2022 so far...

Well, the New Year is already no longer so new, rushing by at a rate of knots; we're already a week into the second month of it.

Various things are in motion at this end; I finished one novel on New Year's Eve and have a few last revisions to do, and am about 30,000 words into what will hopefully be a new one. 

The new issue of Phantasmagoria magazine is out, featuring my story 'Nemesis Of Wire' alongside new fiction by Caitlin Marceau, Evangelia Papanikou, Mike Chinn and many others. 'Nemesis Of Wire' is a Christmas-themed chiller (the issue was originally slated for December) set in a trench on the Western Front in World War One, where amid all the state-sanctioned slaughter, the legacy of one heinous act still lingers...

Reviews of Ellen Datlow's body horror anthology Body Shocks continue to appear, including
this one from Anthony Cardino, which concludes: "If I had to choose the most disturbing story in the anthology in terms of body transformation and trauma, it would be a three way tie between Simon Bestwick’s “Welcome to Mengele’s,” which involves bodily abuse of clones; Cody Goodfellow’s “Atwater,” which contains both the most disturbing birthing scene I’ve read and a scene reminiscent of the climax of the movie Akira which made me physically ill the first time I saw it on VHS; and Michael Blumlein’s “Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report.”" 

I still haven't settled down to read Body Shocks, believe it or not, but I'm looking forward to it, and I'm inordinately pleased that a story I wrote all the way back in 1998 is still disturbing the hell out of people.

Reviews of Devils of London have shown up thick and fast, with Linda Nagle raving over it at Ginger Nuts of Horror and more qualified, though generally positive, reviews from the Future Fire and Horrified. I suspect they're right that there maybe should have been more to this story than there was; maybe I need to return to the theme in a novel. Or maybe I'm just too quick to believe every criticism. Even if I am, though, I kind of like the idea of exploring the premise at greater depth and in greater detail...

Finally - and I've been meaning to blog about this all year! - I was delighted to find I'd made two people's 'top ten' list for 2021.

On Twitter, Ian Duff listed 'ten books I read for the first time in 2021 and really enjoyed', which were:

1) Last One At The Party - Bethany Clift
2) Roth-Steyr - Simon Bestwick
3) One Day All This Will Be Yours - Adrian Tchaikovsky
4) Never - Ken Follett
5) Tidepool - Nicole Willson
6) The End Of Men - Christina Sweeney-Baird
7) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
8) Zero Day Code - John Birmingham
9) The Burning Girls - CJ Tudor
10) Nine Ghosts - Simon Bestwick

Making the list twice is brilliant enough, and even better when I'm sharing it with the likes of Margaret Atwood, CJ Tudor, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Ken Follett...

And last but far from least, Tony Jones published his Top Ten Reads of 2021 at Horror DNA, in which A Different Kind Of Light leads the list, alongside work by Adam Nevill, Ronald Malfi and Philip Fracassi:

"A Different Kind of Light is top-heavy with genuinely standout creepy scenes which leave a lasting impression once the final page is turned... Out of the blue Ash receives a message from Danie, an old university friend, who is seeking help in authenticating a piece of vintage sports film footage, which features the aftermath of the 1955 Le Mans Disaster. In this crash, the driver Pierre Levegh swerved into spectators, killing 84 and injuring 120 in the deadliest accident in motor racing history. The pair agree that there is no way this footage could have been faked and investigate further, buying the oddity on behalf of a third-party collector.

Building horror novels out of real historical events is a tricky business and A Different Kind of Light totally nails it. When Ash realises there is something very dodgy with the film, his research takes the story into unpredictable directions, with the balance of the developing supernatural storyline convincingly interconnected to the dynamics between the two main characters, and an enticing investigation into the origins of the film.This haunting novella will remain with you long after the killer ending."

All of which makes me a happy man, as we forge ahead into the uncharted waters of 2022.... 

A Different Kind Of Light and Roth-Steyr Relaunch!

Well I had a different first post planned for 2022, but I couldn't let this go by unannounced - Black Shuck Books are relaunching the first nine books in their Signature Novellas series!

The original editions all had the same basic cover design - just the title and the author's signature - but Steve at Black Shuck has decided it's time to give the novellas new, individual cover art...

A Different Kind Of Light is set in the not-too-distant future, in which freelance researcher Ashok Dhillon is called in to authenticate previously unseen film footage of the 1955 Le Mans Disaster. The footage is genuine enough, but eerie, spectral figures begin appearing on it, growing more visible on each viewing. When the spectres begin reaching out into the real world and claiming the lives of anyone who's seen the footage, Ash and his ex-lover Danie find themselves racing to discover the story behind the film, before they too, fall victim to the monstrous schakalgeier...

