Jaeger

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."

Anthony Watson, author of The Fallen.

A Different Kind Of Light and Roth-Steyr Relaunch!

Well I had a different first post planned for 2022, but I couldn't let this go by unannounced - Black Shuck Books are relaunching the first nine books in their Signature Novellas series!

The original editions all had the same basic cover design - just the title and the author's signature - but Steve at Black Shuck has decided it's time to give the novellas new, individual cover art...

A Different Kind Of Light is set in the not-too-distant future, in which freelance researcher Ashok Dhillon is called in to authenticate previously unseen film footage of the 1955 Le Mans Disaster. The footage is genuine enough, but eerie, spectral figures begin appearing on it, growing more visible on each viewing. When the spectres begin reaching out into the real world and claiming the lives of anyone who's seen the footage, Ash and his ex-lover Danie find themselves racing to discover the story behind the film, before they too, fall victim to the monstrous schakalgeier...

Roth-Steyr is the name of an early type of automatic pistol: it's also the murder weapon used to kill two men who've arrived one after the other in the mortuary where Valerie Varden works. Under other circumstances, it would just be an unusual cause of death, but Valerie knows both the victims. Now, as another 'long dark night of the European soul' looms, she has to confront the spectres of her own past in a tale that reaches back to the last days of World War One and the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire - before she, too, can falls prey to the mysterious killer with the Roth-Steyr...

The new editions of A Different Kind Of Light and Roth-Steyr will be out at the end of January. You can pre-order them, and the other re-launched Signature titles, here, or order all nine new editions at a special here.

Things Of The Past Few Weeks

It's been... eventful since I last blogged. Not all of it is stuff I can talk about publicly right now, and not all of it's good. Things should be okay in the long run, but there have been some tough times.

However, there've also been some good things, so I wanted to talk about those here.

First of all, there've been more reviews for A Different Kind Of Light, and they've been excellent ones. At The Future Fire, Rachel Verkade says:

I loved this book. I read it in the space of a couple of hours because I literally could not put it down. The story is compelling and moves at a swift and natural pace, the characters are compelling, and the descriptions of the disaster are haunting. It is a thematic cousin to stories like Revival and Hell House, stories about our fascination with death and our questions about what lies beyond… and whether we really want those questions to be answered. 

While over on Horrified, Ally Wilkes describes the novella as:

A delightfully short and scary little book... makes for compulsive reading. I found myself extremely creeped out as the daylight slipped away and the shadows on the hallway stairs became more prominent.... genuinely dread-inducing.

Many thanks to both reviewers!

I've been focusing on short fiction over the past couple of months, and one of the markets I submitted to was Maxim Jakubowski's Book Of Femmes Fatales And Dangerous Women Stories. I didn't think I stood a chance, but was delighted to learn yesterday that my story 'Bait' has been chosen for the anthology - one of 18 stories out of 170 submissions, which is pretty cool! Also sharing the TOC are Eric Brown, Susi Holliday, Keith Brooke, Joseph S. Walker, Robert Lopresti, Michael A.Gonzales, Lavie Tidhar, Rhys Hughes, Ali Seay, Ashley Lister, Bernie Crosthwaite, Rose Biggin, O'Neil De Noux, Bev Vincent, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Claude Lalumiere and Ana Teresa Pereira.

Some of these are writers I've read or worked with before, while others are new to me, but I look forward to appearing in print with them.

So those are the latest developments. I'll try and blog again soon.

One last request before I go: if you've read my work and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review (even a few words will do) or rating at Amazon for any works you've liked. The more reviews it gets, the more visible it becomes to other customers, and the wider an audience it reaches.

Things Of The Week 2nd April 2021: Best Horror Of The Year #13, Nine Ghosts Launch Video, Out Of The Darkness, Body Shocks Advance Review

So, two nights ago I got an email from Ellen Datlow, about a short story of mine called 'A Treat For Your Last Day,' letting me know she wanted to publish it in The Best Horror of the Year #13.

Anything like that is always great news, but this was particularly great for two reasons: firstly because it'll mark the first time I've appeared in Best Horror of the Year for two years running - it only seems like last week that I received my contributor's copy of Best Horror of the Year #12, the incredibly cool Reiko Murakami of which is pictured on the left - and secondly because 'A Treat For Your Last Day' was first published on my Patreon page.

I've had a Patreon account for a couple of years now, and my biggest challenge has been making it both something I can sustain and something that's worth looking at. I'll talk a bit more about my Patreon in another post some time. For now, I'll just say that I post new work there every fortnight and that you can read it for as little as a dollar a month. So there we go. 

In other news, the Kickstarter for Unsung Stories' Out Of The Darkness anthology still has five days to run, although it's already massively outstripped its original target of £2500. I'm one of a host of authors - including Laura Mauro, Aliya Whiteley, Georgina Bruce, Gary Budden, Tim Major - who've contributed horror and dark fantasy fiction inspired by the theme of mental illness. All author fees and royalties will be donated to Together For Mental Wellbeing.

