New Gemma Files Collection: In That Endlessness, Our End

Gemma Files is an amazing writer.

If you know anything about horror, you should already know this.

If you didn't know, then now you do.

She has a new collection out. 

It will be very good. 

Because it's by Gemma Files.

You can buy it here.

And you should.

So now you know. 

COME CLOSER, FRIEND.

LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.

Heard the one about the Airbnb that eats your dreams, or the iron-crowned king who preys on his own bloodline from the air, still smoldering centuries after being burnt alive? How about the cloudy antique bottle you can wish your excess rage inside, or that crooked alley down which something waits to replace your disappointing child with a far more pleasant facsimile? We all know the truth, especially in times like these—in an anxiety-ridden, sleepless world such as ours, it’s only ever our very worst dreams that come true.

Here streets empty out and people pull themselves apart like amoebas, breeding murderous doppelgangers from their own flesh; houses haunt, ideas possess and a cold and alien moon stares down, whispering that it’s time to spawn. New myths rise and ancient evils descend. From the seemingly mundane terrors of a city just like yours to all the most dark and distant places of a truly terrible universe, nothing is as it seems…not even that dimly-recalled cinematic memory you’ve been chasing all these years, the one you think might be just something you stumbled upon while flipping through channels after midnight. The one that still disturbs you enough to raise a cold sweat all over your body, whenever you try to will its details clear.

Hot on the heels of her This Is Horror Award-winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

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Table of Contents

This is How It Goes

Bulb

The Puppet Motel

Come Closer

Cut Frame

Sleep Hygiene

Always After Three

Thin Cold Hands

Venio

Look Up

The Church in the Mountains

Distant Dark Places

Worm Moon

Halloo

Cuckoo

Guest Blog by Ashley Lister - The Cursed Blog Tour: Day Three

Ashley Lister is a prolific author of fiction, having written more than fifty full length novels and over a hundred short stories. Aside from regularly blogging about poetry and writing in general, Ashley also teaches creative writing, language and literature in Lancashire, England.

(This is part of the blog tour to promote Ashley's latest release, Cursed. Now read on...) 

I’d like to begin by thanking Simon for letting me visit here today and share this. This is an extract from my latest novella, Cursed. Cursed is the third in an ongoing series of novellas, all loosely related by the location in which they’re set, Innsmouth, and it’s going to be released on March 1^st, 2021. This chapter occurs halfway through the story.

Innsmouth University's Explorers Club meet once a month to share stories of the supernatural. They meet in empty houses, abandoned buildings and derelict churches. They meet in the dead of night. They tell stories of the impossible, the unbelievable and the most terrible. And now, it appears, their meetings have been cursed.

There were shadows at the base of the clocktower. At this time on a winter’s evening, with the first of the ten o’clock chimes ringing out through Innsmouth’s empty town centre, shadows were not unexpected. But, for anyone paying close attention, anyone watching the dark shapes that came and went of their own volition, the shadows would have seemed darker around the base of the clocktower on this occasion.

Derek Brown, lost in his own thoughts as he took Horatio on his evening constitutional, had not noticed the shadows. It was a cold night and, not for the first time, the threat of rain made him wish to Christ his wife’s French Bulldog would hurry up and do its business so he could get back home. Horatio was not the brightest dog he’d ever encountered and this nightly walk was always made tiresomely protracted because Horatio needed to sniff every lamppost, piddle at least three hundred times, and take one shit that was slightly larger than the turds that Derek could produce. On top of that, with Horatio being a chunky little bastard, who waddled more than he walked, the nightly constitutional took forever.

“Is this what my life’s come to?” he wondered, glaring down at the dog.

Horatio had paused to take his last shit of the day and it was never a pleasant experience to watch. With his bulging eyes, which always seemed to bulge further when he was straining to squeeze one out, Horatio reminded Derek of his wife. The idea that a pet could look like its owner was never truer than when Horatio was standing on a street corner with his fat arse trembling, his eyes bulging like chapel hat pegs and an expression of stupid surprise on his tubby face as though he didn’t know what was happening. Derek had often thought it was like having his wife with him on the walk, except with less inane chatter and slightly more outdoor defecating. He repeatedly told himself he’d take a picture of this moment when it occurred so that he could post it on FaceBook, alongside a picture of her, and ask his friends to spot the difference.

