The Lockdown with... Tom Johnstone

Born in 1968, Tom Johnstone came to writing rather late in life, and so pursues it with the quiet desperation of someone conscious of the relatively short time he has left. His novella The Monsters are Due in Madison Square Garden, published by Omnium Gatherum Books, is mainly set at the time of the 1939 Nazi rallies in the place mentioned in the title, but has a certain resonance in this age of right-wing demagogues in power in Britain, America and elsewhere. His collection of interlaced stories, LastStop Wellsbourne, has a fair amount of socio-political commentary baked into it too, so much so that David Longhorn of Supernatural Tales called it a ‘state of the nation’ novel in short story form, and says of the author that he “has quietly risen through the ranks to become a first-rate craftsman of the short story.” His stories have also appeared in such publications as A Ghosts and Scholars Book of Folk Horror (Sarob Press), Single Slices (Cutting Block Press) and Best Horror of the Year #8 (Night Shade Books), with further anthology appearances scheduled in Nightscript Vol. 6 (Chthonic Matter Press) and Body Shocks (Tachyon Publications). Also forthcoming from Omnium Gatherum Books is the sequel to The Monsters…, entitled Star Spangled Knuckle Duster. 

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I can operate a Hayter ride-on lawn-mower (sort of).

I was once a stagehand on a production of ‘The Scottish Play’, which took place on the island of Inch Colm in the Forth, and starred John Bett, formerly of 7.84 Theatre Company, with the audience ferried out there for each performance.

I spent a good part of the mid-nineties up trees and sitting in front of bulldozers on various road protests. Not really the up-a-tree part so much as my climbing ability and head for heights leaves a fair amount to be desired.

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?

In some ways, it hasn’t affected me at all, as my ‘day job’ has remained unaffected, so I’m not benefiting (or suffering) from any extra time at home. If anything I’ve been busier at work, so more tired. Last summer, I took to writing in a pub on the way home from work, scribbling rough drafts down in a semi-inebriated haze (well, in a notebook actually!), which proved surprisingly productive. One of the stories I wrote in this fashion (finishing a tale I began in a creative writing workshop co-hosted by the fabulous and delightful Victoria Leslie) will be appearing in Volume 6 of Nightscript! But it’s a writing setting that is obviously out of reach to me at present.

The virus has negatively affected my writing in practical ways, which have had a knock-on effect on my creativity. A novella that was supposed to be part of a series, due for publication in the spring has now been delayed until the Autumn, because of the impact of the virus on sales. This has somewhat taken the wind out of my sales with regard to working on the next one in the series.

On the other hand, the crisis and its political ramifications have inspired me to produce fiction about it. When the outbreak first reached this country, I swore blind I wouldn’t write a ‘virus story’, thinking the market would be flooded both with virally-themed anthologies and enough stories on this subject to fill them several times over. I’ve since relented and written something called ‘Untogetherness’, which thanks to my observations of what it’s actually like to live through this situation as opposed to typical fictional representations of what it might be like, I sincerely hope is not too corny. But it’s yet to find a publisher, as the deluge of Covid-themed open calls ready to snap it up doesn’t seem to have materialised…

3. What was the first thing you had published?

A short story called ‘Trail of Tears’, credited to ‘T.R. Johnstone’, in Dark Tales magazine, Vol. 12. The first one credited to ‘Tom Johnstone’ was ‘Dairy of a Madman’, in Dark Tales 13, which also featured a story by a writer many readers of your blog will have heard of, a certain Priya Sharma.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

‘The Beast in the Palace’, my Georgian gothic novelette set in and around the Brighton Pavilion in 1829, as it’s one of my boldest stylistically, structurally and thematically. It was the first, and to date only, story I sold to Black Static, so it has a special place in my heart.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

All of them, including even the aforementioned story in places. And let’s not even start on the adolescent poetry. There’s no escape from the Cringe Factor in anything I write, I find, and there’s nothing like getting something published and irrevocably in the public arena to make you spot every shortcoming, glitch, typo and other unforced error in your work. Re-reading your own work is almost as risky as reading your Amazon reviews, or indeed any reviews. On the other hand, I sometimes take a fresh look at a story that’s been rejected so many times I’ve decided to retire it (unceremoniously, without even a carriage clock) and think, You know what? This isn’t too bad. It isn’t too bad at all… That’s how I came up with my first collection. Most writers do the sensible thing and pack their debut collection with reprints of their most prestigious story sales. I filled mine with unwanted stories. So more of an album of interesting B-sides and out-takes than a greatest hits compilation. I’m really selling it here, aren’t I…?

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

On working days, I aim to start writing from 5.30am until 6.30am in time to leave for work. In practice, I piss around checking my emails, the submissions grinder, social media, news sites (for research purposes of course) and then write for about ten minutes, or at best half an hour, but somehow between these and longer sessions at the weekend, when put together and edited they end up amounting to something I can persuade myself is worthy of publication.

