Still alive...

...just working on longer-term schtuff :)

And melting. Seriously summer, we're over. I warned you last year, but no...

Twenty-Eleven and all that

Happy New Year!

As with every January 1st I spent tonight a little drunk and thinking I was on the verge of some great realization that would change my life forever. As with every January 1st it didn't happen and I'm left with a short list of resolutions that will do well to make it to Valentines Day and all of the bad habits I had 24 hours ago. At least they are lesser in number than they were 365 days ago.

2010 did have some powerful personal moments - both myself and Mrs-me kicked the cigarettes and exist purely on robotic vaping sticks. On top of turning away from the evil vices Traci also got to grips with her newly-discovered gluten allergy and reinvented her diet, which is huge. Having tasted the gluten-free versions of pizza crust, pancakes and chocolate chip cookies I can honestly say I wouldn't have known the difference if someone hadn't told me - I'm happy to get on board and eat the same brands she has to. Thank God coffee is immune from the gluten thing. That might be pushing it.

Traci is probably my person of 2010. There's a few others up on the pedestal with her, though. My mum - the happiest person I know, whatever occurs, and finally finding some clear blue skies after years of turbulence. My sister - coming out of something horrible into something we all hope is very, very good. My brother - extending the family name for at least one more generation and shooting above his designated target! :) I have yet to meet my first ever (EVER!) niece (or nephew) and I cannot, cannot wait to look into the eyes of Zara Lily and be an uncle. My three uncles were/are all very important people in my life and I hope I can live up to that, even from a distance. I can list times where they all did something huge for me - first ever football match, help with an enormous school project, numerous pints in North Wales pubs - and I want to be on Zara's list when she looks back.

So here's to you all - may this year exceed your last year - whether you want to move, stay, rise or step to the side - and if I can help in any way, just ask.

The Man Who Killed a Whale

The wonderful Fix It Broken have put up an interview they conducted with me last week
Thanks to Greg for the cool questions and general good times!

The short story Red Ice (formerly Last of the Kjett) now has a home on Smashwords after the awful experience earlier this year with a certain crooked publisher. Back to it's original title and available for less than a dollar! (#onlyjustmind)

I think all outstanding matters are now resolved, onwards into new waters!

A big and very sincere thank-you to anyone who has read any of my stories this year - that should be me done on here until 2011 :)

December is for Lovers

Hey all - Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you do and wherever you are I hope you are with loved ones this festive season
Been a while but a few updates to post!
First - check out this new literary blog, follow it and enjoy the daily updates from creator Abe -

aobibliosphere

He was kind enough to review my very short story Terminal Sunday and followed this up with a very fun interview last week - thanks Abe!


Next up - another new site you should bookmark and pay attention to - an online literary magazine named Fix It Broken
Issue 1 just went up yesterday and showcases 10 diverse and wonderful pieces of fiction. Every issue FIB is doing something very cool and different - picking one story to be turned into a t-shirt which is then sold in a limited quantity from the site. I was delighted to find out my story 'The Comfort of Dead Whales' was the winner for issue 1 and is now a wearable piece of fashionable fiction !
Thanks to all the cool cats at FIB for making me extremely giddy with that, and such a sweet idea, I look forward to future issues!



The newest edition of 52 Stitches has been released - flash horror stories, originally published online at a weekly rate throughout 2010 - and I have one in there. All proceeds go to the Jamie Eyberg fund - you may remember, writer Jamie and his wife were killed in a horrible freak accident earlier this year leaving behind 2 young children. Jamie actually has a piece in this book, one of the last things he wrote.

Finally, a link to one of the best collections I've read in a while - Terminal Earth! - stories from the end of the world. A lot of my favourite new writers are present in this one and it really is a great read from start to finish - recommended very highly!

The Concrete Dead and Other Myths

The October release of legendary quarterly magazine Bards & Sages is now available and includes my story about strange goings on in post-WW2 East Berlin called The Concrete Dead. Check out the Queen inspired cover too! (#ref for oldies)

No more Penny Dreadful

Angry and sad about this - I'm not going to go into great detail or make personal attacks, but I will be removing all traces of the 'Last of the Kjett' chapbook from my websites and bio. All I will say is that I suffered the same fate that, apparently, many writers' who get involved with Penny Dreadful/Ghostwriter Publications have suffered and continue to suffer. I can fight my own battles just fine but when paying members of the public get shafted supporting me, that's it.
If you were one of the unfortunate, please contact me immediately.

Non-genre Goodness

I've had a couple of literary shorts (literary in the broadest sense of the world, you understand!) accepted into the debut issues of 2 new and potentially exciting American magazines.

The first, titled Fragility, will be appearing in .insidious. mag in the near future.

The second, snappily titled The Comfort of Dead Whales, will make an appearance in Fix It Broken magazine

I love writing straight fiction and hope to do more in the future along with the best genre pieces I can think up and express.

I almost swerved off my chair...

