#Horror Anthology Launch - 666

Back in the dead of last winter, Fantastic Books Publishing put out a call for professional contributions to augment its competition for Horror Fantabbles of exactly 666 words. I thought it an amusing distraction from the work-in-progress. After all, how hard could it be?

Argh!! Writing short is an artform. Writing to an absolute length is a recreation for masochists. Some ideas simply won’t fit, no matter how many thrashing tentacles are hacked off with a rusting blade. As readers of my speculative fiction know, I’m not into gorefests, I much prefer atmospheric creeping dread. By definition, creeping does not flash by at the speed of a lightning bolt.

Yet I refused to be defeated. No wordage constraint would leave me a quivering wreck, though it very nearly did. Not until the fourth idea had been dragged screaming across the keyboard did that frisson truly erupt. The story was submitted, and accepted.

Number Thirteen will take its initial breath on Monday evening – All Hallows Eve, naturally – alongside professional contributions from four other authors as well as the competition winners, the highly commended, and those who made the shortlist. Congratulations to them all.

The paperback and ebook is now live on Amazon, the ebook on the Fantastic Books Store. The launch event - with prizes - will be on Facebook Monday 31 October. Howling begins at 19:06 GMT [6 hours and 66 minutes after noon... evidently]. Costumes and/or cushions to hide behind may be considered optional.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1044691382276161/ 
Update: check the FBook link to see a reading, by the light of flickering candles (naturally), of one of the stories.

Be there AND be scared! And if you haven't been scared enough, check out the book trailer to my 99p Horror short Scent of the Boggel-Mann.

Halloween #BookTrailer for #Horror Short – Live!

I’ve been considering producing a book trailer for some time – see Post 1 & Post 2 – but it became evident very quickly that the necessary skills were simply beyond me. I did, though, learn a lot in the process, which I’ll be blogging about in a couple of weeks. Suffice to say that I turned to an expert, YourBookTrailer.

Timed for Halloween, the trailer is for Horror short, Scent of the Böggel-Mann. It can be viewed in widescreen/fullscreen on Youtube HERE. Enjoy!

 

Got a taste for Horror? Return tomorrow for a new title announcement – 666.

Are You Still #Writing?

Chapters of  'Pilgrims of the Pool' in precis

That question has been asked of me three times this week. Considering that in the Torc of Moonlight trilogy I maintain the Celtic belief in the ‘power of three’, and one of my main characters adamantly refuses to believe in coincidence, perhaps it is time to show that the long-overdue final novel, Pilgrims of the Pool, is still breathing.

So here you have it, the proof>>>

This is my ‘chapters completed’ list, each precis fixed with Blu-tack to my office door for an at-a-glance structural flow. That’s why each is topped with a colour, signifying one of the three storyline viewpoints [you can’t say I didn’t mention the trilogy’s thing about threes]. 

I also use it to ensure Time has some sort of wavy leading edge: X has to happen before Y mentions it, sort of thing. The two lonesome chapters at the bottom of column three show where I have written ahead of this.

When the first novel was released, a Goodreads' subscriber soundly lambasted me, and other writers, for not waiting until all novels in a series were finished before releasing them. At the time I was astounded, but now I smile wryly and don’t bite. It merely portrays the gulf that still remains between readers and how a book is written.

Sure, there are writers who can produce a full-length novel in 4-6 weeks, others who can fall out of bed at 5am and have 3,000 words on-screen before waking their children for a cooked breakfast and taking them to school on their way to a stressful day-job. I’m not one of them. I need equilibrium and head-space. When I tried to plough on without those two ingredients I unwittingly took a left turn and subsequently found myself in a universe running at a tangent to that envisaged at the outset of writing the novel.

Does it matter? I didn’t think it did at the point of realisation – there are a lot of good things in this at-a-tangent universe – but as the novel has progressed it has become clear that some of those good things are mere charades, and the gulf between the two universes is widening. Tone has changed; character motivation has fallen down a hole or splintered into contradictions; the mirrored surface of each storyline has dulled so is unable to produce reflections. 

Readers might not even notice in the run of the three books, but I want it not only to be right, but to be the very best I can produce. My reputation depends on it. And there is no worse critic for a writer than Self.

All Things CON-ventional

At the end of September I attended my first FantasyCon. For any writer or reader of the speculative genres it proved a long weekend of intellectual overload. Catch my post-Con thoughts HERE. 

Still on a high, I went on to investigate Bridlington ComicCon – a first for both the town and me. Yes, there were comics, boxes and boxes of them on tables and tables, all wrapped in protective plastic and labelled as if rare artefacts, which I’m sure some were. Enough to whet the appetite of any collector. 

It was fascinating to watch illustrators and graphic artists bring to life 3-D worlds on 2-D paper with nothing more than a couple of Sharpies and a bucketful of talent. Cosplayers mingled as if in a surreal marketplace, complete with a patrol of Stormtroopers ex Star Wars telling us all to move along; nothing to see here... when there was plenty to see everywhere I turned.

In for a penny... This weekend it was off to Hull HorrorFest. 

It wasn’t as busy by the time I arrived, though I didn’t venture upstairs to the movies being run with Q&As from their writer/directors. Doubtless ravenous hordes of decaying figures were lurking in the comforting darkness. If you wanted to feast on the delights of cupcakes topped with gore-oozing eyeballs, or slice up a celebration cake in the shape of a greenish severed forearm, this was definitely the place.

There were zombies, though not as many as I’d expected. I have to admit, though, there is something unsettling about being urged to contribute to a hospital charity by a shuffling once-human medic in a tattered white coat, even when you know it’s all in the make-up and gait.

The biggest surprise was chatting with a member of MadAboutHorror.co.uk in front of its wall of head-masks and discovering that not only is it based close to where I live, but that the majority of its sales aren’t Halloween entertainment but to “collectors”. Er... collecting for what, exactly, neither of us wanted to discuss in depth, but a seed of a story started to fester before I’d even left the booth.

At the turning of the year Hull becomes City of Culture 2017, and I came across a roaming monk carrying a hemp noose (as you do) and proffering leaflets for new venture Dark History Museum of Hull, part museum and part immersive attraction by the sound of it, due to open mid-year. I wish them well.

There were green-screen selfies on offer, make-up artists offering their skills from quaint Dracula-for-children to the air-brushed full-body outfits of The Walking Dead, and people were signing up to be considered as extras in the forthcoming LARP film Xisle.

The event, both events, were an interesting and cheap way to grab a few hours entertainment; but writers and books? A scattering of authors did attend, yet they certainly weren’t being mobbed. I guess it depends on the genre and the Con.

That’s it for me until FantastiCon where I have an author table and am on a panel discussing writing. It won’t be so much graphics and make-up as NERF wars and VR gaming. And actors. And cosplayers. And lots of authors. See you in Hull’s Guildhall late November.