And this evening, to his surprise, Horatio was providing him with the perfect moment. It was almost as though the fat, simple dog had decided to pose for the shot.

Derek snatched the mobile from his jacket pocket and opened the camera app. It was set on selfies when the screen opened and he found his own pudgy, gammon-coloured features being displayed on the screen. Recoiling only a little, he pressed the button to turn the camera around and found himself staring down at Horatio as the dog stared up at him.

With the eyes bulging, the tongue lolling out over a double-chin, and a facial expression that looked like it had found three consecutive answers on a word search puzzle and was bursting to boast about the achievement, the shitting Horatio could have been his wife’s twin. Admittedly, one of them had a little more facial hair than the other, but Derek thought that was such a small distinction it was close to being negligible.

He snapped three pictures in short succession, chuckling softly to himself as he anticipated the repercussions of sharing this picture with friends. Horatio, clearly unimpressed with being photographed in the middle of a relatively private act, shied away from Derek. It was an abrupt lurch that caught Derek by surprise. One moment he was taking pictures of a shitting dog whilst holding its leash and chuckling to himself. The next moment the leash had been pulled from his hand, Horatio was waddling toward the clocktower, and Derek watched his phone, fall from his fingers and land on the freshly laid turd that Horatio had deposited.

“Bloody hell,” Derek complained. “Horatio,” he called. “Come back here.”

He reached for his phone, picking it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger, and realised Horatio’s sticky turd had adhered to the screen. Derek sneered in disgust, sure the dog had done this deliberately and he scanned the empty street looking for his wife’s French Bulldog.

“Horatio,” he called. “Where are you?”

Innsmouth seemed surprisingly quiet this evening. On the positive side, that meant there had been no one around to witness him dropping his phone on top of a warm and steaming dog turd. On the negative side, the silence unsettled him and there was no one around to tell him where his wife’s stupid dog had gone. A mist of drizzle hung in the air. The night seemed chillier than it should have been and, for the first time, he noticed that quite a few streetlamps seemed to have stopped working. The night was darker than it had any right to be and the subsequent shiver that tickled down his spine had nothing to do with Innsmouth’s low temperature.

Ashley writes:

This story is built on my fascination with the way people share their personal ghost stories. To celebrate this fact, on Monday March 1^st, I’ll be hosting an online book launch/virtual event where I (and some friends and fellow writers) will be sharing our own personal ghost stories. If you fancy joining us, either to share a ghost story or simply to listen, please drop me an email at me@ashleylister.co.uk and I’ll happily send you an invite.

And, to find out what happens in the remainder of this novella, you can pre-order a copy of Cursed on Amazon.

You can also buy the previous novellas in the series, Unearthed and Fearless. 

Women In Horror Month: Dani Brown on Time Vampires and the Illusion of Support (Part Two)

Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “Becoming,” “56 Seconds”, “Sparky the Spunky Robot” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.

("I don’t think I’ve ever touched on finding the time to write when you’re a women and so much else is demanded of you," Dani told me when I invited her to write a guest blog for WIHM. "Would that work as a topic?"

Yes, it would. And does. So here's the concluding part of it.)

Overnight

I doubt this is a specific to women or transwomen issue, but there are some people that seem to think I write a novel overnight. There was this one creep/weirdo who wouldn’t leave me alone when I first moved to this city. He told me a “great” idea he had. I said, “oh I already wrote that”. He came to bother me the next day and I had that novel out and he tried to take credit for the idea. I can’t remember the exact word count, it was long, somewhere between 70-80k, but even for someone who writes a lot very quickly when I’m in the right flow that is impossible.

You need to help me.

This is a very specific incident that happened sometime between January and June 2018. I can’t remember the exact month as I was either recovering from post traumatic stress disorder, writing 56 Seconds and Becoming (according to readers, these are two of the best things I’ve ever written, Sparky the Spunky Robot remains my favourite), or dealing with creeps who thought five months single was long enough (it really wasn’t).

