'Hell Is' - Supernatural Tales 56

Pleased to say my story, 'Hell Is', appears in the latest issue of Supernatural Tales, edited by David Longhorn. This is my fourth appearance in ST, so I must be doing something right.
 

Supernatural Tales #56, (UK | US)

Print Versions 

(Cover art by Sam Dawson)

'Self Expression' in STRANGER from Sans. Press

 Really excited by this one: my story, 'Self Expression' is out now in the wonderful looking STRANGER anthology from Sans. Press:

"Between doppelgängers and shape-shifters, magical healers and clever tricksters, you should trust no one – including yourself!

In the #7 Sans. PRESS anthology, 15 writers try to find answers to how we can truly know each other; on the way, they find psychedelic worms, supernatural roommates, new dimensions and the deeply rooted question of how to know even ourselves. With stories by: Scott Beggs, Phil Cummins, Corinne Engber, James Everington, David Hartley, Tim Jeffreys, LL Garland, Lauren Mulvihill, Lily Nobel, Elaine O′Connor, Elin Olausson, Diana Powell, Shalini Srinivasan, Claire Watson and Rebecca Weinert. This edition is digitally signed by the writers!"

 

The book is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook formats - and as you can see from the image, it looks magnificent. All links to buy here. 

Reflections

A new small bit of flash-fiction from me published today: 'Reflections' appears in the latest issue of The Sirens Call. You can download it (for free) and have a gander here.

For Tomorrow

I'm sure we all remember where we were when we heard the news about Wellbrook High; I know I do, much as I might want to forget some of the images from the TV news that night.

Now, over 30 years later, Dan Coxon has put together an anthology of stories about what happened after.

My story, 'Comments On This Video Have Been Disabled' is one of them, and I'm very proud of it, and that its alongside pieces from many other fine writers. But, given the situation, this isn't one I'll boast about too much; that doesn't feel proper. 

“We all live in the shadow of Wellbrook High – it’s been called the tragedy that defined a generation… That’s why this book feels so important, and so long overdue – as we go back to Wellbrook, and pay witness to those who had the courage and the strength and, yes, the simple luck to pull through. A timely work, and an urgent one.”
—Robert Shearman

You can pre-order For Tomorrow from Black Shuck Books here. 

Also features stories by C.C. Adams, Charlotte Bond, Phil Sloman, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Malcolm Devlin & Helen Marshall, Verity Holloway, Ray Cluley, Polis Loizou, Ashley Stokes, Daniel Carpenter & Penny Jones.

#wewillremember93

Darkest Nights

Pleased to say I'll be be taking part in Darkest Nights writing school, running one of the online sessions along with some fantastic authors, as you can see below:

Details & tickets here

 

'The Switch' to appear in Uncertainties 6

I'm pleased as punch to say my story 'The Switch' is to be appear in the forthcoming anthology Uncertainties 6 from the mighty Swan River Press.

“Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write—least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these eleven writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities.

Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

Readers of my fiction, or of this blog in general, will no doubt recognise why this chimes with me so, and why I'm excited to have a story in this latest volume, alongside some absolutely fantastic authors. 

You should never trust a writer's own opinion of their work, but I've always considered 'The Switch' to be a very me story, a very Everington story. A writer friend who read a draft of it said "only send this one to the best places" and, with Uncertainties 6, I certainly obeyed.

You can read more about the anthology and pre-ordered it here.

UK Ghost Story Festival 23

 Pleased to say I'll be haunting the good people of Derby as part of the UK Ghost Story Festival...

Night Time Logic: Interview with Cemetery Dance

I've been interviewed by the weird fiction author Daniel Baum as part of his Night Time Logic column over on Cemetery Dance. Daniel and I share a love of Robert Aickman, so the interview inevitably touches on that, strange stories in general, and my recent anthology from Hersham Horror, Ebb Tides

You can read it here.

Ebb Tides: UK | US

"...the style is so delicate and beautiful..."

Nice to see my book, Trying To Be So Quiet (published by The Sinister Horror Company) on this great list of recommendations from author Cristina Mîrzoi on the Armed With A Book site.

"...the style is so delicate and beautiful..."

In terms of kind words about my stories, doesn't get much better than that, really.

New Story: 'Not That Kind Of Place'

Very pleased to be back in print in the pages of Supernatural Tales. My tale 'Not That Kind Of Place' appears in the latest issue (#49) alongside stories from Rosalie Parker, Steve Duffy and others. It's my third time appearing in ST - always a pleasure.

Supernatural Tales #49 (UK | US)

Fiction: 'Advent'

This story appeared online last year as part of a creepy advent calendar of stories for the wonderful Sinister Horror Company (who publish Trying To Be So Quiet & Other Hauntings, as well as much other sinister goodness).

