Wolf's Hill and Breakwater nominated for British Fantasy Awards

The shortlists for the British Fantasy Awards were announced on Tuesday, and I'm stunned to have made the running for not one, but two awards.

Wolf's Hill has been shortlisted for the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, alongside Little Eve by Catriona Ward, The Cabin At The End of The World by Paul Tremblay and The Way of The Worm by Ramsey Campbell.

To be sharing a shortlist with those three authors, those three novels, to be included in the same category, feels like an award in itself. I'd be happy to lose to any of them.

It's also particularly poignant because the Black Road novels mean a lot to me, and there've been times when I wonder if anyone's even reading them. In guess some people are, and enjoying them too.

Breakwater, meanwhile, has been shortlisted for Best Novella, alongside 'Binti: The Night Masquerade' by Nnedi Okorafor, 'The Land Of Somewhere Safe' by Hal Duncan, 'The Last Temptation Of Dr Valentine' by John Llewellyn Probert, 'The Only Harmless Great Thing' by Brooke Bolander and 'The Tea Master And The Detective' by Aliette de Bodard. Again, a storming list of names.

The winners will be announced at FantasyCon in Glasgow on 20th October.

Here are the BFA nominations in full:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)
Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri (Orbit)
Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Green Man’s Heir, by Juliet E McKenna (Wizard’s Tower Press)
The Loosening Skin, by Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories)
Priest of Bones, by Peter McLean (Jo Fletcher Books)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
The Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (Titan Books)
Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (W&N)
The Way of the Worm, by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Wolf’s Hill, by Simon Bestwick (Snowbooks)

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J Bounds Award)
Tomi Adeyemi, for The Children of Blood and Bone (Macmillan Children’s Books)
Cameron Johnston, for The Traitor God (Angry Robot)
RF Kuang, for The Poppy War (HarperVoyager)
Tasha Suri, for Empire of Sand (Orbit)
Marian Womack, for Lost Objects (Luna Press Publishing)
Micah Yongo, for Lost Gods (Angry Robot)

Best Novella
Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Breakwater, by Simon Bestwick (Tor Books)
The Land of Somewhere Safe, by Hal Duncan (NewCon Press)
The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, by John Llewellyn Probert (Black Shuck Books)
The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)

Best Short Fiction 
Down Where Sound Comes Blunt, by GV Anderson (F&SF March/April 2018)
Her Blood the Apples, Her Bones the Trees, by Georgina Bruce (The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism)
In the Gallery of Silent Screams, by Carole Johnstone & Chris Kelso (Black Static #65)
A Son of the Sea, by Priya Sharma (All the Fabulous Beasts)
Telling Stories, by Ruth EJ Booth (The Dark #43)
Thumbsucker, by Robert Shearman (New Fears 2)

Best Anthology
The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, ed. Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books)
Humanagerie, ed. Sarah Doyle & Allen Ashley (Eibonvale Press)
New Fears 2, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
This Dreaming Isle, ed. Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories)
Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Shearman & Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)

Best Collection
All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)
The Future is Blue, by Catherynne M Valente (Subterranean Press)
How Long ‘til Black Future Month?, by NK Jemisin (Orbit)
Lost Objects, by Marian Womack (Luna Press Publishing)
Octoberland, by Thana Niveau (PS Publishing)
Resonance & Revolt, by Rosanne Rabinowitz (Eibonvale Press)

Best Non-Fiction
The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini (Luna Press Publishing)
The Full Lid, by Alasdair Stuart (alasdairstuart.com/the-full-lid)
Ginger Nuts of Horror (www.gingernutsofhorror.com)
Les Vampires, by Tim Major (PS Publishing)
Noise and Sparks, by Ruth EJ Booth (Shoreline of Infinity)

Best Independent Press
Fox Spirit Books
Luna Press Publishing
NewCon Press
Unsung Stories

Best Magazine / Periodical
Black Static
Gingernuts of Horror
Interzone
Shoreline of Infinity
Uncanny Magazine

Best Audio
Bedtime Stories for the End of the World (endoftheworldpodcast.com)
Blood on Satan’s Claw, by Mark Morris (Bafflegab)
Breaking the Glass Slipper (www.breakingtheglassslipper.com)
PodCastle (podcastle.org)
PsuedoPod (pseudopod.org)

Best Comic / Graphic Novel
100 Demon Dialogues, by Lucy Bellwood (Toonhound Studios)
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Tyler Crook & Dave Stewart (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola and others (Dark Horse)
The Prisoner, by Robert S Malan & John Cockshaw (Luna Press Publishing)
Saga #49-54, by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Widdershins, Vol. 7, by Kate Ashwin

Best Artist
Vince Haig
David Rix
Daniele Serra
Sophie E Tallis

Best Film / Television Production
Annihilation, Alex Garland
Avengers: Infinity War, Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Black Panther, Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan
Inside No. 9, series 4, Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman

Congratulations to my fellow nominees!