This weirdo was associating with my group of friends briefly. I had a lot of books released during the first half of 2018, with two more to follow in July and August of that year. Each one of those books had to be promoted as well. This weirdo demanded my help in writing a book. He basically wanted me to write a book for him then he’d put his name on it and get all the money (which doesn’t really exist for a first book). Apparently it was my social obligation to help him (or write for him) because he cranked up the emotional manipulation. For all those years I couldn’t report emotional manipulation, I am well tuned to it and have no tolerance for it. I explain that I’m a single mother, I have to write my own books, I have chores to do, bills to pay, a day job and a vague resemblance of a social life. I don’t have the time. Again, he turns up the emotional manipulation.

I eventually posted a status on Facebook stating what I have to do each day and why I’m not available to help anyone and how I get no help. A family member jumps on stating, “your sister lives there” (half my family live in the USA). My sister lives two and a half hours away by car. Why on earth should my sister jump in her car to come wash dishes I’m perfectly capable of washing myself if I don’t help this person emotionally manipulating me? Even if she lived next door, that is an unreasonable demand. She has her own life.

I have a pretty set schedule to ensure I get through what I need to do each day. Plus my son was still in primary school and having a really rough time of it between the terrible teachers and bullying, mixed messages from pretty much everyone about how his mother wastes her life trying to have a career. My son’s mental health is a priority for me, not someone who thinks he’s entitled to my time because he can emotionally manipulate. If I don’t do the household chores to cater to other people’s demands instead, I’m only going to end up in the same situation I was in a few years ago – living in squalor with more people demanding my time and attention as my life falls apart around me. I can’t even often help people I’m more inclined to help or people I’m physically and mentally capable of helping due to my lack of time.

Running a Household

As much as I wished self-cleaning houses exist, they don’t. Plus there’s budgeting, sometimes with very little money. The less money there is, the more mentally taxing and time consuming it becomes. Then the cooking. This isn’t even considering parenting. These are the basic things that need to be done every single day. Every time I was in a relationship, the weight of these things fell on me. The weight of these things often falls on women. It is a lot easier since being single.

Congratulations if you have a partner who is helping you out with all of these things so you can write. I don’t have that. I have never had that. I don’t get the support with these things that people seem to think I have. And they all need to be done. I can’t leave dishes to pile up on the counter tops. For a start they go a bit crusty and become harder to wash, but eventually I’d run out of dishes and in the summer they’d attract insects. It isn’t exactly hygienic either. Floors need to be washed for the same reasons. Don’t get me started on having a filthy bathroom. I have no one to do these things for me. My son helps out to an extent but it is unfair to expect him to do everything.

I’ve let the dusting slip these past few weeks to sort out this novel, plus one I’m self publishing and the next novel and to see if I can sell some of these unpublished short stories on my laptop. I haven’t been trying to replace a lost to post traumatic stress freelance client who proved very lucrative to focus on getting these things done but that does create extra budgeting as my money supply dwindles (rather obviously, I haven’t been able to build up any savings with all these demands on my time from people who think they know best). I know in the long term, these things will have a better pay out than freelance and dusting. My son seems unbothered by the lack of dusting and that is something he can do if he really wants.

There’s a much higher mental pay out too, both while I’m working on it and in the future when I don’t have to do as much freelance to try to make up for time lost to the people mentioned above. Time lost is money lost. It is life lost. It is friendships lost. Dreams lost.

Finding the Time

Even in lockdown, I have found it difficult to find the time to sort out the beginning of this novel. I eventually did it between the hours of midnight and four in the morning. It wasn’t something I could break into fifteen minute chunks like the rest of the novel. It needed to be done in one sitting with a clear and rested mind. Every time I would sit there to see to it, I would then have to do something else, like cook dinner.

The health problem I mentioned a few times is one of those that keeps me awake with discomfort at night. It has been playing up lately. With it being lockdown I’ve been making up for lost sleeping and sleeping well into the afternoon. Although my life is specifically arranged for me being a late riser, this is ridiculous even by my standards. I’ve been trying to go to bed earlier, but the middle of the night was the only time I could find where I’d get a good chunk of peace. A decent amount of sleep is all part of self-care. I sacrificed it once before, I’m not doing that again. I’m still feeling the effects of those 5AM starts now and probably won’t fully recover.

