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 Week: 10th June 2016

Bits and pieces of stuff this week. Work on Devil's Highway grinds steadily on, gathering momentum. Fingers crossed, I might just pull this one off.

In other news, the shortlist for the British Fantasy Awards was announced on Monday. Some of you may remember that I posted a few recommendations for the shortlist back in February - and a very gratifying number of them have made the shortlists! Either I'm a major trendsetter, have developed powers of mind control without realising. Or, more likely, I just felt the same way as a majority of voters. The most boring explanations are usually the likeliest.

I'm on one of the juries - for Best Collection, alongside Carole Johnstone and Emma Cosh. The nominations in that category are:

Ghost Summer: Stories, Tananarive Due (Prime Books)
Monsters, Paul Kane (The Alchemy Press)
Probably Monsters, Ray Cluley (ChiZine Publications)
Scar City, Joel Lane (Eibonvale Press)
Skein and Bone, V.H. Leslie (Undertow Publications)
The Stars Seem So Far Away, Margrét Helgadóttir (Fox Spirit Books)

We're going to have our work cut out, to say the least. I've read some of the collections, but not others - but there's no doubt it's going to be a close-run thing.

I didn't make the shortlist this year - I hadn't expected to, given the quality of work out there - unless you count The Second Spectral Book Of Horror Stories, which has nominated for Best Anthology and which includes my story 'Horn Of The Hunter.' Despite my (and others') well-documented issues with Spectral Press and issues raised in respect of its TOC, I think it's an excellent anthology and a fine achievement by Mark Morris.


However, someone else did make the shortlist, and this for me was the best news of the whole thing.

Among my recommendations back in February were a short story and a novella, 'When The Moon Man Knocks' and The Bureau Of Them, which in my admittedly biased view were two of the best things published last year. Both of them have been shortlisted, alongside (among others) Nnedi Okorafor, Mark Morris, Priya Sharma, V.H. Leslie, Adam Nevill and Usman Tanveer Malik.

Both pieces are, of course, by Cate Gardner, now also known as Mrs Bestwick. (It's still great to write that!) 'When The Moon Man Knocks,' in particular, is one of the best things Cate's ever written, a heartbreaking and unsettling meditation on grief and loss. It's also packed with oddness and invention, in a world that's half the one we know and half a surreal fairyland - somewhere between Lewis Carroll and early Tim Burton. Cate wrote it shortly after her mum passed away; today would have been Pauline's 71st birthday.

Anyway, I'm hugely proud of and happy for Cate today. Fingers crossed for the awards in September!

The Lowdown with... Carole Johnstone

Carole Johnstone is a British Fantasy Award winning Scottish writer, currently living in Essex, England. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, published by Constable & Robinson, PS Publishing, Tachyon Publications, ChiZine, Running Press, and Night Shade Books, among many others.

Her fiction has also been reprinted in many Best Of anthologies, including Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, and Salt Publishing's Best British Fantasy series. Her novella, Cold Turkey, and debut short story collection, The Bright Day is Done, were both shortlisted for 2015 British Fantasy Awards.

More information on the author can be found at her website.

1. Tell us three things about yourself:

I LOVE beer. (Hence the photo). But ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, I drink wine instead. Because beer does not love me.

I collect medieval weaponry, the bigger and uglier the better. I buy most of it from museum auctions, so that I know I’m not paying often ridiculous amounts of money for something that’s been cobbled together in someone’s shed. My pride and joy is a huuuge iron battle axe head from the Black Forest.

I once picked the balls out of the bag live on Scotsport for the Scottish Cup. It was the single most terrifying moment of my life.

2. What was the first thing you had published?

It was a short story called 'The Morning After', and it was published in Black Static #3, back in 2008, I think. A very short, very simple story with a very predictable twist, but I still have a soft spot for it all the same.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

God, that’s hard, Simon! I’ll do what I usually do, and pick a few...

I’ve just finished a dark psychological thriller called The Love of My Life, and I’m hugely proud of that, but as it hasn’t been published yet, I’ll choose my 2014 BFA-nominated novella, Cold Turkey. It’s about a guy who tries to give up smoking, but finds that the side-effects of going cold turkey are far more horrific than he’d been expecting. I wanted it to be all things: scary and sexy and funny and moving; a love story and a horror story, a cautionary tale. Whether anyone actually thinks that it’s any or all of those things is, of course, entirely beyond my control. I was trying to give up smoking myself at the time – which proved entirely beyond my control too.

