Things Of Last Week: 18th April 2016

I am a very bad person.

I normally do Things of the Week every Friday, but got a little distracted, not least because we had dinner guests - Priya Sharma and her partner Mark came round for dinner, several rounds of Cards Against Humanity (I won a pack of these a couple of months back) which is set to become a guilty pleasure, I suspect.

The only reason we didn't end up playing all night was because Priya had a Blu-Ray of Mad Max: Fury Road. So I finally got to see the damn film, and it was incredible. Charlize Theron is superb as Imperator Furiosa (and what a cool name that is) and Tom Hardy... damnit, Tom Hardy is Tom Hardy. After seeing him in Locke, I understood exactly why so many people go chicken oriental about the guy. He fits very snugly into Mel Gibson's boots here, but Theron basically owns this film, which is just great stuff: almost completely non-stop action, but it actually builds in heart and character development and emotional power without sacrificing a moment's pace. I will admit to welling up slightly at one point. To avoid spoilers, I'll just say this: "Witness me."


Yep.

Bottom shelf, second from left. :)

This week, things have ticked along. I've enjoyed my break from Devil's Highway continues, and
used it to rewrite some more of The Song Of The Sibyl. And then a new idea came along, and has started twitching into life. Should be worth the few days it'll hopefully take to bring it into the world. There are a few things I was putting off until 'after the book is written' that I'll try and do before going back to it, I think. I've a fairly tight deadline, but life's always fun lived close to the edge. (Famous last words, I know.) But you can't always do the sensible thing: see this excellent blog from Chuck Wendig.

This week has been the week of the London Book Fair, and both my publisher Snowbooks and my agent Tom Witcomb were there. They're probably just about recovering now!





And - nearly forgot! Angels Of The Silences got another review - this time on Hellnotes:

Bestwick’s talent for capturing the distinct voices of his protagonists is what sets this novella apart from others with a similar plot. Wrapping up in a quick but solid conclusion, Angels of the Silences will leave a lasting impression on any reader lucky enough to cross its path.


I'll take that. :)

May the Liberator carry you safely home.

 
On a sadder note, the actor Gareth Thomas died last week. I was a huge fan of Blake's 7 (and it was an influence on Hell's Ditch: there's a reason there's a character called Darrow in it...) and Roj Blake was, of course, the role he was best known for, but he had a long and solid career on the stage and television, and was actually twice nominated for a BAFTA, for the TV play Stocker's Copper and the series Morgan's Boy. (He even has an uncredited, blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearance in Hammer's Quatermass And The Pit - right at the beginning, as a workman...) Not to mention the cult TV series Children Of The Stones. Another series I always loved him in was the underrated Knights Of God, where he starred alongside John Woodvine, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and (in their final TV appearances) Nigel Stock and Patrick Troughton in a dystopian thriller set in a ruined Britain controlled by an order of clerical fascists. It was written by Richard Cooper, who's always good. I still have Cooper's novelisation of the script somewhere.


Knights Of God has never been released on DVD in the UK, but until it is, it's on YouTube:

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Things Of The Week

This week brought good news that I already had, but made it official. As you all know, I signed with Blake Friedmann back in December, but hadn't actually been added to the client list on the website. That has now been rectified, and includes my best 'windswept and interesting' author photo, which came as a great relief as I thought they were about to come to their senses and realise they'd been grossly mistaken.

Another cracking review of Angels Of The Silences, courtesy of the brilliant Jim McLeod! Big thanks to Jim, and to everyone else who's helped spread the word about Angels. It means a lot to see this little book get a second chance.

The week also brought my author copy of Angels too, which now sits on my 'ego shelf' along the original Pendragon Press edition with its Neil Williams cover.

And it brought the news that my short story 'Hushabye', which first appeared in Ellen Datlow's Inferno, will be reprinted in Ellen's new anthology Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, out from Tachyon Press on October 31st.

And Hell's Ditch will be out in paperback at the beginning of March! I'll be at Waterstones Liverpool One on March 11th to sign copies and otherwise generally disport myself - more details to follow in due course.

So, all told, a really good week!

This excellent and thought-provoking article by Nina Allan wasn't a thing last week, but it was the week before, and I think it's worth sharing. I'll blog more about this in due course, hopefully.

Have a grand week, all of you! Thanks for your continued support.

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!

Things Of The Week

Bit of admin first: I've now updated the page for Angels Of The Silences to include the info for the new edition, and Hell's Ditch now has its own page too.

Anyway... I haven't called this blog 'Nice Things of the Week', because there've been some decidedly not-nice ones: the passing of both David Bowie and Alan Rickman, both absolutely stellar talents. I have to admit Rickman's death hit me harder - I've been a fan since I saw him in Die Hard when I was a teenager. Plus, he was, of course, the definitive Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, acting Kevin Costner and everyone else off the screen.