I used to pull all-nighters, but I can’t do that these days. I find self-doubt and negativity is stronger in the hours of darkness, which makes them better for editing. Unless I’m drunk, in which case I can scribble stuff down in the pub (or could in pre-Covid times...)

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

The collection I mentioned earlier’s a good one: Last Stop Wellsbourne, published by Omnium Gatherum Books. I may have called it an album of B-sides, but to stretch the musical metaphor, it’s also something of a concept album. The title refers to my adopted home town of Brighton’s ‘lost’ underground river the Wellsbourne, and also the lost town of the same name I’ve invented, in the tradition of weird, haunted places in horror literature from Lovecraft’s Miskatonic Valley to Joel Lane’s Clayheath. And while it does include a fair amount of unpublished stories, there are also some reprints I certainly wouldn’t write off as B-sides, such as ‘The Beast in the Palace’, which fits in well with the theme: George IV, who was responsible for draining the Wellsbourne ‘irl’ as the cool kids say, appears in the story as a character in a way readers will, I hope, find hard to forget…

For those who enjoyed the Spine Chillers readings that were like Jackanory for classic horror fans in the Eighties, I’ve started making videos of fireside readings of some of my stories. Here are some links to the ones I’ve done so far: What I Found In The Shed, Mum And Dad And The Girl From The Flats Over The Road and The Man In The Black Suit, Part One and Part Two.  

8. What are you working on now?

My main focus at the moment is the third novella in a sequence about reluctant occult detective Herb Fry and his associate Daniel Spiegel. The first, narrated by Fry, is called The Monsters are Due in Madison Square Garden, which Omnium Gatherum Books published two years ago. The second, Star Spangled Knuckle Duster, told by Spiegel, is due out shortly. I’m currently in the process of writing The Song of Salome, which returns to the Universal Monster Movie theme of the first.

Actually, at getting on for 30,000 words each, and with their historical scope and scale, taking in events from the 1919 Red Summer to the 1950s Red Scare, and including historical characters such as Meyer Lansky and Bela Lugosi, the first two feel more like short novels. I’m hoping the third one will have more of the concentration and intimacy of a novella.

The Lowdown with... Nicholas Kaufmann

Nicholas Kaufmann is the critically acclaimed author of numerous works, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated General Slocum’s Gold, the Thriller Award-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated Chasing the Dragon, Still Life: Nine Stories, Dying Is My Business, Die and Stay Dead, In the Shadow of the Axe, and 100 Fathoms Below, co-written with Steven L. Kent. In addition to his own original work, he has written for such properties as Zombies vs. Robots and The Rocketeer. His short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Dark Discoveries, and others. His non-fiction has appeared in On Writing Horror (Writers Digest Books), Dark Scribe Magazine, Annabelle Magazine, Fantastic Metropolis, Hellnotes, Rue Morgue, and others. He has also served on the Board of Trustees for the Horror Writers Association and is a member of the International Thriller Writers.

You can also visit Nick on LiveJournal, Twitter, and Facebook.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

1. I've been writing since 4th grade, when I wrote my first illustrated story about a boy and his father who are stranded on another planet filled with monsters and dinosaurs. As you might imagine, I had some issues about how little time my father was spending with me!
2. I was the founder and president of my college's Godzilla Film Club, in which I showed a different Godzilla film every other week from my own personal VHS collection. Frequently, I was the only one there.
3. I don't like avocado. I just don't. You can have mine.

2. What was the first thing you had published?
I had a few things published in my high school and college literary magazines, although nothing I would want anyone to read today. My first professionally published piece was the short story “La Bête est Morte” in the anthology BELL, BOOK & BEYOND, edited by P.D. Cacek.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?
I'm very proud of the story "The Fire and the Stag," which appeared recently in BLACK STATIC #63. I think it might be the best thing I've written so far!

4. …and which makes you cringe?
Oh, man. Any number of my early stories make me cringe. It's hard to choose just one. Maybe "Better Off with the Blues," which appeared in the charity anthology SCARS, edited by Gina Osnovich, in 2001. The anthology was for a good cause, the Red Cross, and it raised a lot of money, but looking back at that story...ugh. It was my first attempt at writing something voicey, and all the cliches and forced folksiness just make me cringe now.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?
I tend to write in the afternoons, rather than the mornings, so I'll grab some lunch and then do my writing in the New York Public Library's main branch (the Ghostbusters branch, I call it). It's a beautiful building and being there inspires me. Being around other people also keeps me honest. I can write at home, too, but I usually get less done. There are too many distractions at home.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first?

It depends on the reader, of course, but most people seem to recommend CHASING THE DRAGON to their friends. My most recent novel, 100 FATHOMS BELOW, co-written with Steven L. Kent, is another I'd probably tell people to read first.

7. What are you working on now?
I'm working on a new horror novel, tentatively titled THE HUNGRY EARTH, in which a new residential and commercial development is being planned on a capped landfill where something happens to be living underground, something that used to eat the garbage, but now that no more garbage is coming it has to find a new source of food.

