One is the release of my new novel, Hunter's Game; this is my first tie-in novel, set in the universe of the Sniper Elite video game. Set in the dying days of the American Civil War, it centres on Hunter, a young but battle-scarred Union Army sniper, on a mission to stop a trainload of weapons that could change the course of the conflict. A mission that also becomes deeply personal, as the train is under the command of Colonel Grauermann - her former CO and mentor before he defected to the Confederacy, leaving Hunter to die.
It's a short, sweet novel, about 50,000 words, packed with tension and action - and, I hope, as dark and twisty as you'd hope for from me. I'm proud of it, anyway! You can buy it here.
The second thing is a new review of The Sound of the Dark, my third novel under my Daniel Church byline, from Shannon Fay over at Strange Horizons:
"Some of the descriptions of what Cally experiences are so vivid and
awful they actually made me shudder. The turn the book takes is all the more thrilling for how out of left field it is, which is why I’m trying to be as vague as possible here to protect the premise.... It’s also a rare case where the story doesn’t deflate once all is revealed. Here the horror is so well done that it can make the reader wonder if they have been cursed—whether being exposed even secondhand to the tapes has inflicted on them the same contagion with which the characters are plagued."
"I'd highly recommend it," Shannon concludes - and who am I to argue with a reviewer who clear has such good taste? :) You can read her review here.
See you soon, and thanks, as always, for your awesome support.
Last year, I had a lot of false starts and dead ends in the
novel-writing game, but I did manage to finish one book.
It was a new departure for me: my first tie-in novel,
written for Rebellion’s Sniper Elite Worlds series. And in some ways, it was
just what the doctor ordered: never underestimate the power of a cash advance,
with the balance payable on delivery, to motivate you into completing a story –
or finding one you want to tell in a submission brief. It also got me out of my
comfort zone, to tackle a type of story I wouldn’t normally write.
It’s called Hunter’s Game, and is set in the last
days of the American Civil War. Originally Rebellion were talking about
bringing it out in 2027. Normally there’s a very tight timescale on tie-in
stuff, which is why they tend to look for authors who can turn stuff around
quickly, but at a guess, with this being my first time, they wanted to leave
plenty of room to fix things if I handed in a complete mess.
I guess I didn’t, anyway, because it comes out next month.
Hunter’s Game will be released on 4th June,
and for those of you based in North-West England, there will be a book launch at
Write Blend in Waterloo, Liverpool, on Friday 5th June.
Who will win Hunter's Game?
1865, Texas. The American Civil War is over but a final
pocket of defiance remains. Despite the recent surrender of General Lee, a
secret plan is hatched for the Texan insurgents to receive a last shipment of
deadly munitions that could spell ruin for the Union forces facing them.
Major Sparanero, of the Union, uses one of his undercover
agents to discover that the weapons are being sent by train. There will only be
one chance to prevent the munitions being put into the field – as the train
crosses the fragile bridge over Tophet Gorge. Before his capture the undercover
agent sets a bomb beneath the train and marks it for a sharpshooter.
Hunter – a disillusioned deserter – is the only one
skilled enough to make that shot. Bribed by Sparanero to return one final time,
Hunter is charged with destroying the train. But an enemy colonel with whom
Hunter has history discovers the mission, and so begins a deadly game of hide
and seek…
As regular readers of this blog (both of them) will know, each December I usually post a round-up of the work I've had published for the first time that year. Partly so I can pop my head up and take a look at what has been achieved - and, yes, to show what work of mine is eligible for any awards that are going.
Anyway, for various reasons I wasn't in a great place at the back end of last year, so I didn't get round to doing such a post. So here, belatedly, it is now.
Novels
The Sound of the Dark (as by 'Daniel Church) Angry Robot Books.
Short Stories:
'The Witch of November' in Nightmare Abbey 8, ed. Tom English.
'The Last Train' in Nightmare Abbey 9, ed. Tom English.
'Polodski's Bride in The Joining, ed. Jacob Steven Mohr
I wrote one novel last year - my first tie-in book, in fact! - which I think is slated for 2027. Details will be made available in due course. I started and abandoned various novel-length projects; this year will be hopefully be the year of finishing some!
