Wolf's Hill and Breakwater nominated for British Fantasy Awards

The shortlists for the British Fantasy Awards were announced on Tuesday, and I'm stunned to have made the running for not one, but two awards.

Wolf's Hill has been shortlisted for the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, alongside Little Eve by Catriona Ward, The Cabin At The End of The World by Paul Tremblay and The Way of The Worm by Ramsey Campbell.

To be sharing a shortlist with those three authors, those three novels, to be included in the same category, feels like an award in itself. I'd be happy to lose to any of them.

It's also particularly poignant because the Black Road novels mean a lot to me, and there've been times when I wonder if anyone's even reading them. In guess some people are, and enjoying them too.

Breakwater, meanwhile, has been shortlisted for Best Novella, alongside 'Binti: The Night Masquerade' by Nnedi Okorafor, 'The Land Of Somewhere Safe' by Hal Duncan, 'The Last Temptation Of Dr Valentine' by John Llewellyn Probert, 'The Only Harmless Great Thing' by Brooke Bolander and 'The Tea Master And The Detective' by Aliette de Bodard. Again, a storming list of names.

The winners will be announced at FantasyCon in Glasgow on 20th October.

Here are the BFA nominations in full:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)
Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri (Orbit)
Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Green Man’s Heir, by Juliet E McKenna (Wizard’s Tower Press)
The Loosening Skin, by Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories)
Priest of Bones, by Peter McLean (Jo Fletcher Books)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
The Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (Titan Books)
Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (W&N)
The Way of the Worm, by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Wolf’s Hill, by Simon Bestwick (Snowbooks)

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J Bounds Award)
Tomi Adeyemi, for The Children of Blood and Bone (Macmillan Children’s Books)
Cameron Johnston, for The Traitor God (Angry Robot)
RF Kuang, for The Poppy War (HarperVoyager)
Tasha Suri, for Empire of Sand (Orbit)
Marian Womack, for Lost Objects (Luna Press Publishing)
Micah Yongo, for Lost Gods (Angry Robot)

Best Novella
Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Breakwater, by Simon Bestwick (Tor Books)
The Land of Somewhere Safe, by Hal Duncan (NewCon Press)
The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, by John Llewellyn Probert (Black Shuck Books)
The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)

Best Short Fiction 
Down Where Sound Comes Blunt, by GV Anderson (F&SF March/April 2018)
Her Blood the Apples, Her Bones the Trees, by Georgina Bruce (The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism)
In the Gallery of Silent Screams, by Carole Johnstone & Chris Kelso (Black Static #65)
A Son of the Sea, by Priya Sharma (All the Fabulous Beasts)
Telling Stories, by Ruth EJ Booth (The Dark #43)
Thumbsucker, by Robert Shearman (New Fears 2)

Best Anthology
The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, ed. Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books)
Humanagerie, ed. Sarah Doyle & Allen Ashley (Eibonvale Press)
New Fears 2, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
This Dreaming Isle, ed. Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories)
Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Shearman & Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)

Best Collection
All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)
The Future is Blue, by Catherynne M Valente (Subterranean Press)
How Long ‘til Black Future Month?, by NK Jemisin (Orbit)
Lost Objects, by Marian Womack (Luna Press Publishing)
Octoberland, by Thana Niveau (PS Publishing)
Resonance & Revolt, by Rosanne Rabinowitz (Eibonvale Press)

Best Non-Fiction
The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini (Luna Press Publishing)
The Full Lid, by Alasdair Stuart (alasdairstuart.com/the-full-lid)
Ginger Nuts of Horror (www.gingernutsofhorror.com)
Les Vampires, by Tim Major (PS Publishing)
Noise and Sparks, by Ruth EJ Booth (Shoreline of Infinity)

Best Independent Press
Fox Spirit Books
Luna Press Publishing
NewCon Press
Unsung Stories

Best Magazine / Periodical
Black Static
Gingernuts of Horror
Interzone
Shoreline of Infinity
Uncanny Magazine