Plus, of course, there was this: Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply. A sort of quirkily British riff on the Swayze/Moore movie ghost, where he played alongside Juliet Stevenson as her deceased lover. Basically a rom-com, where one of them is a ghost - although a fairly solid one!

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Another less than entirely pleasant thing of last week was the collapse of Spectral Press in the UK,

which I blogged about on Friday. Not something I especially wanted to do or enjoyed doing, but necessary. I am very grateful to those who helped by providing necessary information, and to the many who, publicly or privately, sent messages of support. There'll be some further discussion on Brian Keene's podcast The Horror Show this week.

Friday also saw the rerelease of Angels Of The Silences, a novella of which I'm very fond. Thanks to all who attended the online launch party and/or bought a copy! 

Another anthology including one of my stories came out last week, and I completely forgot! The Mammoth Book Of Kaiju, edited by Sean Wallace, was published by Robinson Constable, and reprints 'Now I Am Nothing', from the Cubicle 7 anthology World War Cthulhu.

Friday also brought some really excellent news that I can't talk about yet! I will just say it involves a new story collection - I'll reveal all once the contract's signed and sealed.

ETA: I nearly forgot! Bad me. David A. Sutton's 2008 anthology Houses On The Borderland, which includes my novella The School House, is being reissued in February by Shadow Publishing, under the title Haunts Of Horror. The School House is another tale with a special place in my heart - albeit a fairly cold, dark one as it's one of the grimmest things I've written - so it's good to see it get another airing. (Of course, you can also read it in The Condemned.) Also includes stories by Allen Ashley, Samantha Lee, Paul Finch, Gary Fry and David A. Riley.

Oh, and just to say again you can still read the latest Friday Freebie, 'The Lowland Hundred', here until this coming Friday, when it gets replaced by a new one.

Have good week!

Angels of the Silences: pre-order for 99p ($1.44)

The new edition of Angels Of The Silences will be released THIS Friday,  January 15th by Omnium Gatherum, and the ebook is now available for pre-order at 99p ($1.44 in the US.)

The low price is only valid till the release date, after which the ebook will be £3.99 ($5.80)

So snap Angels up for a song here! Or here, if you're in the US.

Nice Things of the Week(end)

A few other nice things have happened since I last posted on that subject, and so I thought I'd share them to bring out a bit of cheer following the last announcement.

First up, I learned from Kate Jonez at Omnium Gatherum that Lynda E. Rucker (a fantastically talented writer and a lovely person into the bargain) had contributed the following blurb for the re-release of Angels of the Silences:

"In this powerful and beautifully written novella, Simon Bestwick unerringly assumes the voice of seventeen-year-old Ems, a narrator whose voice ranges from fragile to furious. By turns stark and elegiac, Angels of the Silences is part devastating tale of an all-too-human evil and the secret lives of teenage girls, but it’s also a story of transcendence, the unassailable bonds of friendship, and the light that can sometimes survive even the darkest places."

*skips and dances round the house, making occasional squee-like noises*

Second, I found out that my short story 'The Churn' (first published in Black Static #27) has been recorded by Tales To Terrify and will be released soon!

*bounces up and down, causing minor earthquake*

Thirdly, the redoubtable Matt Fryer has reviewed Hell's Ditch over at the Hellforge:

"I applaud Simon’s vision. It’s a menacing and bleak world, made tangible by flourishes and attention to detail... It stands alone as a novel, so don’t worry that it’s just a chapter without any resolution: you don’t need to invest in the series. But I bloody well am, and I think you will too...  Like Adam Nevill’s apocalyptic “Lost Girl” released a few months ago, it can be read as a gruesome thriller but also enjoyed for its thoughtful layers and complex moral core, and I can’t wait for the next instalment."

 *sings along with CD player, shattering windows across the Wirral*

Thanks also to all who've sent messages of support in the wake of the Black Mountain announcement, bought copies of mine or Cate's stuff by way of support, or offered us a place to stay for the honeymoon! Thanks too to Neil Williams and Graeme Reynolds - they both know why. :)

Anyway, on with what's left of the weekend...

Nice Things of the Week

Well, my self-imposed Facebook ban bore fruit. I didn't deactivate my profile, just banned myself from liking or commenting on Facebook. I lurked occasionally, and exchanged a few direct messages - which was more than I'd meant to do- but I found myself with a LOT more free time. I got more reading done - and better still, more writing.
 The week before Christmas, my agent sent me a set of notes and edits for the crime novel. There was a LOT to do (there also appears to have been a LOT of writing LOT in allcaps this week, too, oddly) but it's all about getting the novel into the best possible shape to go out into the world. I finished the first redraft yesterday and emailed it off. There'll probably be more changes to make before it's ready, but hopefully the biggest jobs have been done.

