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.

Things of the Week and March 2018: Breakwater and Deadwater

The two big events this week both involve the editorial amazingness that is Ellen Datlow.

First off, my novelette Breakwater was published on Tor.com and released as an ebook. Set in the near future, during a war between the humans and a newly-discovered intelligent sea-dwelling species, the Bathyphylax, it takes place aboard HMS Dunwich, a pumphouse - a Permanent Underwater Modular Platform, a kind of undersea space station. Dunwich was originally a scientific research station called Breakwater, but has been commandeered and expanded by the military. The pumphouse's designer, Cally McDonald, is on board when the Bathyphylax attack...

That should give you something of a flavour of it, anyway. To find out the rest, you'll just have to read it. :)


Meanwhile, Ellen's new anthology of sea-themed horror fiction, The Devil and the Deep, will be out later this month from SkyHorse, and has just received its first advance review over at Signal Horizon.

"The edition starts with "Deadwater" by Simon Bestwick, which is remarkably well done and really hooks you in. "

I'll take that. :)

Water-themed stuff seems to be working rather well for me just now.

The Devil and the Deep also features stories by Michael Marshall Smith, Alyssa Wong, Christopher Golden, Ray Cluley, Stephen Graham Jones, Seanan McGuire, Siobhan Carroll, Brian Hodge, and many more.

Breakwater: It's Here!

At last! After a couple of delays, my novelette Breakwater is online at Tor.com.

You can read it online here.

Or if you prefer, you can get the ebook here (US) or here (UK.) Only $1.19 or £0.86, depending on your preferred currency...

And with this gorgeous cover art by Goñi Montes.

Things of the Year So Far 21st January 2018: The Moraine on Books In The Freezer Podcast, The Judgement Call and Breakwater, Planet of the Knob Heads

Hello again. So this year I want to be a bit more structured and revive the blog a bit. And what better way to do it than a swift recap of what's been happening?

First of all, there was some lovely news to round off 2017, when the Books In The Freezer Podcast shared their roundup of the year's reading. The two hosts picked their favourite novels and short stories of the year, and one of the picks was 'The Moraine' (the host's other favourite horror story read that year was Clive Barker's 'The Yattering and Jack', which is pretty damned good company to be in!) They start talking about 'The Moraine' at 31.50. The podcast's here, and of course you can listen to the story being read here at Pseudopod.

My first stories of 2018 see print in the next month or so: my story 'The Judgement Call', originally to have been a chapbook from Spectral Press, will be published by Fox Spirit alongside a new tale by Penelope Jones. Neil Williams' original awesome artwork for the story will grace the Fox Spirit volume.

And on February 7th - my Mum's birthday and the day after mine! - my novelette Breakwater will be published by Tor.com. More details as the time approacheth.

(TOR-DOT-COM! As I may have screamed ecstatically said before. TOR-FREAKING-DOT-COM!)

Ahem.

In other news, I encountered this little article on Brain Pickings (excellent site, and well worth a browse) which raised a few smiles as well as a reminder that nothing's new under the sun.

When e.e. cummings was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 1950, the approbration wasn't universal. Some of the responses were downright unpleasant: step forward Dr Earl M. Byrd and Stanton A. Coblentz. The bilious grumblings of would have been at home on any internet message board. Well, maybe not, as they could both spell and weren't writing everything in allcaps. Not only was the art form of poetry being debased and destroyed, they cried, by those damned 'new', 'progressive' authors, but a cabal of their supporters were working to ensure the prizes went only to them. No doubt that'll sound pretty familiar, especially to American readers. (Not that there aren't times when 'dude, seriously?' is a legitimate action to someone winning an award. But we digress.)

However, the Brain Pickings article's author is wrong about one thing: he says Stanton A. Coblentz is 'entirely forgotten.' Well, not entirely. He's achieved a sort of second-hand immortality by dint of his authorship of a novel called... Planet Of The Knob Heads. He seems to have been a bit of an Anglophile in his poetic tastes, but obviously wasn't well-up on colloquial UK English. Perhaps he was visualising a world colonised by followers of Vox Day and John C. Wright. Who knows?


Hope the New Year's treating you all well. See you soon!

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.

Vlog

Hello! I'm back.And I hath committed vlog. See below

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code

Nice Things of the Week Saturday 17th June Part Two: First Anniversary, Death By Water and Tor.com...

And on a more personal note...


Last month, the ever-reignng Cate and I celebrated our first year of marriage. My anniversary present to her was a weekend away in Barmouth, in a lovely 17th century cottage. The other night my parents came over and Dad got talking about his childhood in Barmouth. We showed him a picture of the place where we stayed... and it only turned out to be my great-grandparents' old home.


Also, a couple of sales.

My short story 'The Tarn' will be published in The Beauty of Death 2: Death By Water, due out from Independent Legions Publishing this autumn. The TOC is still being finalised, but thus far includes Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Adam Nevill, Lucy Snyder and many more.

Last and MOST DEFINITELY NOT least... (can we have a drum roll and maybe a fanfare please, maestro...)

My novelette Breakwater has been acquired by the mighty Ellen Datlow for Tor.com and will be published in 2018!

TOR. DOT. COM.

There are really no words to describe how delighted I am about this.

Many thanks (again!) to Ellen, and to all at Tor.