Wolf's Hill Is Here!

The third book in the Black Road quartet, Wolf's Hill, is published today. You can buy it from Amazon (US or UK.)

Helen Damnation’s rebellion against the Reapers has spread. All across post-nuclear Britain, the fires of revolution are beginning to burn. But her old enemy Tereus Winterborn still intends to rule supreme, and has a new ally in Dr Mordake, the creator of Project Tindalos – now monstrously transfigured by the forces he unleashed at Hobsdyke.

Their target is Helen’s closest ally: the last Grendelwolf, Gevaudan Shoal. The worst tortures of all await him in the cells of the Pyramid. At Hobsdyke, in the tunnels beneath Graspen Hill, the legacy of the Night Wolves is waiting for him – along with secrets about Helen that threaten to tear both Gevaudan and the resistance apart.

With the Reapers poised to strike at the first sign of weakness, a series of brutal killings breaks out behind rebel lines – and the evidence leads back to Gevaudan’s door. With all those closest to Helen turning against her, she faces her greatest challenge yet as Winterborn begins his bid for ultimate power.

Thank you to Emma Barnes, Tik Dalton and Anna Torborg (past and present Snowbooks bods), everyone who shared the last blog, and all the reviewers who've said kind things about the series.

The Black Road rolls on...

Wolf's Hill is coming...

What with the excitement, drama and heat of the last month, I managed to completely forget that my seventh (hopefully a lucky number) novel, Wolf's Hill, will be released on 31st July.

FAQ: (well, not really frequently asked questions, but who knows, maybe in future...)

Q: What is Wolf's Hill?
A: It's the third novel in the Black Road Quartet, following on from Hell's Ditch and Devil's Highway.

Q: What is the Black Road?
A: It's a series of novels set in Britain twenty years after a nuclear attack. The country's mostly still in ruins, and controlled by the tyrannical Commanders of the Reclamation and Protection Command and their soldiers: the Reapers.

Q: What's the story so far?
In the first book, Hell's Ditch, a Commander called Winterborn is looking for an ultimate weapon to consolidate his bid for supreme power. This takes the form of Project Tindalos, a paranormal weapons system developed at REAP Base Hobsdyke by Dr Mordake. Project Tindalos ran wildly out of control and was only stopped when Winterborn's old enemy Helen Damnation (no, I couldn't resist calling her that) and her rebels destroyed Hobsdyke.

Devil's Highway saw Helen's rebellion gaining strength, aided by an assorted band of allies - among them, Gevaudan Shoal, the last of the genetically-engineered warriors known as Grendelwolves. Winterborn attempted to crush the rebellion with an assault on their base at Ashwood Fort, spearheaded by the monstrous Catchmen, created from the remains of Project Tindalos. The rebels survived, but now the conflict is moving into a newer, deadlier phase...

Q: So what's in store in Wolf's Hill?
A: Dr Mordake, the creator of Project Tindalos, has resurfaced, and is advising Winterborn in his war against the rebels. The Reapers having failed to crush the rebels militarily, Mordake seeks to break their unity and divide them against one another - and against Helen in particular. And central to his plans is Helen's closest ally, Gevaudan Shoal.

A new enemy will emerge. The rebels will face a deadly threat from within their own ranks. And secrets will be revealed: Helen's past, Mordake's journey, and what really lies beneath the ruins of Hobsdyke.

(You'll also learn how Gevaudan got his name. No particular relevance to the plot there, but just in case you were interested...)

Q: Where can I get hold of it?
A: You can buy it on Amazon (US or UK.) It should be up on the Snowbooks website soon: Hell's Ditch and Devil's Highway are there already, or at least pages showing a huge range of links where you can order a physical or electronic copy.

Q: Will it be any good?
A: Well, only you can judge. But here's what the reviewers have said abouit the series so far:
Hell's Ditch:
"Grabs you and won't let go." - Pat Cadigan.

"I loved the time I spent on the world of Hell’s Ditch and I look forward with much anticipation to the follow ups. It’s a book I recommend highly." - Dark Musings.

"Hell’s Ditch is a magnificent achievement, the work of a writer who knows how to tell a story and make it hurt, but in a good way, and putting on my fortune-teller’s cap I suspect that the best is still to come." - Black Static.

"Hell’s Ditch is the epic you always knew Bestwick had inside him... There is loyalty, bravery, self-sacrifice, tenderness, and loss. And some of the best writing on the planet, but you were expecting that if you’ve ever read Bestwick’s work. Aaannnddd, there is also violence, gory imagery, that kind of language, sexuality, and reference to torture. The very thing you don’t want your teenagers reading and the very thing you should buy them…things aren’t looking good for us right now and they might be the ones to make some tough decisions." - Hikeeba.