Things of the Week 14th June 2019: The Rewrite That Will Not Die, Paul Darrow, And Cannot Come Again, and Stuff I Cannot Talk About Right Now

Hi everyone.

Sorry it's been a quiet week on the blog and elsewhere. I've been struggling with a few things, principally anxiety, fatigue and The Rewrite That Will Not Die - of which more in a moment. Hoping to restore normal service next week, or something like it.

June has brought more sad news, with the passing of the actor Paul Darrow. He was best known for playing Kerr Avon in Blake's 7: a complex, ruthless character who managed to be somehow likeable in spite of it all, locked in a love-hate relationship with Gareth Thomas' Roj Blake. Blake's 7 was a huge influence on the Black Road novels - there's some of Avon in Gevaudan Shoal, and there's also a character called Darrow. By all accounts a funny and genuinely nice guy; I'm sorry I never got a chance to meet him in person.

Nearly ten years ago now, I wrote the first draft of a novel. It was the biggest, most ambitious work I'd ever attempted. I began it right after finishing my first novel, Tide Of Souls, and it soon became clear that I wasn't equal to the task. But at the same time I couldn't stop, and ended up with a first draft of about 170,000 words that had more things wrong with it than I could count, and which neither of the publishers I had a foot in the door with were interested in.

So I put it aside and went to work on something else. But I kept coming back to it, and eventually started listing everything wrong with the damned thing, then correcting it. Eventually there was a second draft, this one nearly 250,000 words long.

Finally I sent the thing to my agent; I'd spent a couple of years meaning to go through it again, but by now I was half-convinced the thing was a white elephant nobody would be interested in. Better to send it off and find out if there was any point.

My agent decided that there was, and sent back a long list of things to be fixed, and so began The
Rewrite That Will Not Die. I've been working on it since last year; I'm not done yet, but (inshallah) I'll be finished this month, and can then gear up to starting a new novel.

I finished with the copy-edits of And Cannot Come Again last week, and I'm just waiting on the final proofs. (Review copies are available, to any reviewers or book-bloggers out there.) The release date has edged back slightly - July for North America, August for the UK.

I've had some very exciting news in the last week, but annoyingly, I can't actually say anything about it right now. Watch this space for more.

Paul Darrow's Avon was known for his sardonic sense of humour and put-downs, so I'll leave you with a compilation of some of his best moments. RIP, Mr Darrow, and may the Liberator carry you safely home.

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2018 In Review #2: Awards Eligibilty And All That

So now we come to the 'obligatory blowing of my own horn' bit, which doesn't come easily to a lot of Brits...

Anyway, here are the works that saw publication for the first time in 2018 and are eligible for nomination for any relevant awards...

Novel

Wolf's Hill, published by Snowbooks.

Story collection

Singing Back The Dark (mini-collection), published by Black Shuck Books.


Novelette

Breakwater, published by Tor.com. (16,000 words long, so some would consider it a novella and some a short story.)


Short fiction

'If I Should Fall From Grace With God' (Crimewave #13: Bad Light, TTA Press)

'Deadwater' (The Devil and the Deep, Night Shade Books)

'The Bells Of Rainey' (Great British Horror #3: For Those In Peril, Black Shuck Books)

'The Judgement Call' (Two Chilling Tales, Fox Spirit Books, Black Shuck Books)

'Hard Time Killing Floor Blues' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'And All The Souls In Hell Shall Sing' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Moon Going Down' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Effigies Of Glass' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Dab and Sole' (Ko-fi)

'A Constant Sound Of Thunder' (Ko-fi)

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

2017: The Roundup

At least I didn't quack up.

Writing wise, 2017 was what Aliya Whiteley has called a 'Duck in the Mist' year - an awful lot of paddling going on beneath the surface, but not that much activity above it. I wrote quite a lot, and there'll be more about that in 2018, but comparatively little activity on the publication front. So here's the year that was.

 








Novels
I wrote the final drafts of Wolf's Hill and the entirety of a new novel, The Mancunian Candidate.

I didn't sell any novels in 2017, but there may be news on that front soon. Or not, of course. Such is the business....

The paperback of Devil's Highway was published in February. (It first appeared as a hardback in December 2016, however, so would be ineligible for any awards for 2017, assuming anyone was daft enough to nominate it. For anyone daft enough to want to read it, the ebook's still only £1.99)

Novelettes and Short Stories

Finished the first draft of a novelette, Breakwater, and redrafted to completion.
Also wrote first drafts of four novelette-length (I think) stories. Redrafts ongoing.
Wrote and completed two other stories, currently making the rounds.

Short story 'Deadwater' accepted for publication in Ellen Datlow's anthology, Devil and the Deep.
Breakwater accepted for publication by Tor.com in 2018.

Short fiction published this year:
'The Adventure of the Orkney Shark' in Sherlock Holmes' School of Detection.
'The Tarn' in The Beauty of Death 2: Death by Water.

Devil's Highway is unleashed!

