So, breaking the silence again to share some news:
The release date for Devil's Highway has been pushed back. This isn't Snowbooks' fault; as blog readers will know, I was late getting the MS to the publisher, and that's what's knocked things out of kilter. Also, because the novel was completed at white heat and warp speed, both I and my brilliant editor, Tik Dalton (more about Tik in a second) have found a host of minor errors that need fixing.
Personally, I'd rather wait a bit longer to see the book and have everything about it spot on than see it come out on schedule with things wrong with it. I don't have the new release date yet, but I'll be sure to share it when I do.
Tik and her brood of novellas.
Tik, by the way, is the newest addition to the Snowbooks staff, and has been editing Devil's Highway for publication. I met her briefly, for the first time, at Fantasycon, where she and Emma Barnes were handling the launch of Snowbooks' horror novellas (including Cate's The Bureau Of Them, Mark Morris' Albion Fay, Ray Cluley's Within The Wind, Beneath The Snow and John Llewellyn Probert's The Nine Deaths Of Dr Valentine and The Hammer Of Dr Valentine, recovered from the Spectral Press trainwreck, and also featuring Gary Fry's Scourge and Andrew Hook's The Greens.)
One of Tik's first assignments at Snowbooks was to design and typeset all seven novellas. They all looked great, as anyone who's seen them will tell you. And she's been a joy to work with - fast, professional, patient and helpful.
In other news, I have now signed my first contract via my agent, Tom Witcomb, relating to an audiobook of my crime novel. More details in due course!
In the meantime, thanks for your patience: Devil's Highway will be here soon!
My main two activities have been working on Devil's Highway, and working up a list of my available stories for my agent. He has a meeting in a fortnight or thereabouts which he'd need it for, so I wanted to get it ready well in advance to make sure it had everything he needed.
So I finished it today: about a hundred stories, novelettes and novellas, including existing and forthcoming collections. (There's another hundred or so stories that are officially 'retired', i.e. "hell, no, they will never see the light of day again!" and thirty-odd others which may be usable after some rewriting (or should alternatively be slung out and started again from scratch.) Complete with word-count, publication history, story summary and content warnings for sex, violence, abuse, or, in the case of one story, for 'nun-on-dragon action'. (Not that there was anything explicit or triggering in it, but would you have been able to resist the temptation to write that?)
Devil's Highway has been a harder ride - there is a huge amount of stuff to type up. I wrote part of my crime novel via dictation, but I'd forgotten that I'd actually written somewhere between a third and a half of the thing on my laptop before spraining my wrist and being forced to record. The typing up is becoming such a slog that I've been thinking I'd be quicker writing the rest of the book from scratch using my notes! (If you remember, my outline was something like 30,000 words long.)
I made some stabs towards that today, but my main problem was fear. I was afraid to try, convinced it would all go wrong...
...at which point, Facebook Memories actually did something useful, by throwing up this excellent post by Gareth L. Powell on the very subject of The Fear. It came in very handy in getting me back in the saddle. The work goes on.
Graham Masterton - Lowdowned here and interviewed at length here and here - has a new book out: Living Death, the latest in his excellent Katie Maguire series of crime novels... DS Katie Maguire is at a loss. Last year, she and her team destroyed
the biggest drug trafficker in Cork. So how is the city's drug trade at
an all-time high? Meanwhile, a spate of violent attacks which leave
victims severely disabled has brought confidence in the Garda to an
all-time low.
As Katie investigates, she realises that the two
cases might be connected. Someone is using brain-damaged victims to
smuggle drugs into the country. And the only way to find out more is to
go in undercover...
As ever with the Katie Maguire books, Living Death promises to be funny, engaging, gripping and unsparing. So well worth your time there.
With summer on the way, I found myself listening to an album that suits the hot sunny weather very well - A-Lan-Nah, the Canadian singer Alannah Myles' third album.
Myles is best known for her biggest hit, the sultry '80s rock ballad Black Velvet, and a helluva song it is too. But it was the only real standout track on her first album, Alannah Myles. Sod's law being what it is, her second albums, Rockinghorse and A-Lan-Nah, were a huge step up in quality, but far less successful. Her voice has grown in range too - bluesy, tender, and a raging rocking howl, sometimes on the same track.