Stewart Hotston, in his own words: "I’m a short and long fiction writer repped by John Baker atBell Lomax Moreton. I am also one of the co-owners of Flow State Games which runs (among other games)Curious Pastimes, one of the UK’s biggest fest larps with c.1500 players at our main events. I spend a lot of time writing for that and it’s one of my joys in life – I believe that anyone who’s played video games or D&D would love LARP.
My stories are about odd situations that are bigger than the people in them. They’re typically Sci Fi, Fantasy and often quite weird. They’re about changing the world and realising that we can all have a part in that. My non-fiction tends to be about these very same subjects."
Stewart's very kindly agreed to talk to me about his new novel, Project Hanuman, which was released yesterday by Angry Robot. Read on...
1) So, what’s new from you?
Project Hanuman! It’s a new space opera but also a retelling of
how Hanuman lost his powers. It’s set within a utopian civilisation called the
Arcology who span much of the galaxy but live mostly online. It’s not too much
of a spoiler (welcome to chapter 1) to say they get destroyed at the beginning
and the rest of the story is about a group of survivors trying to wrestle with
what’s happened.
2) How did it come about?
I’ve been wanting to write a space opera for a long time but I’ve
never quite figured out the story. Part of the reason for that is I wanted to
bring the experience of a far off galactic civilisation up to date – using the
most cutting edge physics. Thing is, there’s a lot of physics out there that
most people haven’t ever heard of and much of it is so counter-intuitive that
writing about it could feel entirely alienating in a bad way.
After my BFS and Subjective Chaos nominated novella, The Entropy of Lossfrom NewCon Press, seemed to find a great audience I started to think I had a
way forward – which was to concentrate on just how strange the idea of
information is within mathematics and modern physics.
3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.
The thing about hard science is that it’s hard. Popular science
books have to flatten and simplify it – if for no other reason than the
language of these things is mathematics and if you can’t speak that much of
what modern physics has to say about the universe is beyond reasonable reach.
You obviously can’t write that on the page and expect anyone to be
interested or for it to make for a thrilling story. I can imagine people
thinking, oh, this is ‘hard science’ and switching off immediately as it not
being for them. That’s the furthest thing from what I want to achieve.
Fortunately for me I’ve been long enthralled by the story of
Hanuman, spiritual child of Vayu the wind god. There are many stories about how
Hanuman lost his powers but they all centre on someone needing to learn how to
control their power – not in the sense of flying better but in the sense of
power without control is dangerous to everyone around us.
This was my way in – a fantastic story about a powerful being
reduced to nothing and having to learn about responsibility from the ground up.
4) What was
your favourite part of the process?
Figuring
out the main characters. Prab and Kercher (together with Hanuman). Prab was my
everybody, the ordinary person thrust into astonishing events. Kercher’s my
reject, the one who is torn about the system they’re supposed to save.
As
always, a great story has to be driven by the characters not the setting.
5) What was the toughest part of it?
Navigating
that line between the madness of how modern science describes the universe
and creating a story in which everything feels interesting and familiar enough
to have you turning the page.
6) Is there a theme running through it?
When
big events dwarf us how do we find meaning, how do we make a difference when it
feels like we have no power. To be honest, that feels pretty important to me
right now.
7)
What are you working on now?
I
have a bunch of stuff coming! Next year I have a Cold War SF novel and
following swiftly on its heels the first of an Epic Fantasy duology set for
2027. Alongside those will also be a light-hearted portal fantasy series also
due to launch in 2027.
I'm exhausted just reading that list! Thanks so much for talking to me, Stewart, and here's hoping Project Hanuman is the first of many huge successes!
Just a quick heads-up to let you all know that my story 'The Witch of November' is the lead tale in the latest edition of Tom English's excellent journal Nightmare Abbey!
'The Witch of November' is another of my tales of Bone Street, that strange little corner of Manchester that appears on no maps of the city, which also featured in my story in the previous issue of Nightmare Abbey, 'The Hadrian Hornpipe.'