My son is lost to the Playstation Network, especially right now as it is half term so all the children will be online all week. This is the only way they can socialise and play with each right now. It would be nice to watch a film with him when the schoolwork starts coming in again. Time with my son is never time wasted. That is something all these other people that demand my time need to understand. My son is a priority. It isn’t his fault these people come along and feel they are entitled to my time. He understands that rent needs to be paid and if I don’t get the work done, we won’t have a place to live. It is something the adults around us fail to comprehend. He has witnessed first hand people claiming to love him or look out for him swallowing my time so it comes down to choice between paying the rent or spending time with him.

So I’m hoping to make a significant impact on this novel this week while my child is busy socialising. That should be easier now the beginning is done enough to move on. I’m a quick writer. 56 Seconds took two-three weeks to write. While I was writing that, I wrote notes for Becoming and it took five weeks to form those into a narrative that made sense (it isn’t a traditional one). I learned how to be speedy while trapped in the bulk of time-consuming people inflicting help on me. Sometimes my books require a lot of concentration to make sense. Becoming certainly did and this book I’m writing now requires just as much concentration even if the narrative is more on the traditional side.

And now it is time to cook dinner again. At least it is leftovers tonight. That’s easier than prying the Playstation controller away from my son’s hand.  

Dani on Facebook

Dani on Twitter

Dani on Instagram. 

Unfortunately, Dani Brown has yet to find the time to set up a TikTok account or sort out YouTube, let alone anymore obscure social media.

Dani on Amazon USA 

Dani on Amazon UK 

Women In Horror Month: Dani Brown on Time Vampires and the Illusion of Support (Part One)

Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “Becoming,” “56 Seconds”, “Sparky the Spunky Robot” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more. 

("I don’t think I’ve ever touched on finding the time to write when you’re a women and so much else is demanded of you," Dani told me when I invited her to write a guest blog for WIHM. "Would that work as a topic?"

Yes, it would. And does. So here it is.)

For the past few days I’ve been trying to clean up the beginning of a novel. This is during a lockdown so I can’t even go outside and therefore, I’m not being roped into any dramas or being told what to do by people convinced they are helping me fix my life that wasn’t broken until people started inflicting help on me. Every time I sat down to clean it up I found myself being called to do something else. It had me thinking of all the times people expected me to somehow stretch the hours in the day and make it longer.

“If it was really that important, you’d find the time.”

An ex of mine had a favourite saying. “If it was really that important, you’d find the time.” And eventually I would find the time and then he’d come up with some crazy scheme, usually involving me going online and Facebook chatting to people I don’t know and don’t want in my life, or dragging me along somewhere, or shouldering his emotional weight. So it wasn’t my found time to begin with. He’d claim it. If I put up an objection, it would descend into a time consuming argument and I would end up even more stressed than I was already, with less time. Then he’d start to pick on me for not having any money. I’d explain that money needs to be earned, it doesn’t just magically appear. I’d then go through the effort of explaining to him with evidence of what I was doing to earn money and how I can’t keep getting roped into doing things that I don’t want to do in the first place. Then he’d sit there and respond with “we need to find out where all this stress is coming from” after I had literally explained it to him. I had taken my time to dig out evidence of what I was doing and go through point by point of what I was doing or trying to do if I wasn’t dealing with all this other stuff that was not necessary to my life.

To be honest, that ex is like a lot of people who all demand a piece of time and if they don’t get it, they will go to get lengths to cause maximum stress and then say, “see I told you that you couldn’t do it”. People do not like a single mother with boundaries and career that brings her happiness. I speak to other women in the creative industries and they all have these stories.

By this point I was waking up at 5AM every week day to have an hour and a half to write before I would have to get my son up for school and trek via one bus and one train to a day job on the other side of the city that left me feeling suicidal.