Best Audio
Bedtime Stories for the End of the World (endoftheworldpodcast.com)
Blood on Satan’s Claw, by Mark Morris (Bafflegab)
Breaking the Glass Slipper (www.breakingtheglassslipper.com)
PodCastle (podcastle.org)
PsuedoPod (pseudopod.org)

Best Comic / Graphic Novel
100 Demon Dialogues, by Lucy Bellwood (Toonhound Studios)
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Tyler Crook & Dave Stewart (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola and others (Dark Horse)
The Prisoner, by Robert S Malan & John Cockshaw (Luna Press Publishing)
Saga #49-54, by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Widdershins, Vol. 7, by Kate Ashwin

Best Artist
Vince Haig
David Rix
Daniele Serra
Sophie E Tallis

Best Film / Television Production
Annihilation, Alex Garland
Avengers: Infinity War, Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Black Panther, Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan
Inside No. 9, series 4, Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman

Congratulations to my fellow nominees!

Goodbye, 2018, Hello 2019...

I love this picture far too much not to use it again.

So... whew. It's really strange to think another year's passed already. But it has, and now we're nearing the end of the first day of 2019.

364 of them to go.

Some people are dismissive about New Year's Resolutions. I'm not: this is the perfect time to look back on what you've achieved, and look ahead to where you want to be.

I wrote a novel this year, and a play, and several short stories. I saw another novel into print, plus a mini-collection and (with Penny Jones) a chapbook. I saw a novelette published by Tor.com; I saw my fiction published in major anthologies, reprinted in The Best of the Best Horror of the Year.

Cate and I celebrated our second year of marriage, and our sixth year together.

I got to see Laura Mauro win a totally unexpected (on her part) and hugely well-deserved award for Looking For Laika.

I helped start up something new: Shock Against Racism, raising money to combat racism and the far-right.

I discovered a new sense of purpose in my writing, one I thought I'd lost.

So, for 2019, what do I want to strive for? Where do I want to be?

I still want the dusk. I still want to be able to earn my living doing what I love. Time is short, for all of us. God alone knows what the next year will bring, for the world at large and for the UK in particular. I want that time to count, to be spent doing the stuff I care about and that I was put here to do.

I'm still hoping against hope that we'll find a way to halt the national insanity that is Brexit before this deranged suicide cult screws us for decades to come. (Even if we do, there'll still be divisions, but you know what? Maybe, just maybe, it's exposed the hatred and ugly-mindedness that's festered so long in our country. We can't be in denial about those things any more. And yes, I know that not every Leave voter did so out of bigotry, but don't tell me that there isn't a sewer of racism, small-minded, mean-spirited spite and cruelty running through our public life and our national culture. Maybe, now it's publicly on display, we can hope to recognise it and drain it. Crazily optimistic? Yes, but you've got have some hope.)

I want to see a change of government too. So I'm going to try and be more politically active in both those causes in the coming year.

This year, I'm going to write the final book in the Black Road series. I'm going to rewrite the one I drafted in 2018, and try to complete, or at least begin, another book after that. I want to start learning how to draw. I want to lose more weight and become fitter and healthier. I want to find more ways to turning what I love to account, so I can spend all my time doing it.

One step I've taken in that direction is to launch a Patreon account. Among other things, I'll be serialising a novel, The Mancunian Candidate, there for my supporters to read. There's a free sample available to read, to whet your appetite.

Let's hope we can get through 2019, that the things we fear don't happen and that the things we hope for do. Let's hope we're all still here at the end of 2019, and that things are better for us than they were at the start.

Good luck, everybody.

See you soon.

2018 In Review #2: Awards Eligibilty And All That

So now we come to the 'obligatory blowing of my own horn' bit, which doesn't come easily to a lot of Brits...

Anyway, here are the works that saw publication for the first time in 2018 and are eligible for nomination for any relevant awards...

Novel

Wolf's Hill, published by Snowbooks.

Story collection

Singing Back The Dark (mini-collection), published by Black Shuck Books.


Novelette

Breakwater, published by Tor.com. (16,000 words long, so some would consider it a novella and some a short story.)