It sits alongside stories and articles by John Llewellyn Probert, Stephen Volk, Steve Duffy, Helen Grant, Gary McMahon and many many more.
By PiRGoif - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/ w/index.php?curid=141784673
With December very nearly upon us, it's time for one of those obligatory annual posts where I review what came out this year (other than me...)
Novels
The Ravening (Angry Robot Books, as by Daniel Church).
Novella
Jaeger (Black Shuck Books, follow-up to my 2020 novella Roth-Steyr)
Stories
The Manktelow Timepiece (ParSec #10)
Territory (Nightmare Abbey #6)
The Hadrian Hornpipe (Nightmare Abbey #7)
Patreon
Hungry Is The Hunter
Where The River Runs Red
A verse story, 'Last Christmas', was published on Patreon on 22nd December 2023. Technically last year, but after the cut-off point for most anthologies, so I mention it here.
And that's the lot! Not too shabby, I guess. Onwards and upwards. :)
Dusting off the blog again, because it seems like a good idea...
So the past week or two has seen one story newly published, another accepted, and an upcoming anthology appearance announced!
The newly published story is 'The Manktelow Timepiece,' which appears in issue 10 of ParSec magazine. It's one of my Bone Street stories; others include 'And You Heard The Rattling Death Train' in Railroad Tales and 'Are We Going Under?' in ParSec #6 (and later ParSec In Print.) This was actually the first of the stories I wrote, but I'd almost despaired of finding a home for it when Ian Whates snapped it up (thanks once more, Ian!) So I'm truly proud and delighted to see it appear at last. You can buy ParSec #10 here.
The latest acceptance is 'Territory,' a funny tale whose basic premise had been with me since about 2006 or thereabouts till I finally managed to do justice to it. That notched up its fair share of rejections too, but has finally a loving home in the haunted halls of Nightmare Abbey, in which it'll be appearing in the summer! A big thank you to Tom English for taking it on.
And finally, the anthology appearance! I'm honoured to announce that my story 'Bait' is being reprinted by the great Ellen Datlow in her new anthology of psychological horror, Fears, alongside works by Annie Neugebauer, Josh Malerman, Dale Bailey, Steve Duffy, Margo Lanagan, Bracken MacLeod, Tim Nickels, Stewart O’Nan, Priya Sharma, John Patrick Higgins, Livia Llewellyn, Laird Barron, Theresa DeLucci, Sharon Gosling, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Cluley, Carole Johnstone, Hailey Piper, Charles Birkin and Stephen Graham Jones. That's bloody good company to be in. To feast your eyes on that cover in full, click here. If you'd like to pre-order the anthology, here's the link.
My new novella, Jaeger, will be published on 29th February by Black Shuck Books.
It's a follow-up to my earlier novella Roth-Steyr, picking up the trail of its narrator, Valerie Varden, a few months after the events of the first story.
Trained as an assassin by the crumbling Habsburg Empire to fight a secret war that began in the last days of World War One, Val's spent a lifetime trying to forget all she once she knew. But some things are never forgotten...
Fleeing across a darkening Europe, Val finds being hunted by a relentless, determined and powerful enemy - one who, wherever she goes, wants to see her dead. To survive, she'll need to draw on all her old, lethal skills and become the hunter herself. A Jaeger.
“A worthy sequel to the author’s Roth-Steyr, packed with action and intrigue. Alongside a lethal and fascinating protagonist, Bestwick drives us without pause through the tangled remnants of a secret war over a century old — remnants drenched in blood, madness and memories. Fast-paced, engrossing, and extremely satisfying. No one truly survives the Sindelar Gate.”
John Linwood Grant, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Where All is Night, And Starless.
"With the structure of a spy novel, a heart of cosmic horror, and an elegy at its core, Simon Bestwick's relentlessly paced and meticulously researched Jaeger hurtles across Europe from the turn of the last century to the present day in this gripping, satisfying follow up to Roth-Steyr."
Lynda E. Rucker, author of The Moon Will Look Strange and Now It's Dark.
