What's New? with Penny Jones

Penny Jones currently lives in Leicestershire with her long suffering husband and patron of the arts Simon (although they do spend any free moments they have plotting to leave the landlocked county and get closer to the sea).

Penny knew she was a writer when she started to talk about herself in the third person – Her family apparently knew when she was little and Santa bought her a typewriter for Christmas (honestly who buys a three year old a typewriter?)

Penny loves reading and will read pretty much anything you put in front of her, but her favourite authors are Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and John Wyndham. Her whole family are avid readers, meaning that they have had to move three times just to fit in their book collections. In fact Penny only got into writing to buy books, when she realised that there wasn’t that much money in writing she stayed for the cake.

As with all writers Penny has crippling impostor syndrome so if you would like to be her friend you can send her a request at Facebook.

Or you can follow her on Twitter, although she does still find it freaky that on-line stalking is now a thing.

1) So, what’s new from you?
This month I’ve finished a short story for an upcoming anthology from Hersham Horror called “The Woods” which is being released at EdgeLit. I’ve also finished work on my debut collection “Suffer Little Children” which is being released on 16th May as part of the Black Shuck Books “Shadows” series.

2) How did it come about?
The anthology story was an invite, which is always nice. The editor had read one of my stories in another anthology, liked it, and asked me if I’d like to do a piece for Hersham Horror. The theme was around woods and forests, and I’d had an idea about growth rings rattling round in my head for ages, and that developed into my story “Dendrochronology”.

The collection came in an entirely different manner, I was approached by the publisher when I was at a writing convention last year, I may have had one drink too many and completely forgot about it. It was only months later when I was looking through some of the stories that I had written, and was trying to work out how I was going to sell several short stories around the theme of children (they really scare me), that I remember that Steve Shaw the owner of Black Shuck Books had asked me for a themed collection.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.
It always starts with an image for me. I tend to be quite a visual person, I prefer to see or read something, rather than have it verbally explained to me. I just find that I process information better that way. Once I have that image in my head I will study it, I’ll look at the minute details of why that image is in my mind, of what makes it interesting or disturbing, what emotions does it evoke in me. I’ll then almost pan out until I can see what is around the image, how does it affect its environment, how does its environment affect it? Then the image will start to move, like a film in my mind. What has happened to get to this point? What will happen next? By the point I actually sit down to write I’ll usually know most of the story, then it’s just a matter of finding out its secrets and getting the right words down on the page.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?
The initial idea is always my favourite part. I tend to find writing quite difficult and I never feel that the words on the page at the end do justice to the story in my mind. I’m looking forward to the day when I can just do a direct cranial transfer of the story.

5) What was the toughest part of it?
Commas. My punctuation is horrendous.

6) Is there a theme running through it?
I’m a psychiatric nurse by profession, and mental health does tend to be a theme throughout all my work. I’m very much of the opinion that mental health needs impact on everybody to some extent or another, and it is just the severity of it which differs. My collection also has a running theme with children being either the antagonist, victim or both. I’ve always found children creepy, I always say I don’t really like them very much, and that even as a child I didn’t. Also when I was little I had a phobia of injections which my dad tried to cure me of, by telling me about all the injections and blood tests you had to have when you became pregnant. It didn’t help at all with my phobia of needles, but it did install an even deeper fear of pregnancy. One of my major concerns is that if there was ever an apocalypse I would be forced to help repopulate the planet (it happens in every apocalyptic novel I’ve ever read). But the family planning nurses tell me that isn’t reason enough to get my tubes tied.

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

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?
“The Woods” will be available at EdgeLit, once released it will also be available from Hersham Horror Books.

“Suffer Little Children” is available for pre-order from Black Shuck Books.

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.

A Love Like Blood

I have not one, but two books coming out in July.

I've already talked elsewhere (but weirdly I forgot to do so here!) about my new short story collection from ChiZine Press, And Cannot Come Again, which is out in July.

But I also have another book out, from Dark Minds Press, being released the same month.

It's called A Love Like Blood.

It consists of two novelettes on the theme of missing parents.

"From the author of AND CANNOT COME AGAIN and the BLACK ROAD series, two tales of family trees whose roots go down into dark and bloody soil. 

FITTON’S GHOST: When Laura inherits her murdered father’s derelict shop, she finds herself haunted by the terrible Grinning Boy. To escape him she’ll have to learn the truth about her family, and face something even more monstrous than him... 

BURNS THE WITCHFIRE, UPON THE HILL: Emma searches for her long-lost mother, only to learn she died mysteriously years before. Will uncovering the truth doom Emma to the same fate? 

The answers lie in dark earth, hidden places… and in a love like blood."

"Hauntingly beautiful and compelling, these stories will linger in your mind long after you’ve finished reading. Simon Bestwick understands what it is to be human, to be fragile and frightened, and yet still find the strength to fight."

- Damien Angelica Walters, author of Sing Me Your Scars and The Dead Girls Club.

I'll post a link to where it can be bought/pre-ordered as soon as I have one. 

