Things of the Week 5th April 2017: Interview by Louisa Rhodes, New The Feast Of All Souls review, The Adventure of the Orkney Shark

Photo by Vicky Morris.

A few things to announce this week...

First up, there's this really cool interview done last month, after my half of the Hive Writer's Day Workshop with the brilliant K.T. Davies. Louisa Rhodes, one of Hive's young writers, fed me questions about horror, writing and spaghetti, typed up my rambling responses and made them look reasonably intelligent. So here's the result. Louisa did a fantastic job, and was a pleasure to talk to.

The Feast Of All Souls has a new review, over at RisingShadow, in which Seregil of Rhiminee describes it as "one of the best horror novels I've read in recent years... entertaining, thrilling... ambitious and well-written. Excellent British horror fiction!"

Many thanks to RisingShadow, and to Seregil!

And finally... Simon Clark's anthology Sherlock Holmes's School For Detection is out now.

It's 1890. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson return to Baker Street after a night pursuing a vicious criminal. Inspector Lestrade is waiting for Holmes with a proposition of national importance.
Lestrade tells Holmes that a school of detection has been formed to train a new breed of modern investigators that will serve in Great Britain and the Empire. Most students will become police officers. Some, however, will become bodyguards and spies. Holmes begins instructing his decidedly curious assortment of students from home and abroad. He does so with his customary gusto and inventiveness.
Scotland Yard, in the main, allocates crimes to solve and Holmes mentors his students. Occasionally, he shadows them in disguise in order to assess or even directly test their abilities with creative scenarios he devises. Certain crimes investigated by the students might appear trivial, such as the re-positioning of an ornament atop a garden wall, yet it will transpire an assassin has moved the ornament to create good sightlines in order to commit murder with a sniper's rifle.
Other mysteries are considered outside the domain of the police. For example, the inexplicable disappearance of a stone gargoyle, which is linked to an ancient family curse. Or a man suffering from amnesia who discovers that not only has he acquired a secret life but also gained an implacable enemy, too. Holmes, with the ever- trustworthy Doctor Watson in his wake, is kept busy with his students' cases, ranging from minor to serious, sometimes rectifying their mistakes and saving them from a variety of disasters.
These eleven wonderful new adventures and intrigues include tales such as 'The Gargoyles of Killfellen House', 'Sherlock Holmes and the Four Kings of Sweden' and 'The Case of the Cannibal Club'.

The anthology also features my story The Adventure Of The Orkney Shark. Other contributors include Cate Garder, Paul Finch, Alison Littlewood, Carole Johnstone... and many, many more.

The Adventure of the Orkney Shark is set in 1927. Lieutenant-Commander Noel Atherstone, recalled from retirement in Australia for the Imperial Airship Scheme, is given a top-secret mission: to assist Sherlock Holmes in investigating the mysterious disappearance of ships in the North Sea. Fishermen blame the gigantic and voracious Orkney Shark - but as Atherstone, Holmes and Holmes' reluctantly-acquired pupil Mr Blacksmith search the seas in airship R.36, they discover a threat far deadlier than any sea monster...

“There,” said Blacksmith, pointing from an open starboard window.

“Where?” Holmes and I ran to his side, peering out – but we had already passed over the spot.

“Reduce speed,” I told Church. “Mr Potter, bring us around. Mr Hunt, maintain altitude.”

Slowly the airship turned. It wasn’t a quick process; R.36 was six hundred and seventy-five feet long from nose to tail, and almost eighty wide. But in the end, she cruised back the way she had come, at a more sedate pace.

“What did you see, and where?” demanded Holmes. Blacksmith pointed to an area of swirling water between two flat, tabular skerries.

“There,” he said. “It does not move.”

“I see nothing,” said Holmes.

“Nor I,” I said. “Just rock, weed, barnacles…”

“Barnacles, yes. There are none elsewhere on these shoals.”

He was right, now I considered: for whatever reason, the tiny shellfish didn’t appear on any visible part of the rocks and skerries. They lay only in this one area, in a long wide cluster. As we drew closer, I saw its outline was distorted by the water’s churning, but there was something about the shape – a regularity, a symmetry.

