised it was the couple next door. Making love. Very, very loudly. I managed not to bag on the wall and tell him to give her one from me.

I was twenty-seven when I moved in here. Last month I turned forty. I spent the last of my twenties and all of my thirties here. For most of that time I was single, and on occasions despaired of ever not being alone.

Not that I was. I've made good friends living here in Swinton; the guy over the road is one of my best mates. My next door neighbour, a former lodger, is someone I knew at college.

I learned to be happy on my own in this house. While I've lived here, I saw my first books published, and my stories appear in annual 'Best Of' collections. I wrote Tide Of Souls here, and The Faceless.

And I fell in love while I lived here. And that love has deepened, and now I'm moving to another city - Liverpool - to be with the woman I love. A new life begins, exhilarating and scary all at once.

I will miss this house. I'll miss Swinton. I'll miss the little Chinese takeaway up the road where I'm on first name terms with the owners. I'll miss the nature reserve ten minutes walk from my front door and the country park up the road, and all the bits of green belt and natural beauty I've come to know, living here.

But it's time to go.

This is a good little house. It's taken care of me, far better than I've taken care of it. I'm glad that the people buying it from me are friends. I'm glad it will be in good hands.

This might be the last post here on this blog, too. I'm hoping to set up a WordPress site. This blog has been good, but I think I need something different now.

Thanks to everyone who's been following me since I set it up six years ago. Take care, be well and be happy.

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code