Anyway - hard to pick a favourite song from this album, so here's one of them: crack open your wine/beer/tipple of choice, chill out in the garden with the one you love, and listen to this.
So this week has principally been about Getting Back Into The Groove.
Cate had another week off work after the honeymoon, allowing us to relax a little... and to get on with stuff like writing thank you notes (a lot of them!) and, among other things, buying a new bed! (Our existing one is a cheapo model with a knackered mattress.) Thanks to all the people whose gifts have made that possible.
Cate and I both decided recently to work together at losing weight and getting into better physical shape; that was after I was referred for a talk on bariatric surgery (aka weight-loss surgery) at the end of March. We both came away with a strong 'HELL NO' attitude to it, but if anything it made us more committed to living healthier lives. And it's been working. A couple of years ago, I was 24 stone (that's 336 pounds, to US readers) and had managed to drop to about 23, but my weight was stuck around there. By the time we got married, I was down to 22 stone.
Then came the honeymoon, and there was a lot of going out for meals and eating that extremely nice ice cream they do in Barmouth. By the time we got home, we'd both some - but by no means all - of the weight back on.
Initially I tried to go straight back to counting calories, keeping to 1800 or less a day. Didn't work; I kept getting hungry between meals, craving sweets and treats. So I indulged myself. A little. Not as much. But bit by bit, I've eased myself back into my old routine.
Today, I weighed myself, and for the first time in years, I'm under 22 stone. Okay, 21 stone, 13 and a quarter pounds, but psychologically speaking, that's a big milestone. Next target - 21 stone and less than ten pounds. Then less than 21 and a half stone. And so on. Baby steps. They work.
They work with the writing, too. While I'm still able to write full-time, I need to make every day count. That means not only Devil's Highway and the remaining Black Road novels, but short stories and a couple of other WIPs that I'm struggling to find time to work on, not to mention the 'admin' side of things - everything from finding writing markets for stories and submitting them, to putting together a list of my short stories for my agent, doing something about a tribute anthology I inherited, booking tickets for a show, applying for grants and bursaries, writing some spec non-fiction articles... all the little bits of stuff that need doing but keep getting put off because of the big tasks.
That meant working out a schedule for the day that would let me do all those things. But, like the dieting, you can't just impose a whole new regime at once - not least because I have to type up Devil's Highway from the dictated recordings in order to rewrite it, and that's a big job, still ongoing. But bit by bit, I'm getting there. Baby steps again. And the work is getting done.
Albeit slowly, and not without stress. Just this morning, I found the end of one chapter missing. I know I recorded it, but the file isn't where it's supposed to be. It might be on the old laptop, if I can get the damned thing running again. If not... well, I'll try not to panic. Get it typed up, then write in any missing bits. One problem at a time.
But as, piece by piece, the story materialises in concrete form, I find I'm getting excited about it again, remembering why Helen and Gevaudan and the rest got my interest in the first place. My only worry is how little time I've left myself to get everything fixed and ready. All hands to the pump.
I got in touch with my agent on my return; he's reading Black Mountain and enjoying it, which is good news! He'll have some notes soon, and hopefully a way forward for Mynydd Du to rise once more. In addition, I need to put together a full listing of all my short fiction for him... (see 'Admin') My Dad's reading Black Mountain too, mainly to make sure I haven't screwed up monumentally with my Welsh. Apparently he's enjoying it as well, though, even though he's not particularly a horror fan...
The final piece of news is a sadder one: Gary Fry today announced that, after over a decade, he is closing down Gray Friar Press. Gary is, and has been from the word go, a class act. I have him to thank for
publishing two of my story collections, Pictures Of The Dark and The Condemned, and it was also down to him that my short story 'The Moraine'
first saw print (later to be reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror Of The Year.
