FEAR: A Modern Anthology Of Horror And Terror

So, one of my short stories has been published. Which is nice!

I speculatively submitted a short story for a great up and coming publisher Crooked Cat, they were looking to publish a short story anthology, bringing together many authors, to coincide with Halloween, with all proceeds going to charity. As you can guess from the title, the theme is horror/terror :)

(image from Crooked Cat)

So, to get the business side of things out of the way, if you want to buy it and support two great charities (Barnardo’s and Medicines sans Frontieres), then it’s available in both E-book and print versions from Crooked Cat’s own bookstore, or Amazon (UK links provided but also available around the world)

Volume 1 (print)

Volume 1 (ebook)

Volume 2 (print)

Volume 2 (ebook)

I also believe it will also be out on iTunes too.

---For info – I am in Vol2. End of Business Element of this blog post!

I was pleasantly enthused to see they considered my story good enough. It’s called Daisy and the Bear. The blurb for the book includes a reference to my story (see below). It’s about a girl and her teddy, her “loving toy”. I wont reveal any more, you’ll have to read it!

“Fear: A Modern Anthology of Horror and Terror brings together, for the first time, tales of murder, monsters and madness, by sixty of the world's best indie horror authors.
Discover what lurks in the water at the end of the garden, learn of the unforgiving loyalty of a loving toy and meet a writer, just itching to finish his latest horror story.
Every author in the Anthology has generously contributed their work for free. All royalties from sales will go directly to the international charities, Barnardo's and Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Fear, with forewords by international bestselling authors, Peter James and Sherri Browning Erwin, is released in two volumes in Paperback and on Kindle.”

This is the first time I’ve put my work out there, beyond a small circle of people.

It tickles me to see this in print:

I like the photo, as it eliminates all the haggard worry lines and gives me a radiant youthful look. Almost cherubic. In real life I look like a brow beaten Cypriot mountain shepherd from the 19th Century lamenting the loss of his most powerful goat, so I’m grateful the camera is sometimes forgiving.

In summary:

Am I pleased? Of course.

Am I inspired to write more? Yes.

Am I nervous of negative scrutiny? Of course.

Am I entirely satisfied with the story? Not entirely! I’m still a baby when it comes to writing, I read it back to myself and doubt myself. Perhaps it’s slightly stilted, I don’t know. I wrote it a few years ago, I tidied it up and submitted. I like the story, I love the premise, but I think I have a problem with building suspense, the arc doesn’t feel organic enough. The only way to know is for lots of people to read it, I hope some will be kind enough to give me constructive feedback. But I wont be too hard on myself. I will strive to improve, get better and if I ever finish something novel length, then we will see. There is always room for improvement, there is always room to better oneself no matter how adept one is at their chosen craft. Perfection is elusive, perhaps out of reach, but we must always try our best.

Until then, I see this as a small but precious step in an adventure. I hope Crooked Cat make lots of money for the charities and I wish Crooked Cat and all my fellow authors, both new and established much happiness and success.

The Lost City of Dunwich

“A land that is lonelier than ruin
    A sea that is stranger than death
Far fields that a rose never blew in,
    Wan waste where the winds lack breath;
Waste endless and boundless and flowerless
    But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free
Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless
            To strive with the sea.”
So begins Victorian wild bunch poet Algernon Charles Swinburne’s epic (as in it goes on a bit) “By the North Sea”, which is written about Dunwich supposedly.
We’ve been back from Suffolk over a week now, but there was one more blog to write. This is with regard to the lost city of Dunwich. Once one of the biggest towns in England and a foremost port, it fell into decline (and the sea) after the peak of its success in the middle ages. It all happened when the first of a succession of storms in 1286 blocked the natural harbour of Dunwich with shingle, meaning the prosperous town was cut off from it’s trade routes across the North Sea. It never recovered.
Now it’s a pretty little village perched on the natural cliff face, population of just less than 200.
There is a great little museum there with some discovered artefacts from the deep, but the main draw for me was going for a walk along with cliff face, along the boundary wall of the Greyfriars priory. How long this old ruin will hold out against coastal erosion, who knows, but it is breathtaking and quite unsettling. There is one grave from a long gone church (All Saints) still holding on against the relentless coastal erosion.
Here is a pic of All Saints (taken from this website) through the ages. Considering this was one of the many churches of Dunwich considerably inland in the middle ages, many other churches having been lost hundreds of years before, it makes you think how transient the coastline is.