Today, at last, the paperback edition of Devil's Highway is properly in stock! As you may remember, it was originally slated for release on 1st February, but Snowbooks had so many advance orders they ended up switching publishers for a bigger run! So, at last, it's loose now.

Also, Snowbooks are now doing a special offer on ebooks: all their ebooks are now available at a reduced rate. That includes Devil's Highway, and Hell's Ditch too! For the full list of Snowbooks e-titles, go here! (The Devil's Highway ebook doesn't seem to be on Amazon just now, so you'll have to get it from the site, here.

And just to round it all off, here's that third book trailer...

#thereapersarecoming

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More Black Road News: The Second Trailer!

And so here's the second trailer! Number three will be along soon...

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More Black Road News: The Second Trailer!

And so here's the second trailer! Number three will be along soon...

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The Black Road Website, and the first Devil's Highway Trailer

Been meaning to do this for while - I've set up a separate website for the Black Road series. It won't replace this blog (and I'll be blethering on about the books here as well) but I liked the idea of giving this story - which has been a long time in the telling for me, and is very close to my heart - its own online home. And it was good practice for me with Wordpress...

Another thing I got round to (always fancied trying it and had a little spare time over the past week) was making a book trailer for Devil's Highway. Three of them, in fact - all short, and hopefully building up in effect. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the first of them...

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Things of the Week, 6th February 2017: Good/Bad News re Devil's Highway, Tales To Terrify, Writer's Day in Sheffield

I know you're sick of the sight of it by now.

First of all, huge thanks to everyone who’s bought, pre-ordered or reviewed Devil’s Highway so far. It’s hugely appreciated. So, as promised by the above title, some good news and some bad news.

The bad news first.

The lovely Emma Barnes at Snowbooks has been in touch to let me know that the paperback won’t be properly in stock until 20th February. Some copies will be going out to online purchasers, including (at my request) ones originally earmarked as my advance copies. So my apologies to those who may have to wait a couple more weeks to read the latest instalment of the Black Road.

However…

The good news is the reason for that delay.

Basically, Snowbooks have received WAY more pre-orders than anticipated – between five and seven times as many as they expected. As a result, they’ve decided to change printers in order to request a larger print run.

That’s right.

So many people have ordered copies, the publishers have had to print more.

So once again, a HUGE thanks to everyone who’s ordered a copy. Again, sorry for the delay, but you will get your copies. I really hope you find them worth the wait.

The kick-assness that is KT Davies.

In other news, I’ve a new story up on the Tales to Terrify podcast: 'Vecqueray’s Blanket', from my Pictures Of The Dark, is read by Graeme Dunlop. It joins 'The Children Of Moloch' (read by J.K. Shepler) and 'The Churn', (read by Ashley Storrie.) So go and listen for free, if you’re so inclined.
second collection

Also, I’ll be in Sheffield on 25th February, co-hosting a Writer’s Day for Hive South Yorkshire with the brilliant KT Davies (read her Lowdown here!) It’s open to budding writers up to the age of 25, so if you know anyone who’d be interested, spread the word...

I’m hoping to get the blogging back into some sort of regular groove again soon – juggling writing with the new day job has thrown me off a bit, although I’ve ended up being pretty productive (touch wood.)

Till next time!

Devil's Highway: Paperback Launch

TODAY'S THE DAY!

The paperback of Devil's Highway, the second book in the Black Road quartet, is released today.

You can buy direct from the publishers, or from Amazon.

In the haunted desolation of post-nuclear Britain, the Catchman walks. Spawned from the nightmare of Project Tindalos, it doesn’t tire, stop, or die. It exists for one purpose only: to find and kill Helen Damnation, leader of the growing revolt against the tyrannical Reapers and their Commander, Tereus Winterborn.

Meanwhile, Helen is threatened from both without and within. Her nightmares of the Black Road have returned, and the ghosts of her murdered family demand vengeance, in the form of either Winterborn’s death or her own. And close behind the Catchman, a massive Reaper assault, led by Helen’s nemesis, Colonel Jarrett, is nearing the rebels’ base.

Killing Helen has become Jarrett’s obsession: only one of them can emerge from this conflict alive.

And in others news, today I finished the first draft of the third Black Road novel, Wolf's Hill, which will be published in 2018.

Please share far and wide! Like an idiot (well, partly because juggling the new job with the writing in knackering me out) I completely forgot to do much to signal boost this one, and it's a book I'm very proud of. I hope you'll enjoy it too.

Basically, just imagine this as the theme music:

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#thereapersarecoming

Black Road: Devil's Highway

The Snowbooks website this morning!

Yes, that's right! At long last, the waiting's over. The second book in The Black Road, Devil's Highway, is now available to buy in hardback and ebook form.

Following on from last year's Hell's Ditch, Devil's Highway shows Helen Damnation and her allies carrying on their fight against post-nuclear-attack Britain's tyrannical rulers, the Reapers, and their Commander, Tereus Winterborn. But Winterborn and his fanatical henchwoman, Colonel Jarrett, will stop at nothing to destroy her.