Having hit its first stretch target of £5000, the anthology will now include an additional story by Malcolm Devlin; if it hits its second stretch target of £7000, a further story by Gareth E. Rees will be added to the table of contents. The total amount pledged currently stands at £6840, so things are looking pretty healthy there.

Ginger Nuts Of Horror has been hosting a series of articles in which the anthology's contributors talk about their own inspirations and experiences. Contributors Aliya Whiteley, Tim Major and Anna Vaught disucss their stories here; Alison Moore, Verity Holloway and Eugen Bacon talk about theirs here, and you can find Sam Thompson, Richard V Hirst and myself on our own contributions here. 

The first advance review of another Ellen Datlow anthology, Body Shocks - which includes my story 'Welcome To Mengele's' - is now up at HellNotes, and seems to be a rave. Hopefully the first of many for this book. 

Finally, Nine Ghosts, my new mini-collection from Black Shuck Books, was released on March 25th, and March 26th saw a live-streamed launch via YouTube. 

See! A fat beardy man wittering on!  

Hear! The two lucky winners of free copies of the book!

And tremble! At readings of two of the stories from the collection, 'The Cage' and 'Dab and Sole.'

If you missed (or if you didn't, and for some insane reason actually want to put yourself through that again,) here it is.

Have a good weekend, folks.

Simon. 

Nine Ghosts

I have a new mini-collection coming out from Black Shuck Books.

It's called Nine Ghosts.

There are nine stories.

There are nine ghosts.

Two of the stories have never been published before.

Two others have only appeared on my Patreton.

You can find more details here.

I meant to do a live launch on Facebook, as I did for A Different Kind Of Light. Unfortunately Facebook has currently blocked me from livestreaming. I have no idea why.

Luckily I can livestream through my YouTube channel. So that's what I'll be doing at 7.00 pm GMT on Friday 26th March.

There'll be a live reading, a Q&A and a chance to win a couple of copies.

So be there or be square.

The nine ghosts await you. 

(PS: I've invited as many people to the event via Facebook as I can, but I was only able to send a limited number of invites. So do please spread the word if you possibly can, or if you know anyone you think might enjoy this.)

Things Of The Last Week Or So 2nd March 2021: Lots of stuff!

Normally, I try to list the various things (hopefully nice ones) that the week has had in store, but this week-and-a-bit (various things popped up on Friday and over the weekend that stopped me blogging earlier) has actually been pretty packed, and in the best of ways.

So here's the latest.

The launch party for A Different Kind Of Light ran into a few technical hitches, and in the end it ended up just being me reading and presenting (big thanks to Laura Mauro and Keris McDonald, who were to have read on the night), but ended up being a great laugh and getting a few people to rush out and buy a copy. It's the closest thing I've come to hanging out with many of my friends on the horror scene in a very long time, so that was great as well.

The first reviews for A Different Kind Of Light have also appeared. Over at Marc's Books, Marc Francis sums it up with "Well worth spending your hard-earned cash on," which is, after all, what every writer wants to hear people say! And at Ginger Nuts Of Horror, Tony Jones' verdict is: "A terrific novella which sits nicely amongst the best work Simon Bestwick has written and Black Shuck have published. Outstanding and highly recommended."  

You can buy A Different Kind Of Light here. 

In other news, Nine Ghosts, my upcoming mini-collection (from Black Shuck Books, again, because they rock!), originally slated for an October release, will in fact be out later this month. I have some proofs to check this week. More details to follow.

Way back when I was starting out as a writer in the late 1990s, I published a number of stories with a great little magazine called Nasty Piece Of Work, edited by the wonderful David A. Green. David was open to stories that were both gruesome or extreme on the one hand, and cerebral and intelligent on the other. I did some of my best work from that period of my career for Nasty, some of which might not only never have found a home without it, but never have been conceived.

One such story was Welcome To Mengele's, a story about a brothel where you can make your sexual fantasies - whatever they are - a reality... for a price. It was reprinted in my second collection, Pictures Of The Dark, but has been out of print for a long time. I'm delighted to announce it'll be appearing in Ellen Datlow's upcoming body horror anthology Body Shocks, alongside stories by Ray Cluley, Gemma Files, Livia Llewellyn, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Priya Sharma, Tananarive Due, Tom Johnstone and many, many more wonderful authors. Hugely proud to be included.

Paula Guran, editor of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy And Horror, has published her recommended reading list from the first volume online, and I get name-checked twice, for the title novella from my collection And Cannot Come Again and for my Terror Tales Of North West England story 'Below', which went on to be reprinted in The Best Horror Of The Year #12. Cate is also listed for her Terror Tales Of North West England story 'The Mute Swan.'

Finally, I'm over the moon to announce that my novella Devils Of London has found a home at Hersham Horror, courtesy of that excellent gentleman Peter Mark May, and should be out later this year. All being well, quite a bit of my stuff should be seeing print...

So that's what's been going down, anyway.

Hope you're all well, and see you soon. Keep safe.

Simon.

Things Of The Week: 12th February 2021 (A Different Kind Of Light Facebook Launch Party, New review of And Cannot Come Again, Super Sekrit Acceptances)

Sorry, Dave - I only had room
 for one author picture!