“Jaeger is a time-hopping, occult-tinged thriller featuring a deadly, transcontinental game of cat-and-mouse showcasing a wealth of brilliantly crafted set-pieces. It’s also a meditation on love, loss, grief and immortality. It ticked so many boxes for me that I ran out of boxes. I loved it."
It's been nearly a year since I last posted here, mainly because my alter ego Mr Church has had a lot to say for himself over on his website. He's been pretty busy writing, too, but the Bestwick byline hasn't been completely dormant
2023's been comparatively quiet on the publication front: another of those 'duck in the mist' years where a lot of work's been getting done, but the results won't be visible for a while yet. Nonetheless, a few things made it into print, so here's the obligatory round-up of any work that saw daylight for the first time this year.
Stories
'Are We Going Under?,' published digitally in Parsec #6, January 2023, edited by Ian Whates. Reprinted in book form by the same editor in Parsec in Print, September 2023.
'Kingbreaker,' published in Shakespeare Unleashed, edited by James Aquilone, July 2023.
'The Flight of Ravens,' published in Unknown Heroes versus the
Forces of Darkness, edited by Will Jacques, April 2023.
Patreon
Most of my Patreon output's consisted of a new serial story, Dogman, which is still ongoing. Some stories have appeared, but most of these have been previously published pieces, with the following exceptions:
A fair bit happened, just for me personally (I'm not even going to try to summarise the year's political upheavals or all the cool people we lost.) It went something like this:
I got an agent (properly speaking, I signed with the Ki Agency last year, but couldn't officially announce it, for Reasons, till well into this year.) I'm still with Ki and looking forward to more excitement in 2023, but now represented by agency founder Meg Davis, as Anne Perry has moved on to become the new commissioning editor at Jo Fletcher Books. Anne has been an absolute star and I hope we get to work together again in the future.
I wrote two complete novels in 2022, and am partway through a third. That took up the bulk of my time and energy work-wise this year, but I also managed to place three stories with publications due out in 2023: 'Are We Going Under?' will appear inParSec Magazine, 'Kingbreaker' inShakespeare Unleashed, and 'The Flight Of Ravens' inUnknown Superheroes Vs The Forces of Darkness.
On top of all that, I started a podcast, No Darkness But Ours, with my friend and colleague Gemma Files, in which we discuss horror in all its forms. Topics so far have included snowbound horror, the work and legacy of M.R. James, and Folk Horror. We're currently in the middle of a discussion on Queer Horror, with more to come. You can check our work out here.
Under my own byline, the following was published this year:
Short Fiction:
Nemesis of Wire (Phantasmagoria #20, ed. Trevor Kennedy)
Bait (Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, ed. Maxim Jakubowski)
Mummy Calls (Classic Monsters Unleashed, ed. James Aquilone)
Work published on Patreon:
Short fiction:
This Life, This Death
The Night of the Dog-Headed Man
The Death of Norma Lake (fragment from early draft of Bonewalker)
Low Over Water
The One You Feed
Adaptive Evolution In The Lancashire Grindylow: A Report By Alexandra Thraves Ph.D
The Bactrian
Verse:
Submariner
Beacon 46-A
The Christmas Kiss
In addition, my story 'Redwater,' from The Alchemy Press Book Of Horrors 3: A Miscellany Of Monsters, was reprinted in Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror Of The Year #14, making three years in a row that my work's appeared there.
Thank you to all the editors who've published me this year, to Anne and Meg, to Gemma for her support on the podcast, and to all readers and listeners who've supported my work by reading or listening to it.
Finally, and most of all, to my lovely wife, Cate, without whom none of this would have been possible.
"Unquestionably a must-read. It felt like diving into the best and most compulsive creepypasta, or the weird world of Missing 411 and disappearances in the wilderness: full of questionable narrators, conflicting explanations, and the unspooling realisation that whatever haunts the Bala Triangle has been doing so at least as far back as recorded history.
...A propulsive narrative and a compulsive read... Bestwick is to be applauded for creating a pitch-perfect creepypasta in book form, full of unsettling incidents and genuinely scary scenes of folk – and cosmic – terror."