Helen finds herself hunted by the inhuman, unstoppable Catchman...

Helen slowly raised her head and peered over the sill through the grimy window. As she did, a steel helmet rose into view; two round glass lenses lit by a pale, flickering light stared into her eyes. Breath gusted from the metal grille over its nose, misting the window. Below that a red and white grin stretched impossibly wide across its face.

For a second time stopped, didn’t exist, and there was just the damp brick room and the Catchman’s face grinning through the window.

The grin widened further still; the Catchman screeched, the glass rattling in its frame. Helen flung herself backwards as a clawed hand smashed through the window...

...directing a battle to the death against Jarrett as the rebel base at Ashwood Fort comes under siege...

The guns opened fire from the shelters, and the ones on the wall hammered down. The ground burst and shattered; men and women dropped and spun; fell and lay still, fell screaming. Danny almost went down as the woman running alongside him pitched sideways. He caught her, staggered, then let her drop; half her head was gone.

A Reaper leant over the battlements to fire at them; Danny fired a burst from the Lanchester and the man pitched over the rail screaming. Danny ducked again, ran on and reached the bottom of the steps, pressing flat against the wall.

Reapers above, firing down; he threw himself flat and the bullets flew over. Cries and thumps of falling bodies from behind. He fired up, heard another SMG fire behind him. Fired the Lanchester up the steps, zig-zagging the barrel. Two Reapers rolled down them. “Come on!”

Danny up and charging, firing bursts as he went. Muzzles flashed above. A cry; someone just behind him fell backwards down the steps, shot in the throat. Danny advanced and fired, advanced and fired. Slow progress, step by step, bullets cracking by and chipping the wall. The Lanchester emptied; as he changed sticks he saw a Reaper appear at the top, rifle aimed down...

...and facing the secrets of her own past on the Black Road.

She starts screaming, screaming into the dead beneath her. Things shift and stir in the earth. They’re waking. Frank and Belinda, the others, all the ones killed, they’re coming for revenge. Because this is her fault, of course it is. How can it not be? ... Her screams become howls of anguish – not only grief, but torment. There was a saying she’d heard somewhere – from Mum? From Darrow? Hell is truth seen too late. And now she’s in Hell. The dead are waking and coming for her, to tear her apart....

Devil's Highway is one of the most relentless things I've ever written. I'm pretty damned proud of it. I
hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing the book.

For those who'd rather wait for the paperback, it'll be out on February 1st 2017.

Huge, huge thanks are due to so many people, but especiall my amazing editor, Tik Dalton, who's done a fantastic job. And also to Lisa DuMond at Hikeeba.com and Anthony Watson at Dark Musings for the first advance reviews of the novel, here and here.

From the Hikeeba review:

What is astonishing is Bestwick’s portrayal of battle... it is frightening how well he grasps the horror and conveys it....  
Hell’s Ditch started the engines and Devil’s Highway pushes the needle into the red as we hold on with a death grip to race through the atrocities and unstoppable action of the second volume, white-knuckled as we are thrust into the middle of the firefights and the helpless fear for those we have come to love and will certainly lose.
Can an author push the machinery even farther towards destruction and keep readers’ nails dug into the iron for more? Maybe not every one, but trust Bestwick. The Black Road has only gotten more horrifying with each volume, but I cannot look away, nor do I want to.

And from Dark Musings:

Who lives? Who dies? These, and many more questions will be answered within the pages of Devil’s Highway... The book fulfils [its] role admirably, progressing the narrative whilst setting things up for the final instalments. The back-stories add an extra edge to the inevitable showdowns and the introduction of a shadowy and mysterious character raises the expectation of new horrors in prospect...
The next part of the journey along the Black Road has begun.

The third novel, Wolf's Hill, will be released in 2018.

Please share this news far and wide!

I'll leave you with some music to suit the mood...

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Things Of The Week: 4th November 2016

Me, Nightmares, and early morning bed hair

Well, Offline October wasn’t as offline as I intended – social media’s a definite addiction of mine, and one I need to address as it’s been eating into my writing too much. I was worried that I might have writer’s block, but once I unplugged the wireless router (downstairs), fired up the laptop (upstairs) and made myself write I found the prose still came easily enough. So, basically, it was simple laziness.

I’m still not underway on the first draft of Wolf’s Hill, and that needs fixing – I’m hoping to get rolling in the next week or two, and try and finish the first draft, at least, by year’s end. At the moment I’m working on a couple of short stories; once those are gone, it’ll be the book’s turn. The Lowdown will resume next week: meanwhile, here are some things that have been going on.

credit: www.blakefriendmann.co.uk

The first piece of news is a sad one: the sudden and unexpected passing of literary agent Carole Blake. Although I never met Carole personally, many other writers have spoken of her with great warmth and affection in both professional and personal terms. Along with Julian Friedmann, she co-founded the agency that represents me; she also wrote 29 Ways Not To Submit To An Agent, which was handy (although I was relieved to note that I didn’t do most of them anyway) and I know that her book, From Pitch To Publication, was a big help to many writers. My thoughts go to her family and to her friends and colleagues at Blake-Friedmann.