Roth-Steyr is the name of an early type of automatic pistol: it's also the murder weapon used to kill two men who've arrived one after the other in the mortuary where Valerie Varden works. Under other circumstances, it would just be an unusual cause of death, but Valerie knows both the victims. Now, as another 'long dark night of the European soul' looms, she has to confront the spectres of her own past in a tale that reaches back to the last days of World War One and the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire - before she, too, can falls prey to the mysterious killer with the Roth-Steyr...

The new editions of A Different Kind Of Light and Roth-Steyr will be out at the end of January. You can pre-order them, and the other re-launched Signature titles, here, or order all nine new editions at a special here.

Another frickin' year - 2021 in review

So, here we are again, after twelve more months hunkering in the bunker while waves of plague, insanity, hate and plain economy-size stupidity swept back and forth across the globe (to say nothing of the stuff Cate and I were going through closer to home.) And by the look of it, with the arrival of the Omicron variant, it ain't over yet. Here's hoping 2022 is better - or at least, that we get through it in one piece. 

I often find myself looking at this video by Idris Elba around the end of a year. I genuinely find it inspirational, because it has two important lessons: stay out of your own head, and keep going. Don't keep second-guessing yourself over taking risks as an artist or comparing yourselves to others' results and techniques; don't keep obsessing over where you are, how close to your goal.

Just do the work. Show up. Get your head down. Whatever works best for you, however it works: do it, and keep doing it. Don't give up.

Over the last couple of years, I've done my best to take Elba's advice to heart, and while I haven't conquered the world, it has paid dividends. Some of those, hopefully, you're going to hear more about in 2022. Some of them I can share with you today.

I had multiple false starts in terms of writing a new novel throughout this year. A lot of it was not being able to get out of my own head and trust my writing instincts. I turned to shorter forms for a big chunk of 2021 instead, and completed two novellas - including a follow-up to Roth-Steyr - and a bunch of stories.

I finally managed to get a novel going in September, and - touch wood - I'm close to the end. I hoping I'll be able to complete it within the next couple of days, so I can say I managed to write on in 2021.

So this year's creative output has been:

17 short stories,

11 pieces of verse,

5 flash fictions,

2 novellas,

And hopefully a novel!

On the acceptance front, one novel, a novella, a short story collection, and eleven individual stories. Plus some other cool news I can't announce yet.

As for actual publications in 2021:

Novel:

Black Mountain (Independent Legions Publishing) 

Novellas:

A Different Kind Of Light (Black Shuck Books)

Devils Of London (Hersham Horror Books)

Story Collection:

Nine Ghosts (Black Shuck Books)

Short Fiction:

'In The City In The Smog' (Horrified Magazine)

'In the Service of the Queen' (Horrified Magazine, reprinted from Patreon)

'And You Heard The Rattling Death Train' (Railroad Tales, Midnight Street Press)

'The Hungry Dark' (Out of the Darkness, Unsung)

'Redwater' (Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 3: A Miscellany of Monsters, Alchemy Press)

'Tonight the War is Over' (Nine Ghosts, Black Shuck Books, original to collection)

'The Cage' (Nine Ghosts, Black Shuck Books, original to collection)

Work published on Patreon:

Short Fiction:

Danielle

We Pray

Bone Street Blues

The Harvest Of Efriam Drazer

Beneath The Crust (Written for and read out on The Tiny Bookcase podcast) 

Flash Fiction:

A Bottle Of Ink

Osaka Jones

Ermenonville

The Mayan Ships

Brokerage

Verse:

Go Get It, Girl

The Book Of Angels

Below Decks On The Morro Castle

The Book Of Nightmares

Oubliette

The Whispered Song Of Anton Probst

The Call

Whaleback

Goliath’s Song

Steel City Blues

The Ghost School

Grandmother’s Footsteps

Stalin’s Gun: The Daze Of Vasili Blokhin

The Andragathius Doctrine

I Don’t Wear A Poppy Anymore

Jarman’s Ghost

On top of that, two of my short stories were reprinted in mass market anthologies: 'A Treat For Your Last Day' in Best Horror of the Year #13, and 'Welcome To Mengele's' in Body Shocks. Huge thanks to Ellen Datlow on both counts.

So, all the best the coming year to all of you.

