Things of the Week Friday 20th March 2020: Free Fiction on Patreon and PDF Download, plus And Cannot Come Again News

I hope you're all keeping well. I've been signed off work for a further period, which is probably for the best as the coronavirus pandemic continues - in addition to my MH issues, Cate and I are both in 'at risk' categories...

StokerCon, like most events scheduled over the next few months, has been cancelled, but the new edition of And Cannot Come Again - including the previously unpublished stories 'In The Shelter' and 'Black Is The Morning, White Is The Wand' - will still be released by Graeme Reynolds' Horrific Tales next month.

In the meantime...

With increasing numbers of people forced to remain at home, a number of authors are making work available to readers either free of charge or at reduced rates. They include Sarah Pinborough, who's made her early horror novels for Leisure Books - The Taken, Breeding Ground, Feeding Ground and Tower Hill available, or Adrian Tchaikovsky, who's put together an ad hoc collection of short fiction, including a collaboration with the fab and lovely Keris McDonald. This article by Philip Fracassi for the Book and Film Globe lists a bunch of others.

In the same spirit, I've decided to make my two Gray Friar Press collections, Pictures Of The Dark and The Condemned, likewise available as free downloads. The Google Drive folder containing them - and any future titles I add - is here. In addition, I've made the fiction I've uploaded to my Patreon page, including the novelette Roads Heading South and the SF/horror/comedy/thriller The Mancunian Candidate, available to the public at no charge.

Hope these provide some enjoyment. If you have work you're making available in this way that hasn't been mentioned here or in the Fracassi article, let me know and I'll add a link below.

Keep well, take care and hold steady, and have a good weekend.

Simon x

Things of the Week 14th February 2020: Sean Hogan, Sarah Pinborough, Graveyard Shift, World Fantasy Awards

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody, for those celebrating it (and Happy Friday whether you are or not!)

Just over nine years ago today, my novella Angels Of The Silences saw print for the first time, as a chapbook from Pendragon Press. It sold out at some speed, and was unavailable until those lovely people at Omnium Gatherum reissued it in 2016. Last year it came out for a third time, as part of my collection And Cannot Come Again, from ChiZine Press.

Readers of this blog will be only too aware of what happened with ChiZine, but for anyone who missed out on getting a copy of the collection, there are only two months to go until the new edition of And Cannot Come Again (the ebook of which is available for preorder) from Horrific Tales gets launched at StokerCon in Scarborough in April.

Good and/or interesting things are happening in respect of a couple of friends of mine:

Sarah Pinborough's new novel Dead To Her has just been released in the US. If past books like 13 Minutes, Behind Her Eyes and Cross Her Heart are any indicator, we're in for a treat.

Sean Hogan is the man responsible for the excellent supernatural thriller The Devil's Business and the documentary Future Shock! The Story Of 2000AD (not to mention the co-writer of the superb The Borderlands.) You can also avail yourself of his services as a script doctor/reader/editor, should you wish. And if you're after a free sample of what the man can do, check out his short films The Thing: 27,000 Hours and the cracking little ghost story We Always Find Ourselves In The Sea, both starring his 'good luck charm', the Northern Irish actor Billy Clarke, whom I've admired ever since watching his performance in Outpost 11.

A couple of developments on the home front have made me smile: Nancy Baker at ChiZine has informed me that And Cannot Come Again has been entered for the World Fantasy Awards. I doubt it'll stand any chance at all given the breadth and quality of work out there, but it's nice to be even slightly in the running.

And Catherine Cavendish, in a guest blog for Kendall Reviews, has listed eight favourite horror novels: alongside works by Ramsey Campbell, Adam Nevill, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Hand, Ronald Malfi, J.H. Moncrieff and Hunter Shea, she lists The Feast Of All Souls. That's pretty damn good company to find myself in - so thank you, Catherine!

Well, that's all the news fit to print for now. Have a good weekend!

We Belong

Laura Mauro. Photograph by Michael Kelly.

So there goes another Fantasycon. Another brilliant event, another brilliant year.

Belonging is important. Finding a tribe, a group of people who share your values, the things you care about and love.