Short fiction

'If I Should Fall From Grace With God' (Crimewave #13: Bad Light, TTA Press)

'Deadwater' (The Devil and the Deep, Night Shade Books)

'The Bells Of Rainey' (Great British Horror #3: For Those In Peril, Black Shuck Books)

'The Judgement Call' (Two Chilling Tales, Fox Spirit Books, Black Shuck Books)

'Hard Time Killing Floor Blues' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'And All The Souls In Hell Shall Sing' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Moon Going Down' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Effigies Of Glass' (in Singing Back The Dark, Black Shuck Books)

'Dab and Sole' (Ko-fi)

'A Constant Sound Of Thunder' (Ko-fi)

Wolf's Hill Is Here!

The third book in the Black Road quartet, Wolf's Hill, is published today. You can buy it from Amazon (US or UK.)

Helen Damnation’s rebellion against the Reapers has spread. All across post-nuclear Britain, the fires of revolution are beginning to burn. But her old enemy Tereus Winterborn still intends to rule supreme, and has a new ally in Dr Mordake, the creator of Project Tindalos – now monstrously transfigured by the forces he unleashed at Hobsdyke.

Their target is Helen’s closest ally: the last Grendelwolf, Gevaudan Shoal. The worst tortures of all await him in the cells of the Pyramid. At Hobsdyke, in the tunnels beneath Graspen Hill, the legacy of the Night Wolves is waiting for him – along with secrets about Helen that threaten to tear both Gevaudan and the resistance apart.

With the Reapers poised to strike at the first sign of weakness, a series of brutal killings breaks out behind rebel lines – and the evidence leads back to Gevaudan’s door. With all those closest to Helen turning against her, she faces her greatest challenge yet as Winterborn begins his bid for ultimate power.

Thank you to Emma Barnes, Tik Dalton and Anna Torborg (past and present Snowbooks bods), everyone who shared the last blog, and all the reviewers who've said kind things about the series.

The Black Road rolls on...

Wolf's Hill is coming...

What with the excitement, drama and heat of the last month, I managed to completely forget that my seventh (hopefully a lucky number) novel, Wolf's Hill, will be released on 31st July.

FAQ: (well, not really frequently asked questions, but who knows, maybe in future...)

Q: What is Wolf's Hill?
A: It's the third novel in the Black Road Quartet, following on from Hell's Ditch and Devil's Highway.

Q: What is the Black Road?
A: It's a series of novels set in Britain twenty years after a nuclear attack. The country's mostly still in ruins, and controlled by the tyrannical Commanders of the Reclamation and Protection Command and their soldiers: the Reapers.

Q: What's the story so far?
In the first book, Hell's Ditch, a Commander called Winterborn is looking for an ultimate weapon to consolidate his bid for supreme power. This takes the form of Project Tindalos, a paranormal weapons system developed at REAP Base Hobsdyke by Dr Mordake. Project Tindalos ran wildly out of control and was only stopped when Winterborn's old enemy Helen Damnation (no, I couldn't resist calling her that) and her rebels destroyed Hobsdyke.

Devil's Highway saw Helen's rebellion gaining strength, aided by an assorted band of allies - among them, Gevaudan Shoal, the last of the genetically-engineered warriors known as Grendelwolves. Winterborn attempted to crush the rebellion with an assault on their base at Ashwood Fort, spearheaded by the monstrous Catchmen, created from the remains of Project Tindalos. The rebels survived, but now the conflict is moving into a newer, deadlier phase...

Q: So what's in store in Wolf's Hill?
A: Dr Mordake, the creator of Project Tindalos, has resurfaced, and is advising Winterborn in his war against the rebels. The Reapers having failed to crush the rebels militarily, Mordake seeks to break their unity and divide them against one another - and against Helen in particular. And central to his plans is Helen's closest ally, Gevaudan Shoal.

A new enemy will emerge. The rebels will face a deadly threat from within their own ranks. And secrets will be revealed: Helen's past, Mordake's journey, and what really lies beneath the ruins of Hobsdyke.