With the run-up to Halloween, it seemed a good time to catch up on horror movies (as per my recent posts. I have a tendency to buy books and DVDs which then sit around for months or even years before I finally get round to watching or reading them, and I caught up with a few titles in October. In the book stakes there was Ramsey Campbell’s The Seven Days Of Cain (great title!)*, while in the realm of movies there were two corkers: Oculus and The Babadook.

Oculus centres around a mirror with demonic properties. By controlling the perceptions of those who own it, it drives them to suicide. Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) lost their parents to it, and Tim was incarcerated in a mental institution for years; now, Kaylie has tracked the mirror down and sets out to prove there’s a genuine supernatural force present. The narrative cuts back and forth between the events of their childhood and the present day; if it has a weakness, it’s that this format means the parents’ psychological deterioration feels as though it happens a little too quickly. Cate and I found this seriously unsettling: there are a few jump scares, but that’s not where it’s at.

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The Babadook: wow. Amelia (Essie Davis) was widowed in a car crash the night her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) was born. Now, her son is plagued by nightmares of a monster coming for him, building weapons to fight it; as his behavioural problems place Amelia under ever-increasing strain, she finds a pop-up book called The Babadook, after the shadowy monster it centres on. Soon, the creature from the book begins to invade their lives, and Amelia’s own sanity begins to crumble. Original and very, very disturbing.

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We’ve also started watching the new E4/Netflix series Crazyhead, starring Cara Theobald and Susan Wokoma. The trailer looked as though it could be good or terrible; we only needed to watch about five minutes to know we liked it. Amy (Theobald) has just stopped taking anti-psychotic medication to suppress the hallucinations she keeps having. Except that they aren’t hallucinations: she’s one of a tiny number of people who can see those possessed by demons. One of them nearly kills her till she’s rescued by Raquel (Wokoma), another ex-mental patient with the same gift. Crazyhead manages to be both genuinely funny and full of genuine scares, and has real heart, especially in the relationship between the two leads. There’s also a strong supporting cast – Amy’s flatmate and best friend Suzanne (Riann Steele), her amorous work colleague Jake (Lewis Reeves), Raquel’s brother Tyler (Arinze Kene) and head demon Callum (Tony Curran) – plus a willingness to bump off supporting characters that helps ramp up the tension among the humour. Crazyhead’s only downside is that, being a British series, it’s only six episodes. Here’s hoping it gets a second series.

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Three really nice things happened this week.

Nice Thing No. 1: My contributor’s copy of Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror arrived. Nightmares has been very well received, with a host of excellent reviews appearing, including a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly. Not many of them mention my own tale, ‘Hushabye’, but I can live with that – I’m happy to be published in that company!

Me with The Feast Of All Souls, plus yet more bed hair.

Ellen Datlow’s latest anthology collates stories from between 2005 and 2015 that have had a ‘lasting impact’ on her. Authors such as Mark Samuels, Laird Barron, Livia Llewellyn, John Langan, Gene Wolfe, Margo Lanagan and many more appear within; I’m proud and delighted to see ‘Hushabye’ included.

Nice Thing No.2: My author copies of The Feast Of All Souls, published next month by Solaris, turned up too. Complete with that beautiful cover art by Ben Baldwin. Please get in touch if you’d like to review the book. Which brings me on to…

Nice Thing No.3: Gill O’Rourke recently started reading my stuff, starting with Tide Of Souls, which she raves about on her blog here. She also co-presents the radio show Lifestyle MK, where she continues the rave-age, and solicits a few words with me on reviews. You can listen to me blather on here. Many thanks, Gill!

So, about that:

One thing I’ve become very aware of recently is the importance of reviews in driving book sales. The algorithms on Amazon (and let’s face it, this is where a lot of people are buying their books now) give you more visibility if you’ve had more reviews. 50 is usually the magic number that means you show up near the top of the search results in your chosen category.

So, if you’ve read my stuff and liked it, please leave a review. Or just leave a review (honest ones are better any day of the week!) I’ve certainly decided to start doing this more with books I’ve read and liked. It’s a simple and direct way to show your appreciate for a writer, and something concrete you can do to help them out.


* ETA: And yes, I'll be writing an Amazon review!

Things of the Week: 26th May 2016

So this week has principally been about Getting Back Into The Groove.


Cate had another week off work after the honeymoon, allowing us to relax a little... and to get on with stuff like writing thank you notes (a lot of them!) and, among other things, buying a new bed! (Our existing one is a cheapo model with a knackered mattress.) Thanks to all the people whose gifts have made that possible.