Devil's Highway:
"There’s genuine poignancy in this novel... It actually made me tear up... But overall, what an incredible ride this is. With the Black Road Quartet now half complete, the bar is set impressively high, but Simon Bestwick gives us no reason to think that the rest of this tour-de-force in progress will be anything less than superb." - The Hellforge.

"Part post-apocalyptic horror, part military action, Bestwick has crafted a thrilling tour-de-force novel full of military grade action sequences and complex characters. But also moments of intense emotion and the lightest touches of romance which combine to deliver a compelling story that pulls you in and refuses to let go." - This Is Horror.

"In the hands of another writer, Helen might have become a dull caricature of a ‘strong female character’. Here, though, her flaws and failings are put under a narrative microscope and viewed alongside her strengths and triumphs: she is a brave warrior, a survivor, a leader of men. She is also weak and selfish and dangerously impulsive. She is imperfect, and all the more interesting a character for it... A potent mix of grim, dystopian sci-fi and visceral horror, combined with a vibrant imagination, lift a standard ‘Good vs Evil’ narrative and have turned it into something quite special indeed." - Ginger Nuts of Horror

The Lowdown with... Stephen Hargadon

Born in London, Stephen Hargadon now lives and works in the north of England.

• Shortlisted for the 2017 Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for Arts Journalism
• Runner-up 2016 Irish Post Short Story Competition

His short stories have been published in a number of places, including Black Static, Structo and Popshot magazines, the Irish Post, and on the LossLit website. His non-fiction has appeared on Litro.co.uk (including a well-received article on the joys of secondhand bookshops).

He has recently finished a novel.












1. Tell us three things about yourself.

i) These are the objects on my desk: a watch with a black face and orange hands; a brown leather wallet; a white notebook containing a short story set in Stockport and the beginnings, perhaps, of a novel; a tape dispenser in the shape of an audio cassette (must buy some tape); a lamp; a small black notebook (unused); an ovoid paperweight with purple spiral motif, bought from an antique shop in King’s Lynn, a pleasingly chaotic warren of a place, overseen by two old ladies, where I also found an attractive edition of Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (as yet unread); a passport; scissors; coffee stains; two memory sticks; a wooden cigarette box incised with geometric patterns; a paperclip; a twenty pence piece; a white pen.

ii) I like watching films. Who doesn’t? I’m not quite as hardcore a cineaste as Marshall Tito who, I believe, watched a film every night. I used to like finding films by accident on TV. I saw The London Nobody Knows as a child. It quite gripped me – James Mason was an attractively menacing presence – and I wanted the film to go on forever: the filth and decay, the street drinkers swigging purple meths, the men ruined during the Depression, the grotty yards where the Ripper performed his foul operations, all this lingered in my memory (although for some reason I mistakenly rechristened the film The Secret Places of London). Later in life, the glib omnipotence of the internet led me from the film itself to the books and drawings of Geoffrey Snowcroft Fletcher. (His atmospherically illustrated works, including Pearly Kingdom, London After Dark and his masterpiece, Down Among the Meths Men, are well worth reading.)

One of the increasingly rare pleasures of watching TV is to stumble on an old film, a film you’d never seen before, an oddity, a treasure. I remember seeing an American film, The Baby, late one night on the BBC – perhaps the last thing before the screen was plunged into darkness. Such a bizarre, creepy film – with a sickening twist. It stayed with me. I’d look at the listings for years, hoping that The Baby would reappear, if only to convince myself that it hadn’t been a ghastly, half-drunken hallucination. Of course, it wasn’t. And I now own the film on DVD. You can look up everything on the internet. Instant information. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush – a kooky 1960s coming-of-age drama set in Stevenage – was another film that thrilled me when I first saw it by accident on late night TV. The second time I watched it, a few years later, I couldn’t see what had occasioned my excitement. It was just another vaguely zany 1960s romp, albeit one with an alluringly mundane setting. I now have the DVD, of course. I can watch it whenever I want, which is hardly ever. There’s a good scene in it where Denholm Elliot’s character is describing wine at a dinner party. He’s plastered. He sloshes the liquid around his gob, then says: ‘It greets the palate like an old friend …’

iii) At the moment I’m reading August is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien. It the first time I’ve read O’Brien. I think I’m in for a treat. The opening chapter is a perfect thing – it could stand alone as a short story, ambiguous, funny, sharp. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book.

2. What was the first thing you had published? 

‘World of Trevor’ in Black Static 40.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of? 
 I can’t say that I’m particularly proud of any one piece over another. Yes, I have a residual affection, perhaps, for certain stories. But I don’t feel pride. I very rarely re-read my stuff once it’s found a home: I tend to see faults and blemishes, wrong turnings, botched gambits, although occasionally I’m surprised by a phrase or image, as if it’s been put there by someone else. I have a soft spot for old Trev because it was the first thing of mine to appear in print: a thrill, for sure. I wrote successive drafts in longhand. Then I typed it up, revising, refining. ‘Through the Flowers’ (published in Popshot Magazine, issue 14, with a brilliant illustration by Kate O’Hara) is another story for which I have a certain fondness – at least that’s how I think of it in the cosy saloon bar of my memory. Should I be forced to read it again right now I might well shake my head in dismay, or at least flinch every second sentence. And there’s ‘Just Browsing’, an essay on second-hand bookshops, which was my first venture into non-fiction, a mode I’ll certainly explore in future.

