Things of the Week, Friday 6th March 2020: Best Horror of the Year 12, Cate Gardner Collection and more...

It's been a strange week.

I'm currently still off work, and haven't been venturing out much, so the unfolding coronavirus epidemic's had a slightly unreal quality. We had been thinking of going to Manchester this weekend, to meet Catana Chetwynd - we love her comics - but she's cancelled her tour due to the outbreak. There've been so many pandemic scares over the last decade or two that they've taken on a 'cry wolf' quality (although one of the reasons many of these outbreaks haven't been worse will have been prompt action and treating them as an urgent crisis) but it looks as though this one will be the real thing. I hope it's under some sort of control sooner rather than later (although with the kind of brain-donors we have in charge here and in the US, I'm not getting my hopes up too high), and to see old friends and Facebook friends, and maybe make some new ones too, at StokerCon in Scarborough.

On a happier note, this week I received some fantastic news when Ellen Datlow selected my story 'Below' (originally published in the mighty Paul Finch's Terror Tales Of Northwest England) for inclusion in The Best Horror Of the Year #12.

You can read the full TOC here. I'm in some stellar company, including Gemma Files, Robert Shearman, Joe R. Lansdale and Catriona Ward, not to mention friends such as Ray Cluley and Ren Warom. Great to see S. Qiouyu Lu's excellent 'As Dark As Hunger', which I finally read in Black Static the other week (I'm very behind with my reading), included, and special congratulations to Laura 'Bricklauncher' Mauro, for finally ticking one off her bucket list and making a Datlow anthology! (The first of many, I have no doubt.)

I'm absolutely over the moon about this.

I'm also delighted to report that the first review of Cate's new collection, These Foolish And Harmful Delights, is now up at The Eloquent Page. Of it, Paul Holmes says: "There is an introspective, almost intimate quality to each entry in the collection. Gardner’s powerful writing brings together tales of love and loss, rebellion and empowerment. These Foolish & Harmful Delights encompasses the full gamut of emotions. The stories delicately dance that fine line between dark fantasy and psychological horror. If you enjoy your fiction in the short form and are looking for something memorable, I can confirm that Cate Gardner is the author for you."

Couldn't have put it better myself.

e-ARCs of the new edition of And Cannot Come Again are now available from Horrific Tales, including the previously unpublished stories 'In The Shelter' and 'Black Is The Mourning, White Is The Wand' and an updated introduction from Ramsey Campbell. Still can't get over how amazing Ben Baldwin's cover art is... 

My very cool friend Joely Black is leading a workshop: Making Magical Objects: Experimental Archaeology Meets Creative Writing later this month in Manchester. Joely's a fine writer, whose academic background focuses on religious and magical practices in the ancient world, so she knows what she's talking about. I promised to help spread the word about this event, but sadly it's actually sold out already! Nonetheless, any Mancs who like the sound of it should keep an eye out for future ones.

And that's the lot for now. Have a good weekend, all.

What's New? with Joely Black

Joely Black is an author and academic specialising in magic and ritual practices in the Ancient World.
She has a PhD in Geography and is now studying for a second in Classics and Ancient History. She lives in Manchester with her partner and cat, and enjoys running, travelling, and learning dead languages. Her work is available on Amazon Kindle under the titles Amnar and Five Empires.

1) So, what’s new from you?

Since nobody knows who I am, I should start at the beginning. Way back in the mists of time, I wrote a fantasy series called Amnar. About five years ago, I started working on what turned out to be a prequel. I’ve been working on the first book of that for a while. The elevator pitch introduction is that an orphaned girl is thrown into a machine that turns her into a god. She has had her memory stolen and was intended to be a weapon of war. She decides to take revenge on the people who did this to her, and build a new, better world. She has a twin sister, which adds to the complication: her sister is horrified by what she can do so she has to wrestle with whether she should use her new abilities at all.


2) How did it come about?