The barnacles had not grown here; they had grown somewhere – or on something – else. Something that had spent a great deal of time in other parts of the sea, more conducive to their survival.

Blacksmith was right: I saw it now. A great mass, encrusted in barnacles and weed, in the shape of a huge fish – a long teardrop body, but with fins, almost like wings, jutting out from its sides, and another, a thin sharp triangle, rising from its back. But it was larger than any fish – four hundred feet, if it was an inch...

You can buy the anthology here.

Things of the Last Two Weeks (Part One): 19th May 2016

Well, I'm back. Sorry the blog's been a tad quiet, and for the absence of The Lowdown. It returns tomorrow, all being well.

Still, there's a pretty good excuse for the long hush: Cate and I finally got married on Saturday 7th May this year. The following Monday we were off on our honeymoon to Barmouth, which we got back from a couple of days ago.

Cate mentioned a friend of hers saying 'I needed a holiday to get over the holiday!' and in the best possible way, I think I know what they meant. Returning to normality is a slow process after a week or so like that.

We were told to enjoy every moment of our wedding day, as it all went by so fast. And it did. And at the same time, it seemed to last forever - again, in the nicest possible way. My face hurt from all the smiling. Family and friends were there, and a lot of writers. God knows how many horror stories we've inspired. One day I'll have to write about it myself - make sure it's all immortalised in prose.

We took a moment, too, to remember Cate's Mum Pauline, and Joel Lane, who would have been our

best man: special thanks to Bernard, who did that job on the day, and to the one and only John Llewellyn Probert for reading a short extract from one of Joel's works. I could go on and on about all the different people who made the day so special, like our bridesmaids Amy and Becky, or... but I'm going to stop there now, because I'll end up leaving someone off! But thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who came. It was a special day.

The honeymoon was lovely too - on past trips to Barmouth we've been cursed with some grotty weather, but that week was glorious. I'm tanned several shades darker than I was before - or at least my face and forearms are! So we walked along the beach, spent a lot of times in the beautiful cafes on the Quay, like Davy Jones' Locker and The Anchor, spent even more time in various gift shops (Cate) and second hand bookshops (both of us), and spent most evenings in the restaurants - The Captain's Table and (again) The Anchor being two particular standouts. If you're ever in Barmouth, those are both great places to eat.

They're even naming drinks after my stuff now....

We made a couple of day trips, to Porthmadog and Bala, and on the second actually found a bottle of liqueur called Black Mountain, aka Mynydd Du!

The day before we left, we went to St Mary's Church at Llanaber, where my gran is buried, to pay our respects and put some flowers on the grave. Daft, I know, but I find myself talking to her, even though she isn't there. She worried, I think, in her last years, that I was never going to get married or settle down with anyone. I wish she and Cate could have met - they'd have loved one another to bits.

We walked back from Llanaber, over the railway tracks and down the full length of the prom, which, be assured, is a bloody long way, especially in hot weather. Luckily, the Quay also boasts an ice-cream parlour called Knickerbocker's, which was a pretty good motivator. On the way there, we actually bumped into the registrar who'd married us, who was spending the weekend on the coast...!

So, a lovely day and a lovely honeymoon. And I'm a very happy man. Hopefully Cate's an equally happy lady. I love her very much and hope for many happy, healthy and prosperous years with her.

Here's some music, because for some bizarre reason this seems to be the song that sums up the whole thing for me. (Cate will probably think otherwise, but even the happiest marriage has the odd disagreement.) ;)

 Peace and love to all,

Simon x

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Things Of The Week 8th April 2016

This week has been exciting and frustrating in equal measures. On the one hand, my crime novel has gone out to publishers; editors at three or four major imprints now have it on their desks. So now I just have to cross my fingers, wait and hope.

On the other hand, work on Devil's Highway hasn't been going as quickly or smoothly as I'd have liked; I'm in the process of typing up the first draft from pre-recorded notes, and I'm behind where I'd hoped to be. Well, that's often the way, but tendonitis and a lousy cold aven't helped; I've been feeling wiped out for most of the week. Not been out of the house very much either, which has been little help; I went for a walk yesterday, but came home exhausted and flopped out for the rest of the afternoon.