 A Different Kind Of Light is released by Black Shuck Books on February 25th, and to celebrate and signal boost it I'm throwing a Facebook Launch Party. There'll be live readings from me and from my Special Guests Dave Jeffery and Laura Mauro (aka Bricklauncher,) book giveaways and a Q&A. Bring your own booze and order your own food from Just Eat. What else is there to do of an evening these days anyway? 😃

You can join the party here.

A new review of And Cannot Come Again has surfaced at SFRevu, describing it as: 'An excellent collection that will keep you entertained and disturbed at the same time.' Many thanks to Mario Guslandi for the kind words. (Props too to my Horrific Tales stablemate Thana Niveau, whose The House Of Frozen Screams also got a shout-out this week over at The Eloquent Page.)

I have some new acceptances, which is great, BUT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM YET because contracts have to be signed, etc. Bah. So for now they are Super Sekrit, but details will be announced before much longer.

Anyway, that's all for now. And consider yourself invited to my Facebook party!

 

Things Of The Week 29th January 2021: Horrified, New Novella and A Different Kind Of Light

So, another week ends, and the lockdown rolls on. Hope you've all been keeping well.

Meanwhile, at Castle Bestwick, a few little victories have been scored:

I've had my third story acceptance of the year, from those wonderful people at Horrified magazine! 'Low Over Water' will appear there in the near future.

I completed a novella, which I started having hit a brick wall with the novel I'd been working on. It was written purely for fun, so now I need to find it a home. More news on that story (see what I did there) as it comes...

And finally (drum roll), speaking of novellas, I have one now available for pre-order! A Different Kind Of Light will be released by Black Shuck Books on 25th February. If you like stories about haunted films, this is one for you...

I think it's the kind of thing that ought to be celebrated - say, with a party. An online party, of course, but let's face it - where else have we got to go? Details/invites to be posted in the next week.

In the meantime, here's a hint of what to expect: 

“I first read about the 1955 Le Mans Disaster over twenty years ago, but I knew at once there was a story to tell.
When I learned there’d been newsreel footage of the aftermath, footage so appalling it never saw daylight, I also knew what kind of story: a story about how many of us want to see things we aren’t supposed to, even when we insist we don’t.
What I didn’t know was who would tell that story. It took me two decades to realise that it was also the story of two lovers who weren’t lovers, in a world that was falling apart. So finally I began to write, following Ash and Danie into a shadow land of grief, obsession and things worse than death.
Now the story’s written. Open this book, and I’ll tell it to you.

And the film will start to play.”    

And a few words from Gary McMahon:

"A Different Kind of Light is a fast, headlong race along a dark track towards the pitiless heart of Bestwick's darkness."

Have a good weekend, people. And stay safe. One day this will be over, and we'll be able to hang out with friends or spend an afternoon chilling in a coffee shop again. Or whatever it is that floats your boat.

Till then, let's just keep on keeping on.

Simon x.

Things Of The Week: 16th January 2021 (Horrified Magazine, Nine Ghosts and A Different Kind Of Light)

The main event of the last week has been my first appearance in Horrified Magazine! 'In The City In The Smog', a dark and hallucinatory tale inspired by the 1952 London Smog Disaster, was published last week. You can read it here.

I'm going to have two new books out this year, both from Black Shuck: another novella, A Different Kind Of Light, and a mini-collection called Nine Ghosts.

Nine Ghosts won't be out till nearer the end of the year, so I'll say more about that closer to the time, but A Different Kind Of Light will see print in February. I won't say anything about A Different Kind Of Light just yet, but I will leave you with a quote from the novelist Sarah Lotz, who very kindly agreed to read the novella and provide a blurb:

"Compulsively readable, original and chilling. Simon Bestwick's witty, engaging tone effortlessly and brilliantly amplifies its edge-of-your-seat atmosphere of creeping dread. I'll be sleeping with the lights on."

More details to follow: stay tuned....

What's New? with... Jonathan Oliver

Jon's the one in the middle.

Jonathan Oliver is an award winning editor and writer. Once a former 2000 AD droid, he is best known as the former commissioning editor for Solaris and Abaddon Books. He lives in Oxford with his family and fixes words for money.

1) So, what’s new from you?

Well, apart from continuing to heal from two years of a deeply damaging office job, after deciding to leave genre publishing for a bit (great decision, Jon!), I’ve just about managed to pull myself together in 2020 – with slight sanity wobbles due to, you know, a global pandemic – and that lovely chap at Black Shuck Books, Steve Shaw, agreed to publish my debut collection, The Language of Beasts.

2) How did it come about?

The collection comprises around 10 years of short stories, most of them previously published. I’ve been writing for a lot longer than that, but these tales feel to me like the strongest I’ve written to date. Originally the collection was picked up by ChiZine, but then… you know, things happened, and I had to get my rights back. Thankfully that wasn’t too big an issue. I remember Steve saying to me at Fantasycon in Glasgow that he would have been pleased to have published the collection, so I offered it to him, and we were back in business. Steve is wonderful to work with and hugely accommodating, especially as I chose the cover design. I used to hate it as a commissioning editor when authors would say, “I have this mate who’s great at covers…” Fortunately my mate is Simon Parr who used to be Head of Design at Rebellion, so I knew he would knock it out of the park.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.