Along the way, there are comparisons to Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves, Matt Weselowski's Six Stories novels, and (deep breath) ARTHUR MACHEN.
That's Arthur Machen, as in The White People, and The Great God Pan.
I could not be more delighted.
In other news, Tuesday saw the paperback launch of The Way of the Worm, the stunning conclusion to Ramsey Campbell's trilogy The Three Births of Daoloth. Ramsey's a marvellous raconteur, with a wealth of insights and anecdotes; he needs very little encouragement to share them, but somebody had to provide that, and it turned out to be me!
The event was held at Blackwell's Bookshop in Liverpool, and was followed up by a very nice (and very large) Chinese meal at Mr Chili's, a brilliant Sichuan restaurant that you really should pay a visit to if you're ever in town. Phil, the excellent store manager at Blackwell's (ably assisted by James Lefebure) livestreamed the event to Facebook, and you can watch it here if you're so inclined.
I'm delighted to announce that my story 'Redwater,' which appeared in The Alchemy Press Book Of Horrors 3: A Miscellany Of Monsters last year, is to be reprinted in the 14th volume of Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. It leads off a line-up of brilliant authors, including some of my favourite contemporary horror writers. Volume 14 promises to be a dark and scary treat.
That table of contents in full:
Redwater -- Simon Bestwick
Caker’s Man -- Matthew Holness
Black Leg -- Glen Hirshberg
The Offering -- Michael Marshall Smith
Fox Girl -- Lee Murray
Shuck -- G. V. Anderson
The Hunt at Rotherdam -- A. C. Wise
Dancing Sober in the Dust -- Steve Toase
The God Bag -- Christopher Golden
The Strathantine Imps -- Steve Duffy
The Quizmasters -- Gerard McKeown
All Those Lost Days -- Brian Evenson
“Elephant Subjected to the Predations of a Mentalist” – Dir. B.S. Stockton, 1921
And “Ol’ Will’s Birthday Bash and Dither Family Reunion” – Dir. Various, 1952.
-- Jonathan Raab
Three Sisters Bog -- Eóin Murphy
The Steering Wheel Club -- Kaaron Warren
The King of Stones -- Simon Strantzas
Stolen Property -- Sarah Lamparelli
Shards -- Ian Rogers
Chit Chit -- Steve Toase
Poor Butcher-Bird -- Gemma Files
Trap -- Carly Holmes
I’ll Be Gone By Then -- Eric LaRocca
Jack-in-the-Box -- Robin Furth
Tiptoe -- Laird Barron
With 'Below' appearing in Volume 12 and 'A Treat For Your Last Day' in Volume #13, 'Redwater' marks three consecutive appearances for yours truly in Best Horror of the Year - a hat trick! I am, as I said above, absolutely delighted.
A lot of alterations were made to the original MS of 'Redwater', not all of which I was able to correct in time for publication; Ellen has very kindly allowed me to rectify them all for the reprint, and so Best Horror of the Year will be publishing my preferred version of the text.
The paperback of Ramsey Campbell's novel The Way of the Worm will be launched this month at Blackwell's Bookshop in Liverpool. I'll be interviewing the big man (or burbling meaninglessly; anyway, I'll be there), so why not come along? Tickets are available here.
The time: Tuesday 29th March, 2022, 6.00 - 7.30pm.
The place: Blackwell's Bookshop, Peach Street, Liverpool, L3 5UH
"Join us on the 29th March when the legendary Horror writer Ramsey Campbell will be in conversation with Simon Bestwick
About the Author:
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. Three of his novels have been filmed. In 2021 appreciation of his collected works, The Washington Post said, " taken together, they constitute one of the monumental accomplishments of popular fiction". Three of his novels have been filmed. Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", and Robert Hadji has described him as "perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition", while S. T. Joshi stated, "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."