And here's that Idris Elba video to finish off with. He's a lot better-looking than me. :)

Things Of The Past Few Weeks

It's been... eventful since I last blogged. Not all of it is stuff I can talk about publicly right now, and not all of it's good. Things should be okay in the long run, but there have been some tough times.

However, there've also been some good things, so I wanted to talk about those here.

First of all, there've been more reviews for A Different Kind Of Light, and they've been excellent ones. At The Future Fire, Rachel Verkade says:

I loved this book. I read it in the space of a couple of hours because I literally could not put it down. The story is compelling and moves at a swift and natural pace, the characters are compelling, and the descriptions of the disaster are haunting. It is a thematic cousin to stories like Revival and Hell House, stories about our fascination with death and our questions about what lies beyond… and whether we really want those questions to be answered. 

While over on Horrified, Ally Wilkes describes the novella as:

A delightfully short and scary little book... makes for compulsive reading. I found myself extremely creeped out as the daylight slipped away and the shadows on the hallway stairs became more prominent.... genuinely dread-inducing.

Many thanks to both reviewers!

I've been focusing on short fiction over the past couple of months, and one of the markets I submitted to was Maxim Jakubowski's Book Of Femmes Fatales And Dangerous Women Stories. I didn't think I stood a chance, but was delighted to learn yesterday that my story 'Bait' has been chosen for the anthology - one of 18 stories out of 170 submissions, which is pretty cool! Also sharing the TOC are Eric Brown, Susi Holliday, Keith Brooke, Joseph S. Walker, Robert Lopresti, Michael A.Gonzales, Lavie Tidhar, Rhys Hughes, Ali Seay, Ashley Lister, Bernie Crosthwaite, Rose Biggin, O'Neil De Noux, Bev Vincent, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Claude Lalumiere and Ana Teresa Pereira.

Some of these are writers I've read or worked with before, while others are new to me, but I look forward to appearing in print with them.

So those are the latest developments. I'll try and blog again soon.

One last request before I go: if you've read my work and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review (even a few words will do) or rating at Amazon for any works you've liked. The more reviews it gets, the more visible it becomes to other customers, and the wider an audience it reaches.

Things Of The Last Week Or So 2nd March 2021: Lots of stuff!

Normally, I try to list the various things (hopefully nice ones) that the week has had in store, but this week-and-a-bit (various things popped up on Friday and over the weekend that stopped me blogging earlier) has actually been pretty packed, and in the best of ways.

So here's the latest.

The launch party for A Different Kind Of Light ran into a few technical hitches, and in the end it ended up just being me reading and presenting (big thanks to Laura Mauro and Keris McDonald, who were to have read on the night), but ended up being a great laugh and getting a few people to rush out and buy a copy. It's the closest thing I've come to hanging out with many of my friends on the horror scene in a very long time, so that was great as well.

The first reviews for A Different Kind Of Light have also appeared. Over at Marc's Books, Marc Francis sums it up with "Well worth spending your hard-earned cash on," which is, after all, what every writer wants to hear people say! And at Ginger Nuts Of Horror, Tony Jones' verdict is: "A terrific novella which sits nicely amongst the best work Simon Bestwick has written and Black Shuck have published. Outstanding and highly recommended."  

You can buy A Different Kind Of Light here. 

In other news, Nine Ghosts, my upcoming mini-collection (from Black Shuck Books, again, because they rock!), originally slated for an October release, will in fact be out later this month. I have some proofs to check this week. More details to follow.

Way back when I was starting out as a writer in the late 1990s, I published a number of stories with a great little magazine called Nasty Piece Of Work, edited by the wonderful David A. Green. David was open to stories that were both gruesome or extreme on the one hand, and cerebral and intelligent on the other. I did some of my best work from that period of my career for Nasty, some of which might not only never have found a home without it, but never have been conceived.

One such story was Welcome To Mengele's, a story about a brothel where you can make your sexual fantasies - whatever they are - a reality... for a price. It was reprinted in my second collection, Pictures Of The Dark, but has been out of print for a long time. I'm delighted to announce it'll be appearing in Ellen Datlow's upcoming body horror anthology Body Shocks, alongside stories by Ray Cluley, Gemma Files, Livia Llewellyn, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Priya Sharma, Tananarive Due, Tom Johnstone and many, many more wonderful authors. Hugely proud to be included.

Paula Guran, editor of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy And Horror, has published her recommended reading list from the first volume online, and I get name-checked twice, for the title novella from my collection And Cannot Come Again and for my Terror Tales Of North West England story 'Below', which went on to be reprinted in The Best Horror Of The Year #12. Cate is also listed for her Terror Tales Of North West England story 'The Mute Swan.'