For me, the finished thing, the completed text, is not as interesting as the act, the process of writing, the way in which words spark more words. Once it’s done, it’s time to move on. I can only hope that the reader enjoys what I’ve produced, that he or she experiences the same strange, complex thrill that I’ve feel when reading a good book, a kind of yesness. I suppose my deepest loyalty is always to the last thing I’ve written or to the thing I’m working on at any given time. The important thing is to finish the wretched thing before it becomes a bore to write (and probably to read).

4. … and which makes you cringe? 
All of it and none of it.

5. What’s a normal writing day like? 
I spend many days in an office, among voices and computers. It’s not too bad. I suppose I’m always writing. There’s always a section of the brain working on something. Everything is material. Every moment, every sensation: floating spores of thought, the pollen of memory. (Careful, look out for that lamp-post.) I carry around a small notebook (it bears the logo of the Monk Bridge Iron and Steel Co Ltd, Leeds, 1922) and the slimmest pen imaginable, a Japanese marvel, thinner than a matchstick. The problem with notebooks is that I have so many of them. They multiply. They hide in bags and pockets. They lurk on shelves like awkward, scruffy adolescents among proper books, books with the author’s name on the spine, books that were perhaps once notebooks themselves. My notebooks refuse to give up their secrets when I need them most. They contain odd lines, quickly caught, my handwriting stretched and loosened to the point of indecipherability, flattened by the speed of thought. There are snatches of dialogue, obscure epiphanies, many dark doodles, emphatic squiggles and underlinings, sinuous arrows pointing at words that mean nothing to me now. In some respects I’m not very organised. But it’s worth making notes: sometimes, when I skim through my notes and can’t find what I think I need, I’ll find something else that I’d forgotten about, a bright fragment, a useful quip, a callous aside. I’m not too fussy about where and how I write. I started a recent story on the morning train next to a fat businessman who was scrolling through inanities on his phone. The first line just came to me on the platform, in the milky blue of a suburban dawn. I didn’t know if the line would turn into a story. I still don’t – it’s not finished. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of catching the voice. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. A writing day is nothing special. You sit down and write. You get on with it.

I need peace and quiet if I’m editing or re-writing. It depends. Sometimes I listen to music but mostly I prefer the sound of the world around me, its creaks and sighs. There’s no routine. A mug of tea or coffee. I switch between keyboard and longhand. The change can freshen things up. I try to write something every day. I always start a new piece with pen and paper. It’s the only way. Often, it’ll be a snatch of dialogue that sets me off, less often an image. I don’t tend to plan things in minute detail. No graphs. No spreadsheets. No diagrams or intricately engineered story arcs. I need room for things to develop. That’s part of the fun. The words spark and fizz as you write. For me, there is no other way. Sometimes a story can die in my brain once I know the ending. If I don’t finish the thing while it’s still fresh and new, I could lose interest, I’ll roll off and fart. After I’ve put a fair amount of ink on paper I switch to the screen. I work on a basic laptop. I don’t use anything like Scrivener. I am a one-fingered percussionist. I bash the keys. I’ve got it down to an art, I can go at a decent speed. I don’t have a daily word target, although I keep an eye on how much I’m churning out. I might aim to get to the end of a chapter or to work out a scene. But I’ll stop when the writing becomes sluggish, when the connections don’t quite work: that’s when I’m tired. I write during the day. I don’t burn the midnight oil. Although sometimes I wake up and jot down a thought or two.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first? 
Well, I suppose the best place to start is to find anything that’s been published, online or in print. There’s not exactly tons of stuff out there: my published works are not likely to buckle your shelves. Go to my website: you’ll find a few stories there. Most of my published stories have appeared in Black Static, so that’s a pretty good place to start. People seem to like ‘The Bury Line’ (Black Static 42) and ‘The Visitors’ (Black Static 45). I like ‘The Mouse’ in Structo 15.

7. What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished a novel. Now I need to find a home for it, which is a job in itself. I’ve a couple of stories on the go – I’ve always got a story on the go – while others haven’t yet found an outlet. In fact, my notebooks contain about 20 stories in various states of disrepair. A novel is stirring. It is set in Manchester. I’ve written a few sections. It’s like tuning a radio. There is feedback and interference. The neighbours are making a racket. But mostly the new novel remains a possible world of certain images and unresolved dialogue. At this stage, it’s no more than a flavour, a smell, a feeling, a dream, a portly man with desire in his eyes, a man who sits next to you on the train. There will be dirty carpets and brick walls. There will be pale faces and whorled turds, chicken sandwiches and an impossible love affair. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to work.

