Edge-Lit 8

This weekend the lovely Cate and I will be in Derby for the 8th Edge-Lit convention.

Edge-Lit is one of the two cons I always attend every year (the other, of course, being Fantasycon, although this year we might have to give it a miss.) A one-day event organised by the most excellent Alex Davis, it's always well-attended and a great chance to catch up with old friends.

Among this year's luminaries are:

Confirmed Guests of Honour:
Aliette De Bodard, multi-award winning fantasy and science-fiction author
Anne Charnock, Arthur C Clarke Award winning author of Dreams Before the Start of Time
Christopher Golden, New York Times Bestselling Author of Ararat and The Pandora Room - joining us from the US!
Neil Spring, bestselling author of The Ghost Hunters, The Watchers, The Lost Village and The Burning House
Sarah Lotz, acclaimed horror and thriller author (The Three)
Tim Lebbon, popular dark fantasy and horror novelist (The Silence)
Special Guest:
Stephen Volk, author and scriptwriter (TV's Ghostwatch, Afterlife, Midwinter of the Spirit)
Speakers and Panellists:
Simon Bestwick, acclaimed horror novelist and short story writer (*waves*)
Jan Edwards, award-winning crime and horror author
Robin Triggs, author of Night Shift
David Mark, author of the DS Aector McAvoy crime series
Sarah Pinborough, Bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes and Cross Her Heart
Alex Reeve, writer of the Leo Stanhope series
Zen Cho, acclaimed fantasy author and editor
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C Clarke Award winning SF and fantasy novelist
Dominic Dulley, author of Morhelion and Shattermoon
Matt Hill, science-fiction author of Zero Bomb
Anna Stephens, fantasy author of the Godblind trilogy
Jen Williams, fantasy author of the Copper Cat and Winnowing Flame series
Genevieve Cogman, author of the Invisible Library series
Tim Major, SF and horror writer
KK Perez, YA author of the Sweet Black Waves series
Adam Christopher, acclaimed novelist, comics and tie-in fiction writer
Jodi Taylor, author of the Chronicles of St Mary series
Daniel Godfrey, author of The Synapse Sequence and New Pompeii
Ruth De Haas, fantasy author and blogger
Danie Ware, Warhammer 40k novelist and author of Children of Artifice
Dan Coxon, award-winning author and editor
AC Clarke, children's and YA fantasy author

It's also great for panels and workshops, both of which I'll be involved with this year. There'll also be readings of work, too, which I think is new.

Here's my itinerary, for those interested (or wanting to know which parts of Derby Quad to avoid!)

10.00 am. Panel:
Short Cuts: Does a Background in Short Fiction Help You Build a Career as a Novelist? (Sponsored by Fox Spirit Books)
Simon Bestwick, Zen Cho (Chair), Jan Edwards, Tim Lebbon, Tim Major.

2.00 pm. Workshop:
Simon Bestwick:Writing Your Novel

4.00 pm. Multi-Publisher Horror Book Launch:
Dark Minds Press launches A LOVE LIKE BLOOD by Simon Bestwick.

Hersham Horror Books launches THE WOODS: PENTANTH 6, with stories by Cate Gardner, James Everington, Mark West, Penny Jones and Phil Sloman.

Sinister Horror Company launches CANNIBAL NUNS FROM OUTER SPACE by Duncan P. Bradshaw.

Wine and nibbles available.

5.00 pm. Reading: 
Simon Bestwick and Robin Triggs.

As you can see, I'm a glutton for punishment. :)

Looking forward to this weekend. And I hope I'll see you there. 

Nearing The Halfway Point

Current mood.

We're almost at the end of May (both the month and the Prime Minister.) Not halfway through the
year yet, but getting there. So, not a bad time to take stock of where things are.

Healthwise, it's not been the best year. I spent the first couple of months of it virtually bedbound with agonising knee pain (and with codeine medication for it leaving me wiped out half the time and with my sleeping patterns completely banjaxed), and been off work with anxiety for the last week. As a result, I've piled on a lot of the weight I lost last year. Next month, I'm heading back to Slimming World, where I'll start to put the damage right.

Not been a great year story submissions wise either - in fact, I haven't had a single acceptance all year, with stories I was very pleased with repeatedly knocked back. But that has had the effect of making me reflect on what I write and why, and made me determined to strive for excellence in my work. The last couple of years have also reminded me, very strongly, that I do what I do because I love it. And if I don't love what I'm doing, I shouldn't be doing it.

I hit a crisis point last year, where I realised I'd lost all sense of direction in terms of novel writing - the old, perennial trouble of trying to write what I thought was popular instead of what I needed to write. Two things helped me resolve it. One was realising that the projects of mine my agent was the most excited about were the ones I'd written out of sheer love and passion - the ones I'd thought no-one would be interested in. The second was asking myself one very simple question:

"If you could only write one more novel, what would it be?"

As it turned out, the answer was the novel that I'd been writing - but very differently from how I planned it. What was to have been a bog-standard psychological thriller became something else - a ghost story, a love story, a horror story... it's very rough at the moment (and not even fully typed up from Dictaphone notes) but it's something different.

I've written two novellas this year, as well, while also working on The Song Of The Sibyl, the huge

quarter-million word epic. There has been a shedload of work to do on that (two novels' worth, effectively!) but it's close to being finished and sent off to The Agent.

In addition, my Patreon is running and bringing in a stream (well, trickle) of income, featuring the ongoing serial The Harrowing.

One thing I was determined to do in 2019 was to write a screenplay; I've been working on something, a little bit of a time, in between work on the novel; slow going, but it's taking shape.

So, a lot of work, that will hopefully pay off in the future.

But there are also good things happening this year.

The big one, of course, is And Cannot Come Again, due out from ChiZine Press soon, complete with an Introduction by Ramsey

Campbell and blurbs from Angela Slatter, Reggie Oliver, Gemma Files and many, many more. The paperback will be released on the 11th July; if you can't wait that long, the ebook version will be available from the 18th June.

July will also see the release of A Love Like Blood, consisting of my novelettes Fitton's Ghost and Burns The Witchfire, Upon The Hill. It'll be launched at Edge-Lit in July - and who knows, there may be some copies of And Cannot Come Again available too.

Another good thing happened a couple of weeks ago, when Ellen Datlow's anthology The Devil And The Deep, featuring my story 'Deadwater', won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. Congratulations to Ellen and the other contributors!

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print so far. Now on with the rest of the year.

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.