It got to the point where I realised I had enough for a collection, and that some of it was good enough for a collection. So, I looked at the stories on my PC and winnowed it down to the best ones. Then I put them together, got the brilliant Sarah Lotz to write an intro, managed to gather brilliant blurbs from authors I loved, and then sent it out and waited... and waited… It took about 3 years for it to finally find a publisher. Then that publisher had its… issues, and then Black Shuck came along, and I couldn’t be more delighted to be in such fine company.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

I’ve never found writing easy. I always have to drag myself away from life’s distractions, and then it’s a fairly drawn-out process. I’m terribly undisciplined. My favourite part is having written and having something I’m pleased with. Also, seeing the finished book in your hand is a big thrill. Getting Simon to design the cover and the ease of working with Steve made the publishing aspect all rather easy and agreeable.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

The self-doubt, the anxiety – all the usual author quibbles. The deal with ChiZine turning sour was a bit of a bugger to say the least, especially as so many good friends were wrapped up in the messy fallout. Choosing a running order is a bit of an art too, I think, and took a while. Really, though, I have very little to complain about.

6) Is there a theme running through it?

Those who know me well will be fairly unsurprised that religion, issues of faith, and vicars crop up more than once. It’s hard to pick apart what the major themes are, though, as I don’t analyse myself to that extent. That’s the readers’ job.

7) If you had to sum this story up in three words, what would they be?

Strange dark stories.

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?

You can get the lovely hardback from Black Shuck Books, and in all the usual online book retail venues (which don’t have to include Amazon).

Hunker in the Bunker: 2020 in review.

2020 has been, I think we can all agree, a bloody weird year.

I'm not even going to try to summarise all the weird shit - the political shit, the pandemical shit, the insane screeching on social media shit, the stupid conspiracist shit - that went on. Or to list the number of people - writers, actors, artists, musicians, not to mention, in many cases, friends - that we lost this year.

It's been a fucker. But at least Trump's finished. That's one thing.

This really was the year of 'Hunker in the Bunker' for me. Anxiety and depression kept me off work and confined to the house for most of the year, so the first lockdown didn't really come as much of a change. Plus which, after the General Election last December, my attitude was basically 'we're fucked and there's not much point trying to change anything for the better because the UK, at least, is locked into an insane death spiral largely of its own making, so I'm just going to stay home, read, watch Netflix and snuggle with my beloved.'

Well - that, and write.

Which seems absurd, I know. But at least it kept me sane. Well, sort of.

This quote from Natalie Goldberg's wonderful book Writing Down The Bones kind of summarises it for me: "Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the centre of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write."

So yeah. That.

1000 words a day. 

There's a great video where someone's talking to Idris Elba, and he has two pieces of advice: don't be afraid to fail, and keep your head down. The second one, in particular, strikes a chord with me at this time of the year, when I try to look back and take stock. Elba talks about when he's swimming, trying to do 25 laps a day - there's always the temptation to look up and see how you're doing, to be constantly checking your progress. And if you do that, you're never as far along as you'd have hoped, and the work lasts longer and feels harder. But if you keep your head down and focus on just doing what you need to do, moment to moment, getting into the rhythm of your work, before you know it you're almost there.

I did my best, this year, just to do that. Hunker in the bunker, and keep my head down, and work.

So what do I have to show for it?

Well:

Novels

I was past the 100,000 word mark on The Teardrop Girl at the end of 2019. I finished the first draft - 170,000 words all told - at the end of February this year. And then started a new book.

Following The Teardrop Girl I've completed not one, but two new novels in first draft this year, and am (touch wood) 36,000 words into another. The Teardrop Girl has been redrafted and sent out to agents, and I'm at work on the others.

Stories

I've written sixteen pieces of short fiction this year (seventeen if you count my previous blog post!) Some of them very short. Finding homes for most of them proved harder: a lot of them are over on my Patreon. But some saw the light in other places.

Published This Year:

And Cannot Come Again was rereleased, in a gorgeous new edition from Horrific Tales, courtesy of the excellent Graeme Reynolds. It contained two previously unpublished stories. 

Also reprinted was my story 'Below', from Paul Finch's Terror Tales of North West England, in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year #12.

Stories

Not counting stuff that appeared for the first time on Patreon, four stories were published for the first time this year:

'In The Shelter', in new edition of And Cannot Come Again

'Black Is The Mourning, White Is The Wand' in new edition of And Cannot Come Again

'Kanaida' (on the Unsung Stories website, ed. Dan Coxon)

'We All Come Home' in After Sundown, ed. Mark Morris

Novella

Roth-Steyr, Black Shuck Books. 