(You'll also learn how Gevaudan got his name. No particular relevance to the plot there, but just in case you were interested...)

Q: Where can I get hold of it?
A: You can buy it on Amazon (US or UK.) It should be up on the Snowbooks website soon: Hell's Ditch and Devil's Highway are there already, or at least pages showing a huge range of links where you can order a physical or electronic copy.

Q: Will it be any good?
A: Well, only you can judge. But here's what the reviewers have said abouit the series so far:
Hell's Ditch:
"Grabs you and won't let go." - Pat Cadigan.

"I loved the time I spent on the world of Hell’s Ditch and I look forward with much anticipation to the follow ups. It’s a book I recommend highly." - Dark Musings.

"Hell’s Ditch is a magnificent achievement, the work of a writer who knows how to tell a story and make it hurt, but in a good way, and putting on my fortune-teller’s cap I suspect that the best is still to come." - Black Static.

"Hell’s Ditch is the epic you always knew Bestwick had inside him... There is loyalty, bravery, self-sacrifice, tenderness, and loss. And some of the best writing on the planet, but you were expecting that if you’ve ever read Bestwick’s work. Aaannnddd, there is also violence, gory imagery, that kind of language, sexuality, and reference to torture. The very thing you don’t want your teenagers reading and the very thing you should buy them…things aren’t looking good for us right now and they might be the ones to make some tough decisions." - Hikeeba.


Devil's Highway:
"There’s genuine poignancy in this novel... It actually made me tear up... But overall, what an incredible ride this is. With the Black Road Quartet now half complete, the bar is set impressively high, but Simon Bestwick gives us no reason to think that the rest of this tour-de-force in progress will be anything less than superb." - The Hellforge.

"Part post-apocalyptic horror, part military action, Bestwick has crafted a thrilling tour-de-force novel full of military grade action sequences and complex characters. But also moments of intense emotion and the lightest touches of romance which combine to deliver a compelling story that pulls you in and refuses to let go." - This Is Horror.

"In the hands of another writer, Helen might have become a dull caricature of a ‘strong female character’. Here, though, her flaws and failings are put under a narrative microscope and viewed alongside her strengths and triumphs: she is a brave warrior, a survivor, a leader of men. She is also weak and selfish and dangerously impulsive. She is imperfect, and all the more interesting a character for it... A potent mix of grim, dystopian sci-fi and visceral horror, combined with a vibrant imagination, lift a standard ‘Good vs Evil’ narrative and have turned it into something quite special indeed." - Ginger Nuts of Horror

2017: The Roundup

At least I didn't quack up.

Writing wise, 2017 was what Aliya Whiteley has called a 'Duck in the Mist' year - an awful lot of paddling going on beneath the surface, but not that much activity above it. I wrote quite a lot, and there'll be more about that in 2018, but comparatively little activity on the publication front. So here's the year that was.

 








Novels
I wrote the final drafts of Wolf's Hill and the entirety of a new novel, The Mancunian Candidate.

I didn't sell any novels in 2017, but there may be news on that front soon. Or not, of course. Such is the business....

The paperback of Devil's Highway was published in February. (It first appeared as a hardback in December 2016, however, so would be ineligible for any awards for 2017, assuming anyone was daft enough to nominate it. For anyone daft enough to want to read it, the ebook's still only £1.99)

Novelettes and Short Stories

Finished the first draft of a novelette, Breakwater, and redrafted to completion.
Also wrote first drafts of four novelette-length (I think) stories. Redrafts ongoing.
Wrote and completed two other stories, currently making the rounds.

Short story 'Deadwater' accepted for publication in Ellen Datlow's anthology, Devil and the Deep.
Breakwater accepted for publication by Tor.com in 2018.

Short fiction published this year:
'The Adventure of the Orkney Shark' in Sherlock Holmes' School of Detection.
'The Tarn' in The Beauty of Death 2: Death by Water.

Devil's Highway: Paperback Launch

TODAY'S THE DAY!