I'm just one of numerous authors given a break
and a start by Gary. He's also been an absolute model of how to
run a small press: when the printing firm Biddles went into
administration, making it cost-ineffective to proceed with the hardback
of The Condemned, he promptly refunded those who'd pre-ordered it,
offered them copies of the paperback and also provided them with a PDF
of the additional story the hardback should have included. On top of
that, he took the hit caused by the money lost, while still paying me
the full royalties owing for the book.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done.
Gray Friar has been a solid bulwark of the UK small press, and it's
very sad to see it go. Here's to Gary and all he does in the future.
I normally do Things of the Week every Friday, but got a little distracted, not least because we had dinner guests - Priya Sharma and her partner Mark came round for dinner, several rounds of Cards Against Humanity (I won a pack of these a couple of months back) which is set to become a guilty pleasure, I suspect.
The only reason we didn't end up playing all night was because Priya had a Blu-Ray of Mad Max: Fury Road. So I finally got to see the damn film, and it was incredible. Charlize Theron is superb as Imperator Furiosa (and what a cool name that is) and Tom Hardy... damnit, Tom Hardy is Tom Hardy. After seeing him in Locke, I understood exactly why so many people go chicken oriental about the guy. He fits very snugly into Mel Gibson's boots here, but Theron basically owns this film, which is just great stuff: almost completely non-stop action, but it actually builds in heart and character development and emotional power without sacrificing a moment's pace. I will admit to welling up slightly at one point. To avoid spoilers, I'll just say this: "Witness me."
Yep.
Bottom shelf, second from left. :)
This week, things have ticked along. I've enjoyed my break from Devil's Highway continues, and
used it to rewrite some more of The Song Of The Sibyl.
And then a new idea came along, and has started twitching into life.
Should be worth the few days it'll hopefully take to bring it into the
world. There are a few things I was putting off until 'after the book is written' that I'll try and do before going back to it, I think. I've a fairly tight deadline, but life's always fun lived close to the edge. (Famous last words, I know.) But you can't always do the sensible thing: see this excellent blog from Chuck Wendig.
This week has been the week of the London Book Fair, and both my publisher Snowbooks and my agent Tom Witcomb were there. They're probably just about recovering now!
And - nearly forgot! Angels Of The Silences got another review - this time on Hellnotes:
Bestwick’s talent for capturing the distinct voices of his protagonists
is what sets this novella apart from others with a similar plot.
Wrapping up in a quick but solid conclusion, Angels of the Silences will leave a lasting impression on any reader lucky enough to cross its path.
I'll take that. :)
May the Liberator carry you safely home.
On a sadder note, the actor Gareth Thomas died last week. I was a huge fan of Blake's 7 (and it was an influence on Hell's Ditch: there's a reason there's a character called Darrow in it...) and Roj Blake was, of course, the role he was best known for, but he had a long and solid career on the stage and television, and was actually twice nominated for a BAFTA, for the TV play Stocker's Copper and the series Morgan's Boy. (He even has an uncredited, blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearance in Hammer's Quatermass And The Pit - right at the beginning, as a workman...) Not to mention the cult TV series Children Of The Stones. Another series I always loved him in was the underrated Knights Of God, where he starred alongside John Woodvine, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and (in their final TV appearances) Nigel Stock and Patrick Troughton in a dystopian thriller set in a ruined Britain controlled by an order of clerical fascists. It was written by Richard Cooper, who's always good. I still have Cooper's novelisation of the script somewhere.
Knights Of God has never been released on DVD in the UK, but until it is, it's on YouTube:
Nothing to do with the post, it just looked pretty.
So, this week's things...
Not the most eventful of weeks, I guess. Things are ticking along. One less week to go until I become a married man. The venue, the honeymoon, the rings are all paid for. Just need a new set of clothes for the ceremony and we're done.
The crime novel is ready to go. The next stage is hammering out the details of the pitch and which publishers it's going to, which is more Tom's department than mine. Although when he asked if I had any good quotes about my work, I found I was able to oblige him. Along with other reviews and a host of generous quotes from fellow writers, there's Damien Walter's namecheck in the Guardian and the Telegraph review of Tide Of Souls. That's nearly seven years old now - but still one to be proud of!