This is a time of year when absent friends come to mind. Today, the day after the con ended, Facebook reminded us all it's Graham Joyce's birthday. October was the birth month, too, of Joel Lane; November will be the fifth anniversary of his death.

Talking to the fantasy author James Bennett this weekend, he told me about his first Fantasycon. He was nervous, if not terrified - a young gay man, taking his first steps into a community he wasn't sure would welcome him or not. Joel saw that, took his hands and said, simply: "You belong here."

Yeah. That sounds like Joel.

That word came up again this morning, while I was reading different people's con reports on Facebook. The author Eliza Chan spoke about how the convention put to bed any fears that she didn't belong.

The British SFFH community gets a bad press in certain quarters, and it isn't deserved. I've always found it to be a friendly, welcoming and open community. No-one who loves the fiction we create and celebrate at Fantasycon should ever feel as though they have no place here. They do. I hope no-one has ever been made to feel otherwise.

The awards ceremony was, for me, a high point of the convention, when I got to see my dear friend, the lovely, talented and ridiculously modest Laura Mauro win the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story for the brilliant 'Looking For Laika'. I don't think I've ever seen someone more genuinely gobsmacked to win. (And I've seen a few.)

A couple of people who are normally mainstays of the convention (for me, anyway) couldn't make it this year - Lynda E. Rucker and Sarah Pinborough. The August Derleth Award went to Victor LaValle's The Changeling, but I was standing by as Sarah's stunt double in case it went to Behind Her Eyes. She sent me a short acceptance speech, and here's part of it:

"Fantasycon as ever evolves and changes and we may bicker on the internet and get riled about stupid things that mainly don't matter, but when push comes to shove, we are a family. Fantasycon has been there since the very start of my writing career, and it was through coming to Fantasycon every year that I made so many good friends, and gained so much inspiration to try harder and do better."

Yep. Exactly that.

So: if you love horror, SF or fantasy, Fantasycon is a place where you will be welcome. Doesn't matter what the colour of your skin is, your gender, your sexual orientation, whether you're cis or trans. Never doubt that you belong here. And never hesitate to let others know that they do too.

Behind Her Eyes By Sarah Pinborough

The fab Ms. P.

Sarah Pinborough is an author whose career basically embodies the term ‘levelling up’. After emerging in the mid-2000s with a succession of pulpy supernatural thrillers from Leisure Books, she made her mark as a writer to be taken seriously with the award-winning and poignant novella The Language Of Dying. Since then she’s gone from strength to strength, penning (among others) a dystopian crime trilogy featuring the fallen angels (The Dog-Faced Gods trilogy) a brace of Victorian murder mysteries (Mayhem and Murder) with a supernatural tinge, the devastating novel The Death House and a first-class YA thriller, 13 Minutes. Throughout, she’s aimed higher, got better and better, and marked herself out as a name to watch.

Pinborough’s latest, Behind Her Eyes, has been spoken of as her breakthrough book, one that will propel her name in among the front rank of British thriller writers. And they may be right.

Single mum Louise feels as though her life’s stopped: it consists of her son Adam, her job as a doctor’s receptionist, the occasional joint and bottle of wine with her friend Sophia – and that’s it. Then she meets David – attractive, charming and sexy. Only one problem: he’s her new boss.

Louise begins an affair with David, but also – despite her better judgement – befriends his wife Adele. Trying to prevent her lover and her friend from finding out about about one another, Louise is drawn deeper into the secrets and lies of the couple’s marriage. Is David, her gentle and charming lover, a controlling and abusive husband? Or is Adele more than she seems?

Well, that would be telling.

The most frustrating thing about Behind Her Eyes – frustrating in a good way – is that it’s hard to describe why it’s such a good read without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure yet. That’s not just because of the plot’s twists and turns, although it has plenty of them and they’re done very well – there’s a reason #wtfthatending has been trending constantly about the novel. It’s more than that.

What drives this book is a simple, but very unwelcome and unsettling truth: you can never really

know for sure what goes on in someone else’s head. Your closest friend, your most intimate lover, your spouse of years or decades: they’ve all got secrets that you’ll never find out. You just have to make your peace with that and hope none of those secrets are dangerous. But in Behind Her Eyes, of course, they are.