Out of the blue, I got an email from a professional horror podcast, enquiring about reprint rights for two of my stories and offering pro payment for them. I checked with the editor who'd originally published the stories, who was fine with it as long as it wouldn't prevent her possibly reprinting one of them herself!

Another nice thing happened yesterday: the anthology THE HYDE HOTEL was published by Black Shuck Books. Edited by two fine gentlemen, James Everington and Dan Howarth, it includes stories by the ever-reigning Cate (of course), Ian Rowan, Alison Littlewood, Ray Cluley, V.H. Leslie, S.P. Miskowski, Mark West, Alex Davis, Amelia Mangan and Dan Howarth. Oh, and one from me.

The Hyde Hotel looks almost exactly as you’d expect it to: a faceless, budget hotel in a grey city you are just passing through. A hotel aimed at people travelling alone, a hotel where you know so little about your fellow guests that they could be anyone… and where, perhaps, so could you. But sometimes things are hiding in plain sight, and not everyone who stays at The Hyde gets a good night’s sleep… Enjoy your stay.

Here's a snippet from my tale, 'Wrath Of The Deep ':

You can check out any time you like...

The first thing he registered when he opened the door was the smell. It was a cold, briny stink of seaweed, dead fish, and stagnant air.

The second thing was the cold; the next breath he drew in seemed to scorch his lungs and when he breathed out, it hung pale in the air like smoke.

The third thing was the figure down the corridor.

It stood between him and the top of the stairs. He knew, of course, that it was the source of both the stench and the cold. It was very tall, well over seven feet in height, and dark. He couldn’t make out any features in detail, only its silhouette – except for its eyes, which were round and luminously gold...

In other good news, my 2011 novella Angels Of The Silences will be out next week, in paperback and
ebook form, from Omnium Gatherum. I'll blog more about that soon; it's a piece I'm very fond of, and it's  good to see it getting a second outing. In the meantime, I have to read the proofs!

Another lovely thing - two lovely things in one, in fact - was getting an advance peek at Peter Tennant's reviews of Hell's Ditch and Angels Of The Silences for Black Static #50. He loved them both: Angels he describes as 'without doubt one of Bestwick’s finest stories', and Hell's Ditch as '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.'

Peter's also just posted his 'Best In Class' list for 2015. The laurels for 'Best Novel ' went, unsurprisingly - and deservedly - to Sarah Pinborough's The Death House (which if you haven't read yet, I can heartily recommend), but Hell's Ditch is listed alongside works by Simon Kurt Unsworth Alison Littlewood, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Marko Hautala, Angela Slatter and Nicole Cushing as one of the close contenders for the title.

Today marks a new feature on the blog, the Friday Freebie, wherein I make a previously published story available each week. Think of it as a thank you to all who come here! The first one up is a personal favourite of mine: 'Lex Draconis', which first appeared in Tales of the Nun and Dragon in 2012. I'm also adding a 'Donate' button: I'm going to look into a Patreon account in the future too, but in the meantime, it's a sort of online busker's cap that you can toss the odd coin into should you wish.

And that's pretty much it for the first proper week of 2016. Hope you've a good one, folks; I'll be back on Monday with The Lowdown! Till then, have a good weekend - and why not pop over here and have a free read? 

Angels Of The Silences To Return!

Delighted to announce that my novella Angels Of The Silences is to be published in the US by Omnium Gatherum!

Cover art for Omnium's edition is still to be arranged; the image here is Neil Williams' artwork for the original 2011 Pendragon Press edition (long since sold out.)

Angels will be released in 2016. Further details to follow.

Two teenage girls have the kind of friendship we only often experience once in our lives. More sisters than blood sisters, spiky, argumentative but loyal and close, two sides of the same coin. That sort of friendship can’t be broken easily, even by death. And a terrible death at that. Yet, somehow, they are still “alive”, fleshed, clothed, and human in all but heartbeat.

There is a way to move on, but neither are inclined to do so, because, perhaps, there is a reason they’re still here on earth in the land of the breathing, where they go about their daily lives with their status unsuspected by friends and family alike. There is, they suspect, unfinished business.

But when the time comes, when is it right to move on and leave everyone and everything they love behind them?

Angels of the Silences is short, sharp and for me, immensely touching. The two girls are complete, three-dimensional, recognisable. Their plight is utterly realistic, yes, realistic, because there are dilemmas here; who to tell, how to deal with parents and other loved ones, with the possibility that the truth will out and that there will be questions, torment, terrible grief.