When I originally got the invite to write a story for the project, I decided to be get all meta, and try and write a horror story about someone opening an advent calendar (because that's just the kind of twat I am). The piece was originally published on the 17th of December, which is when its set, and also my birthday. So I thought I'd republish it here, a year to the day later. Thanks to Justin Park at Sinister for asking me to write it in the first place.

Happy Christmas to all readers of this blog... if we get past the 17th December, that is.

Advent

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He cut himself on the cardboard doing so, sucked the pad of his finger. There was a chocolate wrapped in red foil inside; he looked around for his son but his son wasn’t there, so he ate it, dropped the foil to the ground. Tasted blood.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He cut his finger on the cardboard doing so. There was a chocolate wrapped in yellow foil inside; he looked around for his son but he wasn’t there. He called his son’s name but there was no answer, so he yelled again, then ate the chocolate, dropped the foil to the ground. Tasted blood.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He reopened a cut on his finger doing so. There was a chocolate wrapped in orange foil inside; he looked around for his son but his son wasn’t there. He called his wife’s name instead, but she wasn’t there either. He listened for the sounds of weeping in the house, then ate the chocolate, dropped the foil to the ground. He felt sick and at the same time hungry. Tasted blood.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. There was a callous on his finger that stopped him cutting himself. He looked around for his wife and son but they weren’t there. What were they so scared of? He’d slept it off now. He unclenched his fists. He ate the chocolate, dropped the red foil to the pile of it on the ground. He felt sick and at the same time hungry. Tasted blood, which couldn’t be right?

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. The thick callous on his finger stopped him cutting himself. He looked around for his wife and son but they weren’t there. What were they so scared of? He was sober now. He unclenched his fists. He ate the chocolate, dropped the orange foil to the pile on the ground. He felt sick like he’d eaten too much chocolate and at the same time hungry like he’d eaten nothing but. Tasted blood, but from where?

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He didn’t cut himself. He looked around for his wife and son but they weren’t fucking there. What were they so scared of? He was sober now. He hit the wall, remembered her face. How she’s been slicing beetroot at the chopping board at the time. He ate the chocolate, dropped the yellow foil to the pile of it on the ground. His insides felt sick, emptied. Tasted blood, which when he spat it out was stained brown.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He didn’t cut himself. He looked around for his wife and son but they weren’t fucking there. What was he so scared of? He’d kill for a drink. He hit the wall, remembered her face, how she’d said she wasn’t going to let him do it again. He ate the chocolate, dropped the foil to the pile of it on the ground. His insides felt sick, emptied, muddled. Tasted blood, like he always did.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He didn’t cut himself. He looked around for his wife and son but couldn’t see them. What was he so scared of? He hit the wall, remembered her face, how she’d said she wasn’t going to let him do it again. Said she’d see him in hell first, and he’d said prove it you bitch. There were drifts of foil around his feet. He ate the chocolate. His insides felt sick, emptied, wounded. Tasted blood, like he always did when he got angry.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He looked around for his wife and son, for anyone, but everywhere was grey and misted in his sight. What was he so scared of? He touched the wall, saw the colour his hands left it. She’d said she’d see him in Hell, and he’d said prove it you bitch. How she’d been slicing at the chopping board at the time. He puked up chocolate even as he ate it. His insides felt sick, emptied, wounded. Tasted blood; his fingers had been clutched to his gut and he tasted blood off them.

***

The next day, he opened the window on the advent calendar: 17th December. Tasted blood.

The cold foil around his feet was red and orange and yellow, like flames.

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 2

Very pleased to say my story 'The Sound Of The Sea, Too Close' has been reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Volume 2, edited by Paula Guran and out now for Pyr. The lineup selected for the book lives up to the title and I'm proud my story found a place in among such great authors. 

The book is available here: The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Volume 2, Pyr 2021 (UK | US)

The story was originally published by Micheal Kelly in the brilliant anthology Shadows & Tall Trees #8 (Undertow Publications).

Hallowe'en Horrors

I'll be appearing at the Hallowe'en Horrors event at the Derby Quad on October 30th, running a workshop  on writing weird, strange, off-beat, and creepy fiction. Details and a link to get tickets are below:

Join us for the first part of a very special day of horror writing, with five workshop sessions looking at a wide range of aspects of the genre! QUAD’s Literature Officer Alex Davis will be your host throughout, and will be joined by acclaimed authors Sophie Draper, James Everington and Angeline Trevena for an exciting day of dark inspiration, imagination and information!