The paperback of Devil's Highway, the second book in the Black Road quartet, is released today.

You can buy direct from the publishers, or from Amazon.

In the haunted desolation of post-nuclear Britain, the Catchman walks. Spawned from the nightmare of Project Tindalos, it doesn’t tire, stop, or die. It exists for one purpose only: to find and kill Helen Damnation, leader of the growing revolt against the tyrannical Reapers and their Commander, Tereus Winterborn.

Meanwhile, Helen is threatened from both without and within. Her nightmares of the Black Road have returned, and the ghosts of her murdered family demand vengeance, in the form of either Winterborn’s death or her own. And close behind the Catchman, a massive Reaper assault, led by Helen’s nemesis, Colonel Jarrett, is nearing the rebels’ base.

Killing Helen has become Jarrett’s obsession: only one of them can emerge from this conflict alive.

And in others news, today I finished the first draft of the third Black Road novel, Wolf's Hill, which will be published in 2018.

Please share far and wide! Like an idiot (well, partly because juggling the new job with the writing in knackering me out) I completely forgot to do much to signal boost this one, and it's a book I'm very proud of. I hope you'll enjoy it too.

Basically, just imagine this as the theme music:

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#thereapersarecoming

Things Of The Week: 4th November 2016

Me, Nightmares, and early morning bed hair

Well, Offline October wasn’t as offline as I intended – social media’s a definite addiction of mine, and one I need to address as it’s been eating into my writing too much. I was worried that I might have writer’s block, but once I unplugged the wireless router (downstairs), fired up the laptop (upstairs) and made myself write I found the prose still came easily enough. So, basically, it was simple laziness.

I’m still not underway on the first draft of Wolf’s Hill, and that needs fixing – I’m hoping to get rolling in the next week or two, and try and finish the first draft, at least, by year’s end. At the moment I’m working on a couple of short stories; once those are gone, it’ll be the book’s turn. The Lowdown will resume next week: meanwhile, here are some things that have been going on.

credit: www.blakefriendmann.co.uk

The first piece of news is a sad one: the sudden and unexpected passing of literary agent Carole Blake. Although I never met Carole personally, many other writers have spoken of her with great warmth and affection in both professional and personal terms. Along with Julian Friedmann, she co-founded the agency that represents me; she also wrote 29 Ways Not To Submit To An Agent, which was handy (although I was relieved to note that I didn’t do most of them anyway) and I know that her book, From Pitch To Publication, was a big help to many writers. My thoughts go to her family and to her friends and colleagues at Blake-Friedmann.

With the run-up to Halloween, it seemed a good time to catch up on horror movies (as per my recent posts. I have a tendency to buy books and DVDs which then sit around for months or even years before I finally get round to watching or reading them, and I caught up with a few titles in October. In the book stakes there was Ramsey Campbell’s The Seven Days Of Cain (great title!)*, while in the realm of movies there were two corkers: Oculus and The Babadook.

Oculus centres around a mirror with demonic properties. By controlling the perceptions of those who own it, it drives them to suicide. Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) lost their parents to it, and Tim was incarcerated in a mental institution for years; now, Kaylie has tracked the mirror down and sets out to prove there’s a genuine supernatural force present. The narrative cuts back and forth between the events of their childhood and the present day; if it has a weakness, it’s that this format means the parents’ psychological deterioration feels as though it happens a little too quickly. Cate and I found this seriously unsettling: there are a few jump scares, but that’s not where it’s at.

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The Babadook: wow. Amelia (Essie Davis) was widowed in a car crash the night her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) was born. Now, her son is plagued by nightmares of a monster coming for him, building weapons to fight it; as his behavioural problems place Amelia under ever-increasing strain, she finds a pop-up book called The Babadook, after the shadowy monster it centres on. Soon, the creature from the book begins to invade their lives, and Amelia’s own sanity begins to crumble. Original and very, very disturbing.

