Hello! An unexpected burst of creativity. I'd finished the sixth, and longest, Engineer story (see previous #AmWriting post) and was taking a breather to build up the energy and ideas for the next one. Suddenly, I had an idea for a novella: almost the entire story came to me in a few minutes. I wrote … Continue reading #AmWriting…differently
Hello; it's been a while (again). The book reviewing has taken a back seat, largely because Horrified closed down at the end of last year, partly because I seem to have lost enthusiasm for reviewing (for now, at least), and partly because all my creative energies have been spent writing my own fiction, which is … Continue reading I still #AmWriting
No, not that Mark Ronson. Not Uptown Funk Mark Ronson. The Ghoul is an odd one. A bit like The Pet, it’s a book clearly marketed by the publishers as a pulp horror but which turns out upon reading to be a much more thoughtful, intelligently-written piece of fiction than the “pulp” label generally implies. … Continue reading Horror Rewind #8 – ‘The Ghoul’ by Mark Ronson (1980)
Books last. Okay, some books last. Some books are hailed upon publication and instantly attain 'classic' status; the reputation of others grows only slowly; still others appear and just as quickly vanish. Reputations, too. In the 'Horror Rewind' series I've looked at a selection of horror fiction from the 70s and 80s to examine how … Continue reading Horror rewind #7 – ‘Skeleton Crew’ magazine, July 1990
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine in 2021. Cavan Scott & Corin M. Howell’s addictive new horror/crime comic Shadow Service – featuring a detective with magical powers in the murky underworld of London – invites obvious comparisons with Ben Aaronovitch’s enjoyable Rivers of London series, and is, therefore, a welcome addition to a tradition … Continue reading Review: “Shadow Service” by Cavan Scott and Corin M. Howell
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine in 2021. The Folk Horror Chain was developed by writer and film-maker Adam Scovell in his essential guide to the sub-genre, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (2017). The chain consists of four ‘links’ which can be used (amongst other things) to help define a cultural artefact … Continue reading Review: “Harvest” by Julian Payne and Zoe Elkins
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine in 2022. Of the world’s ’empty spaces’, the polar regions have a long and distinguished place in horror fiction. From The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (Edgar Allen Poe, 1838) to At The Mountains of Madness (HP Lovecraft, 1936), and from the TV drama The Terror (AMC, David … Continue reading Review: “All The White Spaces” by Ally Wilkes
This review first appeared in Horrified in 2021 The British Library’s Tales of the Weird series continues its commendable mission to unearth long-obscured writers of the strange from the past hundred and fifty years or so. This latest offering introduced me to a writer whose name I vaguely knew but whose work I had never … Continue reading Review: “I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist”
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine As a frequent visitor to the county – my wife is Cornish – I came to this new addition to the British Library’s excellent Tales of the Weird series with great excitement. However, unlike the thousands of holidaymakers who flock to the Duchy every year, I left it … Continue reading Review: “Cornish Horrors: Tales From the Land’s End”
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine in 2021. The word ‘parochial’ is almost always used pejoratively, but it needn’t be. It’s commonly used to dismiss something as being only of local concern, as if there’s a mythical ‘centre’ which is more relevant or important than the ‘local’. After all, we all live ‘local’ lives. … Continue reading Review: “Cheslyn Myre” by Dan Weatherer
Into the Gyre 