So I'm trying to take it easy today in the hope that'll help. Will see how that goes. I want to get the novel into a good enough shape to send a draft out to betas at the beginning of May.

The harder you pull, the tighter the knot gets. I've spent a lot of the last week or two typing stuff up, breaking away from it to work-avoid by dicking around on Facebook, then berating myself for not doing enough before spending more time glaring at the screen and demanding I do more work today, not going out of the house or doing anything else... it becomes a vicious circle, so I may have a week or two away from Devil's Highway to work on other projects, then try and go back to it (hopefully) refreshed. I have an idea or two revolving around abandoned communities - not this one or that one, though!

The Spectral saga resurfaced on Facebook, with much of the same unpleasantness as before. In the interests of fairness and full disclosure, though, I have now received the outstanding monies due to me from Black Mountain. Many thanks to Gary Compton for sorting that out. So, with the exception of any royalties that The Second Spectral Book Of Horror may accrue, that's hopefully the end of my involvement with the whole sorry affair. Other customers and authors are still in the process of recovering what they're owed, but the wrongs appear to be getting righted, steadily.

The lovely Priya Sharma has been doing a feature on her blog, interviewing contributors to the Black Shuck Books anthology The Hyde Hotel. So far, the victims have included James Everington, Alison Littlewood, Mark West - and, in today's instalment, the one and only Cate. There'll be one from me coming up soon.

On a happier note, here's something I've been meaning to link to for a while; the artwork of Sergey Kolesov, aka Peleng. Bizarre, grotesque, funny and macabre stuff.

The Lowdown with... Alison Littlewood

Alison Littlewood was raised in Penistone, South Yorkshire, and went on to attend the University of
Northumbria at Newcastle (now Northumbria University). Originally she planned to study graphic design, but “missed the words too much” and switched to a joint English and History degree. She followed a career in marketing before developing her love of writing fiction.
A Cold Season, from Jo Fletcher Books, was Alison’s first novel. It was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, where it was described as “perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.” Her second novel, Path of Needles – a dark blend of fairy tales and crime fiction – has recently been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award. Her third, The Unquiet House, is a ghost story set in the Yorkshire countryside and has been shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award.
Alison’s short stories have been picked for Best British Horror, The Best Horror of the Year and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies, as well as The Best British Fantasy 2013 and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10. Other publication credits include the anthologies Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Where Are We Going? and the charity anthology Never Again.

She now lives in a house of crooked walls and creaking doors in deepest
Yorkshire, with her partner Fergus and a dalmatian called Dexter.
She Tweets here, or find her on Facebook.

 1. Tell us three things about yourself.

1. I hate talking about myself!

2. I’m from Yorkshire, and my accent has got broader the more I’ve written about Yorkshire places and Yorkshire folk. There’s no escaping it . . .

3. I’m older than I look. How much older – oh, let’s not go there.

2. What was the first thing you had published?

A piece of life writing called 'The Day I Drew God.' I did it for an online competition called TooWrite, and from there it got picked up by the Lincolnshire Echo, who plucked stories from the website from time to time. It was about the curiosity of a child being summarily squished, and it was tremendously exciting to see it in print.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

Hmm . . . the thing is, in retrospect, there’s always something you want to tinker with. But I think that would be The Unquiet House, my last novel. I started off knowing that I wanted to have it working backwards, with jumps back in time shedding light on what had just taken place in the present. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to handle the historical sections, but once I started delving into the research I found I was immersed in it and thoroughly enjoyed the writing. I also started out without knowing how the plot would all come together, but somehow it did. It taught me to trust the old subconscious all over again. These days, I tend to think that if I’m starting to write a novel and it doesn’t feel impossible at the outset, I’m probably doing it wrong.

4. …and which makes you cringe?