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We’ve also started watching the new E4/Netflix series Crazyhead, starring Cara Theobald and Susan Wokoma. The trailer looked as though it could be good or terrible; we only needed to watch about five minutes to know we liked it. Amy (Theobald) has just stopped taking anti-psychotic medication to suppress the hallucinations she keeps having. Except that they aren’t hallucinations: she’s one of a tiny number of people who can see those possessed by demons. One of them nearly kills her till she’s rescued by Raquel (Wokoma), another ex-mental patient with the same gift. Crazyhead manages to be both genuinely funny and full of genuine scares, and has real heart, especially in the relationship between the two leads. There’s also a strong supporting cast – Amy’s flatmate and best friend Suzanne (Riann Steele), her amorous work colleague Jake (Lewis Reeves), Raquel’s brother Tyler (Arinze Kene) and head demon Callum (Tony Curran) – plus a willingness to bump off supporting characters that helps ramp up the tension among the humour. Crazyhead’s only downside is that, being a British series, it’s only six episodes. Here’s hoping it gets a second series.

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Three really nice things happened this week.

Nice Thing No. 1: My contributor’s copy of Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror arrived. Nightmares has been very well received, with a host of excellent reviews appearing, including a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly. Not many of them mention my own tale, ‘Hushabye’, but I can live with that – I’m happy to be published in that company!

Me with The Feast Of All Souls, plus yet more bed hair.

Ellen Datlow’s latest anthology collates stories from between 2005 and 2015 that have had a ‘lasting impact’ on her. Authors such as Mark Samuels, Laird Barron, Livia Llewellyn, John Langan, Gene Wolfe, Margo Lanagan and many more appear within; I’m proud and delighted to see ‘Hushabye’ included.

Nice Thing No.2: My author copies of The Feast Of All Souls, published next month by Solaris, turned up too. Complete with that beautiful cover art by Ben Baldwin. Please get in touch if you’d like to review the book. Which brings me on to…

Nice Thing No.3: Gill O’Rourke recently started reading my stuff, starting with Tide Of Souls, which she raves about on her blog here. She also co-presents the radio show Lifestyle MK, where she continues the rave-age, and solicits a few words with me on reviews. You can listen to me blather on here. Many thanks, Gill!

So, about that:

One thing I’ve become very aware of recently is the importance of reviews in driving book sales. The algorithms on Amazon (and let’s face it, this is where a lot of people are buying their books now) give you more visibility if you’ve had more reviews. 50 is usually the magic number that means you show up near the top of the search results in your chosen category.

So, if you’ve read my stuff and liked it, please leave a review. Or just leave a review (honest ones are better any day of the week!) I’ve certainly decided to start doing this more with books I’ve read and liked. It’s a simple and direct way to show your appreciate for a writer, and something concrete you can do to help them out.


* ETA: And yes, I'll be writing an Amazon review!

Things of the Week: 9th September 2016

This week's things?
Stuff is bubbling under. The Proofs of Devil's Highway have arrived from Snowbooks. I've finished the opening chapters of Wolf's Hill. And some good news from my agent. Unfortunately I can't say anything about it yet (contracts have to be signed, etc, which is some way off.) Sorry about that. Nobody loves a vaguebooker. Or vagueblogger, as the case may be.

Anyway, do you fine folks know Mr Tony Schumacher? No? Then you should acquaint yourselves with both the man and his work. If you get a chance to attend one of his readings, you definitely should - he's an extremely nice bloke and a very funny guy.

Oh, and he's also a bloody good writer.

The Darkest Hour, his first novel, is set in 1946, in an alternate-history Nazi-occupied Britain. I admit it - I didn't get round to reading this for some time, as my first reaction was that this had been done before, a lot.

But The Darkest Hour is a different kettle of fish for two reasons. First of all, you can forget the cliches of evil Germans and square-chinned Resistance fighters - the cast of this novel are human beings, flawed and complex. As in other occupied countries, the resistance movements are made up either of Soviet-aligned Communists or right-wing nationalists, half of them as anti-Semitic as the Nazis themselves.

