Pictures of the Dark

Yes, at last, a post that isn't about The Narrows. I imagine you're all probably getting bored of hearing about that by now...

My story collection, Pictures Of The Dark, is now in stock at the rather wonderful Gray Friar Press and will be shipping in about a week or so. Hugely delighted, and kudos to the great Gary Fry for putting this together.

Here's the cover blurb, to wet your whistles (or whet your appetites, if you prefer):

There are dark places everywhere.
The world outside your front door, and the one inside your head. Dreads and longings. Pasts and futures.
Loneliness and relationships. Love and hate. Life and death . . . and what might lie beyond.

And then there’s the place the stories come from.
The council estate where the dead walk . . . The farmhouse attic filled with mummified corpses . . .
The old tramp’s blanket, and what slept in it at night . . .

Here, collected for the first time, are Simon Bestwick’s pictures of the dark -
23 despatches from a world very like ours, but where those dark places take on a life of their own.
The damaged and forlorn men and women in these stories pit themselves against their own demons or worlds gone mad,
uncover the rot at society’s core or in their own souls - but they’re all caught by the dark. And nobody gets away clean.

Will you?

Open the book and find out.

Here's a sneak preview of the front cover:

The back cover's too scary to show here. It has an author photo on the back, for Chrissakes...

It also has an introduction by my friend, comrade and 'brother by another mother', the truly brilliant Gary McMahon. He says incredibly nice things about the book and its author (all without having to be bribed or blackmailed, too!)

To preorder, go here.

Thanks to you all for reading this!

British Fantasy Awards- The Shortlist!

I'm delighted to report that The Narrows has made the shortlist for British Fantasy Awards for Best Novella. Listed alongside Joe Hill, Simon Clark, Gary McMahon and Tim Lebbon- fine writers all!

The anthology it was taken from, We Fade To Grey, has also been shortlisted for the Best Anthology Award. Great news!

You can visit the BFS website and read the full shortlist here. If you attended the 2008 Fantasycon or have signed up for the 2009 one, you can vote- also, of course, if you're a member of the BFS itself. If you like your horror, science fiction and fantasy, joining is always a good thing!

You don't have to vote for me, of course... but if you want to, feel free.

Thanks to everyone who voted for the story and got it this far!

Best Horror Of The Year #1

Just received an email today from the editor Ellen Datlow in New York. I can proudly announce that The Narrows has been selected for the first volume of her new Best Horror Of The Year anthology.

I'm absolutely delighted with this. Ellen is the premier editor in the USA for horror fiction and it's a great thrill to be accepted, especially given the length of the story.

Pissed Off

Not by anything in my own little world. At the moment- knock on wood (not you, Chris)- things are pretty good in Simonland.

On the other hand, the world outside...

Remember the guy who died of a heart attack at the G20 demo last week? Well, it would appear that he died after being hit and shoved over by a police officer. No provocation, far as anyone can tell. Just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

I dare say some would say tough shit on him for getting involved with the demo. Funny, really, as the right to protest is supposedly one of the things that makes Britain so great. (Or so the drooling, brainwashed fuckwits still mindlessly braying that the Iraq war was a good idea keep telling us. It's just, like, totally unpatriotic to make use of it unless it's to agree with the government.)

But that misses the point anyway, because Ian Tomlinson wasn't even part of the demo. He was a newspaper seller. Just doing his job.

And what's the betting that the officers responsible get clean away with it?

Quite frankly, I wouldn't bet a used bottle top against that outcome. After all, the police in London can blow an innocent man's head off his shoulders, and the coroner will tell the jury that they cannot return a verdict of unlawful killing. Just ask Jean Charles de Menezes. Oh, no, you can't. He's dead. He'd done nothing wrong. But a group of armed cops acting more like an El Salvadorean death squad than Dixon of Dock Green pinned him down and put seven rounds in his head. And it's apparently nobody's fault.

Still, why should that surprise? Our ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is a war criminal. No ifs, buts or maybes apply. He lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, lied about Iraqi links to 9/11- lied and lied some more so that he'd get his dirty little war. Funnily enough, before his resignation, the Sainted Tony was claiming that the Nuremberg Trials were no longer relevant. Well, after all, they not only set precedents about the rights of refugees (and where would the Right be if they couldn't blame the immigrants and asylum seekers for everything wrong with the country?) They set another precedent Blair has much more cause to worry about.

The Nazi leaders weren't just indicted and convicted for crimes against humanity. They were indicted and convicted for crimes against peace as well. That is, for planning and waging an aggressive war.