What's New? with Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, from JournalStone; the dark fantasy novella, Pretty Marys All in a Row, from Broken Eye Books; and her debut novel, The Rust Maidens, from Trepidatio Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Shimmer, Black Static, Daily Science Fiction, Interzone, LampLight, and Three-Lobed Burning Eye as well as Flame Tree Publishing's Chilling Horror Short Stories anthology, among others.

Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts.

UPDATE: As of Sunday 12th May 2019, Gwendolyn is in fact the Bram Stoker-winning author of The Rust Maidens, which was awarded for Superior Achievement In A First Novel.

1. So, what’s new from you?
I’m right between two big projects at the moment. My debut novel, The Rust Maidens, was released in November 2018 from Trepidatio Publishing, while my next book—a novelette called The Invention of Ghosts—is due out this coming November from Nightscape Press.

2. How did it come about?
The Rust Maidens and The Invention of Ghosts were ideas that lived with me a long time before finally making their way onto the page. Both books deal with friendship and loss and the horrifying ways that we learn to cope with pain and ostracism. That being said, plot-wise, the stories are very different. Friendship is a form of salvation in The Rust Maidens whereas the relationship between the two protagonists in The Invention of Ghosts becomes more complicated and even treacherous. As with many writers, there are certain themes that I love, and I always think of myself as circling those ideas like a vulture or a shark, trying to examine them from as many different vantage points as I can. I’m hoping that readers that enjoyed The Rust Maidens will like what I’m doing in The Invention of Ghosts, since there’s overlap while definitely telling a new story, but I guess we shall see when the novelette is released!

3. Tell us about the process of how you created it.
My process often varies so much, not only from story to story but even across the development of each particular piece. I would say for both The Rust Maidens and The Invention of Ghosts, the process started with lots of research and prep, and then from there, I did a bit of formal outlining before jumping into the writing itself. In my experience, it helps to have something of an outline for longer works, though I do my best not to feel locked into a plan if the story starts to develop in a different way.

I also try to do a decent bit of editing as I go, so that when there’s a full draft of the story completed, I don’t still have a mountain of work ahead of me. All that being said, one person’s process is another person’s prison, and I personally think there are very few steadfast rules as to what’s the “proper” way to write a story, which is why if one approach isn’t working, I have no problem with completely throwing my own plans and rules to the wind. Writing can feel like a strangely magical process at times, so I always remind myself that when things get tough. In my experience, if you stick with a piece, you can usually find a way out.

4. What was your favourite part of the process?
The research for both of these books was a lot of fun. For The Rust Maidens, I really enjoyed investigating more about Cleveland in the 1970s and 1980s, all the ins and outs of the landscape and the economics and the pop culture of the time. I’m from Ohio originally, so there was something special about delving into that history, which is extremely personal for me. For The Invention of Ghosts, I got to explore a lot about the history of the occult. Much of the information I already knew coming into that project, but through my research, I definitely went deeper into the specifics, including about the Fox Sisters, Mother Shipton, and the Victorian occult movement in general. As so often happens with research, there was so much that I wasn’t ultimately able to include in the final stories, but it was such a tremendous experience simply spending time researching those subjects, which are both so near to my heart.

5. What was the toughest part of it?
Getting a project across the proverbial finish line is often the hardest for me. Starting a new story is always an exhilarating feeling, but sometimes, midway through, the ideas can get so muddled, as you realize certain subplots or favorite lines just don’t fit with the whole anymore. Editing can be such a rewarding part of writing, as the final book takes shape, but it can certainly be frustrating too. And the only way out is to write your way through it all. At least in my experience, there are no shortcuts with writing. You just have to keep going until you figure it out. 

6. Is there a theme running through it?
Much of my work deals with coming-of-age, horrific transformation, and characters—in particular women who are outsiders—trying to find their place in the world. These two books in particular take on those themes, though in very different ways. With The Rust Maidens, the body horror is absolutely at the forefront, as a group of teenage girls are literally transforming into rust and decay. The Invention of Ghosts, on the other hand, deals more with body horror through the perspective of what it means to be a ghost, to be invisible, to conjure loss in a physical sense through working with the occult. I’ve always loved stories that deal with hauntings, and it was a really incredible experience as a writer to get to take my love of the supernatural and the occult and see how I could tell a ghost story in a different and even more surreal way than I’ve done before.


7. If you had to sum this book up in three words, what would they be?
For The Rust Maidens—decay, transformation, and freedom.
For The Invention of Ghosts—occult, friendship, and loss.

8. Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?
The Rust Maidens is available now from JournalStone and Amazon, and The Invention of Ghosts will be released in November from Nightscape Press. That pre-order page should be up in the coming months, so until then, feel free to keep up with me at my author website, for updates.

What's New? (Mr and Mrs Edition) Part Two: Thana Niveau

1) So, what’s new from you?

I launched three books at Fantasycon last year – my second collection Octoberland, my micro-collection Unquiet Waters, and my debut novel House of Frozen Screams.

2) How did it come about?
 