Cate and I both decided recently to work together at losing weight and getting into better physical shape; that was after I was referred for a talk on bariatric surgery (aka weight-loss surgery) at the end of March. We both came away with a strong 'HELL NO' attitude to it, but if anything it made us more committed to living healthier lives. And it's been working. A couple of years ago, I was 24 stone (that's 336 pounds, to US readers) and had managed to drop to about 23, but my weight was stuck around there. By the time we got married, I was down to 22 stone.

Then came the honeymoon, and there was a lot of going out for meals and eating that extremely nice ice cream they do in Barmouth. By the time we got home, we'd both some - but by no means all - of the weight back on.

Initially I tried to go straight back to counting calories, keeping to 1800 or less a day. Didn't work; I kept getting hungry between meals, craving sweets and treats. So I indulged myself. A little. Not as much. But bit by bit, I've eased myself back into my old routine.

Today, I weighed myself, and for the first time in years, I'm under 22 stone. Okay, 21 stone, 13 and a quarter pounds, but psychologically speaking, that's a big milestone. Next target - 21 stone and less than ten pounds. Then less than 21 and a half stone. And so on. Baby steps. They work.

They work with the writing, too. While I'm still able to write full-time, I need to make every day count. That means not only Devil's Highway and the remaining Black Road novels, but short stories and a couple of other WIPs that I'm struggling to find time to work on, not to mention the 'admin' side of things - everything from finding writing markets for stories and submitting them, to putting together a list of my short stories for my agent, doing something about a tribute anthology I inherited, booking tickets for a show, applying for grants and bursaries, writing some spec non-fiction articles... all the little bits of stuff that need doing but keep getting put off because of the big tasks.

That meant working out a schedule for the day that would let me do all those things. But, like the dieting, you can't just impose a whole new regime at once - not least because I have to type up Devil's Highway from the dictated recordings in order to rewrite it, and that's a big job, still ongoing. But bit by bit, I'm getting there. Baby steps again. And the work is getting done.

Albeit slowly, and not without stress. Just this morning, I found the end of one chapter missing. I know I recorded it, but the file isn't where it's supposed to be. It might be on the old laptop, if I can get the damned thing running again. If not... well, I'll try not to panic. Get it typed up, then write in any missing bits. One problem at a time.

But as, piece by piece, the story materialises in concrete form, I find I'm getting excited about it again, remembering why Helen and Gevaudan and the rest got my interest in the first place. My only worry is how little time I've left myself to get everything fixed and ready. All hands to the pump.

I got in touch with my agent on my return; he's reading Black Mountain and enjoying it, which is good news! He'll have some notes soon, and hopefully a way forward for Mynydd Du to rise once more. In addition, I need to put together a full listing of all my short fiction for him... (see 'Admin') My Dad's reading Black Mountain too, mainly to make sure I haven't screwed up monumentally with my Welsh. Apparently he's enjoying it as well, though, even though he's not particularly a horror fan...

The final piece of news is a sadder one: Gary Fry today announced that, after over a decade, he is closing down Gray Friar Press.  Gary is, and has been from the word go, a class act. I have him to thank for publishing two of my story collections, Pictures Of The Dark and The Condemned, and it was also down to him that my short story 'The Moraine' first saw print (later to be reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror Of The Year.

 I'm just one of numerous authors given a break and a start by Gary. He's also been an absolute model of how to run a small press: when the printing firm Biddles went into administration, making it cost-ineffective to proceed with the hardback of The Condemned, he promptly refunded those who'd pre-ordered it, offered them copies of the paperback and also provided them with a PDF of the additional story the hardback should have included. On top of that, he took the hit caused by the money lost, while still paying me the full royalties owing for the book.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done.

Gray Friar has been a solid bulwark of the UK small press, and it's very sad to see it go. Here's to Gary and all he does in the future.

And on that note.... have a good weekend, folks.

Cover Reveal: Devil's Highway

Just received the cover work for the second Black Road novel from Emma Barnes at Snowbooks, who asked for my reaction. It was a few minutes before I could manage anything more coherent than OH HELL YES.

As you can see, it's awesome. Observant readers will notice that the title here is Devil's Highway rather than The Devil's Highway. I've been umming and ahhing about which one I prefer - initially, I liked the sound of it better with a The, but it does have a terser ring without it, and all the other Black Road novels will have two-word titles, so I'm leaning towards Devil's Highway now.

Anyway, those details will be hammered out shortly. In the meantime... that cover.

All being well, Devil's Highway (or The Devil's Highway) will be out in hardback come October.

Things of the Week 11th March 2016 feat. Hell's Ditch Event at Waterstones Liverpool One

Well, another week, another blogpost.
First and biggest thing of the week, of course, is tonight's event at Waterstones Liverpool One, for which tickets are still available (hard to believe, I know.) I'll by aided and abetted by Conrad Williams and the legendary Ramsey Campbell, who'll both be reading from their latest works.