And I recently had a short called 'There You’ll Be' published in the anthology, Terror Tales of the Scottish Highlands, that I’m pretty proud of, if only because it was a pretty big departure for me, and probably the most personal thing I’ve ever written.

4. ...and which makes you cringe?

My first longer work was a novella called Frenzy, published back in 2009. It’s a story about a group of survivors adrift on the Pacific over the Mariana Trench, at the mercy of the elements, sharks, and each other. And the something waiting in the abyss beneath them.

I don’t hate it – I probably shouldn’t say so, but I’ve never hated anything I’ve had published – although it is very overwrought and overwritten. I was channelling at least half a dozen other – better – writers at the time. Plus, the ending is horribly ambiguous, with little or no resolution at all – the kind of book that I, as a reader, would want to hurl across the room in frustration. Weirdly, this didn’t occur to me at the time.

There are still elements that I like, and I can see what I was trying to do; if I went back now, I’d do a far better job of it. I’ve always had a tremendous sense of fascination/terror for the deep ocean, and just adore the whole lost and alone on the alien sea narrative, so maybe one day I will!

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

Well, I work pretty much full time, so I write when I can, usually in the evening and at weekends. I do have rituals: I read something similar to what I’m writing to get into the mood; I listen to classical music, mostly movie soundtracks (unless I’m editing – then it’s nothing); erm...wine. If it’s going badly, vodka. Very badly, beer. I’ve given up smoking now, but e-cigs are a constant writing companion.

I’m not the kind of writer who can grab a few moments here and there: on the tube, in my lunch hour etc. I have to be all the way down in it. Often I’ll write for seven, eight hours straight, sometimes until dawn, and although not all of it will be any good, it’s definitely my most productive way of working.

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

If they’re looking for long fiction, Cold Turkey. For short fiction, my BFA-nominated short story collection, The Bright Day is Done.

7. What are you working on now?

Having just finished a novel, I’m enjoying writing a few shorts just for me: no commission, no theme, just whatever I feel like, which is great. I’ve also just finished a long short/short long, which is a bit Taggart meets True Detective, and I can’t remember when I last had such a blast writing anything.

I’m planning on starting work on a new novel in the new year. A dark psychological thriller set in Edinburgh, about two very different twin sisters. I’ve got it all pretty much plotted out, so can’t wait to get stuck in.

I’ve also got a couple of pretty major decisions to make next year writing-wise, so watch this space!

The Next Big Thing (With Apologies To Paul Finch And Carole Johnstone)

First of all, sorry I’ve not been around much lately.  There’s been some not-too-wonderful stuff going on in what we laughingly call ‘real life’ that’s occupied a lot of my time lately.  Nothing to do with the ever-reigning Ms G; that’s been one aspect of my life that’s been consistently great, in fact.  No, this involves the world of work, and it’s still ongoing, so can’t be discussed here as yet.  Hopefully that’ll be resolved in the next month or so, and I can be a little less mysterious about it.

Secondly, a more specific apology goes out to Paul Finch and Carole Johnstone, both of whom asked if they could tag me in this meme a while back and didn’t even receive the courtesy of a reply as my head was firmly up my arse.  As penance, I’m tagging them here.  (Also, there’s practically no-one I know left to tag, so that’s its own punishment.)

Anyways, that most excellent Aussie, Mr Antony Mann, tagged me in this meme to write about my WIP.  So here goes…

1) What is the working title of your current/next book?
Riders On The Storm.

2) Where did the idea come from?
The R.101 airship, the biggest British aircraft ever built- 777 feet long and 132 feet high- which crashed in France on October 5th, 1930, killing 48 of the 54 men aboard.

