Generation X-ed

 

2021 - My Year in Books

Weird year, huh?  Even weirder than the previous one in my opinion.  A year when I was determined to get my head down and do some serious writing, making up for all the lost writing time in 2020, which is exactly what I did.  I wrote a good number of short stories, finished a novella, and started work on a novel which is about half-way done.  Not too shabby.  I also saw some of my stories printed in a batch of quality publications, and had a new collection put out by Insomnia & Obsession Books.

First up was one off the bucket list.  I'd always wanted to have one of my stories appear in Supernatural Tales and back in March my 'man-possessed-by-creepy-costume-head' story Here Comes Mr Herribone! appeared in issue #46.

My flash fiction about sinister money collectors, Myerscough and Skelton, appeared online in Blood Knife.  An audio version of this story is also due to be podcast on Tales to Terrify in early 2022.

I was glad to get Grace and the Grey Angel finally let loose on the public when it was published in the Jolly Horror love-gone-wrong anthology, Fornever After.

Two of my stories were published by the good folk at Granfalloon.  First, a story of murder, chess and the universe called Castling.  Next was In Strangers' Gardens, a warning about the direction social media could go in the future.

The Daughters, a folk horror set in Cornwall appeared in The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 3, and Heir Apparent, a tale of a young man who uncovers a horrible family secret when taking over his father's business empire, was published in Stories We Tell After Midnight Vol.3.  Two anthologies in which I'm especially proud to appear.

Insomia & Obsession Books put out a kind of 'best-of' collection of my previously published stories called Autumn Country in October.  The stories for this collection were chosen by the writer Robert Pope, who also wrote an introduction.  A huge thank you to Robert for gifting me this book!

Of all the books I've read this year, the one that I'm going to recommend is The Smoke House by Matthew G Rees.  The Smoke House is a collection of beautifully written strange tales.  After reading so many disappointing weird fiction collections over the past few years, it was a treat to uncover a writer who could be a genuine heir to Robert Aickman, Flannery O'Connor, or Shirley Jackson.

Here's a pic from back in August when Martin Greaves and I went for a stroll over Saddleworth Moor, ostensibly so I could do some research for the novel I'm writing, but actually to catch up after not having seen each other in the flesh, as it were, for about 8 years.

The Daughters

The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 3: A Miscellany of Monsters will be released in time for Halloween, and I'm very happy to say that I'm included in the stellar line up of authors within.  My story, The Daughters, concerns a determined wife and a stroppy teenager going up against some mythological beasts.  And if that hasn't sold it to you, well...

This is my second outing with The Alchemy Press (my story Black Nore appeared in Horrors 2).  Thanks to editors Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards for including me once again - a real honour!

Castling

"After the guards departed, Bryan hugged his son.  He knew at once, from the way Nicholas’s gaze searched his face, that this was the day.  Questions were coming.  What he didn’t know was how he was going to answer those questions in a satisfactory way."

Read my flash fiction 'Castling' for free on Granfalloon.

Grace and the Grey Angel

I have a new story out in the world called Grace and the Grey Angel, which has been published in the anthology Fornever After from Jolly Horror Press.  In this story, delivery man Martel falls in love with agoraphobic sculptor Grace, and in vowing to help her conquer her fears gets way more than he bargained for.  The idea for this story came from an incredible angel sculpture that appeared outside my workplace a few years ago.  I never found out who the artist was.  When I returned for a second look a few days later, the angel was gone.

I'm unsure which genre this story falls into.  Maybe comic fantasy with a touch of horror?  Here's an except:

"But it wasn’t only awe the angel inspired in him, there was fear too.  When he’d said it was big, he hadn’t meant only in size.  It had presence.  A strange kind of authority.  The head jutted forward and the eyes were fixed as if it were scrutinizing him rather than being scrutinised itself.  And there was something about the way Grace had carved its expression that made it seem as if the angel looked right into his thoughts.  The sensation was so powerful the hairs bristled on the back of his neck and he had to turn away.  He could still feel its eyes boring into his back as he set the clay down where Grace indicated."

Grace and the Grey Angel was in danger of becoming a trunk story until my good friend the writer Robert Pope gave me some suggestions on how to rework the ending.  As a thank you I'm going to give a shout out to Robert's wonderful short story collection, Killers & Others (see cover at the end of this post).

I'd also like to thank the team at Jolly Horror Press, Jonathan Lambert and Autumn Miller, for accepting this story and the hard work they put into the anthology.

Myerscough and Skelton

My flash fiction, Myerscough and Skelton, has been published in Issue 10 of Blood Knife.  This story is only 900 words long, so it would be wrong to say too much about it except that it is about a particular kind of enslavement, and is somewhat based on memories I have of men who used to call at the house collecting money when I was a child.

Blood Knife describes itself as an online magazine about cyber-punk, sci-fi, horror, neon, knives, blood, and capitalism.  I'd like to give a huge thank you to editor Kurt Schiller for including my story, which can be read for free here.

10:10 to Throgmorten

My surreal horror story, 10:10 to Throgmorten, appears in the December 2020 issue of Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine.  This story follows an unnamed narrator who sees something bizarre occurring on a passing near-empty train, and decides to venture himself to the train's destination: a town called Throgmorten.  There, he discovers a very different world.  

I'd like to thank Penumbric's editor Jeff Georgeson for selecting this tale for inclusion.  Read the magazine for free here.