A compelling, intelligent and affecting story... Angels of the Silences is one of those brief but startling works that we stumble upon every now and then. Read it and I dare you not to be moved. - Terry Grimwood.

ETA: And here's Omnium Gatherum's official announcement! 

And A Dizzy New Year

Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to 2012.

The year has got off to a fairly exciting start. The last few days have brought a blizzard of good things- so many it's actually almost scary.

In a week or so, I should be signing contracts with my new agent (full details after the event.)

I've also been invited to contribute to a couple of new anthologies, including a big one in the US.

Matthew Fryer at Welcome to the Hellforge listed Angels Of The Silences as one of his top 10 genre reads of 2011. Alongside Where The Heart Is and End Of The Line, both of which I appeared in. Which is lovely as I'm very fond of them all, but Angels in particular.

My story 'The Churn' will still be appearing in a forthcoming issue of Black Static magazine.

My author copies of The Faceless still look gorgeous.

But over and above all that...

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from the wonderful Ellen Datlow in New York, informing me that she was taking 'The Moraine' (from Terror Tales of the Lake District) for Best Horror of the Year 4. Alongside stories by Peter Straub and Stephen King.

This was rather good news (Stephen King! STEPHEN FRAKKING KING!!)

Fast forward to earlier this week, when a further email arrived, this time imparting the information that 'Dermot' (from Black Static #24) had also been selected. So I will have two stories in Best Horror of the Year. Alongside Peter Straub. And Stephen frakking King. And many more besides (see the full TOC here.)

In addition, a new novel is underway, and next Monday, all being well, I start the first stage of my training as a counsellor.

In other news, I now have a Kindle. And I rather like it. Much is happening in these early days of 2012, and it's good. I'm hoping this will set the tone for the year. 2011 was a bittersweet affair, a very tough year in places, but out of it, good things have come. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me- online or otherwise- for the journey, and onwards and upwards. Sod the Mayan prophecy; here's hoping 2012 is a great year for all of us.

This Is Horror 2011. Plus, Squee.

The very nice This Is Horror website are doing awards. You can pop over there and vote. Purely by coincidence, Angels of the Silences is on the Best Chapbook shortlist. On the other hand, so is Nowhere Hall by the ever-reigning Cate, who's also nominated for Best Collection for Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits. So there. Go and take a look. It's a lovely website anyway.

In other news, my author's copies of The Faceless arrived today. I have been drooling. My digi-cam is on the fritz, else there would be pictures. Anyways, me is happy. Hope you are too.

Me & An American Biohazard...

Gardner Goldsmith of Liberty Conspiracy interviewed me for his podcast back at Fantasycon in Brighton, earlier this month. Here's that interview now- I start gabbing at around 6 minute 30 seconds and finally shut up around the 42 minute mark... When not cackling insanely or gabbling too fast for anyone to understand, I can be heard talking about various things I've written ('Dermot', Angels Of The Silences, Tide Of Souls and The Faceless) and stuff that's influenced me along the way (can't believe I forgot to mention Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson...)

Fantasycon 2011: Brighton Rocked

Be warned: this will be a huge blog post. Once I started, I honestly didn't know where to stop... So ensure you have a stiff one to hand (or even a drink.)

I’ll be totally honest here; when I first heard the 2011 Fantasycon was happening in Brighton, I was not a happy bunny. It was fun for World Horror, but that was a big international event. Say what you like about the Britannia Hotel in Nottingham (and many have), at least it was central. Brighton is a looooooooooong way to go if you’re a Manc. Even when Sarah Pinborough pointed out that publishers and agents wouldn’t make the trek to Nottingham, but would to Brighton, I wasn’t convinced.

So, was my mind changed?

Read on…

It went something like this:

Thursday 29th September. The Con doesn’t start till tomorrow, but see that thing above about it being a looooooooooong way to go. So- the epic journey commences- Swinton to Manchester by bus, Manchester to London Euston by train, Euston to Victoria by Tube and finally a train to Victoria to Brighton. After a brief spell of giddiness at the sheer frenetic vastness that is the capitol, it was pretty plain sailing. Arrive at Brighton, decide to walk from the train station to the hotel. A cab would be a silly extravagance, after all.

Did I mention that the Con managed to coincide with a fairly sizzling mini-heatwave? Well, I have now. Am also humping a well-stuffed backpack and a shoulderbag. And am wearing dark clothes. Feel free to quote the words ‘Serious Tactical Error’ at any time, people…

Arrive (approximately one stone lighter and quite possibly in the early stages of dehydration) at the Strawberry Fields guesthouse, a nice and highly-recommended little place if you’re ever visiting Brighton. Not only do they do breakfast in your room, but they have these seriously cute pillows:

Yes, I was tempted to nick one. No, I didn’t. Yes, Evil Me wishes I had.