Patreon

The following stories were published for the first time on my Patreon this year. Those marked with an asterisk were written this year 

 A Story Of Two And A Bit Halves *

A Treat for your Last Day *

Hell Is Children *

I Am The Man The Very Fat Man *

In The Service Of The Queen *

The Book Of Shadows *

The Book Of Spiders *

The Garden *

Truth And Consequences 

Winter Fruit 

Childermass Grove 

Slatcher’s Little Mates 

The Forest You Once Called Home

The Cabinet of Dr Jarvis

Hooded.

On top of all that, I stayed alive, stayed married and managed to get back to work at my day job.

So that was 2020. I didn't take the world by storm, but I'm still here and I'm still writing.

That's good enough for me.

Have the best New Year's you can under the circumstances. Be safe, and take care. Next year looks as though it may be another tough one; let's hold together, keep our heads down, and get through it. 

Winter Tales is now live!

Joseph Freeman's seasonal ghost story extravaganza, Winter Tales, is now live on his YouTube channel. It features readings by Ramsey Campbell, Joe himself, Benjamin Langley, Mark Morris and your humble servant.

Ramsey Campbell: Excerpt from The Wise Friend.

Benjamin Langley: 'The Hands That Do The Devil's Work.'

Joseph Freeman: 'The Waiting Room.'

Mark Morris: 'A Girl, Sitting.'

Simon Bestwick: 'In The Shelter.'

Go treat yourself now (or wait until it's dark!) And why not make Joe's day while you're there, and subscribe to his channel?

 

    

Roth-Steyr Launch Day: This Is Halloween!

In the words of Dr Frank-N-Furter: "Tonight is the night that my beautiful creature is destined to be born!"

Or at least, downloaded and/or ordered.

Yes, today's the day - Roth-Steyr is released at last!

You can buy or order it here.

If you're still stuck for suitable seasonal reading matter, then Keris McDonald came up with a list of recommendations a few years ago, and I managed one or two myself. Ginger Nuts Of Horror has some longer-length recommendations here. (It's pure coincidence that it happens to include another book of mine!)

Thank you to every one who's helped share and signal boost over the past weeks, and a huge thank-you to Steve Shaw at Black Shuck Books for giving this story a home.

Have a wonderful Samhain, folks! 

  

Roth-Steyr Countdown Day Four: In The Service Of The Queen

I meant to write a ghost story especially for the occasion, to help promote Roth-Steyr, but then again Roth-Steyr is the new story I have coming out on Halloween! 

What I have done, though, is make one of the stories previously only available to my Patrons publicly available. In The Service Of The Queen is a ghost story of sorts... with a difference.

You can read it here.

You can pre-order Roth-Steyr here.

The title came from a line in a song about something completely different. You can listen to that song here:

Roth-Steyr Countdown Day Two: Drawing The Reader In At Kendall Reviews, and the Roth-Steyr in action...

Another day dawns, and we're another night closer to Halloween and the launch of Roth-Steyr. And so here I am, yattering away to those nice people at Kendall Reviews, who were probably wondering if I'd ever shut up....

A Roth-Steyr is an early twentieth-century pistol, adopted by the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1907. It's a wonderfully odd-looking weapon, so I thought I'd whet your appetite with some footage of it.

If you ever need to research a firearm, Ian McCollum's channel Forgotten Weapons is a brilliant resource. Unlike some US YouTubers on this topic, there's no insane right-wing ranting, and Ian's both knowledgeable and funny. Not to mention a pretty good shot, as this footage shows. Fellow writers, take note: if you ever need to research a gun for something you're working on, Forgotten Weapons is the place to go, whether you need a technical breakdown or just to get an idea of what the thing looks and behaves like in the wild. 

See you tomorrow, when I'll be doing another interview. I just won't shut up, will I...? :)

  

Roth-Steyr Countdown Day One: A Book for Halloween

Saturday brings both the best night of the year, and the launch of my novella Roth-Steyr from Black Shuck Books! My skull-shaped goblet of blood runneth over...

So, in the coming week, I'll be posting a series of (hopefully) cool and groovy links and articles. Expect interviews, real-life mysteries, and more besides...

To kick it all off, here's a recommendation for some suitably spooky reading matter.

Horror fiction is often at its best in the short form. Novel-length stuff is hard to do really well, but there are those who manage it (Ramsey Campbell springs very much to mind.) Today's blog is about one novel I always think deserves more love: The Matrix by the ever-underrated Jonathan Aycliffe.

Jonathan Aycliffe is a pseudonym of Irish author Denis MacEoin, who's also written a series of dark, intelligent and atmospheric thrillers as Daniel Easterman. (I particularly recommend the 1990s novel Name Of The Beast, an all too prescient and plausible tale of Islamic fundamentalism, backed by an unholy alliance with European fascists, rising to power in Egypt under the leadership of a former Catholic priest who may be in fact the Antichrist. It may be a political thriller, but it also runs along the edge of horror too.) His first novel under the Aycliffe byline was 1991's chilling Naomi's Room, which is a superb book in its own right - and, with its Christmas setting, an excellent pick for another time of year. This was followed by Whispers In The Dark and The Vanishment, with The Matrix appearing in 1994. There have been more since - The Lost, The Talisman, A Shadow On The Wall, A Garden Lost In Time and The Silence Of Ghosts - and his infrequent short stories are also well worth seeking out. I was very proud to publish one of them, 'The Christmas Present', way back in 1998.

