Happy Easter

Dude made us an Easter card and it's lovely.  The message is beautiful, the front cover is a vividly coloured egg, the whole thing is great.  On the inside cover, he's drawn a little conversation between him, me and Alison and this is a picture of it.

Note how Alison looks good and says nice things.  Then notice that I'm bald and just say "YEAH! Dude!"  I love that kid!

Urban Occult released today...

Today marks the release, in print and as an ebook, of "Urban Occult", a new anthology from Anachron Press, edited by Colin F Barnes.

Featuring a great line-up of writers, this is an excellent read (I'm reading it at the moment, I'm three stories from the finish and each one so far has been very good) and the book itself looks fantastic.

cover design by Sarah Anne Langton

The book is available from a variety of places, some of which can be found here:

From the Anachron Website

From Amazon (e-books)

Amazon UK Kindle

Amazon US Kindle 

From Amazon (print)

Amazon UK Print

CreateSpace Print

Kobo

Lulu

My contribution is called "The Witch House", a little story I'm really quite pleased with.  It came, initially, from an image of three boys cowering in a doorway as something towers over them, which doesn't actually appear in the final draft.

The location for the piece is all real (I wish I could say the same for the Witch house itself) and when Nick's Mum & Dad used to live in New Street, we’d often climb over into the fire station yard to play (before the library was built, that area was wasteland and we played there too).  There were old buildings near the bottom of New Street that backed onto the yard and we investigated once or twice, but never went in anywhere.

Happy birthday to my sister

Tracy would have been 42 years old today.

Yet if you should forget me for a while 

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave 

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 

Better by far you should forget and smile 

Than that you should remember and be sad. 

--- Christina Rossetti 

Writing round-up

2013 is turning out to be quite a busy year for me - always nice to hear - so I thought I'd put together a little round-up to keep everything in the same place.

First to appear is Urban Occult from Anachron Press, edited by Colin F Barnes.  This features my story "The Witch House", which I'm really pleased with.  It's set in Gaffney in 1985 and is based on real locations in Rothwell that Nick & I used to play in when we were kids in the 80s.  Further details here.

Cover art by Sarah Anne Langton

My story "Mr Stix" will appear in For The Night Is Dark, edited by Ross Anthony Warren from Crystal Lake Publishing.  I was asked for a story about the fear of the dark and so I combined parental anxieties with the most unlikely monster - Mr Stix - I could think of but it seems to work well (with cover art by Ben Baldwin).

More details here

When Darkness Calls, edited by Emma Audsley from Screaming Spires Press, is a charity anthology (with proceeds going to Pictor School in Cheshire and Autism Awareness).  It features a revised version of my story "Empty Souls, Drowning" and I'm proud to be included in the line-up.

More details here

Cover art by Daniele Serra

The Demonologia Biblica, edited by Dean M Drinkel, will be published by Western Legends Publishing.  It features my story "Falsche See, On The North German Plain (N is for Nickar)", which is about a water demon and set in Germany (giving rise to some fun town names).

More details here

Cover art by James Powell

I'm really looking forward to ill at ease 2, coming soon from PenMan Press - I've read all the stories and it's an excellent collection.  Following on from our grand experiment, Steve Bacon, Neil Williams and I return, along with Sheri White, Val Walmsley, Shaun Hamilton and Robert Mammone.  It includes my story "The Bureau Of Lost Children", which was inspired by an incident where we briefly lost sight of Dude but takes that level of parental fear to whole new levels.

This will be available in print and as an ebook and I'll post more details nearer the time.

Cover art, once again, is by the superbly talented Neil Willams

Anatomy of Death (in five sleazy pieces) is edited by me and Peter Mark May, from Hersham Horror Books.  A loving tribute to the films and paperbacks of the 70s, this features stories by Stephen Volk, Johnny Mains, John Llewellyn Probert, Stephen Bacon and me - my tale is called "The Glamour Girl Murders" and features a foot fetishist, a beast and London suffering through the tail end of the 1976 heatwave.

More details nearer the time.

The cover art (this isn't the final version) is by the excellent Neil Willams