Anyway! On to the Royal Albion Hotel, home of the Con. Boozing follows with the likes of Gary McMahon, Rio Youers, Mark Morris, Steve Jones, Mandy Slater and Sarah Pinborough. (Bit dizzying to find myself in such exalted company. :D ) Everyone else goes to freshen up. Potter round and end up helping the host of organisers fill up the last few goody bags. A drink or two with TTA Press’s Roy Gray, plus Paul and Audrey Campbell. Then further boozing- alcohol blurs the recollection here, but I get to meet Sandra Norval, who’s on her first Con. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s lucky- this will be one to remember.

Anyway, a good time is had by all. And so to bed.

Five hours’ sleep.

Friday 30th September
Up bright and early. Breakfast in bed arrives at 8.00 am. Virtuously decide on a brisk hour-long walk- sweat those toxins out! Better still- a walk on the beach! Why not?

Well, as I discover the beach a) appears to have been built on a 45 degree slope and b) is made entirely of loose pebbles which swallow the unwary walker’s feet up to the ankles. Bollocks to that. Scramble back to terra firma. It ends up being a half-hour walk, but ah well. At least some exercise was taken.

Head to the Albion feeling virtuous. Nose around the dealer’s room in the basement although it’s not officially open yet. Am lassooed by Pete Crowther, proprietor of PS Publishing, and given a stack of cover-sheets to sign for the limited edition of Gutshot. Scribble industriously. Escape to the ground floor and find my way to the first panel on ‘Small Press Publishing’. Had planned to stay for the next two- ‘Maintaining Your Web Presence’, chaired by the lovely Adele Wearing, and one on ‘Making A Living As A Writer’- but have almost been boiled to death by the end of the first panel. Apologise to Adele with much batting of eyelashes and seek out something cold and wet. Catch up, among others, with the equally lovely Anna Taborska, writer and film-maker (and maker of the forthcoming book-trailer for The Faceless.)

Later: attend Rio Youers’ reading and finally get to hear some of the boy’s prose. Oh, he’s good, folks; he’s very very good. Read him! Then on to the PS launch, which includes Gutshot. Sit between Pete Atkins and Conrad Williams sweating like Gary Glitter on a schoolbus and quenching a burning thirst with glasses of white wine. Am vaguely aware this may not be a good idea. Am pathetically grateful when a carafe of water appears. Find myself giving Graham Joyce an autograph. Dazedly think that this should be the other way round. Join Mark West, post-signing, in singing the praises of Graham’s novel The Silent Land. (Which is, like pretty much everything Graham Joyce writes, exceptionally good.) Graham takes the praise with his customary grace and good humour.

Curry with Sandra Norval, Jonathan Green and another chap whose name I shamefully can’t remember.

Back upstairs to the reading room for a succession of readings: Simon Kurt Unsworth, Gary McMahon, Joel Lane and (Lord) John Llewellyn Probert. In temperatures approaching that of the sunward side of Mercury. Morituri te salutant.

Somehow survive. To the bar. Further debauchery, the memory of which is mercifully blurred.

Four hours’ sleep.

Saturday 1st October
White rabbits!

No walk today. My morning exercise consists of intensive groaning and high-speed coffee consumption. Totter to hotel later than intended but sadly miss Reggie Oliver’s reading. Potter round the dealer’s room and am surprised to find I seem to own some new books by the end of it. However did that happen?

Solaris are giving away free books! But before I can join the queue, I bump into the ebullient (and insanely tall) Gardner Goldsmith, singing the praises of ‘Dermot’ in Black Static 24. By the time I remember the Solaris book giveaway, there’s almost nothing left. An object lesson on the price of vanity…

Shortly thereafter sleep deprivation starts to take its toll. Veg out on the sofa, much to the amusement of Gary Cole-Wilkin, John Travis and Soozy Marjoram, who swiftly immortalises the event on camera and posts it on Facebook.

Back to the hotel for a couple of hours’ unconsciousness. Rise and walk, feeling hungry. However, back at the Albion, nearly everyone I know has already decamped in search of an eatery.

Wander the streets of Brighton in search of a Chinese restaurant, or maybe that nice Indonesian restaurant we went to at World Horror last year… after half an hour, on the brink of giving up and heading or Harry Ramsden’s I find myself outside the Indonesian place. (It’s called Warung Tujuh, if you’re ever in Brighton.) Which goes to show something or other, I’m not sure what…

Back to the hotel to read from The Faceless and Angels of the Silences. Pretty good turnout considering it’s 9.30 pm. on a Saturday.