About five years ago, I was involved in a Dungeons and Dragons game with friends, and developed a character I really liked. She was an assassin with some really unique abilities, so I decided to make a world where I could write stories about her. Somehow, the world got tacked on to the world I usually write in as a civilisation that existed before Amnar. Some of its characters are involved in establishing what becomes Amnar later.


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

The whole process of one civilisation collapsing and another rising up from the ashes really interested me – since I’m a Classicist, this is my bread and butter – so the books have been spawned from a combination of me working on a PhD in Classics and playing Dungeons and Dragons a lot. I’ve been working on aspects of religious practice in Greco-Roman Egypt, which inspired a lot of the background to the world.


4) What was your favourite part of the process?

All of it. I’m in the middle of writing now, and that is fairly tough. I am juggling PhD writing, learning ancient languages, and occasionally teaching as well as writing, but that’s really the bit I enjoy the most. I do miss playing Dungeons and Dragons, though, as I haven’t had the chance in a really long time!


5) What was the toughest part of it?

Finding the time and the energy. I suffer from severe depression and anxiety, and there are so many things you have to do as a PhD student, plus language learning, a lot of the work is finding time. You have to learn to streamline, so you have to decide what’s most important and miss out on the rest.


6) Is there a theme running through it?

This is very much about the dangers of humans having a lot of power and not knowing how to handle it.


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

Gods, Power, Sisters.

My Fantasycon Schedule (Updated!)

In other news, here I am with an adorable dog.

ETA: I'm actually on three panels now!

So, despite the fact that some people are claiming that anyone who attends Fantasycon this year is a nazi-loving c**t because the Don Estelle of the far right is on a single panel there, I'm going. Mainly because I'm neither a nazi-loving c**t nor the kind of idiotic arse who thinks [NAME REDACTED] is a credible source of information. Astonishingly, it's possible to be both.

*Breathes out*

Anyway.

I'm having a busier year than I have in a while; I'm on two panels this year, as well as doing a reading. So here goes:










Friday
Panel: Writing Fighting!
7.30 pm, Panel Room Two
With David Tallerman (mod), Anna Smith Spark, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Simon Bestwick and Stewart Hotston.
"Whether you're writing a combat scene on a spaceship, in a vampires tomb, or amidst a desperate battle, you want your readers to care about the outcome, right? Our panel will discuss the fine balance between action accuracy and communicating seat of the pants sensation. "

Saturday
Panel: Creative Writing In Education
2.30 pm, Panel Room Three
With Ginger Lee Thomason (mod), Terry Grimwood, Tiffani Angus, Joely Black, Simon Bestwick and Terry Jackman.
"University degrees, Masters courses, Ph. D's and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE). Our panel discuss how their experiences and work in higher education has helped them as writers and how it can be beneficial to others."

Panel: Writing Dystopias
10.30 pm, Panel Room Two
With Guy Adams (mod), Simon Bestwick, Duncan Bradshaw, Thomas N. Toner
"The world is broken. What broke it? Can it be fixed? Dystopian Fiction has become incredibly popular in the last decade. Join our panel of doommongers as they discuss the different ways the world can be made worse and how different dystopias reflect aspects of our own society."

Sunday
Reading Slot: Fantasy
10.00 am., Sandringham Room
With David Tallerman and Joely Black.
David Tallerman is an all-round good egg and author of fantasy fiction whose forays into horror fiction were collected last year in The Sign In The Moonlight; Joely Black's the gifted author of the self-published Amnar series, and a good friend who's attending her first FCon. And me? I hear you cry. You're a horror author, Bestwick, what are you doing here? Well, I'll be delivering a sneak preview of the latest work in progress, which is definitely edging into the realms of urban fantasy. Closer to the world of Angels of the Silences or The Feast Of All Souls than the out and out horror of Tide Of Souls and The Faceless, or the post-apocalyptic battleground of the Black Road books. Come on down for a sneak preview!