It's Easter Weekend, and the clocks go forward tonight. Which is great when you have to be up early tomorrow... to go to MANCHESTER FOR EASTERCON!
Yup, we got day memberships for Sunday and are going down to Manchester with our friend Priya Sharma. Always good to have an excuse to revisit my home town, of course. This will be our first Eastercon so we're looking forward to it.
First draft of The Devil's Highway is edging closer to completion. Most of the way through Chapter 27 (or 3.7 as I call it - the book's in three parts, each with ten chapters) so after this, there are three more chapters and an epilogue to go. After that, we're done.
Well, apart from typing the draft up.
And the second draft.
And the third draft.
And the...
Okay, so actually, we're not really anywhere near done here. Come to think of it, what's all this 'we' shit? Last I checked, I was doing this on my own. Unless the voices in my head count.
But anyway. We're close to one of the major milestones. What comes next is the process of refining, honing and improving until it the book's the best it's capable of being. And when that's done, half of the story of The Black Road will have been told.
Meanwhile, here's a band I discovered a few years ago, Editors. I heard some of the stuff from their first album and liked it, but the more recent songs are better still. This one's been in my head a lot, and I love the video too - it's by Ben Wheatley. I haven't seen his first film, DOWN TERRACE, yet, much less his new movie HIGH RISE, but KILL LIST, SIGHTSEERS and A FIELD IN ENGLAND all marked him out (for me anyway) as one of the UK's most exciting directors.
Well, the past week or so has seen plenty of developments. Today, some great news for someone other than me: Snowbooks have announced they're reissuing Cate's novella The Bureau Of Them (which I've always said is a brilliant story) along with Mark Morris' Albion Fay, Ray Cluley's Within The Wind, Beneath The Snow, John Llewellyn Probert's The Nine Deaths Of Dr Valentine (to be followed by the sequel, The Hammer Of Dr Valentine) and Gary Fry's Scourge. All good books, and it's great to see them getting another chance (except for Gary Fry's, which is brand new!)
In other news: time ticks away towards the Big Day of the Bestwick-Gardner nuptials. We've sorted the venues for wedding and reception, sent out the invites, even managed to arrange a honeymoon after all! This week, we chose our wedding rings. It's feeling realer all the time as it gets closer. It'll be weird to have a ring; I've never worn one before... Finally - developments with the crime novel! Tom sent back the MS at the beginning of this week, with more or less the last round of edits and notes. This is pretty much the final draft; in the next few days I'll get his final edit to go through, and then - well, hopefully, the first potential publishers will get to see it in the next week or two. That's scary, as well, in a way. Up till now it's been 'yay! I have an agent!' and 'yay! I'm preparing my novel to send out to publishers!' Both of these make you feel as though you're getting somewhere - and let's be frank, you are - but without the risk of actually submitting the book and finding out that actually, no, nobody wants it. Yep. Meet imposter syndrome. An old friend of mine. Well, not exactly friend. More like one of those people you started hanging out with in the '90s and still find yourself in the company of today, even though you have nothing in common any more and all they do is sit around smoking weed.
We all know someone like that, right?
Oh. Well, anyway. The novel is ready to wing its way out into the wider world (well, a slightly wider world than before) and so the question of 'what's next?' arises. Black Mountain is with Tom, so hopefully he'll have some thoughts on that soon. Meanwhile, I'm nearly two-thirds of the way through The Devil's Highway (productivity slightly slowed by those final rewrites.) What comes after that will depend on a host of variables: I have a number of projects to crack along with, things to finish or to start. In the meantime, though, I'm going to chill a little this weekend... in between writing more of The Devil's Highway, that is. Anyone interested in being a beta reader, let me know...
This should go without saying, but - WRITERS, DO NOT PAY TO BE PUBLISHED. There was a name for publishers that charged you money to get your work in print. Actually, there were quite a few names for them, many heavily Anglo-Saxon and some quite creative, but the one most repeatable in polite company was 'vanity press.' And these were, and are, to be avoided like the plague by anyone who takes their work seriously.