About the book: Book 3 in the Three Births of Daoloth trilogy.The present day, or something very like it. Dominic Sheldrake has retired from lecturing and lives on his own. His son Toby is married with a small daughter. The occultist Noble family are more active than ever. Their cult now openly operates as the Church of the Eternal Three, and has spread worldwide. The local branch occupies the top floors of Starview Tower, a Liverpool waterfront skyscraper. To Dominic's dismay, Toby and his wife Claudine are deeply involved in it, and he suspects they are involving their small daughter Macy too. Dominic lets his son persuade him to attend a meeting of the church, where he encounters all three generations of the Nobles. Although Christian Noble is almost a century old, he's more vigorous than ever - inhumanly so. The family takes turns to preach an apocalyptic sermon that hints at dark secrets masked by the Bible and at the future that lies in wait. In a bid to investigate further Dominic undergoes the rite the church offers its members, which confers the ability to travel psychically through time. Before he's able to flee back to the present he has a vision of the monstrous fate that's in store for the world.Dominic discovers a secret he's sure the Nobles won't want to be made public. Although he has retired from the police, Jim helps him establish the truth, and Roberta publishes it on her online blog. It's the subject of a court case, the results of which seem to defeat the Nobles, only for them to return in a dreadfully transformed shape. Now Dominic and his friends are at their mercy, and is there anywhere in the world to hide? Even if they manage somehow to deal with the Nobles, there may be no escaping or preventing the alien apocalypse that all the events of the trilogy have been bringing ever closer..."
In keeping with the Lovecraftian theme, I only learned today that there's an Iron Maiden song inspired by Ramsey's story 'The Inhabitant of the Lake.' I'm just listening to it now - so why don't you as well?
As you'll all know, Russian forces began an invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, in a blatant act of military aggression by Dobby Vladimir Putin. (That's the only joke I'll be making in this post, so enjoy it.)
The Ukrainian military - and people - are putting up the kind of resistance that can only be described as awe-inspiring. Grandmothers give sunflower seeds (the national flower of Ukraine) to Russian soldiers, telling them to put them in their pockets so that sunflowers will at least grow when they die. A young soldier, Vitaly Skakun Volodymyrovych, sacrificed himself to blow up a vital bridge and delay the approach of Russian tanks. The tiny garrison of Snake Island in the Black Sea died to the last man rather than surrender to a Russian warship (and actually turned up the volume on their loudspeakers to make their last words - "Russian warship, go f**k yourself!'" as loud and clear as possible.)
War is vile, and brings out the worst qualities of humanity. Sometimes, though, it also shows some of the best - courage, self-sacrifice, endurance and compassion. But acts of self-sacrifice, such as Volodymyrovych's and the Snake Island garrison's, shouldn't be necessary.
How will this end? I have no idea. In the meantime, I've been trying to find out what I can do as an individual to support Ukraine? It hardly needs saying that sticking a Ukrainian flag on your Facebook profile pic isn't going to help anyone in concrete terms.
I don't know about you, but as well as being a complete physical coward I'm also something of a physical wreck, and wouldn't be much use to any army except as a sandbag. So here are some options:
The Red Cross have launched a crisis appeal, which you can donate to here.
Care International are providing emergency relief for their partner People In Need. You can donate here.
SumOfUs are also taking donations for aid to Ukraine here.
For anyone who wants to involve themselves more directly, the Kyiv Independent has an article here on how to support the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force as a foreigner, including enlistment. (This article is a month old and may be out of date, but if nothing else might at least shut up a few of the inevitable tedious bar-room commandoes who'll be spouting on about how they'd show the Russians a thing or two.)
ETA: Unicef taking donations for children in Ukraine here.
ETA: Ukrainian feminist Olesia Sagaydak on how to help women in Ukraine.
ETA: Donate to UN Populations Fund to support women and girls impacted by the conflict here.
Countries neighbouring or close to Ukraine such as Poland and Estonia are waiving visa restrictions for Ukrainian nationals fleeing the war - including pet passports in Poland's case - as has the Irish government. The UK government has, (of course, being arseholes) done no such thing (although Boris Johnson did light 10 Downing Street up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag last night - words fail.) Change.org has a petition here to get them to waive restrictions as well.
ETA: Link to Support Ukraine Now, which details multiple ways for foreigners to support Ukraine, here.