I’m not very good at staying on top of all the stories I write, and I should have published a second collection years ago! As a result, Octoberland covers quite a range and is something of a bumper crop. Unquiet Waters is smaller and more intimate, with four stories linked by the theme of water. And House of Frozen Screams was partly inspired by our search for a new flat, combined with all my primal Cronenbergian body horror fears. It’s my take on a haunted house, one that isn’t quite what it seems.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.  
My process is pretty reclusive. I can’t write in cafes or public places with other humans around. I focus best at my desk, where I play film scores to accompany whatever I’m writing. (Or not writing – sometimes I can just stare at the blank page for ages wondering where the hell my muse has got to.) But I have Alexa to keep me company if I feel too isolated.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?  
It’s bound to be the same for every writer: that exquisite moment when everything clicks into place and the story flows straight from your mind to the page. But other than that rare and magical experience, I really love world-building. I probably spend way too much time on it, because a lot of it never even makes it into the story. But I like to hope it enriches the writing anyway. 

5) What was the toughest part of it?
 
When I was writing House of Frozen Screams, I was very much looking forward to a couple of gruesome death scenes I had planned. I’ve written loads of violent, horrible deaths and enjoyed killing characters before, even nice ones. But in House, I found it really difficult. I’ve heard other writers describe similar experiences, but it was a first for me.
6) Is there a theme running through it?

There’s definitely a theme in House of Frozen Screams: the female body is as much a place of horror as any haunted house.

7) If you had to sum this book up in three words, what would they be?
 
I’ll do all three books! Octoberland: haunted, nostalgic, sinister Unquiet Waters: eerie, uncanny, apocalyptic House of Frozen Screams: unnatural, nightmarish, macabre

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?  
Octoberland – PS Publishing
Unquiet Waters – Black Shuck Books House of Frozen Screams – Horrific Tales

What's New? (Mr and Mrs Edition) Part One: John Llewellyn Probert

1) So, what’s new from you?

I've got a short story coming out in Cemetery Dance magazine called 'Healing Hands Beneath a Swann-Morton Sky'.

2) How did it come about?

I was at the gym, which is the only place in the world I might even consider watching daytime TV. There was a piece about bacterial antibiotic resistance and the fact that no new antibiotics have been developed for many years because it's not of sufficient financial interest to drug companies. That's the sole reason. So people are dying of infections right now simply because drug companies don't see sufficient profit in researching new ones. I had been aware of this before, of course, but for some reason at that moment it focused my mind perfectly.

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

I got incredibly angry about the state of the world we live in, came home from the gym, and wrote the whole thing straight down in a notebook.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

Realising I'd created something of a nature and style that I'd never done before, and done it to my satisfaction.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

People have often commented in the past about how successfully I blend humour with horror. The thing is, I don't ever actually try and do this - that's just how the stories come out. I didn't want this one to have a trace of 'funny' in it and once it was written I spent a lot of time going over it to make sure it wasn't the victim of 'inadvertent wit'!

6) Is there a theme running through it?

We are all truly doomed if we keep living the way we do now.

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

Angry. Political. Downbeat. Three words I never thought my fiction would be. And who knows? It may never be again. Because you see I don't actually enjoy writing this kind of thing, it doesn't make me feel better and if anything it just makes me feel worse, whereas the whole point of my fiction is that I want it to be a pick-me-up, both for me and the reader. But every now and then you just can't help what comes out, can you?

8) Where can we get hold of it?

It got picked up by Richard Chizmar's Cemetery Dance, which I was both pleased and bewildered by, as it's the first major sale I've had to a US print magazine. God help people who like this and seek out some of my other stuff, because it won't be what they're expecting at all! Although I will add to that something Joel Lane (one of my writing heroes) said about Robert Bloch (another one), that people who thought Bloch was just being funny hadn't realised that beneath his entertaining approach was actually quite a bleak and bitter view of humanity. So maybe it's been there all along. I promise I'll keep it lighter for next time, though.

Probably.

What's New? with Kristi DeMeester

Welcome to a new feature, What's New?, where I interview authors about their latest projects. We kick off with the fantastic Kristi DeMeester, author of the novel Beneath and the story collection Everything That's Underneath, discussing her new novel...

1) So, what’s new from you?

I’m currently working on edits for my next novel. Hopefully, it will go out on submission soon!

2) How did it come about?

I read about Jazzland, the abandoned Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans, and couldn’t get it out of my head. This novel came out of that.

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

Bit by bit. Draft by draft. Slowly and all in a rush. Revision and revision and revision. Lots of pondering and creating rules. I can’t say much more than that.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

Finding the first true thread of the story and seeing how it could unravel.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

Revising when I felt I’d picked the novel into so many pieces there was no way it would fit together again.

6) Is there a theme running through it?

The chain around your neck is usually bought with imposed silence.

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

Beasts. Jazzland. Daughters.

8) Where can we to get hold of it?

That remains to be seen, but I hope soon! In the meantime, you can find all of my other work at www.kristidemeester.com