Money, as the saying goes, flows towards the writer, not away. Of course, self-publishing blurs that line somewhat, as you have to make some outlay in order to get your work out there, but anyone setting themselves up as a publisher should be paying you - in royalties, if not advances.
A&M Publishers, fronted by NYT Bestselling Author Steve Alten, is a vanity press. For more details, see here. The short version? AVOID.
Unless of course, on top of everything else, you want to pay money for someone to make you a book trailer like this:
Thanks to everyone who 'attended' the online paperback launch of Hell's Ditch. I'm told that sales are pretty healthy. The 'off-line' version's still to come - next week. Holy shit. I've done the odd book launch at first, but not one like this: at Waterstones, for a novel, with the likes of Ramsey and Conrad there to make me look good. I'm starting to get a wee bit nervous, I admit. Anyway, if you're in the Merseyside area and you're free that evening, I hope you'll swing by (I need all the help I can get.)
'Bestwick’s writing is some of the most compelling I’ve ever
encountered. It may well take you a chapter or two to really get
invested, but once you are, you will sink into Hell’s Ditch and not come out the other end until you’ve finished it.'
In current writing developments, The Devil's Highway is now underway and rolling along. Currently on Chapter 8, of a grand total of thirty (plus epilogue.) This is one of the most intricate things I've done, narratively speaking, and one of the most relentless. Or it will be if it actually works as intended. If it does, of course, it should flow so naturally as to look a piece of piss, and everyone will assume I rattled it off in an afternoon...
The third round of edits on my crime novel should be with me next week, bringing us ever nearer to the point when it actually starts going out to publishers. I take a certain amount of pride at having been responsible for my agent sending tweets like these:
Simon Bestwick: lowering the tone of conversations since 1976.
I've been subjecting Cate to Babylon 5, which I got hold of on box set recently, having loved the series when it was first broadcast in the 1990s.
Cate isn't a huge fun of space-based stuff, but given that she became a huge fan of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, she was up for giving it a try.
Sadly it's not aged well. Special effects are always the first thing to date - although the Shadow vessels still look eerie - but acting is... well, by the standards of US TV in those days, it's pretty good, but back then there was a much bigger gulf in terms of quality between TV work and the movies. It's basically soap-opera standard for the most part, and a lot of the dialogue comes across as portentous and stiff.
We're into the second season now, which does mean a general uptick in quality; Season One suffered from a lot of 'padding' episodes, not to mention Michael O'Hare. I feel bad slating the guy's performance as Commander Sinclair given that, as was revealed after his death, he was actually suffering from some serious mental health issues at the time - hence his departure from the show. So I wanted to like his performance more than I did. But now Bruce Boxleitner's in the saddle, and starting to settle in. There've been a few episodes that still hold up, that made me laugh or gave me the kind of thrill I remember from the show's first run, so I haven't given up hope, but it's not looking good for Cate ever becoming a huge fan.
Even so, B-5 was one of the first shows of its kind to tell an overarching story that ran throughout the series, where characters changed, developed and grew, where the familar set-up of the show altered, sometimes out of all recognition. It showed that it could be done successfully, and it opened the way for more. Without it, there'd have been no Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and maybe no Battlestar Galactica either (and that's just two examples.)
Last night, we also watched Tom Shankland's The Children; I'd only seen this once before and forgotten how genuinely unsettling it is. Shankland's only films to date are this and WΔZ - both of which I can highly recommend. Since then he seems to have mainly worked in TV - directing, among other things, the short-lived BBC series The Fades, plus Ripper Street and The Missing. Hopefully he'll do another film at some point.
Various things have taken place. One of them was that my contributor copy of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF KAIJU arrived. My story 'Now I Am Nothing' shares space with tales by Gary McMahon, Lavie Tidhar, Neal Asher, Jeremiah Tolbert, Natania Barron, James A. Moore, Cody Goodfellow, Tessa Kum, Steve Rasnic Tem and many, many more. There's a lot of names in the TOC I don't recognise, so I look forward to discovering some new writers...