Then on to the Regency Lounge to witness Lord and Lady Probert’s ‘Teatro Proberto’ presenting Blood On Satan’s Claw- The Panto, followed by a reprise of their 20-minute version of the Peter Cushing classic(?!) Corruption.

Then follows the burlesque. Attractive young lady with not much on alternately conceals and reveals her curves with a big black pair of feathery things (my descriptive powers are getting taxed here.) Not sure how well it fits in with the Con as a whole, but hey. Then a fairly terrifying male performer appears in an act that culminates in him disembowelling and eating a (toy) rabbit (with very realistic internal organs) onstage. And garlanding himself with rabbit innards. Before collapsing, apparently dead, and being dragged off to the strains of Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel. (Another childhood memory desecrated.) The crazy train leaves from ‘O….K,’ passes through ‘What the…’ and ends its journey at ‘Sod this for a game of conkers, I’ll be in the bar.’

It takes a couple of stiff drinks and a pint or two of Diet Coke with Sandra N. to get over that one. As a result I miss the panel on 'How To Scare Your Readers' (a description of that bloody burlesque would’ve done it.) Get up to go to Ramsey Campbell’s midnight reading, then discover the chap I’m squeezing past is Stephen Gallagher. Who’s actually heard of me. Chit-chat follows. Midnight reading also missed. Bugger.

Ah well- on to the disco!

This is a new development, but one of the highlights of the convention. FCon’s excellent Mistress of Ceremonies, Sarah ‘Potty Mouth’ Pinborough, intros our DJs, Rio Youers and Guy Adams, and the games begin. It’s actually enormous fun; only sorry not to have caught Year’s Best Horror editor Steve Jones getting down on the dancefloor, or Gary McMahon’s rendition of the funky chicken, on camera, but here’s Joel Lane boogying away with Lord and Lady Probert. This may be the first time I’ve seen Lord P with his tie loosened…




The disco ends amid much cheering and rejoicing. Sarah reminds the congregation that ‘What happens at the Fantasycon disco… stays on the Fantasycon disco.’ Surely she means ‘…ends up all over Facebook come Sunday afternoon’?

Three and a half hours sleep.

Sunday 2nd October
Awake, pack, head back to the Albion for the last time, this time early enough to catch the day’s first reading, from the lovely Ali Littlewood. Interviewed by Gardner Goldsmith for his podcast- Lord alone knows what they’ll make of that across the Pond. A last raid on the dealer’s room. The rest is hugs and goodbyes.

The odyssey back to the rainy North begins. A cab to the station this time; not making the same mistake twice. Sit next to a pleasant Norwegian student on the train home and the weekend gets rounded off with a chat about the brilliant Norwegian horror film Cold Prey.

All in all, it is, truly, the best Fantasycon I’ve been to, ever. Full stop. However…

I left before the British Fantasy Awards were presented. There’s already been a lot said about it and I wasn’t there, so I’ll direct interested parties to Steve Jones’ comment on the whole business here. There are questions to answer and be addressed.

I’ll put my hands in the air and freely admit I was utterly, utterly wrong about the location for this year’s Con. It played a big part in its record turnout of over five hundred people, plus representation from the big publishers, which I haven’t seen at FCon in a while. We need more conventions like this year’s.

I’ve heard that some have said the Awards debacle soured the whole Con for them. I really hope that’s not true. It was a truly brilliant weekend on so many levels.

I’d love to list all the ace and funky people I met for the first time or got to catch up with, but I’d end up missing someone out. You all know who you are.

Finally, a big shout-out to those brave, busy, red-shirted folks who helped organise everything and ran about making everything else happen on the ground: Marie O’Regan, Paul Kane, Martin Roberts, Helen Hopley, Jenny Barber, Pixie Pants and anyone else I’ve left out.

Loving Angels 2: No Exaggeration

More love for Angels of the Silences has been found, this time over at Terry Gates-Grimwood's website The Exaggerated Press.

Terry says: 'Angels of the Silences is short, sharp and for me, immensely touching. The two girls are complete, three-dimensional, recognisable... A compelling, intelligent and affecting story... Angels of the Silences is one of those brief but startling works that we stumble upon very now and then. Read it and I dare you not to be moved.'

That's certainly brightened up my day, anyway. Incidentally, did I mention that as well as the chapbook (for a mere three of your English pounds), you can also buy Angels as an ebook for one pound only? Well, now I have.

I wish I could claim credit for the title, but sadly I cannot tell a lie: it's from a Counting Crows song. This one, to be precise. Rock on!