I would also use my time on public transport to write. I ended up sticking a letter to my laptop stating I was writing a novel, have a publisher and already know about self-publishing, please leave me alone because people would see it fit to ask what I was doing. It wasn’t any of their business to begin with. These minor distractions all add up. Each time I was taken away from my story it would take at least two minutes to get back into the flow of things, depending on how long the distraction lasted and how mentally taxing it was. During this time, I couldn’t write the experimental pieces where my heart was. A lot of the short stories were just written to say, “see I’m trying”. I did turn out some gems in this time, but some of the stuff I wrote then, I’m embarrassed that it was published.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Not only am I expected to stretch the day to make extra hours magically appear I also I have to somehow alter space and the laws of the land while getting people to conform to my will. It doesn’t happen. And if my relationships fail, it is entirely my fault because if there’s a will to not be single, then there’s a way and the man’s happiness is entirely dependent upon me (finding the time for stuff that’s important to me) and women can’t be single (please notice my sarcasm here).

It isn’t just family that drive me crazy and take my time with this one. When my son was in primary school and his father alive I was expected to get my son’s father to behave in a functional way. Attempts to control people are a) abusive and b) more stress than it is worth. That’s people who do not have an underlying issue. In my son’s father’s case, he had borderline personality disorder (amongst other problems that no one wishes to disclose to me). So somehow, that became my responsibility too, while trying to write books and maybe generate some freelance work so I can quit the day job that left me feeling suicidal, shouldering the weight of my ex’s emotions, catering to the needs of his friends while loosing contact with mine, managing an increasingly worse health problem that wasn’t taken seriously by the NHS until about two years ago (now medicated but still no diagnosis, I think it is a biopsy next, but COVID), trying to earn enough money to just get by and handling what had turned into post traumatic stress disorder and raising a child with no access to child care. I already went through this same cycle with my mother, minus having a child of my own and I didn’t have PTSD back, but did suffer from the impact of chronic stress. I didn’t want to go through it again.

That shouldn’t happen.

This is one I hear quite frequently. No, that shouldn’t happen, but it does. Dismissing something because it shouldn’t happen only sweeps it under the rug, leaving the person dealing with whatever it is with more stress and less time.

I have talked extensively about sexual harassment on my social media, website and in person. That shouldn’t happen, but it does. Ignoring for a minute the mental impact of dealing with some creep who feels a one-sided connection, breaking away from the aforementioned creep is time consuming. It can also be physically dangerous so it has to be done in a careful manner. Each creep takes time to deal with.

These are men that feel they are entitled to a woman’s time. I could be simply going about my day, thinking of what task I have to do next before I can write and then boom, some creep appears as if he is God’s gift to women and empty sex.

I can’t complain about what physical impact these creeps have on my life before the mental effects because “you shouldn’t equate sex and money” (yes that was actually said to me), even if the creep is certainly not getting any from me and if I don’t do the writing or sell the books or generate the freelance work, I’m not paying the rent. If I’m not paying the rent, then me and my son are homeless. It is as simple as that.

Speaking of paying the rent, there have been an awful lot of people in my life that think money magically appears out of thin air and I’m setting a bad example for my son by working and having a career. Instead of leaving me alone to live my life and make things better for me and my son, they let their feelings known. These people all need to be dealt with, often with kid gloves like the creeps. It wasn’t until three years ago that I could phone the police on them as that only led to more very time consuming and stressful problems, especially from people that are well versed in both emotional manipulation and knowing how to manipulate the system. Dealing with this is more time lost.

Do you still write those little stories?

Yes, yes I do. Those little stories have paid the rent or a bill or put food in my fridge on more than one occasion. Freelance writing and lately visual art picks up the slack. I was hardly breaking even with a more traditional job, one that left me suicidal, stressed and the health problem worse.

I don’t have the time, even now, or the energy to argue with this. Speaking to other women, women authors write “little stories” while men write “epic novels” and should be congratulated for the effort they put in and all the sacrifices they make.

I still have two day job clients left for those times I can’t generate the freelance or my post traumatic stress disorder is so bad I can’t fill an order and end up loosing a freelance client. One of them takes it upon herself to continuously blow up my phone. Turns out it is illegal to hack the phone of someone who insisted a day job would fix my life and make me feel good about myself despite my protests so they can receive the messages instead. Those messages, even when I ignore them, take time away from when I could be writing. They also push my stress levels right up, even though she knows I reported her to the council for them. The time devoted to calming down with my phone insistently beeping is more lost writing.