Some contracts were signed. One was for Ellen Datlow's upcoming anthology NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR, out on October 31st from Tachyon Press. It's a follow-up to Ellen's earlier anthology DARKNESS: TWO DECADES OF MODERN HORROR. Here's the full TOC (in order of year
from 2005-2015):
Shallaballah by Mark Samuels Sob in the Silence by Gene Wolfe Our Turn Too Will One Day Come by Brian Hodge Dead Sea Fruit by Kaaron Warren Closet Dreams by Lisa Tuttle Spectral Evidence by Gemma Files Hushabye by Simon Bestwick Very Low-Flying Aircraft by Nicholas Royle The Goosle by Margo Lanagan The Clay Party by Steve Duffy Strappado by Laird Barron Lonegan’s Luck by Stephen Graham Jones Mr Pigsny by Reggie Oliver At Night, When the Demons Come by Ray Cluley Was She Wicked? Was She Good? by M. Rickert The Shallows by John Langan Little Pig by Anna Taborska Omphalos by Livia Llewellyn How We Escaped Our Certain Fate by Dan Chaon That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love byRobert Shearman Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8) by CaitlÃn R. Kiernan Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix The Atlas of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud Ambitious Boys Like You by Richard Kadrey
That is some seriously amazing company to find yourself in, some of the finest names in contemporary weird fiction. To say I'm delighted would be a huge understatement.
The other contract was with Pseudopod Magazine, who'll be releasing 'Dermot' and 'The Moraine' on podcast in the near future. More news on that as I have it.
Me, my hair and another book.
In other news, the paperback of HELL'S DITCH is out on March 1st from Snowbooks, which I'm
delighted about. Can't wait to lay hands on it.
As I may have mentioned, there'll be an event at Waterstones Liverpool One to promote it at 6.30 pm on 11th March. Further details now available: I'm going to be in the company of Ramsey Campbell and Conrad Williams, which should make for a fun evening. If you'd like to come, you can book your ticket here.
That aside, the last week or two has been spent gearing up to write THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY, the follow-up to HELL'S DITCH. I say 'gearing up' because my outlines for novels tend to be ever-longer and more detailed, the better to get the first draft closest to the finished work. They're practically first drafts in themselves these days: the outline for THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY is nearly 30,000 words.
But I'm having to step briefly back from it now because my agent's emailed me with the second round of edits on my crime novel. The first round arrived at Christmas and kept me out of mischief for a good couple of weeks. The second round isn't as big a deal - touch wood, most of the issues that needed fixing are now fixed - and I'm hoping to have finished up on them by the end of the week.
It's also worth noting that Tom's email contained what has to be my favourite editorial note ever: 'Malnutritioned singing children are better than crucified eviscerated ones.'
Indeed.
So, I've got a lot to keep me occupied - along with another project I've been mulling over for a while. I'm planning on setting up a Patreon account; those who sponsor it will be supporting the creation of a new serial novel. I enjoyed writing BLACK MOUNTAIN and it would be fun to revisit the form - plus, it would help forestall having to get a day job. More news as it's made - assuming anyone's interested in the project, of course!
Have a grand week, folks. See you on the other side!
Coming up briefly for air here; I meant to do an end-of-year vlog for New Year's Eve, but I'm working on a novel redraft that needs doing by Monday, and by the evening I hadn't got round to it. Yesterday passed in much the same way.
So, a few quick words on 2015.
It was a tough start to the year. Cate's mum passed away just before last Christmas, which was a huge blow. Pauline was a kind, funny lady who had deserved better from life than she ever got, but never let it get her down. I'd liked her a great deal and wish there'd been time to know her much better, and she and Cate were very close. Seeing the person you love in that kind of pain and being helpless to make it go away is awful.
Plus, we were still living in the neighbourhood where Cate and her mum had lived for decades, in The House Of Damp And Mould (and perenially malfunctioning boiler.) I hadn't published a novel in three years, unless you counted the serial Black Mountain, and still didn't have an agent. (Although I was working on a new novel for Solaris, so it wasn't completely bleak.)
A lot has changed since then.
