Things of the Week 9th October 2020: Roth-Steyr author copies, first After Sundown review, Hannah's Bookshelf, Back to Work, Omnium Gatherum Online Panel

It's been an eventful week or three.

My author copies of Roth-Steyr have arrived. They are things of beauty and you should all want one of your own. :) (Cate took the accompanying picture of Your Humble Scribe with his books and posted them to the Twitter dot com... with the caption 'Proud boy with his books.' Which could have been better phrased and timed. But what the heck.) 

The first review of Mark Morris' anthology After Sundown is up at Booklist: "This rich and masterful collection of horror highlights both up-and-coming and established authors in an interesting twist on the standard anthology [...] Highly recommended for longstanding horror fans and those readers who may not think horror is for them. There is something for everyone in this one."

I'm being interviewed by the delightful Hannah Kate on Hannah's Bookshelf tomorrow (Saturday 10th October) between 2 and 4 pm (UK time.) I'll be talking about Roth-Steyr, as you probably guessed. It'll be available to stream at a later date, so I'll post a link when available.

I'll also be flapping my gums tomorrow on Zoom, where I'll be recording as part of a live panel for Omnium Gatherum Books, to mark the launch of new novellas by Mark Kirkbride and Tom Johnstone. The three of us will be joined by Omnium Gatherum (OG?) supremo Kate Jonez and the fantabulous Lynda E. Rucker. Watch this space for further details.

I went back to work at my day job this month, after months off sick. So far it's actually been quite all right, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of it I remembered or came back.

In other news, my beloved friend Vicky Morris has won first place in the Aurora Prize for Poetry!  Vicky's a lovely person who has done an incalculable amount of work to encourage and develop young writers in South Yorkshire, and it's wonderful to see her getting some much-deserved recognition for her own work. Love and hugs to you, Vic! x

And my even more beloved Cate Gardner had a new short story, 'Liesel', published in Not One Of Us, a fiction market she's been trying to crack for years. Love you and proud of you, babe.

The Lockdown with... Tom Johnstone

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

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

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

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

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

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

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

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

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

3. What was the first thing you had published?

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

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

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

5. …and which makes you cringe?

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

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

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

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

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

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

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

8. What are you working on now?

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

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

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.

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? 

The Lowdown with... Kate Jonez

Kate Jonez writes dark fantasy fiction. Ceremony of Flies published by DarkFuse is a 2015 Shirley Jackson Award finalist. Her Bram Stoker (R) Award nominated novel Candy House is available at Amazon in print and ebook. She is also chief editor at Omnium Gatherum a small press dedicated to publishing unique dark fantasy, weird fiction and horror in print and ebook. Several Omnium Gatherum books have been nominated for awards. Watch for Simon Bestwick's Angels of the Silences available Jan. 2016.

1. Tell us three things about yourself. 
I have a completely useless form of synesthesia. When I'm working on a repetitive physical task like painting a wall or laying stones along a garden path, whatever I'm listening to at the time gets stuck in the fabric of what I'm working on. I remember the words when I touch the thing. For example when I reframed a sketch I did years ago, snippets of CSI dialog came back to me when I touched the paper. This sounds like it could be useful but it's really not. I have audiobooks and TV shows stuck to all sort of things in my house I have to be careful what I touch or I'll go down a rabbit hole.
I like the outdoors but I don't want to get any on me.
I enjoy a nice spreadsheet list.

2. What was the first thing you had published? 
My first sale was a tale of otherworldly poker playing sold to a one of those magazines you get free in casinos. I made a ton of money and was sure, in no time, I'd be rich from short story writing. I was wrong.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of? 

It would probably be easier to choose my favorite child. I prefer the one who cleans up around the house and isn't always pestering me for money. If I had to pick just one piece of writing I'd have to pick my short story "Poor Me and Ted". When I reread stories after I've been away for them for a while to reprint them or do a reading I almost always want to fix them. I've never felt that way about this one, so it must be the best. An audio version performed by the fabulous Tatiana Gomberg is available on Pseudopod. 

4. ...and which makes you cringe? 
I wrote this screenplay once about angsty lesbian vampires... I called it Deep Red because nothing has ever been titled that before, right?

5. What's a normal writing day like? 
I try to get 2 or more hours of writing done before noon. I always seem to have a long list of other things I'm supposed to be doing, so many days this is a challenge. I also try to devote 5 days a month just to writing. On a full day of writing I've learned I have to just unplug the wireless so I won't be tempted by the lovely, lovely internet.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who's never read you before pick up first? 
I'd recommend Ceremony of Flies published by DarkFuse. It moves along at a nice pace and Emily and her social commentary is a lot of fun to spend time with.

7. What are you working on now? 
I've just finished Swamp Logic, a modern day gothic tale. Because of a series unusual, perhaps supernatural, events a vintage loving LA fashonista finds herself and her precocious 13-year-old son in the once grand mansion of her husband's eccentric family deep in the Louisiana bayou. She's cut off from modern conveniences and communication and must find the strength to survive in a world where magic is not only real but deadly. This was a lot of fun to write. I especially enjoyed studying up on Cajun expressions. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

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!