R.101 over St. Paul's Cathedral

3) What genre does your book fall under?
God alone knows.  A sort of bizarre mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror, comedy, action-adventure and love story.  But despite the airships, I don’t think it counts as steampunk.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
That’s an interesting question as many of the characters are based on the real-life crew and passengers killed in the crash.  The main character, Sam Church, was a young crewman who nearly prevented the disaster, and survived the crash only to die of his injuries shortly before his father and fiancee reached his bedside.  The other crew members have largely been fictionalised, so that’s a bit easier: if I could borrow a time machine, I’d nip back to the ‘80s and collect the late great Bob Peck to play Lieutenant-Commander Joseph Stakowski Martindale (R.101’s First Officer) and a greying but still tough-looking John Thaw for Flight Sergeant Bill Rathbone (the ship’s Chief Coxswain.)  Plus a younger Liam Neeson, from around the time he did Darkman, to play the villain of the piece, Mr Quill.  For other characters, I’d go for Pauley Perrette as Sidgeley (a brilliant, geeky Goth chick from 2007), Naomie Harris as Captain Jane Rhymer (an 18th century pirate) and Hermione Norris as Dr Gail Anderman (an archaeologist from 1936.)

Rigger Samuel Church, 1904-1930

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
At the moment before it crashes, the R.101 airship and the men who were killed aboard her are pulled through space and time to a distant world to help save a community of people from throughout earth’s history from an inhuman, Lovecraftian menace that’s awakening after aeons of slumber, and the insane, decaying Mr Quill.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My wonderful agent, Sharon Ring, will be representing it.


7) How long did it take you to write the first draft?
The first twenty or thirty thousand words took months of writing and rewriting, because there’s so much stuff happening- you’ve got to set up the historical event (the R101 disaster) and the background to that, plus the alien planet and everything going on there; also, you have to introduce the airship and get enough information across for readers to understand what’s going on. As well as that, you have to introduce a bunch of characters.  Oh, and on top of all that, there’s the actual story.  The hard work’s trying to combine all that in a way that flows naturally and doesn’t seem clunky.  Once that was finished, the rest- eighty or ninety thousand words- came very easily and the first draft was finished in a couple of months.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’m really not sure!  Michael Moorcock’s The Nomad Of Time is a bit like it, I suppose- it involves airships and time travel.  I did once jokingly describe it as Battlestar Galactica with airships, though I think- hope!- it’s developed beyond that.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Are you sitting comfortably?

In 2010, I went to the Fantastic Films Festival in Manchester, where Ramsey Campbell presided over the raffle.  The prizes were a mix of stuff you’d really want and stuff you wouldn’t accept as a free gift if there was a gun to your head.  One such example was a book on girl’s dolls, apparently written for adults.  Frankly I found that creepy enough, but Ramsey started doing the dolls’ voices… I still have nightmares about that bit. 

Anyway, he made it clear that no-one was going anywhere till somebody bid at least a pound on this book.  Which I did, just to make it go away.  Of course, no-one else was stupid enough to do that, so I ended up with the infernal thing.  I tried to surreptitiously abandon it in the hotel as I was fairly sure that I’d get put on some sort of register if I was caught with it in public, but some bugger found it and posted it to me.  No idea who.  In a way, that’s the most worrying thing about it.

But there was another book that was part of the same prize, called Survival of Death, all about the ‘evidence’ for the afterlife.  And one of the articles in it was about the R.101 airship disaster, and a medium who claimed to have made contact with the spirits of the dead crewmen.

I’d read bits about R.101 before, back in pre-internet days, and this article rekindled my interest.  People still argue today about the causes of the crash and whether she was simply a bad ship or a good one plagued by ill-luck.  I knew there was a story in it somewhere and read more widely about R.101 and the great rigid airships in general.  They cast a spell, which I think you either get or you don’t, and R.101 was certainly a beautiful ship.  Anyway, I originally intended to write two or three stories about R.101- each completely different versions of the story- to try and sell as a chapbook.  Somewhere along the line one of the story ideas- where the ship escaped destruction- expanded and pushed the other ideas out.  First it was going to be a novella… then a novel… now it’s planned as the first in a series of novels.  No idea how that happened.

R.101 over Elstow, Bedfordshire

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
There are also: Spitfires, pirates, monsters, battles and true love.

Thanks again to Antony for tagging me, and I hereby tag Jeannie Alderdice to carry the meme on by answering the same 10 questions and tagging others to carry it on on January 23rd!