Which is what makes it so much more than just another clever thriller with a twist: that uncomfortable truth is the book’s central theme and the motor that drives the whole story. The book cuts between Louise and Adele’s viewpoints, so we only ever see David from the outside, our view of him constantly changing. And while we spend a lot of our time inside Adele’s head, she’s constantly pulling the rug from under us: small wonder, then, that even David doesn’t know all her secrets.

Tautly written, beautifully constructed and with superbly-drawn characters, Behind Her Eyes is Pinborough’s best novel to date. I haven’t re-read it yet, but I suspect I’ll enjoy it even more the second time around, knowing what I know now.

 And, #wtfthatending?

Oh yes, indeed.

Things of the Week: 22nd July

Alexandra Benedict: designated Mains-wrangler.

Well, this week's been better.

The three of us - Cate and I and Priya - went to Edge-Lit in Derby on Saturday, and had a blast. It really was just the tonic. My self-imposed Facebook exile didn't magic away my anxiety and low mood (as doctors call it - low? It was bloody subterranean. I kept expecting to run into Peter Cushing and Doug McClure) but did a lot to reduce it.

Being among friends, spending time with people face to face, was huge as well. It was great to see Sarah Pinborough, Ray Cluley and Jess Jordan, Victoria Leslie, Lynda Rucker (fresh from winning the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story!) and Sean Hogan, James Everington, Mark West, Andrew Hook and Sophie Essex, Nina Allan, Mark Morris, Gary McMahon, Conrad Williams, Alexandra Benedict, Johnny Mains, Emma Newman... and so many others. (The final event of the night was Johnny Mains being interviewed by Alexandra Benedict, but quite frankly 'unleashed' would probably be a better word. Gloriously funny, rude and indiscreet - but painfully honest, too. I suspect Alexandra needed a few large drinks afterwards.)

Talking of Sarah Pinborough, her excellent YA novel 13 Minutes came out in paperback this week. Cate got hold of it as soon as it came out and read it voraciously; I wrenched it from her grip immediately afterwards...

I was dead for 13 minutes. 

I don't remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this - it wasn't an accident and I wasn't suicidal. 

They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you're a teenage girl, it's hard to tell them apart. 

My friends love me, I'm sure of it. But that doesn't mean they didn't try to kill me. 

Does it? 

13 MINUTES by Sarah Pinborough is a gripping psychological thriller about people, fears, manipulation and the power of the truth. A stunning read, it questions our relationships - and what we really know about the people closest to us ...

I went to see my GP this week, and am now back on Citalopram for the depression and anxiety. Some mild stomach upsets, but I'm feeling better already. I've been here before; hopefully things will be okay.

I know I've said this before, but never suffer in silence with depression. And don't listen to it. It's a liar. It will tell you that you're worthless, that everything you do is pointless and doomed, that nothing you've achieved is of any worth. And it isn't true. Be aware of the signs, and if they're there, see your GP. Get help. It's illness, nothing more.

Anyway, this week's big news: Devil's Highway is finally finished!

Well, at least until Emma and Tik at Snowbooks come back to me with edits and notes. But that's half the Black Road now written, as good as I can get it. It's probably the most action-packed instalment of the series - not that any of the others are exactly quiet, but this book is built around a brutal siege in which Helen's old enemy Colonel Jarrett will stop at nothing to destroy the rebellion against the Reapers and kill Helen herself.

I'll be getting to work on the third book, Wolf's Hill, later this year, all being well. This one will be... interesting. More about that nearer the time. For now, I'm having a couple of days off to write short fiction...

Things of the Week: 15th July 2016

This week... has been a bit rough.

For the past few weeks I haven't been feeling good at all - a growing sense of hopelessness, of everything feeling like too much effort, constant nagging anxiety.

Earlier in the week, some old social media bullshit flared up again. That was the final straw; by the time Cate got home that evening, I was practically a wreck. I just about managed to cook dinner for us. At which point I decided Facebook and I needed a break from one another.

I thought it might just be stuff on the news - Brexit and so forth, and all the worries that go with it - and they probably helped tip me over the edge, but ultimately this is just the return of an old enemy. The black dog: depression. It's a bloody horrible thing that I hoped I wouldn't see again - but it's back, worse than before.