And the grave? Well, residing in it is a chap called Jacob Forster. Only a few yards beyond this gravestone is the sheer cliff face, the shingle beach and the North sea. Soon he’ll be gone too.

The inscription says - IN MEMORY OF JACOB FORSTER WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE MARCH 12TH 1796 AGED 58 YEARS.
The priory now looks like this. This is with my back to the priory wall and the cliff behind that.

And the view from the cliffs is as follows, back in Roman times, the coast was a good half mile out from this point. You can just about see a couple of people fishing by the shoreline.

We wandered down through the village where the cliff flattens down to the beach.

When I was skimming stones down on the beach it didn’t really register that I was probably treading on what once was consecrated land, the cemetary of All Saints Church or that my stones were flinging out on old property and houses lost in the muddy waters of the sea. In recent times, when another slice of cliff crumbles down to the beach, human remains still tumble into the open air.
On getting back to our holiday rental, of course I considered this and my unknowing disrespect for the dead. My fears were amplified in the big scary house and shit myself. The Fog by John Carpenter came into mind and for some reason Michael Jackson’s thriller video.
I then did some research on scary legends of the area and I have to say they are awesome. *Adopts old sea dog accent* On some nights you can hear the bells of the old sunken churches over the waves at night.
Or the most chilling, the Dark Heart of Dunwich. Scary Link.
This one stuck with me a bit. It also made me think about HP Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” which is actually set in America, but he probably named the town after reading both Swinburne’s poem and a novella “The Terror (1917)” by the Horror writer (much loved by Stephen King) Arthur Machen, which was also set in the English Dunwich. I’ve stuck it on my wishlist :)
As for modern day Dunwich, it is a gorgeous little English village, nothing horrific to report, apart from the price of an ice cream in the beach side cafe (£1.75!) ffs!

The Horrible Texas Travelling Shit Show

Met up with the Bossman last Friday, mainly to see Queen Adreena play live and to celebrate his birthday with a few JD's.
QA don't usually play the UK, so this was a grand opportunity to catch up with a band I'd always wanted to see.
It was a "themed" evening called The Texas Chainsaw Travelling Horror Picture Show, with the Damned headlining. The theme was a sort of Scooby Doo cheesy horror type of plot with more cartoon violence. Eg - the actors pretending to cut their willies off onstage for instance or dry humping a "severed head" which was in fact the head of a tailors dummy badly painted with red emulsion from B&Q to give it a gory effect.
I didn't really understand the story to be honest, it was clumsily put together, ham fisted and awkward, so much so that some members of the audience became restless, and booed or chucked beer.
The audience themselves were a mix of glam/goth and hardcore punk survivors. oh and there was me and Bossman.
Here is an example of the supposed "horror show". I think the woman in the cage was pretending to be a man eating eagle woman freak, and the two guys, well they just seemed to perve all over her and wave their arms around a lot.

There was one sort of good bit, when the eagle woman did some proper gymnastic stuff and eventually attached a man by his skin to her ring and then lifted him on hooks so he dangled. I didn't get a photo of that though.

Although Bossman wasn't too impressed.

Anyway, Queen Adreena were fantastic. Shame the crowd was restless and the cock of of a compere irritated everyone by continouously introducing them when they were obviously still sound checking. I guess he was trying his best..... to not get a shoeing.
Q.A's set was powerful and emotive. Monstrous guitar, bass and drums with Katie-Jane's wail bringing a shiver down the spine. It was more than music, it was art and poetry, and pain.


And they were glugging champagne on stage.... there was no engagement with the crowd. it was a relentless assault. And I was gutted they didn't play their cover of Jolene...

I find that I also spill Moet and Chandon down my dress when I'm trying to sing. It's so irritating when that happens. I feel like throttling myself with the mike cable too!

I saw Katie-Jane Garside's previous band, Daisy Chainsaw...back in erm... 1992, and I'm sure this is the same dress!! I got a better look when she stood on a chair.

The label says "wash at 40 degrees" if you zoom right in.

During the last song, Katie-J rugby tackled the guitarist Crispin, leaving what looked like a big cut on her head. It was a breathtaking set, full of energy, they threw themselves into it. There were a few Q.A fans there, but maybe not enough feedback from the crowd to justify an encore, shame :-(
After some more antagonisation from the horror show comperes (and someone doing disgusting farts near us), the Damned came on. This was our cue to leave.
Here is an obligatory shot of captain sensible...

As we were leaving, we could see showers of beer and plastic cups flying their way towards the band. The lead singer gave it..."lets have a fucking good time! don't chuck beer! ok?" or something. Bless. We left.