The Lowdown with... Georgina Bruce

Georgina Bruce is a writer and teacher living in Edinburgh. Her stories have been published in Black Static, Interzone, Strange Horizons and elsewhere. She has a blog here.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I hate talking about myself. Seriously, my life is empty and boring. I really like dogs, though.

2. What was the first thing you had published?

I actually sold the first short story I ever wrote – 'The Egg'. A film company bought it and turned it into a short film. The first story I had in print was called 'About a Leg' and was published in Ink, Sweat and Tears in 2008. It's about a boy who thinks he's his grandfather's leg.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

'Cat World', which was published in Interzone 246 and then reprinted in Salt's Best British Fantasy 2014, still makes me cry, and I think that's something to be proud of. Making people cry. Mwahaha.

4. …and which makes you cringe? 

Ha ha ha oh my god. Some of my stories... I'm like, was I high when I wrote that? It's embarrassing. I usually think my stories are amazing, right up until the moment that they're in print, when I suddenly see all the terrible horrible bad and stupid things I've done.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

I get up early to write most days. Like 5.30 am. So the day usually starts in a blur, and I'll be just hitting my stride when I have to stop writing about 7.30 and get ready for work. I sometimes manage to write a bit in the evenings, and then I write like mad all weekend. If I'm not writing a novel, I probably don't do this. But I've been writing a novel for a long time now.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first?

'White Rabbit', because it's the best thing I've written. [SB: The Guardian thought so too; Damien Walter has things to say about it here.] Then they probably shouldn't read anything else, in case they're bitterly disappointed. (Lol jk read everything please.)

7. What are you working on now?

A novel, called The Geography of the Moon. It's a weird and maybe scary story about a woman who loses her way in life. At least, it was meant to be that. It's ended up being mostly about dogs. [SB: Update: Georgina has now finished the first novel, and is now working on a second. Be afraid. Be very afraid.]

Awards Eligibility and Assorted Grumblings

A hard-earned and well-deserved prize. :)

I have to admit to being pretty ambivalent about awards. I wish I could be completely indifferent to them, as some claim to be; God knows I've tried. What matters is the work: I've said that many times and I believe it. That's what counts, not the money or the tick you get from teacher for doing it well, but show me a writer who's never suffered crippling doubt or a profound sense of 'why the hell do I even bother doing this?' and I'll show you a liar or a raving egomaniac (who's quite probably a shit writer into the bargain.)

Self-doubt is a bastard that gnaws at us all. Over the past few years, I've seen many other writers get multi-book deals while my own career stayed stalled. It wasn't their success that rankled; just my lack of it. It doesn't take much to bring out that persistent little inner troll that tells you you're a fraud, a fake, an imposter, a second-division hack who's worthless compared to the other talents out there. I've had a good year in professional terms, but that doesn't kill the troll; it's a persistent, nasty little beast, and you take whatever fire you can to drive it back into the dark.

In the absence of fame or riches, an awards nomination can mean a lot. And there are many, many good writers whose work, through no fault of theirs, just isn't commercial enough; if they're not going to get the big bucks, they at least deserve a damn good shout-out.


(Hell, when you're feeling low enough, a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads can do wonders for your spirits. By the same token, a one-star review can be an almighty kick in the tadpole factories, but we won't go into that.)

The flipside of that, of course, is how the run-up to awards sees so many people feverishly self-promoting, spamming and bigging themselves up. We've all seen awards of one kind or another cheapened by it, and by the prizes going - in some cases - to the loudest mouth, rather than the best writer. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate self-promotion and passive-aggressive Facebook posts whenever they get a bad review.

If your work's good, it should get noticed, but that doesn't always happen. I've been in more than one anthology that's sunk without trace due to poor promotion or other fuck-ups, and stories (no, not just mine) that deserved a wide readership failed to make even a blip on most readers' radar.

A degree of self-promotion is necessary, but pinpointing how much is too much is never easy. Blowing your own horn often goes against the grain, but if you don't make at least some attempt to call attention to your work, there's a good chance you'll be completely overlooked.

So, anyway, here's what I had published for the first time in 2015.

Novel:
Hell's Ditch (Snowbooks, Dec 2015.)

Short Stories:
No Room For The Weak (Mark Allan Gunnells' blog, December 2015.)
The Climb (Black Static #49, ed. Andy Cox, TTA Press, November 2015.)
Horn Of The Hunter (Second Spectral Book of Horror Stories, ed. Mark Morris, Spectral Press, September 2015.)
The Face Of The Deep (Game Over, ed. Jonathan Green, Snowbooks, August 2015.)

Ah well: when all else fails, there's always these wise words of W.H. Auden's: "Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."

Happy New Year, Folks

A picture from a slightly more wintry winter.

Coming up briefly for air here; I meant to do an end-of-year vlog for New Year's Eve, but I'm working on a novel redraft that needs doing by Monday, and by the evening I hadn't got round to it. Yesterday passed in much the same way.