That is, when you attack another country without provocation. Like, say, when they have oil supplies you want to get your hands on. You dress it up with fancy justifications, claim it's really about self-defence, but anyone with more brain cells than a newt with a hangover knowns the truth.

Tony Blair planned and waged an aggressive war. Loathsome though Saddam Hussein and his regime were, they weren't the aggressors in that scenario. And you'd have to be pretty deluded to claim that the majority of Iraqis are better off now.

Let's not mince words (I haven't so far.) Tony Blair, and every MP who voted for this illegal and disgusting war, is a war criminal, and every goddamn one of the lying, murdering bastards deserves an appointment with a lamp-post and twenty feet of rope PDQ.

Will they get what they deserve?

Sure they will.

Oink, flap, oink, flap. (So says the pig who just flew past my window.)

Was there a point to this?

Yeah. There was.

You can know something intellectually. But knowing it emotionally is a different matter. And sometimes you have to learn it all over again. And again.

What did I learn today?

That there's one rule for the rich and powerful, and another rule for the rest of us. Total bastards control our countries and commit atrocious crimes, and they get clean away with it. And then they have the sheer fucking nerve to say that people don't respect the law.

Awards, Awards, Awards...

Sorry, chaps and chapesses- more shameless self-promotion awaits!

Two of my pieces- The Narrows and The School House- have been nominated for the British Fantasy Awards for Best Novella.

Very, very happy about this of course.

For anyone wanting to save money, We Fade To Grey is available as a free PDF download here until such time as voting closes. So if you want to read The Narrows, you know where to click. I'll see if I can sort out something similar for The School House.

Next post needs to be a) sooner, and b) about something other than giving my ego an outing. Hm. Better get my thinking cap on.

More Nice Things, And Some Shameless Self-Promotion

Just as I start getting interested in the world outside my front door again, there's more work- a back-jacket blurb for my story collection, plus pitches for radio plays to be produced at Dark Smile Productions' board meeting on Sunday (go check them out, you blog readers!) And soon I'll be having to put the finishing touches on the collection itself. And I was hoping to dash off a few short stories before getting down to the business of starting a second novel. There are times when I wish the day was 36 hours long instead of 24. But then again, as my ex-housemate used to say, it's better to be busy, so I've really no complaints.

Especially not since reading this review at GoodReads.com, by Richard Wright, of the anthology We Fade To Grey. Of course, if you don't want to check out the whole thing (modern life is so hectic, after all), here's the bit that's really brightened my day:

'Rounding it off, and worth buying the whole book for, is Simon Bestwick's The Narrows, a claustrophobic, unrelenting nightmare, bleak but compelling, that raises questions, and leaves you to answer them. Brilliant stuff, by any objective measure...'

For some reason, that story really seems to have struck home for a lot of readers. If you're wondering why- well, of course, you'll just have to buy the book, won't you?

Cough. Please excuse the shameless self-promotion above. But buy the book anyway.

...And The Tide Goes Out

It was a beautiful sunny day in early September when I got the call saying Abaddon Books were commissioning a novel from me. It's now a beautiful sunny day in early March, and it's now in their hands.

Yup, that's it. I did a final spellcheck this morning and emailed the final draft of my novel Tide of
Souls to Jon Oliver at Abaddon. 'Tis all in the lap of the Gods now... well, actually, it's in Jon's lap, but you know what I mean.

I caught the train to work that day- normally I get the bus, but the phone call had delayed me. For some reason I kept listening to Enola Gay by OMD over and over again on the journey. With a Tony-Blair-esque grin pasted to my face that probably traumatised small children for weeks afterwards. I remember the buzz of it- knowing I was going to get a novel published, but not yet embroiled in all the bloody hard work of making it happen. A couple of days later, of course, I had to buckle down and get on with it.

So, five months later, how do I feel? Odd, so far. It hasn't quite sunk in that it's over. Not completely over, of course- Jon will almost certainly what this or that tweaked or changed, there'll be proofs to read and lord knows what else- but virtually every spare hour of the past few weeks has been devoted to rewriting and redrafting.

Sometimes the writing process was the biggest buzz ever- at a couple of points I got bogged down and it was a long, arduous slog to get through it. So, not an unadulterated joy, but it was worth it.

The first draft, just so you know, was just shy of 117,000 words. The final version that went out today was 93,221. There was a lot of deadweight in that middle section.

Of course, at some point, I need to start thinking about a second novel. That'll come soon... and all the work will start again... but not today. Today I'm going to sniff the flowers, feel the sun on my face, see if my friends still remember who I am... and also, yes, I'll probably listen to Enola Gay. Over and over again.

Thanks for listening to me babble. Have a fun day!

Simon