3:30pm-4:30pm: James Everington – The uncanny: making the everyday seem strange in fiction

Anyone can make a werewolf or spectre sound scary, but how do writers approach more mundane horrors? This workshop will focus on picking out those details in apparently innocuous, everyday situations and making them seem just that little bit ‘off'. Perfect for making your readers uneasy without them knowing quite why….

Further details & tickets here.

A New Review for 'The Quarantined City'

It's always nice when an older work keeps connecting with new readers, and I could ask for no more perceptive a new reader of The Quarantined City than author Terry Grimwood, who's given the book a wonderful review on theEXAGGERATEDwebsite:

"...The Quarantined City is absolutely the child of its author and a highly original one at that. The dislocating sense of being shut-in, of a world that has come to a halt is something which all of us have experienced during the covid-19 lockdown and it is that experience that intensified my relationship with this novel. The Quarantined City is a delight. It keeps the reader guessing and unsettled."

The Quarantined City was conceived and written long-before our current strangeness, but it's really interesting that it seems to speak to our times now more than ever.

The Quarantined City is out now from Infinity Plus / Amazon (UK | US)

Snake Tails

Warning: this is one of those post where I whinge & moan a bit. It's been helpful for me to write, to get a clear-sighted view of where I am writing-wise, but I am aware that to anyone else reading it I might well come across as a wanker.

A few years back, I was in a pretty good place with my writing. Not well-know, even in the little pool of the small-presses, but at least known. I'd published lots of stories and longer works, some with publishers who I considered to be among the best out there. I'd had some very flattering reviews. I was regularly being asked to contribute stories to anthologies, even having to turn requests down. I knew and was friends with many writers I respected, and had published a number of them in anthologies I'd edited. I'd even met some of my writing heroes in the flesh. Small-scale, but at a level of 'success' that if you'd told me when I'd first started out I'd achieve would have made me very happy.

So, I decided to do what most writers would in this situation: to level up. I set about getting an agent, and focussed on writing my first/second* novel. Even then, I knew the novel wasn't the most natural length of fiction for me, but I had an idea that I'd tried as a short story and novella that hadn't worked, so I began expanding and reshaping that to novel-length. I spent over two years drafting and redrafting it: it contains some pieces of writing I'm very proud of, and it's very me (repeating scenes, a sense of creepy ambiguity, a porous background reality). But it's still not right, and I doubt it's very commercial in terms of attracting wider interest.

For which there's no one to blame but me, obviously. But it feels like during the time I spent writing and rewriting the thing I've slid back from whatever small level of visibility and 'success' I had climbed to before. Never being that well known, it didn't take long for me to become less so again. For the first time in many years, I've no certainty that I'll even have a single story published this year (a few things might happen, but they aren't certain and contracts aren't signed).

Where do I go from here? Rewrite the novel again? The problem is, coupled with the above, my writing routine is not what it was. Life changes, and then Coivd/lockdown/homeschooling on top of them, have meant the daily time I had which was 'mine' to write has gone, replaced with what I can cobble together here and there. I simply haven't the opportunity for the sustained time and momentum rewriting the novel would need, or to write anything of equivalent length. Levelly up isn't an option.

So, back to short stories it is. Which is fine—I still love the short story form. I've little I can immediately submit. I've been lucky enough to publish nearly everything I consider worthwhile which I wrote 'before the novel'; for awhile I was running on the fumes of an earlier, more productive period of writing. 

I'm basically back where I was before I published anything: writing some new, creepy, weird short stories for myself, with no guarantee anyone will ever read them. Only now I'm older, tired, and have less free time. So what, right? I'm not special in that regard. Playing the writing game I was lucky enough to land on a few ladders that helped me upwards; I can hardly complain that now I've landed on some snakes and have slide back down.

Anyway, enough moaning. Let's end with a tune, eh?

* I never quite know whether to think about The Quarantined City as a novel or not, given the circumstances of its composition and its structure (in terms of word-length, it is)

NY Ghost Story Festival Night Five

Christmas is traditionally a time for ghost stories, and I had great fun taking part in the digital New York Ghost Story Festival last night; if you missed it you can find a recording of the whole event here.

It was really nice to meet—albeit virtually—the host Daniel Braum, whose fiction I admire a lot, as well as the other guests C.C. Adams, Liliana Carstea, John Langan, and Farah Rose Smith. There was lots of really interesting points made about the ghost story and hauntings real and imaginary in fiction, so do give the whole thing a listen. (And I must thank CC for his kind words about Trying To Be So Quiet.)

Each of us also did a reading from a ghost story we admired: my pick was 'Lilies' by Iain Rowan. Not a traditional, Jamesian ghost story perhaps, but for me it's a beautifully written story about one of the key themes of the ghost story: the unknowability of the dead.