So, a few quick words on 2015.

It was a tough start to the year. Cate's mum passed away just before last Christmas, which was a huge blow. Pauline was a kind, funny lady who had deserved better from life than she ever got, but never let it get her down. I'd liked her a great deal and wish there'd been time to know her much better, and she and Cate were very close. Seeing the person you love in that kind of pain and being helpless to make it go away is awful.

Plus, we were still living in the neighbourhood where Cate and her mum had lived for decades, in The House Of Damp And Mould (and perenially malfunctioning boiler.) I hadn't published a novel in three years, unless you counted the serial Black Mountain, and still didn't have an agent. (Although I was working on a new novel for Solaris, so it wasn't completely bleak.)

A lot has changed since then.

Cate's lovely and moving piece here says more than I could about coming to terms with loss. We moved in June from Tuebrook to the Wirral, to a little house we both love. There are plenty of green spaces close to hand, we're fifteen minutes from the beach by bus and our landlord's great. It's a new start, and it's done us both good. And we've set the date for our wedding next year - this year, I mean.

Hell's Ditch, which I'd started to fear would never see daylight, found a home with Snowbooks and came out last month. It's the first book in a story that's been steadily evolving since I was nineteen. I started writing it back in 2010, broke off for 2011 to write The Faceless and finished it in early 2012 before the long hard task of shopping it around began. Now it's out, and suddenly the rest of the Black Road needs to be travelled. In a few weeks I have to go back to the world of Helen and Gevaudan, Danny and Alannah, of Dr Mordake and Colonel Jarrett and Tereus Winterborn, and start writing about it and them after a three year absence (although I did pop back for a couple of brief visits without too much trouble.) It's exciting, and it's scary. All being well, The Devil's Highway will be out in October. (The paperback of Hell's Ditch will be released this March.)

I finished the novel for Solaris, The Feast Of All Souls (the original title, Redman's Hill, was felt to sound too like a Western for American readers!) and that'll be available in December 2016. Watch this space for a reveal of Ben Baldwin's brilliant cover art.

In between the first and second drafts of Feast, I wrote another book - a crime novel, belted out hard and fast, at white heat. It was great fun, and it got me an agent.

Four short stories came out, including 'The Face Of The Deep' in GAME OVER, which was singled out for praise by the Financial Times, and 'Horn Of The Hunter' in THE SECOND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES - one of fourteen stories picked out of over 800 submissions! The others were 'The Climb' in Black Static #49 and 'No Room For The Weak', published on Mark Allan Gunnells' blog as part of the Hell's Ditch blog tour.

So 2015 ended a hell of a lot better than it started. It wasn't an unbroken uphill climb, of course: there were setbacks and downturns along the way. Especially in the wider world. There was the election result back in May: Britain, already a darker, meaner and more frightening place, is becoming more so. And then there were the horrible massacres in Paris, Baghdad and Beirut, and the vicious racism and hatred that's arisen in response to them. And the Christmas period has brought a succession of horrendous storms with torrential rain and flooding across many parts of the country. There will, very likely, be more to come. But there's still good in the world; there's compassion and kindness and love. Sometimes I think there's actually enough of it. But I always was an optimist.

However good things are going, something can always happen to pull the rug out from under. But just
because it can doesn't mean it will. So I'm starting 2016 with guarded optimism: there's a lot of hard work ahead, and not everything will be easy. But I have my health (touch wood), I'm with the woman I love and I've reached a couple of professional milestones.

2016 will see two novels published - The Devil's Highway and The Feast Of All Souls. And in a couple of weeks, my novella Angels Of The Silences will be reissued by Omnium Gatherum (and here's the new cover art - ain't it beautiful?) It's going to be a busy year in every way: hopefully it will be followed by more.

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope it brings you everything you want, need and hope for.

A Ghost Story For Hallowe'en

Tomorrow's Halloween, so in plenty of time for that here's a small treat for you all: my story 'The Climb', which appears in the next issue of Black Static magazine.

'The Climb' was inspired by its setting, Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Even without the stories of the Pendle Witches, it's a strange, grim place: that part of north-west Lancashire is a harsh, desolate landscape, where the old milltowns are almost like island communities, separated by miles of bleak, empty moor and hill, swept by wind and rain.

Going across those moors - especially on a cold, wet autumn day (or better still evening) - it's all too easy to imagine this part of the world as it must have been a few hundred years ago, long before electric lights, telecommunications and the internal combustion engine made it a little less isolated from the rest of the world. And all too easy to understand how easy it was to believe in werewolves, witches, ghosts... in a whole dark world of deadly and unseen things.

Pendle Hill forms the setting for much of my first novel, Tide Of Souls. Tide Of Souls is a zombie apocalypse novel, complete with Biblical-scale flooding; 'The Climb', though, is a more traditional piece, on a much smaller scale, as Bryan, a widower, attempts an ascent of the hill. Bryan's on his own... or is he?