After a lot of prevaricating - too bloody much of it - I'm going to see my GP on Monday. Hopefully get something sorted.

I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating: do not suffer in silence with this. Men, especially, seem to, believing you're supposed to 'man up' and soldier on. And all too often that makes it worse - and more likely to kill you. I could have saved myself a lot of pain by ringing the surgery on Monday. There's no shame in antidepressants, if they're what you need. You wouldn't think twice about taking painkillers if an injury was causing serious pain; they help you function as normally as possible while you heal. This is no different.

My friend Ren Warom, in addition to being a smashing writer, has blogged and vlogged candidly about mental health issues and recovery. I heartily recommend her blog posts on the subject. And indeed the rest of her blog.


Cheers to Ren, Sarah Pinborough, and a few other people for kind words and cyber-hugs this week. And to Cate, without whom I really don't know how I would have coped. Love you, hun.

*clears throat following embarrassing schmaltzy bit*

Otherwise, what things have there been this week?

Steady progress on Devil's Highway; hopefully the beast will be finished soon. It's taking shape, and I think I'm going to be pleased with how it turns out. Hopefully the publisher will too.

Tomorrow we're off to Edge-Lit in Derby with Priya Sharma - some good company and laughter will, I hope, do me a lot of good.

Saving the best till last, though: I am very, very proud to announce my inclusion in an anthology that will be released at Fantasycon By The Sea this September.

When Joel Lane passed away in 2013 - Jesus, nearly three years ago now - he left behind him a wealth of notes for stories he'd never found time to write. Last year his old friend Pete Coleborn of the Alchemy Press invited me to contribute to an anthology he was editing with Pauline E. Dungate, another of Joel's friends: a number of writers, each working with a different set of notes, would set out to complete the stories.

I've blogged previously about the tale I wrote, 'And Ashes In Her Hair.' This week, Alchemy published the table of contents for the tribute anthology, Something Remains. All proceeds from the anthology will be donated to Diabetes UK (Joel suffered from Type 1 Diabetes since his teens.)

Here's that TOC in full:

• Foreword by Peter Coleborn
• Introduction by Pauline E. Dungate
• Joel by Chris Morgan (Verse)
• Not Dispossessed:  A Few Words on Joel Lane’s Early Published Works by David A. Sutton (Essay)
• Everybody Hates a Tourist by Tim Lebbon
• The Missing by John Llewellyn Probert
• Charmed Life by Simon Avery
• Antithesis by Alison Littlewood
• Dark Furnaces by Chris Morgan
• The Inner Ear by Marion Pitman (Verse)
• Broken Eye by Gary McMahon
• Stained Glass by John Grant
• Threadbare by Jan Edwards
• The Dark above the Fair by Terry Grimwood
• Grey Children by David A. Sutton
• The Twin by James Brogden
• Lost by Pauline Morgan (Verse)
• Through the Floor [1] by Gary Couzens
• Through the Floor [2] by Stephen Bacon
• Bad Faith by Thana Niveau
• Window Shopping by David Mathew
• Clan Festor by Liam Garriock
• Sweet Sixteen by Adam Millard
• Buried Stars by Simon Macculloch
• And Ashes in Her Hair by Simon Bestwick
• The Pleasure Garden by Rosanne Rabinowitz
• Joel Lane, Poet by Chris Morgan (Essay)
• The Reach of Children by Mike Chinn
• The Men Cast by Shadows by Mat Joiner
• The Winter Garden by Pauline E. Dungate
• Natural History by Allen Ashley
• The Second Death by Ian Hunter
• The Bright Exit by Sarah Doyle (Verse)
• Blanche by Andrew Hook
• The Body Static by Tom Johnstone
• You Give Me Fever by Paul Edwards
• The Other Side by Lynda E. Rucker
• Of Loss and of Life: Joel Lane’s Essays on the Fantastic by Mark Valentine (Essay)
• Shadows by Joe X Young
• I Need Somewhere to Hide by Steven Savile
• Coming to Life by John Howard
• The Enemy Within by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Afterword: The Whole of Joel by Ramsey Campbell (Essay)

I'm very proud to be in this one. Hope you'll all buy a copy.