So, onto The Matrix.

I once described The Matrix (no, nothing to do with the Keanu Reeves films) as the kind of book Dennis Wheatley might have written if he'd been able to write. A slim, beautifully concise novel, it's a tale of Black Magic, and reaches heights of terror M.R. James would have wholly approved of.

Following the death of his young wife from cancer, Andrew MacLeod, a young academic, takes on a research post at Edinburgh University, studying occult and religious groups. Initially, it's only a professional interest, but he's drawn into a world of crystal-gazers and Theosophists, he finds a kind of solace in their rituals. But then, in the library of one of the occult groups, he finds a very old book, called the Matrix Aeternitatis - the Matrix of Eternal Life. In it is a woodcut so horrible he almost shuts the book at once... and yet his attention is compelled. But as he studies the book, something begins to move on the floor above him and descend the stairs. And Andrew is alone in the building...

That's only the beginning, though. Soon Andrew encounters Duncan Mylne, an influential advocate (Scottish legal representative) who has a knowledge of the occult that the people Andrew has previously encountered can only dream of. As his professional and personal life fall apart, Andrew is drawn into Mylne's tutelage. When he finally realises the kind of man he's become involved with, he attempts to break away from Mylne's control - but it may be too late. Because Mylne has a very specific purpose in mind for Andrew, and Andrew alone...

What makes The Matrix work so well? Part of it is Aycliffe's precise, elegant, even beautiful prose.

Terror is conjured by hints and shadows and glimpses, memorable images sketched in the reader's mind with enviable deftness and economy that linger and grow. There's very little physical horror here, and what there is is usually glimpsed from the corner of the eye. The novel's tone remains level and restrained no matter how dreadful the events, which only makes its eerie atmosphere and brooding dread stronger.

The Matrix is a slim, concise book, as I said earlier, which makes it a novel that can be read in a couple of days. Or even one. Maybe even a single night. Maybe not if you're on your own in the house, though. 

You can buy The Matrix here - the ebook is a mere £1.99! 

And you can pre-order Roth-Steyr here.

Pop back tomorrow for the next stage of the countdown...

Things of the Week 11th September 2020: 9/11, Roth-Steyr, After Sundown

It's very hard to believe that it's nineteen years since the World Trade Centre attacks in New York. I remember very clearly what I was doing; working in the small office I shared with a colleague in Manchester, when another workmate walked in. It was about 3.30 pm, British time.

"Have you heard? Someone's just flown a plane into the World Trade Centre."

I assumed at first it must be a light aircraft, a one or two-person plane.But it soon became clear it had in fact been a jumbo jet. An airliner. And that there'd been not one, but two. And that the towers had come down.

There was never much doubt about who was likely responsible, and beyond the horrifying death toll was the fear of what would come next. Soon the appalling tragedy was compounded by the invasions of Afghanistan - we're still there, nineteen years later, so that people who weren't even born that day are now risking their lives in the 'graveyard of empires' - and of Iraq.

It feels like a different world, the one I lived in prior to 3.30 pm British time, 11th September, 2001. A better one? Maybe, in some ways. Far from perfect; the tensions and conflicts behind the events of that day had been brewing for years if not decades beforehand. But like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 - also the culmination of long-simmering hostilities - September 11th was a catalyst that brought even more destruction and misery in its wake.

In that context, it seems an awkward time at best to announce a new book. 

I'd forgotten today's date until I sat down to write a blog post about my new novella, Roth-Steyr, and my first thought was to put off the announcement for another time. But the theme of the novella is in fact very much in keeping with what happened nineteen years ago today.

The Empire of the Habsburgs, one of the oldest and most powerful royal dynasties in Europe, was a strange and contradictory place. A relic of another time, reactionary and repressive, yet multinational and multi-ethnic, even cosmopolitan: Jewish writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig, left stateless refugees by the rise of nationalism and fascism after the Empire fell, looked back on it with aching nostalgia. Highly cultured, home to the composers Mahler, Liszt and Strauss, the poet Rilke, the authors Kafka, Meyrink and Musil - yet cruel and barbaric in its treatment of smaller countries and those who attempted to break away from its rule. 

It was the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo lit the fuse that would begin the First World War. At the outset of the conflict, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the Great Powers, covering almost a quarter of a million square miles of territory and home to over 52 million people. By the end of the war it had disintegrated, collapsing almost overnight. New nations were born, amid chaos and bloody violence, and the map of Europe changed forever. 

Roth-Steyr's protagonist, Valerie Varden, is from that lost world and knows, better than anyone, how the

world you take for granted, everything you know and love, can fall apart in an instant. And how the events of the past continue to afflict the present. (Indeed, much of the violence and division in the Middle East - the root cause of the September 11th attacks - can be traced to the aftermath of World War One.) 

Roth-Steyr will be released by Black Shuck Books on Halloween. My contributor copies of Mark Morris' new anthology from Flame Tree Press, After Sundown, arrived this week. They contain stories from some of the finest writers working in the genre today. And me. You can find out more, and order a copy if you fancy, here.