Even now, three years after I proved that writing and art is the only way to improve my life, I get people telling me to go back into health care. Not what I specifically trained in either, but nursing. These are more people that need to be dealt with, taking time away from when I could be improving my life or improving my writing. And if it is not nursing, it is fifty million other things that would take time to train in and time to then work my way up in that world leaving me back at square one and further into my overdraft. Absolutely nothing pays off instantly. Every single job there is out there takes time to train in and work up in.

And I do not want to. I like writing. I like visual art. I have a half finished circuit bending project on my dinning room table that needs my time and attention so I can slowly expand into sound effects. Why should I change my career again to satisfy other people? Nothing I do will ever be good enough, so why not just leave me alone to be not good enough? At least I’m happy being not good enough. Being not good enough alone doesn’t suck away my time.

But, I guess, women and creative industries is an unbelievable combination or attention seeking. I get those two pretty often. Random people laugh when I excuse myself because I’m writing a book and then say, “you will let me know when this book of yours is out”. I respond with “check out my other books, they’re all on amazon” and bring up my amazon author page on my phone. They’re speechless after. This takes less time than explaining the writing and publishing process. The people who think women creatives are attention seeking or doing it to get laid are harder to deal with. I still haven’t found an effective way beyond telling them that I’ll report them to the police for harassment if they don’t let me get on with my day (pretty difficult when it was my son’s primary school doing it, but it sometimes works on others and if not, then I have to go through the time consuming process of filing a report with the police).

I don’t have “bank of mom and dad” sponsoring me. Even if my father was in a position to pay my way, why should he? I’m in my mid-30s now. I’m not a teenager anymore. I have a degree, which he partially paid for. Now is the time to work in the field I’m qualified in and pay my own way. It has been the time since I handed in my final assignment for my degree way back in 2008.

The concluding part of Dani's article appears on this blog tomorrow. 

Dani on Facebook

Dani on Twitter

Dani on Instagram. 

Unfortunately, Dani Brown has yet to find the time to set up a TikTok account or sort out YouTube, let alone anymore obscure social media.

Dani on Amazon USA 

Dani on Amazon UK

Things Of The Week: 12th February 2021 (A Different Kind Of Light Facebook Launch Party, New review of And Cannot Come Again, Super Sekrit Acceptances)

Sorry, Dave - I only had room
 for one author picture!

 A Different Kind Of Light is released by Black Shuck Books on February 25th, and to celebrate and signal boost it I'm throwing a Facebook Launch Party. There'll be live readings from me and from my Special Guests Dave Jeffery and Laura Mauro (aka Bricklauncher,) book giveaways and a Q&A. Bring your own booze and order your own food from Just Eat. What else is there to do of an evening these days anyway? 😃

You can join the party here.

A new review of And Cannot Come Again has surfaced at SFRevu, describing it as: 'An excellent collection that will keep you entertained and disturbed at the same time.' Many thanks to Mario Guslandi for the kind words. (Props too to my Horrific Tales stablemate Thana Niveau, whose The House Of Frozen Screams also got a shout-out this week over at The Eloquent Page.)

I have some new acceptances, which is great, BUT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM YET because contracts have to be signed, etc. Bah. So for now they are Super Sekrit, but details will be announced before much longer.

Anyway, that's all for now. And consider yourself invited to my Facebook party!

 

The Lockdown with... Lex H. Jones

Lex H Jones is a British author, horror fan and rock music enthusiast who lives in Sheffield,
North England.

He has written articles for premier horror websites the ‘Gingernuts of Horror’ and the ‘Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog’, and appeared on multiple podcasts covering various subjects such as books, films, videogames and music.

Lex’s first novel ‘Nick and Abe’, a literary fantasy about God and the Devil spending a year on earth as mortal men, was published in 2016. This was followed in 2019 by noir crime novel ‘The Other Side of the Mirror’ and illustrated children’s weird fiction book ‘The Old One and The Sea’. His latest release is a collection of ghost stories, ‘Whistling Past The Graveyard’. Lex also has a growing number of short horror stories published in collections alongside some of the greats of the genre, and in 2020 he co-created the comic strip series ‘The Anti-Climactic Adventures of Detective Vampire’ with Liam ‘Pais’ Hill. His next project is an occult detective novel titled ‘The Final Casebook of Mortimer Grimm’, which is due for release late 2021.