Cate's lovely and moving piece here says more than I could about coming to terms with loss. We moved in June from Tuebrook to the Wirral, to a little house we both love. There are plenty of green spaces close to hand, we're fifteen minutes from the beach by bus and our landlord's great. It's a new start, and it's done us both good. And we've set the date for our wedding next year - this year, I mean.
Hell's Ditch, which I'd started to fear would never see daylight, found a home with Snowbooks and came out last month. It's the first book in a story that's been steadily evolving since I was nineteen. I started writing it back in 2010, broke off for 2011 to write The Faceless and finished it in early 2012 before the long hard task of shopping it around began. Now it's out, and suddenly the rest of the Black Road needs to be travelled. In a few weeks I have to go back to the world of Helen and Gevaudan, Danny and Alannah, of Dr Mordake and Colonel Jarrett and Tereus Winterborn, and start writing about it and them after a three year absence (although I did pop back for a couple of brief visits without too much trouble.) It's exciting, and it's scary. All being well, The Devil's Highway will be out in October. (The paperback of Hell's Ditch will be released this March.)
I finished the novel for Solaris, The Feast Of All Souls (the original title, Redman's Hill, was felt to sound too like a Western for American readers!) and that'll be available in December 2016. Watch this space for a reveal of Ben Baldwin's brilliant cover art.
In between the first and second drafts of Feast, I wrote another book - a crime novel, belted out hard and fast, at white heat. It was great fun, and it got me an agent.
Four short stories came out, including 'The Face Of The Deep' in GAME OVER, which was singled out for praise by the Financial Times, and 'Horn Of The Hunter' in THE SECOND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES - one of fourteen stories picked out of over 800 submissions! The others were 'The Climb' in Black Static #49 and 'No Room For The Weak', published on Mark Allan Gunnells' blog as part of the Hell's Ditch blog tour.
So 2015 ended a hell of a lot better than it started. It wasn't an unbroken uphill climb, of course: there were setbacks and downturns along the way. Especially in the wider world. There was the election result back in May: Britain, already a darker, meaner and more frightening place, is becoming more so. And then there were the horrible massacres in Paris, Baghdad and Beirut, and the vicious racism and hatred that's arisen in response to them. And the Christmas period has brought a succession of horrendous storms with torrential rain and flooding across many parts of the country. There will, very likely, be more to come. But there's still good in the world; there's compassion and kindness and love. Sometimes I think there's actually enough of it. But I always was an optimist.
However good things are going, something can always happen to pull the rug out from under. But just
because it can doesn't mean it will. So I'm starting 2016 with guarded optimism: there's a lot of hard work ahead, and not everything will be easy. But I have my health (touch wood), I'm with the woman I love and I've reached a couple of professional milestones.
2016 will see two novels published - The Devil's Highway and The Feast Of All Souls. And in a couple of weeks, my novella Angels Of The Silences will be reissued by Omnium Gatherum (and here's the new cover art - ain't it beautiful?) It's going to be a busy year in every way: hopefully it will be followed by more.
Happy New Year to all of you. I hope it brings you everything you want, need and hope for.
As some of you may recall, I had cause to visit London earlier this month. I couldn't say why at the time, but promised an exciting professional announcement in due course. So here it is.
Back in the summer, I wrote a crime novel. I subsequently sent it off to several agents. Three asked to see the full MS; two offered representation. Hence the trip to London, to meet them both face to face - and then to make a decision.
It was a very difficult choice, as both were brilliant agencies and it would have been a huge honour to get an offer from either. Even so, I managed in the end. I signed the contracts last week and returned them; I was going to say something last Friday but as everyone knows, other events - horrible events - took place, and to do so would have been grossly insensitive.
I've been working to get an agent for the last couple of years; it's a funny feeling to have actually achieved that goal. Now I've done so, of course, I've got to remember that it's just one step on the journey, one rung on the ladder - there are many, many more hills to climb, and I may well have to find a proper job again in the interim. But it's an important step, an important rung, and I'm happy to have got this far.
Have a safe and happy weekend, and take care, folks.