I've had book launches before, but this is my first in a proper bookshop where I'm 'headlining' - especially with the likes of Ramsey and Conrad on hand. So, maybe just slightly nervous. I'll cope somehow, I'm sure.

We're continuing our Babylon-5 rewatch, and thankfully the quality's improving. I'm not sure if Cate will ever fall in love with it - space-based stuff tends to be a hard sell with her - but I think she's starting to like it a bit more. No two ways about it, sadly - with no disrespect to the late Michael O'Hare - things started getting markedly better once Bruce Boxleitner took over as station commander. There's a lot less padding in series two, and the Shadows are finally moving to centre stage. The CGI, dazzling in 1994, still looks dated and weak now, but special effects are always the first thing to date.

I'm making good headway with the first draft of The Devil's Highway, hitting the halfway point yesterday. Still a long way to go on typing the bloody thing up, though.

Tachyon Press have revealed the cover for Ellen Datlow's Nightmares anthology, due out in

November. As you can see, it features some great artwork by Nihil. Here's that TOC in full:

• Shallaballah by Mark Samuels
• Sob in the Silence by Gene Wolfe
• Our Turn Too Will One Day Come by Brian Hodge
• Dead Sea Fruit by Kaaron Warren
• Closet Dreams by Lisa Tuttle
• Spectral Evidence by Gemma Files
• Hushabye by Simon Bestwick
• Very Low-Flying Aircraft by Nicholas Royle
• The Goosle by Margo Lanagan
• The Clay Party by Steve Duffy
• Strappado by Laird Barron
• Lonegan’s Luck by Stephen Graham Jones
• Mr Pigsny by Reggie Oliver
• At Night, When the Demons Come by Ray Cluley
• Was She Wicked? Was She Good? by M. Rickert
• The Shallows by John Langan
• Little Pig by Anna Taborska
• Omphalos by Livia Llewellyn
• How We Escaped Our Certain Fate by Dan Chaon
• That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love by Robert Shearman
• Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8) by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix
• The Atlas of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud
• Ambitious Boys Like You by Richard Kadrey

That is a stonking lineup, and I'm blown away to be included.

Right. Off to practice tonight's reading...

Things of the Week: 29th January 2016

So, it's been a week of mostly nice things.

One exception, of course, being DOING MY TAXES. (Hisses, brandishes crucifixes and garlic at the HMRC website.)

Not really the HMRC's fault. My brain starts melting when I try to figure out the wording of the various questions I have to answer, augmented by the fact that the wrong answer could lead to fines and Lord knows what else.

Still, it got done. Now, of course, for the biting of nails in fear I got/did something wrong.

It will pass.

Eventually.

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. I've got to say, that pulled me up short. I was in my first year at secondary school. Can't remember when exactly I heard the news - off my parents, off someone at school, or off Newsround in the afternoon. The men and women of the Challenger weren't the first fatalities of space travel, of course: before them there'd been Vladimir Komarov (Soyuz 1, 1967), 'Gus' Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1, 1967) and Georgy Dobrolovsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev (Soyuz 11, 1971.) (There'd also been fatalities we hadn't heard of in the West at the time, such as Valentin Bondarenko - and maybe others.)

But all those had been before I was born, certainly before the Space Shuttle flew. It didn't happen any more. Except that it did.

30 years. It passes so fast.

Nicer things happened. Damien G. Walter tweeted this, which made my week. And then, just as I was typing this blog post, I found he'd posted this, which made it all over again.

"Simon Bestwick’s horror stories are perhaps the most engaged with ordinary British life of any horror writer working today... 

I had to read the opening chapter of Simon Bestwick’s Angels of the Silences twice – it could have been clipped from my own teenage memories – and I would guess the same is true for many British horror readers. Emily and Biff are those two girls you found in every goth club in the 90s. Except for being dead of course.

Bestwick is brilliant at capturing an ordinary Britain made up of cheap cafes, Bacardi Breezers and over-applied eyeliner. A working-class Britain, in our class-confused age, that’s rarely reflected in mainstream culture, but finds its expression in horror fiction, in large part because of editors like Andy Cox."

He had me at 'Bestwick is brilliant,' of course. :-)

There were also some extremely good pieces of hard-won advice for writers out there on Teh Interwebz this week. There was this piece by Chuck Wendig:

"Let’s face this train head on: a book that super-sucks might do really well, and a book that is legitimately fucking amazing and everyone knows it and it wins awards and is precious to many might sell like a rock dropped into a toilet. This is far from universally true! Sometimes great books sell equal to its perceived quality. Sometimes bad books huff glue and die in a gutter. And nearly always, good and bad are totally subjective declarations because outside of core writing competency, stories are not plug-and-play dongles."

And there was THIS ESSENTIAL PIECE by the awesome Kameron Hurley (read her Lowdown!) I

The highly-cool Kameron Hurley.

just wish Kameron had written this five or six years earlier when I was starting out.

