Occult Goodness

After waiting a while for it to be re-released, I recently finished 'Banquet for the Damned' by Adam Nevill, one of my favourite scribes. While it's not, in my humble opinion, the strongest of Mr Nevill's novels (that would be 'The Ritual'), it's still easily one of the best books I've read in the last year and there aren't many novels I've read in my adult life that have unsettled me in such a way. However, I'm pretty crap at reviews, so I'll just throw some words out there like an ape lobbing its own excrement at a wall, and hope to do justice to the novel with my meagre scribblings. Two friends and failing rock musicians, Dante and Tom, arrive in the university town of St. Andrews after being invited by Dante's hero Professor Eliot Coldwell, who wrote 'Banquet for the Damned', a book that had quite an effect on young Dante. But not all is as it seems, and the town is rife with the disappearances of students and rumours of a nocturnal visitor plaguing them. Strange things are afoot. Whispers of witchcraft and the occult. The town seems infested with dread and darkness. Bad dreams and bad memories. I enjoyed the novel immensely. A story in the occult tradition of old Hammer films and the work of MR James. Great stuff. Also, my copy of 'The Croning' by Laird Barron was delivered. I've read his short story collection 'The Imago Sequence' so I can't wait to get stuck into this. Until next time. *waves goodbye*

Vermilion Fields

Tonight I started work on a new story titled 'Vermilion Fields'. I'm not sure if it'll be a novel or a novella yet - I'll see how it goes. It's about a man who returns to his home village and discovers that the walls between worlds and realities are very thin in some places. And sometimes...things come through to visit us. Very bad things.

NEW PROJECTS

I've been going through a bit of a rut lately with my writing. I finished a short story - which I quite enjoyed writing - and then returned to the novel I was working on and had written almost sixty thousand words. I managed to squeeze out a few thousand more words on it but then I went into a bit of a slump with the story. I became bored with the plot, became apathetic towards the characters and generally lost interest in them. This has continued for days. In short, I didn't care about them. I still don't. And if I don't care about them, then the reader won't care about them. Well, that was my logic, not sure if it holds true or not, but that's how I see it. So I've decided, as there's no deadline for the novel, to take a long, long break and move on to other projects for a while. There's a few short story ideas and an idea for a 'cosmic horror' novella flitting around my head, so I'm going to get started on them while the clock ticks down to the release of my novel THE LAST PLAGUE. In other news, I've had a look at the front cover for THE LAST PLAGUE, and it looks brilliant. Thanks to Adam and Zoe at Crowded Quarantine Publications. Can't wait until it's released. *waves goodbye*

Just a quick update. I've decided to start blogging again, mainly to spread the word about my debut novel 'The Last Plague', coming soon from Crowded Quarantine Publications, and my writing in general. I'm not very good at pimping myself out as a writer...in fact I'm pretty awful at self-promotion, to be fair. Even so, please feel free to stop by the blog and check out my meandering, dribble-soaked musings about writing, horror and other random stuff. Well, that's all for now. *waves goodbye*

That Damned Toy Doll

When I was a young lad, back in the days of VHS, Rick Astley and shoulder pads, my family owned a toy doll. It was the doll of a blonde-haired boy - very similar to me and almost as tall, strangely, back then - with a blue outfit, glazed eyes and a cruel, cherubic face. I can't remember to whom it actually belonged; maybe it was a family heirloom passed down the years. Anyway, my memories of the doll consist of just noticing it lying around the house, discarded and dormant, but waiting. Waiting for me to come along. The doll was, to me, something from a fever-nightmare, gangly and loose-limbed. As a five-year-old boy, I was terrified of the doll, as I was of all kinds of imaginary monsters and bad things. But the doll was real. My clearest, most terrifying memory of it, is coming face-to-face with it while my older brother was carrying me, and he decided to pick it up and hold it inches away from, its moronic eyes staring into mine as it seemed to slyly grin at me. I remember screaming and crying, experiencing the kind of fear that only little children can feel, and I managed to flee from the staring doll and my laughing brother. That was the last I ever saw of the doll. I can empathise with people's fear of creepy dolls. I understand why dolls are such a successful horror trope. They seem to bring out a particular sort of dread. Well, in me, they do. I don't know what happened to the doll that plagued part of my youth. Maybe it was donated to a charity shop or thrown away. I sometimes wonder where it ended up. Maybe it's out there, skittering along empty back roads and alleyways, or stalking across sodden fields in search of another little boy to become friends with. Maybe it's outside my house now, peering in at me, staring and gibbering, as I write this post. I'll make sure to lock the doors tonight.

THE NOVEL

Well, I've spent the last few hours fiddling with the blog, and I'm getting somewhere. I think. I'm slowly getting used to the concept of blogging. So this is just a quick post, nothing grand. I've only had a few short stories published in anthologies, and now I've submitted a novel to a publisher. I'm waiting for that important email - accepted or rejected. I'm nervous, anxious and apprehensive, but patient. I have to be patient, otherwise I'll go mental (maybe, if I wasn't already). So I'm using the time to work on another novel, something vaguely Lovecraftian and bleak. Best to stay busy. Got plenty of ideas to work with. Also, in the coming weeks and months, I'm hoping to interview other horror/dark fiction writers on this blog. I'll do some reviews of novels and films. Just to spice things up. That's all for now, my fellow fiends. Farewell...for now.

TESTING! TESTING!

Hello, gentle visitors! Welcome to my humble blog, where dreams come to die and Eighties' pop stars are made into furniture! This is just a test...a sample, if you will.

So, there you go. I'm a virgin blogger, so be gentle with me. I'm very fragile and I've a touch of man flu. As this blog develops and I hopefully become a published novelist (I hate the term 'novelist', so bloody pretentious) in time, I'll be commenting on various subjects, mostly horror-related of course, so feel free to pop in for a bowl of long-pig stew and a suspiciously salty meat pie.


Don't be scared.