John Rossett, its protagonist, is a war hero, honoured as 'the British Lion' by the German victors he fought at Dunkirk, and now put to work as a police officer loyal to the new regime. Wracked with guilt and self-disgust, he is - like most of Tony's characters - one of the little people, on the sidelines of history, just trying to keep his head down and survive.

The turning point comes when Rossett has to aid in the deportation of Jews from London's East End - only to find the fate of one of them, a small boy, in his hands. It would be the easiest thing in the world just to hand him over to the SS - but he doesn't. Rossett sets out on a path to redemption, but the costs and consequences will be high...

Imaginative, pacey, well-written and with sharp, fresh characterisation that makes this a very different kind of 'what-if?' book, The Darkest Hour is highly recommended. A sequel, The British Lion, is also out, and Rossett's saga will continue in a third novel.

I actually read the book last year, and meant to say something, but forgot. Tony recently did a book video, and gave a couple of novels he'd enjoyed a mention - one of them being Hell's Ditch, which ended up jogging my memory. You can see it here:

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I met Cassandra Khaw at Fantasycon last year; she's an emerging writer of whom good things are already being said (and I hope to host a Lowdown with her soon.) She also wrote this piece on grief and the writing process, which I found thoughful and moving and well worth sharing.

When I was a child, he told me that room service was provided by dinosaurs; they delivered waiters through the windows. He said there were unicorns living in the jungles, magical creatures that could be lured into the open with a single Mars bars. He told me about camping stories, about getting lost in the undergrowth. He told me about fights in school, about racing dolphins in the ocean, about being adrift in sea. 

He made my universe larger.

He was my universe.

I’ve had people ask me why I write, what motivates my desire to craft fiction, what makes me want to tell stories. I never really knew. The answers changed with every conversation, every interview. But I think I know now.  

Because my father was a storyteller and because every time I wrap my audience in a thread of fresh-spun myth, I remember what it is like being a little girl again, curled against his heart, listening as he rumbled through a fresh tale. Because he taught me how to tell stories and because every time I tell a story, I feel his ghost under my words, feel the magic of that moment when the galaxy pivoted on the breath of a syllable.

Because when the words come together, he’s alive again.

(See also this post by Cate along related themes.)

Elsewhere, I encountered On Being A Late Bloomer by Kelly Robson in Clarkesworld, which struck a profound chord. Time and age have been on my mind a lot lately - this year, it'll be twenty years since I graduated from University, nineteen since I started writing seriously. Twelve years since my first book was published. Seven since my first novel. And the realisation dawns: I'm forty-two. I'm not young any more. I'm not a promising new writer or an up-and-comer. I have been in this game for nearly two decades, doing a succession of fairly crappy, low-paid jobs because the task of both climbing a corporate ladder and trying to build a writing career is just something I can't pull off. I am middle-aged, over the hump, looking at the down slope, and there are younger, newer writers coming up behind me who already seem to be making bigger names for themselves and achieving more than I have yet.

It scares me.

There's a scene in From Dusk Til Dawn where Harvey Keitel says:

Every person who... chooses the service of God as his life's work has something in common. I don't care if you're a preacher, a priest, a nun, a rabbi or a Buddhist monk. Many, many times during your life you will look at your reflection in a mirror and ask yourself: am I a fool?

It's just as true if you're a writer, or any kind of artist. That fear that you'll get to the end, be looking at a miserable and impoverished old age, and for what? No-one will know who you are, and you'll look at the stuff you've done and think "Is that it? This is crap. Mediocre. I gave so much up for this?"

But then I remind myself I'm not in competition with those other writers. There's enough room for us
all, and what counts is the work and the hope that it'll outlast you. If you can use it to pay the bills and avoid having a real job while you're at it, so much the better.

I remind myself - for instance - that Mary Wesley published her first adult novel, The Camomile Lawn, when she was 71. She went onto write ten best-sellers, selling three million copies in the last twenty years of her life. She didn't do too badly, in the end.

And I remind myself, and others, to read Kelly's column.

So don’t give up. Don’t quit. It’s never too late—not at any age. Find your own path, wherever it may lead. Being a late bloomer can be an incredible gift. It can lead to successes you never dreamed of.