Have a good weekend, everyone. And take care of those you love.

Life is so much more fragile than you think. 

Things of the Week, 21st August 2020: Best Horror of the Year #12, Black Shuck Novellas, After Sundown, These Foolish And Harmful Delights

The strangeness that is 2020 continues.

I'm still off work, as I have been all year, trying to find a way back through the anxiety maze. It's bloody draining; that's the most frustrating thing about it. One day you can schedule a series of tasks and stick to them, and think you're progressing - the next it all falls apart, with panic attacks, random general anxiety or general debilitating knackeredness kicking in. I do not recommend it, at all.

Most of last year was spent completing the final draft of one huge novel I've been revising on and off for the better part of a decade; my then agent enthused about it, but then took a job as a commissioning editor. Still, the Huge Novel was ready to be sent out in the hope of securing new representation, so towards the end of last year, out it went...

...at which point I should probably mention that it's about a devastating global pandemic that collapses civilisation. I have a certain knack of timing!

Luckily, one agent liked it enough to ask to see my next book. I've completed two novels so far this year (one begun last summer) and am hard at work on a third. The first one has now gone out into the world. 

Despite everything, I'm managing to write 1000 words every day, with very very rare exceptions, and that ensures steady progress gets made. I used to write a lot more than that per day, and still think it wasn't enough, always in a hurry to get somewhere else; now, a thousand words seems plenty. It frees up time and energy to work on more than one thing at a time, and more importantly, it helps make the book about the journey and not the destination.

Best of all, I'm still lucky enough to have a wonderful and loving spouse who is also a phenomenal author in her own right. Anyone who's not read Cate's collection These Foolish and Harmful Delights really should.

The fantastic illustration at the top of this post is by Reiko Murakami, for the cover of Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year #12.  As always, it contains a roll-call of fantastic authors, including Gemma Files, Laura Mauro, Nathan Ballingrud, Stephen Graham Jones, Sarah Read, Paul Tremblay, Sarah Langan and Joe Lansdale. My story 'Below', from Paul Finch's Terror Tales of North West England, is included therein.

Best Horror of the Year #12 is released on October 6th, and you can preorder it here. 

October will also bring the first of two all-new novellas, brought to you by that fine gentleman Steve 

Shaw of Black Shuck Books. The second one will be out next year; the first, all being well, should see the light (or the dark) on Halloween. More details to follow soon.

So October's looking like a good month, but then so does September, with Flame Tree Press bringing out an original, non-themed horror anthology, After Sundown, edited by Mark Morris. The successor to the Spectral Books of Horror and to Titan Books' New Fears, After Sundown features stories by a host of amazing writers -- too many to list here, but just take a closer look at the cover for a full roll-call! My story 'We All Come Home' is included. 

After Sundown is out on September 15th, and can be preordered here. 

And that's all the latest news from Castle Bestwick. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Simon x

The Lockdown with... Sean Hogan

Sean is a writer and filmmaker living in Margate. He has published three books to date: England's Screaming, Three Mothers, One Father and a critical monograph on the film Death Line. His feature film credits include The Devil's Business, Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD and The Borderlands, as well as a long trail of cinematic corpses that he'd rather not talk about.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.
   

I once annoyed Sylvester Stallone so badly at a London Film Festival Q&A (simply by asking a non kiss-ass question) that they terminated the session immediately afterwards.

I own a psychotic cat named Tuco, who I have long suspected isn't actually a feline at all, but a demon familiar from the lower depths of Hell.

Kim Newman and I devised two horror anthology plays, The Hallowe'en Sessions and The Ghost Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (written by ourselves and a host of other extremely talented genre writers) and staged them both in London. People often ask if we'll ever do another. The answer to that is, I directed both shows and it nearly killed me. Twice. I'm not particularly eager to try for third time lucky.

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?

I haven't found that it's affected me too badly, possibly because, as someone who's decidedly agnostic about social media anyway, I usually manage to resist the urge to doomscroll too much. So my day-to-day writing routine is pretty much what it always was – bursts of activity punctuated by general indolence.

3. What was the first thing you had published?

That would be my book on Gary Sherman's excellent film Death Line, back in 2017. I'd done various bits of non-fiction writing (interviews, essays, reviews) over the years, but when I was actually commissioned to contribute to what was ostensibly meant to be a series of critical monographs, the book somehow ended up being mostly fictional. I had such a good time doing it that it A) served as a gateway into me doing more prose fiction, and B) ended up spawning the next two books I had published.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?
   
   
   

I suppose it would have to be England's Screaming, simply because it was an idea I'd long fantasised about, without ever really believing I would or could actually write it. And when I did finally decide to make the attempt, I still had no idea as to exactly how I was going to go about it, or whether I was capable of writing something of novel length. So the fact that I even completed it felt like a massive accomplishment at the time. Now that the book's been published and people seem to be responding to it, there is definitely a certain sense of pride that I managed to pull it off.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

The horror stories you hear about screenwriting are all entirely true. So you can pretty much go to my IMDB page and pick out any film not called The Borderlands (where, incredibly, they just shot what I wrote without changing anything, and it worked!) where I was employed solely as a screenwriter, and I guarantee you that not only do they make me cringe, but reliving the memories of working on them is enough to send my blood pressure surging through the roof.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?
   