Back when I first joined a writing class, I started off trying to write poems. And I thought about expanding on that, but on second thoughts, best leave it there. Ugh.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

Get up. Feed the dog. Feed self. Check emails, do odd jobs, tidy up, spend too long on Facebook. Walk the dog. Home! Right, into the study, laptop on, notebook on hand, everything at the ready. Keep being prodded by dog, who thinks it’s his lunchtime. Make him wait. Try to ignore random pawing and big brown eyes and heavy dalmatian head resting on my knee/arm/keyboard, depending on how hungry he is. Give in. Feed dog. Right, the work of the day begins in earnest. Do words. Either lose self in them or despair, depending on how it’s going. Try not to end at the end of a chapter, because I know it’ll be impossible to get back into the writing tomorrow. Nine times out of ten, end at the end of a chapter.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first?

That’s actually quite a tough one, because my books have all been quite different. I’ve done horror-horror, folkloric horror, a fantasy/crime/horror cross, a more traditional ghost story and a mad zombie romp through a Mexican holiday resort. As I writer I tend to follow the ideas rather than producing the same kind of book over and over – I like to try different things and set myself new challenges each time. So I guess it’s up to the individual - they could pick up whatever they fancy!

7. What are you working on now?

It’s an exciting time, because I have two books out in September – A Cold

Silence, which is a sequel to my first book ACold Season, and Zombie Apocalypse: Acapulcalypse Now. Behind the scenes, though, I’m quietly getting on with my next book. I’ve really taken the plunge this time and set it in the 1800s, and it’s exploring fairy changeling lore – the idea of people being stolen away by the fairies and replaced with their doubles. It’s a scary concept – that the people you love might not really be the people you love. And there’s nothing sweet or light about these ‘good folk’ – after all, it is said that they were called that out of fear, not because it was true. I’m thoroughly enjoying delving into their dark side.

The Condemned

My new collection, The Condemned, will be released by Gray Friar Press around the end of March this year as part of their 'Gray Matters' series of novellas. 

The Condemned contains six novellas and novelettes, including the BFA-nominated The Narrows, which was reprinted in Best Horror of the Year #1, and The School House, originally published in Houses On The Borderland.

The other tales, Dark Earth, A Kiss Of Old Thorns, The Model and Sleep Now In The Fire, are all previously unpublished. The collection will be released in paperback and a hardback limited edition; the hardback will contain an additional short story, 'Made Of Clay.'

As if this wasn't enough to put a smile on my face, some truly excellent writers have provided blurbs for the collection. From Alison Littlewood (author of A Cold Season and Path Of Needles):

'Simon Bestwick writes the kind of fiction that gets under your skin and stays there . . . thoughtful, tense and genuinely scary, his short stories lead you into dark places and then blow out the candle. His next collection is set to be a must-read of the genre.'

Further blurbs come from the mighty Paul Finch:

‘Simon Bestwick has penned some of the downright eeriest fiction I've ever read. But there is nearly always a hard, urban edge to it, and a deep political awareness. This is an author who bleeds onto the page when he's writing. He really believes in what he's doing. It's his passion and his mission, and as such his meaningful brand of horror is raw, shocking and right in-yer-face. Potent stuff, on so many levels.’

And another from Joseph D'Lacey:

'Grim, beautifully crafted and thought-provoking, Bestwick’s fiction satisfies on every level.'

And to crown it all, the great Ramsey Campbell has this to say:

'Simon Bestwick is among the most important writers of contemporary British horror. His work is rooted in unflinching social observation, and his supernatural tales have a real moral resonance. He's living proof that horror fiction can talk about the way we live today and shine an uncanny light on life, which throws its darkness into sharper relief.'

Many thanks to Ramsey, Joseph, Paul and Alison, and to Gary Fry at Gray Friar; as you can imagine, I am a happy chappie. :)

First Review of The Faceless

Back from Leeds and a great time at Alison Littlewood's book launch. Her first novel, A Cold Season, marks the beginning of a three-bo0k deal from Jo Fletcher Books. It was great fun, celebrating a well-deserved success for Ali, and a chance to meet up again with some good friends. And to sample Ferg- Ali's partner's- very fine collection of single malt whiskies (hic.)