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Loving Angels

No, I haven't suddenly become a Robbie Williams fan- sorry, Cate... :-)

That nice Theresa Derwin over at Terror Tree has been reviewing again, this time Angels Of The Silences. And she rather liked it, too! As you can see.

Funny, beautifully written and poignant, Angels of the Silences is a fantastic chapbook that demonstrates Bestwick’s skill as a writer... Good things really do come in small packages. Try this now.

Certainly made my weekend. Thanks Theresa!

Angels and Namings

Well, Angels Of The Silences appears to be out and about at last! My author's copies are shipping (not that ships are likely to be involved, unless there's worse flooding in Wales than I thought) from Pendragon Press down in Maesteg, so if you've ordered a copy, you ought to be getting a mailboxful of salty Bestwick goodness this week. Um, that sounded wrong, didn't it? Sorry.

And yes, there's the new novel, currently underway, which is to be published by Solaris Books. The reason the last blog posting was rather bashful about it is very simple- not modesty on my part (stop laughing at the back there) but because, well, embarrassingly...

...I have no idea what it's going to be called.

Which does not mean, for the record, that I'm helplessly waiting for a crowd of marketing bods from the publishers to decide what the title should be based on pie-charts, statistics and god alone knows what else. Thankfully, Solaris don't have much truck with that kind of daftness. They know their business onions, obviously- and thank goodness for that- but first and foremost they're actually interested in books- you know, those papery things what you read.

The problem is I don't have a title, and this is now getting silly.

All I can do at the minute is keep plugging away and hope that something leaps out at me. I suspect when I do find the right title, I'll immediately slap myself on the forehead and wonder how I missed it. Hope so, anyway.

Because, of course, I can't keep the publisher waiting all bloody year to know what they're going to advertise the damned thing as. 'This new book by Simon Bestwick' doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.

Ah well. In a pinch, I can always rename the main character 'Katie' and insist the book's about the emotional cost of her survival in the face of the events that unfold. Then they can call it Katie's Price. If they print the 's' in very, very small font it should shift millions of copies.

Angels Of The Silences is unleashed...

...well, almost. It's now about to go to print, as a tasty little chapbook from that nice Mr Chris Teague's Pendragon Press. A mere three of your English pounds, or whatever that translates to in dollars, euros, yuan, yen, galactic groats, Martian money, Cthuloid cash or (insert currency unit of your preference here.) Fan, dabi, and not forgetting dozi.

So, what's it all about, Alfie? Well, without revealing too much (i.e. nothing you won't learn on the first page) here's the publisher's blurb:

Emily and Biff are seventeen and best friends. They have also been dead for nine months.

Compared to certain stuff I've written, such as The School House or The Narrows , Angels is almost cuddly. Almost. Or as close to it as you can get. And, as you can see, it also has a truly stonking cover by Mr Neil Williams.

Come on- what else can you get for three quid that's this much fun? (Don't answer that.)

Pendragon are also doing an offer whereby if you order a copy of the limited hardback of We Fade to Grey (which features the aforesaid The Narrows- selected by Ellen Datlow for The Best Horror Of The Year, shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award... I've probably banged on about that so much you probably know this better than me by now :D ) then you will receive a copy gratis. So there you go.


WSAHD!

My Fantasycon Timetable...

If you're attending Fantasycon this year, and you want to know what to attend/avoid, here's my itinerary...

Friday night (17th September)
6.30 pm. I shall be reading... and I've only just realised I'll be the first one up for the whole Con! Eek! So please show up and make a scared man a bit more relaxed. Currently planning to read an excerpt from the new novel I'm writing plus a short story.

Also on Friday night:

10.30pm. I'll be on the panel 'Get Real: Looking at how weird fiction can often be the best tool to address issues in the world around us.' Co-starring with: Joel Lane, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk and Allen Ashley. I'm truly not worthy.

Edited to add...

Saturday (18th September)
1.00pm. Launch for the Solaris Books anthology The End Of The Line, edited by Jonathon Oliver and featuring my story 'The Sons Of The City'. Co-starring with Ramsey Campbell, Joel Lane, Paul Meloy, Rebecca Levene and many, many more. It's gonna be a good 'un, this.

2.00pm. Launch for Never Again, edited by Allyson Bird and Joel Lane and featuring my story 'Malachi'. Also involving Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Rob Shearman, Tony Richards, Lisa Tuttle, Nina Allan, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Kaaron Warren and Thana Niveau- among many other authors.

Sadly Chris Teague at Pendragon Press tells me that Angels Of The Silences won't be ready for the Con. That's a pity, but what the hell, it'll be out sooner or later anyway. Thanks anyway to Chris for publishing that little tale.