Finally, I'm over the moon to announce that my novella Devils Of London has found a home at Hersham Horror, courtesy of that excellent gentleman Peter Mark May, and should be out later this year. All being well, quite a bit of my stuff should be seeing print...

So that's what's been going down, anyway.

Hope you're all well, and see you soon. Keep safe.

Simon.

Things Of The Week: 12th February 2021 (A Different Kind Of Light Facebook Launch Party, New review of And Cannot Come Again, Super Sekrit Acceptances)

Sorry, Dave - I only had room
 for one author picture!

 A Different Kind Of Light is released by Black Shuck Books on February 25th, and to celebrate and signal boost it I'm throwing a Facebook Launch Party. There'll be live readings from me and from my Special Guests Dave Jeffery and Laura Mauro (aka Bricklauncher,) book giveaways and a Q&A. Bring your own booze and order your own food from Just Eat. What else is there to do of an evening these days anyway? 😃

You can join the party here.

A new review of And Cannot Come Again has surfaced at SFRevu, describing it as: 'An excellent collection that will keep you entertained and disturbed at the same time.' Many thanks to Mario Guslandi for the kind words. (Props too to my Horrific Tales stablemate Thana Niveau, whose The House Of Frozen Screams also got a shout-out this week over at The Eloquent Page.)

I have some new acceptances, which is great, BUT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM YET because contracts have to be signed, etc. Bah. So for now they are Super Sekrit, but details will be announced before much longer.

Anyway, that's all for now. And consider yourself invited to my Facebook party!

 

Things Of The Week 29th January 2021: Horrified, New Novella and A Different Kind Of Light

So, another week ends, and the lockdown rolls on. Hope you've all been keeping well.

Meanwhile, at Castle Bestwick, a few little victories have been scored:

I've had my third story acceptance of the year, from those wonderful people at Horrified magazine! 'Low Over Water' will appear there in the near future.

I completed a novella, which I started having hit a brick wall with the novel I'd been working on. It was written purely for fun, so now I need to find it a home. More news on that story (see what I did there) as it comes...

And finally (drum roll), speaking of novellas, I have one now available for pre-order! A Different Kind Of Light will be released by Black Shuck Books on 25th February. If you like stories about haunted films, this is one for you...

I think it's the kind of thing that ought to be celebrated - say, with a party. An online party, of course, but let's face it - where else have we got to go? Details/invites to be posted in the next week.

In the meantime, here's a hint of what to expect: 

“I first read about the 1955 Le Mans Disaster over twenty years ago, but I knew at once there was a story to tell.
When I learned there’d been newsreel footage of the aftermath, footage so appalling it never saw daylight, I also knew what kind of story: a story about how many of us want to see things we aren’t supposed to, even when we insist we don’t.
What I didn’t know was who would tell that story. It took me two decades to realise that it was also the story of two lovers who weren’t lovers, in a world that was falling apart. So finally I began to write, following Ash and Danie into a shadow land of grief, obsession and things worse than death.
Now the story’s written. Open this book, and I’ll tell it to you.

And the film will start to play.”    

And a few words from Gary McMahon:

"A Different Kind of Light is a fast, headlong race along a dark track towards the pitiless heart of Bestwick's darkness."

Have a good weekend, people. And stay safe. One day this will be over, and we'll be able to hang out with friends or spend an afternoon chilling in a coffee shop again. Or whatever it is that floats your boat.

Till then, let's just keep on keeping on.

Simon x.

Things Of The Week: 16th January 2021 (Horrified Magazine, Nine Ghosts and A Different Kind Of Light)

The main event of the last week has been my first appearance in Horrified Magazine! 'In The City In The Smog', a dark and hallucinatory tale inspired by the 1952 London Smog Disaster, was published last week. You can read it here.

I'm going to have two new books out this year, both from Black Shuck: another novella, A Different Kind Of Light, and a mini-collection called Nine Ghosts.

Nine Ghosts won't be out till nearer the end of the year, so I'll say more about that closer to the time, but A Different Kind Of Light will see print in February. I won't say anything about A Different Kind Of Light just yet, but I will leave you with a quote from the novelist Sarah Lotz, who very kindly agreed to read the novella and provide a blurb:

"Compulsively readable, original and chilling. Simon Bestwick's witty, engaging tone effortlessly and brilliantly amplifies its edge-of-your-seat atmosphere of creeping dread. I'll be sleeping with the lights on."

More details to follow: stay tuned....