Please share this post as widely as possible. If you're aware of any other ways in which ordinary citizens in the UK can provide any form of concrete support to Ukraine, please let me know and I'll update this post - I want to make it as helpful a resource as I can.
Whatabouters and Putin-apologists will be told to get stuffed.
Well, the New Year is already no longer so new, rushing by at a rate of knots; we're already a week into the second month of it.
Various things are in motion at this end; I finished one novel on New Year's Eve and have a few last revisions to do, and am about 30,000 words into what will hopefully be a new one.
The new issue of Phantasmagoriamagazine is out, featuring my story 'Nemesis Of Wire' alongside new fiction by Caitlin Marceau, Evangelia Papanikou, Mike Chinn and many others. 'Nemesis Of Wire' is a Christmas-themed chiller (the issue was originally slated for December) set in a trench on the Western Front in World War One, where amid all the state-sanctioned slaughter, the legacy of one heinous act still lingers...
Reviews of Ellen Datlow's body horror anthology Body Shockscontinue to appear, including this one from Anthony Cardino, which concludes: "If I had to choose the most disturbing story in the anthology in terms of body transformation and trauma, it would be a three way tie between Simon Bestwick’s “Welcome to Mengele’s,” which involves bodily abuse of clones; Cody Goodfellow’s “Atwater,” which contains both the most disturbing birthing scene I’ve read and a scene reminiscent of the climax of the movie Akira which made me physically ill the first time I saw it on VHS; and Michael Blumlein’s “Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report.”"
I still haven't settled down to read Body Shocks, believe it or not, but I'm looking forward to it, and I'm inordinately pleased that a story I wrote all the way back in 1998 is still disturbing the hell out of people.
Reviews of Devils of London have shown up thick and fast, with Linda Nagle raving over it at Ginger Nuts of Horror and more qualified, though generally positive, reviews from the Future Fire and Horrified. I suspect they're right that there maybe should have been more to this story than there was; maybe I need to return to the theme in a novel. Or maybe I'm just too quick to believe every criticism. Even if I am, though, I kind of like the idea of exploring the premise at greater depth and in greater detail...
Finally - and I've been meaning to blog about this all year! - I was delighted to find I'd made two people's 'top ten' list for 2021.
On Twitter, Ian Duff listed 'ten books I read for the first time in 2021 and really enjoyed', which were:
1) Last One At The Party - Bethany Clift 2) Roth-Steyr - Simon Bestwick 3) One Day All This Will Be Yours - Adrian Tchaikovsky 4) Never - Ken Follett 5) Tidepool - Nicole Willson 6) The End Of Men - Christina Sweeney-Baird 7) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 8) Zero Day Code - John Birmingham 9) The Burning Girls - CJ Tudor 10) Nine Ghosts - Simon Bestwick
Making the list twice is brilliant enough, and even better when I'm sharing it with the likes of Margaret Atwood, CJ Tudor, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Ken Follett...
And last but far from least, Tony Jones published his Top Ten Reads of 2021 at Horror DNA, in which A Different Kind Of Light leads the list, alongside work by Adam Nevill, Ronald Malfi and Philip Fracassi:
"A Different Kind of Light is top-heavy with genuinely standout creepy scenes which leave a lasting impression once the final page is turned... Out of the blue Ash receives a message from Danie, an old university friend, who is seeking help in authenticating a piece of vintage sports film footage, which features the aftermath of the 1955 Le Mans Disaster. In this crash, the driver Pierre Levegh swerved into spectators, killing 84 and injuring 120 in the deadliest accident in motor racing history. The pair agree that there is no way this footage could have been faked and investigate further, buying the oddity on behalf of a third-party collector.
Building horror novels out of real historical events is a tricky business and A Different Kind of Light totally nails it. When Ash realises there is something very dodgy with the film, his research takes the story into unpredictable directions, with the balance of the developing supernatural storyline convincingly interconnected to the dynamics between the two main characters, and an enticing investigation into the origins of the film.This haunting novella will remain with you long after the killer ending."
All of which makes me a happy man, as we forge ahead into the uncharted waters of 2022....