"One of the big issues we’ve been dealing with the last 15 years or so as self-publishing has become more popular are the increasing rights grabs and non-compete clauses stuck into the boilerplate from big traditional publishers terrified to get cut out of the publishing equation. Worse, these clauses are becoming tougher and tougher to negotiate at all, let alone get them to go away. Worser (yes, worser) – many new writers don’t realize that these are shitty terms they should be arguing over instead of just rolling over and accepting like a Good Little Author. What I’ve seen a lot in my decade of publishing is new writers on the scene who don’t read their contracts and who rely on their agent’s judgement totally (and that’s when they even HAVE an agent! eeeee). They don’t have writer networks yet. They aren’t sure what’s normal and what’s not and they don’t want to rock the boat.

I am here to tell you to rock the boat."


So any of you who are writers, especially if you're looking to make a living at it, should read these. Kameron's because she is awesomely tell-it-like-it-is, Chuck because he's funny as hell, and both of them because they're full of vital information.

And apropos of Kameron's piece, you don't have to be a fan of the singer Kesha to know what she's being put through is fucking appalling.  Here's hoping she wins her case.

At the start of the week, I finished a long story for an anthology and sent it off. (Can't say any more because the anthology is super-secret till further notice.) And then I got to work on writing a detailed outline for the next Black Road novel, The Devil's Highway.

It's been weird, and a little scary. On the one hand this is a world and cast of characters I know well and have already novelled about; on the other hand, I finished Hell's Ditch back in 2012. It's been nearly four years since I last spent time in the heads of Helen, Gevaudan, Danny, Alannah, Colonel Jarrett and Tereus Winterborn. A lot's happened since then. What if I can't do it again? But I have to do it again. But slowly, it's coming back. I should be hitting the Black Road again next week.

Finally, there's a new free story of mine you can read, from my first collection, A Hazy Shade Of Winter. It might be the last Friday Freebie, at least for a while, as I'm not sure enough people are reading it. We'll see. Anyways, the story's called 'Come With Me, Down This Long Road' and it's here, till next Friday.

And on that note, have a good weekend, everybody!

NEW NOVEL: HELL’S DITCH, COMING IN DECEMBER 2015

...or, the meaning of my Twitter handle is finally revealed.

Now this is how you start the week. Well, actually, how I’ve started my week is laughing till I cried at a certain news story relating to David Cameron: if you could convert schadenfreude into electricity, I could probably take care of the entire country’s power requirements for the rest of the week. But I digress.

There’s even better news: I can at last announce that my novel Hell’s Ditch will be published later this year by Snowbooks.

The dream never changes: a moonless, starless night without end. The road she walks is black, bordered with round, white pebbles or nubs of polished bone; she can’t tell which but they’re the only white in the darkness, marking her way through the night.

In dreams and nightmares, Helen walks the Black Road. It leads her back from the grave, back from madness, back towards the man who caused the deaths of her family: Tereus Winterborn, Regional Commander for the Reapers, who rule the ruins of a devastated Britain.

On her journey, she gathers her allies: her old mentor Darrow, the cocky young fighter Danny, emotionally-scarred intelligence officer Alannah and Gevaudan Shoal, last of the genetically-engineered Grendelwolves.

Winterborn will stop at nothing to become the Reapers’ Supreme Commander; more than anything he seeks the advantage that will help him achieve that goal. And in the experiments of the obsessed scientist Dr Mordake, he thinks he has found it.

To Winterborn, Project Tindalos is a means to ultimate power; to Mordake, it’s a means to roll back the devastation of the War and restore his beloved wife to the living. But neither Winterborn nor Mordake understand the true nature of the forces they are about to unleash. Forces that threaten to destroy everything that survived the War, unless Helen and her allies can find and stop Project Tindalos in time.

I’m absolutely delighted by this. My previous novels were all written to commission, having first been pitched to a publisher; the same’s true of the upcoming Redman’s Hill. And don’t get me wrong, I love them all. But this is the first book I just wrote on spec and sent out to be snapped up; it’s a very different feeling.

Hell’s Ditch is the first in a four-part series, The Black Road. It will be released as a hardback and ebook this coming December, with the paperback to follow in March 2016. The second novel, The Devil’s Highway, will be out next October.

The Black Road started out as an idea for a screenplay when I was nineteen, and resurfaced, changing each time, as a novel in the late ‘90s and a radio play in the late 2000s. By then it had grown into something much bigger and more complex than the original.

I wrote the first half of Hell’s Ditch in 2010, before work on it was derailed by a death in the family, then picked up the threads in 2012. It spent its time looking for a home before the good folks at Snowbooks took a shine to it; till now, the rest of the story’s been in limbo, waiting to be told.

You can read Snowbooks' official announcement here - and if your appetite's really been whetted, feel free to pre-order the hardback, ebook or paperback.
 

I’m very, very excited about this. I’m really looking forward to seeing Hell’s Ditch in print, and to continuing the journey in The Devil’s Highway.

The Black Road is waiting. I hope you’ll join me on it.