And I remind myself, most of all, that none of us are done yet, however late or early in the day it might be.

Have a good weekend.

Things of the Week: 2nd September 2016

Been a bit of a sad week, this one, in some respects, as two much-loved and iconic actors passed. I'm not even going to try and summarise Gene Wilder's career - he was the definitive Willy Wonka, and brilliant in a host of other films. He died, aged 83, after a battle with Alzheimer's Disease. I came across this story shortly afterward - which, if anything, makes me like him even more for the way he determinedly educated himself about, and raised awareness of, the ovarian cancer that killed his third wife, Gilda Radner.

Another actor, not as instantly recognisable by name but a presence in a huge number of great movies, was Jon Polito, who died today at 65. Heavy-set, bald and gravel-voiced, Polito played a host of roles on stage and screen; he was often cast as cops or gangsters, but could imbue even the nastiest character with sympathetic traits - perhaps most of all that of Johnny Caspar, the Italian-American ganglord in the Coen Brothers' classic Miller's Crossing. A.V. Club attempts to overview Polito's 35 year career here.

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On a happier note, last month Cate and I both subbed stories to the US magazine The Dark, a notoriously tough market to crack (only something like 0.05% of submissions are accepted.) The great thing about The Dark, though, is the speed with which the rejections come back - usually within 24 hours. So when days passed without either of us receiving a reply, we knew our stories had either been lost, or...

Well, I didn't get in - but I'm encouraged by the fact that the story was with them for as long as it was, suggesting I might have come close this time. However, out of the 244 stories submitted to The Dark in August, one was accepted....

And it was Cate's.

Cate's story 'As Cymbals Clash' will appear in the December issue of The Dark. I couldn't be happier for her, or more proud.

Another coup for Cate, this week, was the release of two of her stories as an e-chapbook, Shadow Moths, from Caroline Callaghan's Frightful Horrors Publishing. As you can see, it has some weird and gorgeous artwork by Joshua Rainbird. The stories, 'We Make Our Own Monsters Here' and 'Blood Moth Kiss', are both brilliant, and have an introduction from yours truly. Can't think how that happened. D.F. Lewis gives the collection one of his real-time reviews here.

Meanwhile, the proofs for Devil's Highway will soon be with me - in just over a month, the second Black Road novel will be released in hardback and ebook formats. I've now started work on the third book in the series, Wolf's Hill: the first 2000 words have been written. Only another 115,000 or thereabouts to go....


Meanwhile, advance reviews for Ellen Datlow's anthology Nightmares: A New Decade Of Modern Horror, which includes my story 'Hushabye', continue to come. Michael Collings says in his review:

Each story in Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror does indeed represent a “nightmare,” although the definition of that word shifts within each. Some deal with worlds like ours, twisted in one detail to force characters to face impossiblities. Others take place in fantastic worlds, where the impossible is an everyday event and horror, therefore, must must reach beyond to terrify. Readers will find sufficient entertainment, frequent enough moments of frisson, ample enough opportunities to challenge preconceptions, to make the book worth reading.

While Michelle Garza, reviewing for This Is Horror, says:

An excellent collection overall, featuring some of the best voices in horror. It has something to suit a wide variety of tastes, blending stories about real life trauma and bloodshed, to stories that pass into the realms of cosmic terror, horror in the old west and even those with a grim fairytale-like feel. In these pages you will find a nightmare for every horror fan.

Finally, I stumbled across this piece: Sci Fi And Scary's Top Ten Most Anticipated Horror Novel Releases. (Well, releases and re-releases.) Alongside titles from the likes of Ronald Malfi, Tom Fletcher, Jonathan Aycliffe and Robert Aickman, there's my upcoming release from Solaris, The Feast Of All Souls.

Why am I interested? Because it looks like a twisted haunted house tale and I love a good haunted house tale.

It is, kind of.... and more. Hope the reviewer enjoys it - and you, when it hits the shelves in December.

So that's all for this week. Now, to play us out, here's the one true Willy Wonka.

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