And once that's out of the way, I'll just have fun. Including forays to the Metal Karaoke that's also going on...



See you all there!

Taking Stock; a long and self-indulgent post

It's been a busy week, what with a job interview to prep for and Angels Of The Silences to proofread (that one has to be finished today- luckily the brave and awesome chap that is Chris Teague of Pendragon Press knows no fear when it comes to cutting things a bit fine), but writing-wise things are on a bit of a pause.

I've put aside a half-finished novella and a new raft of changes to The Song Of The Sibyl to help put together a comedy series pitch for Radio Two, and after that found myself at a loose end. Whereupon the thought of new story collections came to mind. After all, there were a good few tales lying about loose, after thirteen years in the game. (Jesus, that pulls me up short every time I write it. Where the hell does the time go?)

So this meant (ulp) it was time to make an inventory of the uncollected stuff.

You have to picture: there are three computers in chez Bestwick- my laptop, the trusty and nifty little Netbook I'm writing this blog post on and my old desktop. If they were members of the cast of Dad's Army (pause while American readers google that one) the Netbook would be Private Walker (the spiv and wideboy who always got results), the laptop would be Corporal Jones (determined and thinking he was the bee's knees but prone to malfunctiong- that's what you get with Windows pigging Vista) and the desktop would be Private Godfrey (the doddery old one who looked like a strong breeze would knock him over.) The main reason it's still around is that it can still handle floppy disks and there might still be some useful stuff on some of them. Oh, and because that's where a lot of the old material is.

And so, the trawl began. Exporting stories, novelettes, novellas, nearly all unpublished, onto the pen-drive. Quality control was not a factor, just getting them all into one place.

That Protestant Work Ethic thing is securely embedded in the Bestwick brain, if noting else. When I started writing properly, in 1997, I aimed for a story a week. There are 26 stories listed from that year on the inventory. That doesn't include the completed novel, the two unfinished ones and the 20,000 word novella from that year, plus half a dozen lost stories (mercifully, in the case of several that spring to mind) and the ones that need retyping.

Most of the ones from that year and 1998 were published somewhere, but many of those that followed are yet to see print; back at the end of the '90s (I refuse to write 'the turn of the century', except that I just did) the small press scene imploded, losing a lot of markets. My brain seized up at the prospect of actually trying to work out how to post stuff outside the UK and the internet left me decidedly confused. And shortly thereafter there was a several years-long phase of hating nearly everything I wrote. The reasons for that are long and complicated and for another time, but a lot of stories were written and then thrown aside, convinced they were rubbish. There are thirty-odd unpublished stories from 2001 alone, and nearly as many from 2000. Those were two of the years I had the least confidence as a writer, and kept churning out tales in an effort to feel proud of one of them (thanks to Chris and Barbara Roden at Ash-Tree Press/All Hallows Magazine, who were one of the few markets I placed stories with at the time- that boost to the confidence was very welcome)

2002 saw twenty-odd so-far uncollected stories written, but after that short-story production slacked off. Longer projects beckoned, forays into script-writing, a number of novels that are damn well going to stay in their bottom drawer.

But anyway- the final count?

Over a hundred and ninety.

I'm not saying this to brag (well, OK, maybe a bit.) But it did come as a bit of a shock. And that's not counting another dozen to twenty that only exist in hard copy form and need typing up or scanning. Plus some only written in longhand that still haven't been typed up. Oh, and a couple of short novels that might be worth trying to place...

Obviously, there are a lot of stories here that don't merit publication; they're in the bottom drawer for a bloody good reason, and there they shall stay. But even so... there should be enough material for four or five other collections there. It's quite a sobering thought to see that much stuff accumulated.

One reason for writing: a kind of insurance policy against oblivion. A light that glows in the long darkness after your own's gone out (Christ, that's pretentious. But it's also true, so I'll let it stand.) There's a substantial amount of insurance there.

But bloody hell, 190+ stories? After thirteen years?

God, I feel old.

And so now back to Angels Of The Silences. And prepping for the job interview. And the meeting later today. I used to have a life...

Angels Of The Silences

I'm delighted to announce that my novella, Angels Of The Silences, will be published by Chris Teague's brilliant Pendragon Press this September. I.e. next month. Crikey! Full details and cover will follow in the fullness of time, but I believe the cover price will be a mere three of your English pounds.

It should be out just in time for Fantasycon, then. In fact that's probably where it'll be launched. So if you want a signed copy you know where you need to be on the weekend of 17th to 19th of September. There's still time to register and enter the wonderful world of FCon for the first time. That's not addressed to anyone in particular, honest. And certainly not Cate. Noo, not at all. ;-)