When not working on his own writing Lex also contributes to the proofing and editing process for other authors.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I’m from North England, Yorkshire to be specific, which means I live on the moors, it’s always foggy, and yes of course I always wear a flat cap and have a kestrel attached to my arm.

I got my first work published at the end of 2015/beginning of 2016 and since then I’ve been lucky enough to have a steady flow of work out there.

Through no effort on my part, I seem to just inherit cats that are left behind or unwanted by other people.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

I’d say it has, in the sense that I struggle to find the time and motivation to do any writing. I know the first point there, ‘finding the time’ may strike an odd chord given the fact that so much of our normal routine has been taken from us, so I’d better make that a bit clearer. My day job can be done from home as easily as in the office, and even before this all happened, I’d regularly be working at home for one or two days a week. With that in mind, Covid hasn’t given me that much time back on a working day, other than the commute.

What it has done, however, is invaded my ‘writing space’. So the office I’d usually sit at to do writing, is now the office I sit in to do my day job. After sitting there typing on one laptop for 7 hours, I’m really struggling to want to then spend my leisure time sitting there and typing at a different laptop. I also find that the lack of going places, seeing people, or doing things, has affected my motivation to much of anything creative. I think all those things spark it in me, and without them, it’s hard.

That’s not to say I haven’t done any writing at all, I have done. I’ve done a few short stories, worked on a film script, and co-created a new comic strip series. Which doesn’t sound that bad when I type it out like this! But I strongly suspect that in any other year, I’d have done more than that, and even those tasks would have flowed much easier.

3. What was the first thing you had published?

My novel ‘Nick and Abe’. This one tells the story of God and the Devil, agreeing to spend a year on earth as mortal men to see who actually understands the most (or least) about humanity. Their newfound status, however, forces them to revaluate their own relationship as father and son, and perhaps try and find some form of reconciliation. It was a strange one to write, but it got a very nice response from readers.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

Probably my children’s book, ‘The Old One and The Sea’. I’d never written a children’s book before, and I honestly didn’t know whether I could do it. Finding the tone for it was a challenge, and even at the point of paying for an editor, I wasn’t sure if I should abandon the whole project. But the reader response to that has been so warm and passionate, with people constantly telling me how they’ve read it with their children. It’s just lovely to hear that. I mean somebody reading your book is always nice, but imagine somebody choosing to read some of your work to their children. That may become one of those children’s favourite memories, and in a small way your work is now a part of it. It doesn’t get much more special than that.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

Thankfully nothing I’ve actually had published. However before I sought publication for anything, I wrote several ‘practice’ books to sort of get me in the habit of how to craft longer stories. When I’ve gone back and read some of those lately, they make my toes curl. Some of the story ideas and characters are fine, and I may actually revisit those, but the writing itself is just dreadful. It’s like looking at that wonky table you made in woodwork class aged 8. It might have four legs and a surface, but you wouldn’t dare put a drink on it.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

As I have a day job, I don’t really have full writing days. Instead I’ll block out two or three hours either on an evening, or at a weekend, and do some then. And then it’s pretty standard really. Headphones on, hands on keyboard, phone away so I don’t get distracted with anything else that’s vying for my attention.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

Can I recommend two? If you want something nice and gentle, then I’d suggest my children’s book ‘The Old One and The Sea’. It also has beautiful original artwork throughout from artist Liam Hill, so it’s worth it even for that. Or my other recommendation would be my latest release ‘Whistling Past the Graveyard’. That one is my first collection of short horror stories, and is currently getting some absolutely lovely reviews.

8. What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on a second children’s book, and also an occult detective series set in late Victorian London. The first book of this should be out at the end of this year, Covid-permitting. I can’t really say too much more about the second children’s book because I’m not entirely sure where the story is going to take me yet.

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What's New? with Dave Jeffery

Dave Jeffery is the author of 15 novels, two collections, and numerous short stories. His Necropolis Rising series and yeti adventure Frostbite have both featured on the Amazon #1 bestseller list. His YA work features critically acclaimed Beatrice Beecham supernatural mystery series. His screenwriting credits include award winning short films Ascension and Derelict.