And on that note: happy Christmas to all readers of this blog...

New Story: Advent

I have a new story out, as part of The Sinister Horror Company's Advent Calendar of horror fiction. I asked for mine to be behind the window for the 17th, as it's my birthday today. 

It's called 'Advent' and is about a man opening an advent calendar on the 17th of December, because I'm allowed to be as meta as I want on my birthday.

You can find it via the link above, and do check out some of the stories behind the other windows while you are there...

Shadows & Tall Trees 8: 'The Sound Of The Sea, Too Close'

Shadows & Tall Trees 8, which features my story 'The Sound Of The Sea, Too Close', is officially released today. This is a story I'm especially proud of, and I'm pleased that its found a home with the utterly wonderful Undertow Press. As regular readers will know, I've often sung the praises of the work that editor Michael Kelly releases, and getting a story into S&TT is a genuine writing bucket-list moment for me. Especially seeing what other great authors are included, not least Alison Littlewood, Neil Williamson, Steve Rasnic Tem, V.H. Leslie, and... well, they're all brilliant.

Aside from where it's been published, I'm proud of 'The Sound Of The Sea, Too Close' because it achieved something I'd tried and failed at a few times: to write about climate change (and climate fear), in a way that was still speculative and 'weird'. (Maybe 'Heatstroke Harry' from Holding On By Our Fingertips was also a success in this regard.)

I've wrote before on this blog about climate change and fiction, but that piece was called Background Fears and that was largely how I'd tackled the theme in my stories up till now: as a background worry, a bit of atmosphere, a throwaway line. I wasn't sure how to present it as the main focus of a strange story without losing that very strangeness that interests me as a writer; I wasn't sure if it was possible to do so. 'The Sound Of The Sea....' didn't start out as an attempt to untangle that knot, it was originally gong to be a relatively simple and untroubled ghost story, set in an abandoned school. But what the school caretaker found in that abandoned school, in those ghostly classrooms, wasn't a ghost—without knowing I was going to, I wrote something very different and all the better for it. The climate fear—and the guilt—moved centre stage, but the ghostly air remained. Whether it's fully successful as a work of fiction, I'll leave others to judge. But as a way forward for my own work, it feels like an achievement to me.

You can purchase the gorgeous paperback and hardback editions of Shadows & Tall Trees 8 directly from Undertow, or get the ebook from Amazon (UK | US)

(Pathway to Paris brings together musicians, artists, activists, academics, mayors, and innovators to help raise consciousness surrounding the urgency of climate action and offers solutions to turning the Paris Agreement into action.)

UK Ghost Story Festival

I love ghost stories, and so I jumped at the chance to be involved in the UK Ghost Story Festival, which takes place 29th November to 01 December in Derby. I'll be taking part in two events, both on the Saturday:

Supernatural Shorts: Why Do Short Ghost Stories Work So Well?
With James Everington, Alison Littlewood, Rhiannon Ward (Chair) and Mark Latham
So many of the most renowned authors of ghost stories made their name in short fiction, with the works of MR James, Arthur Machen, Charles Dickens and many others gaining iconic status. But why is the supernatural so effective in its shorter form? This panel discussion will explore this tradition and explore the reasons for its success, with time for audience Q+A at the end of the session.

Spirit Masters - Who Are The Best Ghost Story Writers Ever?
With Alex Davis (Chair), James Everington, Alison Littlewood and Marie O'Regan
Get ready to rumble as our expert panel dissects the merits and quality of some of the best-loved ghost story writers out there, as well as those lesser-known purveyors of the form who might deserve that bit more credit. How do the traditional masters of the field compare to its modern authors? Who are the greatest names largely forgotten today? Expect to be taking away a mighty reading list from this lively discussion on who are the best of the best! We’ll also have time for audience Q+A at the end of the session.

As well as my two bits, there's so much else going on that looks worthwhile and I'll definitely be checking out plenty of other events myself as a punter. You can either buy tickets for individual events or weekend/Saturday passes. Check out all the info. here...

Incoming: Two New Tales

I've had two stories accepted for publication in the last couple of weeks. They're two recent-ish stories that I think are among my best work, while being at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of style. And I'm really proud and flabbergasted to say that they are both appearing in the latest volumes of two publications that I regard as absolutely essential for anyone with an interest in weird horror fiction:

'Defensive Wounds' will appear in Tales From The Shadow Booth #4 (ed. Dan Coxon)

'The Sound Of The Sea, Too Close' will appear in Shadows & Tall Trees #8 from the mighty Undertow Publications (ed. Michael Kelly)

I know, right?