   
   

It really depends what I'm working on. Scriptwriting is almost second-nature to me now, so I find that decidedly less onerous and can get much more done without wanting to burst into tears or make a dash for the wine rack. But if I'm working on prose fiction (which I've been doing a lot more of recently), I'm still training my writing brain to think that way, which makes the work a lot slower/more frustrating. Add to that a healthy case of Imposter Syndrome (“I'm just a screenwriter, what moral or ethical right do I have to write ACTUAL PROSE?”), and I'm grateful if I can slog through 1000-1500 words in a day. And possibly this is entirely down to my own laziness, but I also seem to be an either/or writer. That is, I only seem to be able to work on one thing on any given day – I generally don't, say, find myself bouncing between prose pages in the morning and scripting in the afternoon.

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

If I actually liked kids, I might compare this to having to choose between my own children. Well...I'll say England's Screaming again, because it's the meatiest of the books and seems to generally be having the desired effect for readers; that is, it's not solely aimed at those people who'll get every last obscure film reference, but should also work both as a primer on some interesting movies you might not have seen, and as a plain and simple story. But while I'm at it, I'll be completely shameless and say that if you liked that one, then you might want to consider picking up my other 2020 book, Three Mothers, One Father, which is a Eurohorror semi-sequel to England's Screaming, and possibly even the monograph on Death Line, the narrative portion of which functions as a sort of prequel to it. (I hear shared universes are very hot right now.)

8. What are you working on now?

Two writing projects, currently: a game script for a first-person shooter, and a novel proper, The Corpse Road. And there are one or two film projects bubbling under, assuming we're not all just scrabbling around in the ruins of civilisation come the end of the year...

The Lockdown (Mr and Mrs Edition) with... John Llewellyn Probert

John Llewellyn Probert's latest book is the British Fantasy Award-nominated The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, the second sequel to his British Fantasy Award winner The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine. He won the Children of the Night Award for his portmanteau book The Faculty of Terror and his current projects include two more titles utilising the same structure. He is also at work on two novels and two non-fiction film books while continuing to write about current releases at his site, Houseof Mortal Cinema. After all six books have been finished he intends to sleep for a bit. But he probably won't.

1. Tell us three things about yourself. (If you’ve done this previously, ideally tell us three different things than last time!) I started wearing a monocle for a bit of fun but I actually find it incredibly practical. I wear a lot more waistcoats than I used to, but not all at the same time I own more shoes than my wife does.

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?

It hasn't, really. My writing has always been an escape from the real world and there's no reason for that to have changed. Obviously I'm still going to work and as work is even more stressful than ever the need for release is all the greater and so when I get home the keyboard has been on fire most evenings. Let's see if anything any good comes of it all!

3. What was the first thing you had published?

When I was in school I wrote for the school magazine (and was one of the editors for two years) so my first published piece would probably have been a review of the annual organ recital in the school chapel.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

I don't know about proud, but the writing 'thing' I'm perhaps the most pleased I've ever done is my film review site House of Mortal Cinema. I had been tinkering with the idea for some time & eventually decided to go for it, especially once Thana supplied the title. It will be nine years old this year and I still love doing it. It's made me friends and industry contacts, plus the odd book contract, as well as causing me to watch a lot of stuff I would have been on the fence about otherwise.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

On bad days everything.

On good days nothing, because if I don't love my stuff how can I expect anyone else to?

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

I rise with the wind, remembering that high fibre Jacobs Crackers should be consumed one at a time and not by the packet load. Then it's into the bathroom and...

Sorry.

7am Rise

7.02am Champagne! Champagne for Everyone!

10.30am Get off the phone to the Queen after listening to her woes.

11.00am Lunch! Champagne and Truffles for everyone!

3.00pm Sit down at computer. Decide what films to watch for the rest of the day.

5.00pm Tea! Champagne and escargots for everyone while watching creaky Monogram 'classics' from 1942. Midnight. Think I should have written but it can wait until tomorrow.

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

I'd suggest Dead Shift from Horrific Tales Publishing. It's an easy read (I like to think all my stuff is) and lots of fun, even though it's set in a hospital. I'm planning to revisit that world with a longer book, by the way

8. What are you working on now?

It has to be kept secret I'm afraid – all six books! One has been delivered to a US publisher and I'm waiting to hear, another that I've been contracted for I'm getting finished right now. The others are in various stages of scribble but suffice to say they're all more of the same kind of thing I've been writing for years because I'm old now & I can't change, nor would I want to. Oh, I do have a new story coming out in...oh dear I don't think I'm allowed to talk about that either. What about my 'British Kolchak' story in...no. It's all a bugger this pre-publication secrecy thing, isn't it? Anyway plenty of stuff to come and if I'm the only one who likes any of them well at least they have one friend.