Here's the story, anyway. To spare you all the ultimate horror of looking at my face for fifteen minutes, it comes with a montage of pictures of Pendle and the area around it. If the story doesn't give you some sense of the eeriness of the Hill.

So turn down the lights, put on your headphones and press play. And whatever you do... don't look behind you.

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My First Vlog

Egad. The Horror. The Horror. As if Phil Collins coming out of retirement wasn't bad enough, you've now got video footage of my gurning phizog. Why? Because on Saturday I'm putting up another video - my reading my eerie tale 'The Climb', which will shortly be out in Black Static magazine. So I'll see you again then, assuming you don't think of anything better to do.

Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year #7: Honourable Mentions List

The seventh volume of Ellen Datlow's Best Horror Of The Year is with us! This is a good thing. Ellen's now published her full longlist of Recommended Reading/Honourable Mentions, which you can read here (A-L) and here (L-Z.)

While I'm not in it this year, I'm delighted to say that four of my short stories appear on the list:

'As White As Bone' (from Matter #13)
'Night Templar' (from Black Static #44)

'The Battering Stone' (from Horror Uncut)
'The Lowland Hundred' (from Dead Water)

Best of all, these were the only short stories I had published in 2014! I'd call that a pretty good success rate. :)


That's one of three things that's got the week off to a very good start at my end. The other two? Well, one was the story about David Cameron and the dead pig (I spent a great deal of Monday morning when I should have been working crying with helpless laughter) and the other? Well, watch this space for another announcement, coming later this morning....

Me And My Shorts

No wait, come back! This blogpost does NOT feature pictures of me showcasing various trouser-related clothing items. No-one needs to see my hairy thighs; Cate suffers enough of that.

No, this is about short stories! There are things afoot, and of course you want to know about them. What? Yes, you do. Stop struggling. Come back here.

Anyway.


First and biggest - My short story Horn Of The Hunter has been included in Mark Morris' anthology THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, alongside stories by some truly excellent writers. Very good company indeed, and I'm proud to be included. The anthology will be released in October, at Fantasycon 2015.

My story from WORLD WAR CTHULHU, Now I Am Nothing, will be reprinted in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF KAIJU next year, edited by Sean Wallace.

My story The Face Of The Deep will appear in Jonathan Green's upcoming arcade-game-themed anthology, GAME OVER. Basically imagine a cross between Frogger and the Book of Genesis and you're getting there...

Two stories are forthcoming via TTA Press:

The Gaudy, Blabbing And Remorseful Day will be published in BLACK STATIC.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God will be published in CRIMEWAVE.

And, of course, The Judgement Call will be published at the end of the year as a Spectral chapbook, in tandem with the incredible Robert Shearman's Christmas In The Time Of Ennui - a single volume, so I shall be between the covers with Rob, as it were. At least he'll make me look good.

A Bombardment Of Nice Things

Two posts in as many days, after such a long silence!  I know, it's shocking.

Black Static #32 arrived today.  In it, as well as stories, there are reviews.  Many reviews.  A number of them about me.  Or my writing, anyway...

Good things were said by Peter Tennant both about my collaboration with Gary McMahon, 'Thin Men With Yellow Faces', and 'Shuck', my contribution to Paul Finch's excellent Terror Tales of East Anglia anthology.  But the biggest love was reserved for The Faceless:

'The supernatural elements of the book are handled with great aplomb... Another pleasure is the way in which Bestwick handles characterisation and relationships, adding yet further strands and complications to his narrative... a book of true moral dimensions... This is Simon Bestwick's finest work to date, the one in which he harnesses the sense of anger at social injustice that permeates so much of his work and uses it to a greater end, and it is among the very best of what the horror genre in the UK had to offer in 2012.'

And indeed Peter's blog lists The Faceless as one of his top books of 2012.

Dark Musings rated The Faceless as the top horror novel of the year, and it's also made the shortlist for the 2012 This Is Horror Awards.

All of which makes me very happy.  So now you know.

You can now get back to doing whatever you were doing. :)

British Fantasy Awards Shortlist

Well, the BFS has published its Shortlist for the 2012 British Fantasy Awards, and I'm delighted to say that my short story, 'Dermot', originally published in Black Static #24 (and now reprinted in Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year #4,) has been shortlisted in the Best Short Fiction category, alongside work by some very fine fellow writers.

In addition, Conrad Williams' excellent Weird Western antho Gutshot (which features my tale 'Kiss The Wolf') has been shortlisted in Best Anthology.

The short fiction shortlist in full:

Dermot; Simon Bestwick (Black Static)
Sad, Dark Thing; Michael Marshall Smith (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
Florrie; Adam Nevill (House of Fear, Solaris Books)
The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter; Angela Slatter (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
King Death; Paul Finch (Spectral Press)

In other news: I've finished the first draft of Hell's Ditch.

And now I'm off to bed.  See you in the morning.