Anyway, I came back home to another nice thing: the first review of The Faceless.

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review brought out the first review of Tide Of Souls (not counting Amazon); seems only fitting he should do the same for The Faceless! Anyway, he rather likes it:

'A good horror novel will leave you shocked or scared at what you find on each page and secretly glad that you can put the book down, at its end, and return to your normal everyday life. An excellent horror novel though, well... An excellent horror novel will leave you feeling strangely hollow to begin with as what you read demands all your mental space and will swiftly vacate any pretence you had of getting back to normality. That done, the excellent horror novel will move in; making you feel horribly uncomfortable while it settles in. It might be days, or even weeks, before it moves on and you won’t be able to get those deeply unsettling images out of your mind in the meantime. ‘The Faceless’ is an excellent horror novel and this is exactly what it has been doing to me since I read it. It will happen to you as well and that’s why you should give it a go.'

So a big thanks to Graeme Flory. Off now to do various necessary bits and bobs around the house and neighbourhood. There may be occasional squeeage.

Have a most excellent weekend, dudes and dudettes.

The full review is here.

A Hazy Shade Of Winter...

...is out on ebook from those lovely people at Ash-Tree.

There has been squeeage. There may be even more.

You can buy it direct from the Ash-Tree website here, and it will, in due course, be available from Amazon as well.

I am very pleased about this.

Tomorrow I am off to Leeds, where Alison Littlewood is launching her new novel, A Cold Season: (here's the book trailer, directed by Mark West)

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I'll see my old buddy Gary McMahon, Simon Marshall-Jones, Emma Audsley and Shaun Hamilton of The Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog, and many, many more. Oh, and I will be signing contracts with my new agent. Of whom more shortly.

Here's another song to end the bloggage on. Trust me, it's very appropriate. But you'll have to read the collection to the end to learn why.

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Twisted Tales, Liverpool and Other Stuff

So, Friday saw me catching the train to Liverpool to meet with the ever-reigning Cate at Cafe Nero in Liverpool One. No, not to swap state secrets or foil a dastardly terrorist plot- we're doing that next weekend- but for a cup of coffee prior to the Twisted Tales event at Waterstone's. Ally Bird and Joel Lane joined us as well, and Cate (despite what she says on her blog) managed not to turn into a complete gibbering wreck. We'll get her through this year's Fantasycon yet...

No photographs of that historic meeting exist, sadly, because I still can't find a camera that can capture the awesomeness that is Cate without melting. You'll just have to buy her story collection to get an idea. It's really good- see? I'm also proud to announce that I persuaded Cate to sign her first ever autographs, as well. Yay me. I made history ;-)
Anyroad, there are some photos from Twisted Tales and its drunken aftermath, I'm pleased to state. It's sort of like Jackanory, but with horror writers. Present this evening were Joel (pictured above reading from his tale Winter Journey), the lovely Ali Littlewood (doing her first ever public reading and acquitting herself admirably) and Conrad Williams. All three read cracking little horror stories. The event was a lot of fun and also in attendance were the likes of Roy Gray of TTA Press, Dark Fiction editor and agent Sharon Ring and Ramsey and Jenny Campbell (which was particularly handy as I managed to snag a copy of Ramsey's latest novel, The Seven Days Of Cain, and so got it signed.)

Over here we have Conrad Williams, looking a little bit demonic. But Liverpool will do that to you- joking!











Afterwards, we sloped off for a drink or two and ended up in the Cavern. Beatles tribute bands a-go-go...

Over to the left, Ali Littlewood and her equally nice partner Fergus...









Over here, Roy Gray and Ally Bird...













And dear god, what the hell is this hideous apparition?! Oh- it's me. Ahem. Move along please, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing to see here.










In other news, I do have a rather ace announcement to make. Solaris Books have commissioned a new novel from yours truly, which is due to hit the bookshelves in February or March 2012. The title? Still TBC, but watch this space for an announcement. There shall be more anon.

Hope you have enjoyed all this. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately this means it's Monday tomorrow and you have to go back to work. It's not my fault.