Jeffery is a member of the Society of Authors, British Fantasy Society (also as a regular book reviewer), and actively involved in the Horror Writers Association where he is a mentor on the HWA Mentorship Scheme. Jeffery is married with two children and lives in Worcestershire, UK.

1) So, what’s new from you?

Hi, Simon. First of all, I’d like to say thank you for being a generous host.

In terms of new projects, I have just released the second book in my A QUIET APOCALYPSE series through DEMAIN PUBLISHING. The series is set after a pandemic, where a mutant strain of meningitis (MNG-U) has left most survivors deafened and dependent on those few who have retained their hearing. The novella is called CATHEDRAL and features a cordoned off section of Birmingham city centre, where a fledgling society keeps order using spurious methods of social control.

Like the first book, the story is told from a single person point of view. Where the original novella featured a hearing survivor enslaved by a deafened farmer, CATHEDRAL focuses on a deafened woman living in a town that is terrified of returning to the chaos prevalent in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of civilisation. The town’s presiding council use a bastardised version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (known now as Maslow’s Law) where community comes before all, and there is no scope for individuality. Failure to adhere to Maslow’s Law means The Corral, a place where dissent is met with ritualised punishment.

2) How did it come about?

A QUIET APOCALYPSE was meant to be a standalone volume. Critical and reader response was highly positive, but there was consistent interest in what was going on outside the experiences of our hearing protagonist. A few reviewers were captivated by the mention of CATHEDRAL, an almost mystical place that meant different things to different people. This had me thinking about CATHEDRAL as a construct of social control in a world never too far away from falling to ruin.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.

As a concept, CATHEDRAL was in my head as context for pending interviews. I decided that it would be of value to write these ideas down. This process made more sense once words were on the page. The story seemed such a natural progression, it made perfect sense to develop it into another novella. Looking at the isolating nature of deafness, I wanted to maintain the single person perspective and use it as a device to compound that sense of alienation for the reader. This works extremely well for the story, but I readily accept this kind of narrative does not appeal to all.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

The story came so effortlessly, felt so right from the outset, that the whole process was as exciting as it was unusual. The basic story structure was there from the start, with a few tweaks in the second draft, to knit together any loose strands. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was something that came to mind when I was considering the society in which our protagonist lives. I had worked with Maslow’s model during my time as a mental health professional (35 years in the NHS) and its core concepts worked so well until applied to a society as a whole. This is deliberate, of course, as the model is for the development of individuals to become the best they can be. If you remove individuality from the equation, in this instance by culling the top two tiers of Maslow’s triangle relating to personal growth and self-actualisation, you have an effective social model with no scope for individualism. Add to this fears of an existential threat, then I felt the scene was set for strong drama. Weaving this into the storyline was my favourite part of the project and reinforced that I was doing something different.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

There are some scenes in the book that are very brutal, but I wanted to make sure that they were not sensationalised or marred by inept delivery. This is an extremely horrific story but not a book of extreme horror, so maintaining a balance was important when putting those scenes together. In the end, I made the controversial aspects of these events almost an afterthought of the protagonist as they rationalised their involvement in what is ritualised retribution on Harbingers, that is those culturally Deaf people who are blamed (without evidence) for the end of humanity. This was then contrasted by the response to this practice by someone who has just arrived in Cathedral and witnessing the atrocities for the first time.

These scenes were difficult to write and difficult to get right, but they are so important to demonstrate how, by trying to keep away from chaos, we step ever closer to losing something far more terrifying. I think they work well, and reviews so far have not been contrary to this early conclusion.

6) Is there a theme running through it?

The central theme is that of abject fear of isolation - that created by the disease and also of being alone in a world that has fundamentally changed – and how, as human beings, we maintain our sense of well-being. The idea that self-imposed adversity, shared through community, is better than the crippling terror of fending for oneself in a hostile environment is at the heart of the book. It asks the question: “Are some horrors easier to accept if they mean preventing something far worse?” Ultimately, I’ll leave that to the reader to decide.

7) If you had to sum this story up in three words, what would they be?

Unique dystopian horror.

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?

CATHEDRAL is out now in eBook format on Amazon by following this LINK.

The paperback is coming at the end of February/early March 2021.

Thanks again for allowing me to share these insights with your readers!