Don't know how this hasn't come to my attention before now, but stumbled upon this review of the Night Terrors collection at the mighty Fangoria Magazine earlier today and it's a cracker! They may not have enjoyed the whole book but my contribution was singled out, in a good way.

But what fresh nightmare is this? Not all is lost for NIGHT TERRORS. Harper Hull’s shocker “Amy Lou’s Ice Cream Parlor” is an absolute sucker punch to the gut. The tenderness of Hull’s text is a trap that catches the reader in a swift six pages. By beginning with the all-too-familiar, painting a portrait of a pleasant ice-cream shop, Hull drags us down into the spectral depths of his protagonist’s heartbreaking depravity—and never brings us back. Discovering this story at the tail end of the collection is just about enough to justify the entire purchase price.

Quickie freebie flash piece of happy, jolly 'apoco-romo' fiction up at Smashwords - Terminal Sunday

E-Harper & the arrival of Lark, Investigator of the Unusual

I've been wanting to release an e-book for a while now, mainly just to see how it flies and what the experience is like. This week I decided that my paranormal investigator story The Watcher on the Walls would be the ideal test. The genre, the length, the fact it's the first in a series - all seemed like good reasons to let it loose and see what happened.

Yesterday, after a night of formatting 13K words which wasn't anywhere near as awful as I'd imagined, it went live on Smashwords and will hit the big name marketplaces next week.

It costs a measly $1.75 (about a quid in Britain) and is available right here!

You can download it for Kindle, Nook, Stanza, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, Palm - pretty much every piece of hardware you can imagine.
If you don't have an e-reader and hate reading plain docs as much as I do, I highly recommend this free application from Amazon - Kindle for PC

I'm happy with the way it looks and now just need to promote the story itself - here's the short blurb from the website

England, 1975. Neville Lark, self-proclaimed 'investigator of the unusual,' is drawn into a brutal murder case in the city of Chester. All signs point to an horrific incident from the past when an entire Roman garrison was slaughtered by supernatural forces, but who is resurrecting the ancient evil and why?

If you enjoy paranormal mysteries, historical supernatural tales or monster horror I think you'd enjoy this. Witches, satanists, Roman ghosts, mysterious church soldiers, golems and a foppish, self-destructive protagonist with a house full of skeletons are all at play in here!

The fantastic photo of Chester's famous Eastgate Clock which forms the basis of the cover was taken by Traci, my much better half, last year. I need to mention that so she doesn't sue me for my pennies.

The Boys From the Spires

Nice little interview in my hometown newspaper today! Click for full image :)

Just what I need, a new obsession

Got back this evening from a brilliant week in the North Carolina mountains - it was just the two of us, way way up in the clouds in an enormous house that had 3 levels, 5 bedrooms and bathrooms, and a 'great room' that looked like the entrance to a church complete with stained glass windows from England and a dizzying ceiling height. We got to play Lord and Lady of the Manor and it was incredible. On our first morning there the clouds came in so heavy and thick that all around the house was nothing but white - a very strange feeling, and I couldn't help but think of 'The Mist' - especially when, as darkness fell, the biggest, strangest, most colourful moths and other assorted insects I have ever seen came swooping in to land on the windows, drawn by the outside lights. Entwine your thumbs, flap your hands and you get an idea of their size.

Anyway, this place had a big library/study, packed with books and films, and I saw the novel 'Cold Mountain' in there which is a book I've always wanted to read but never got around to. I demolished it over the next two days and being able to read it in the location where a lot of the events were set was quite the experience; it made everything sharper, clearer and more intense. Fantastic book, I loved it, and now I'm obsessed with reading stories in their actual settings, probably not something I'll get to indulge too often but I aim to try. I also now know that a peeper is a type of frog and a rabbit's butt is called a scut.

Superfantasticmeganewsupdate!!!!!!!

Lots of stuff to catch up on, sugarsnap, so let's dive right in!


NEWLY AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE:

Sick Things (Comet Press) at Amazon US and Amazon UK

Through the Eyes of the Undead (LOTLD) at Amazon US and Amazon UK

Frontlines (Northern Frights) at Amazon US and Amazon UK

Last of the Kjett (Penny Dreadful Co.) no later than Monday direct from here - I'll blog more extensively about this baby next week


NEW SALES AND ACCEPTANCES

Sci-fi short 'A Symphony of Drones' will be appearing in a German-based sf magazine!

Horror tale 'Daddy Long-Legs' is lined up for the Day Terrors collection from The Harrow Press. Good, challenging anthology this - the brief was to write a scary story that takes place in daylight under bright sunlight. No hiding away in dark attics or forests, stick it right out there for all to see and make it work. The editors (Kfir and Dru) are fantastic to work with and I'm very happy to have made the cut. This is another southern-based horror heavy on the psychological elements and with (hopefully) a quite terrifying 'monster' for people to enjoy.


AUTHOR PAGES!

Now up at both Limey Amazon and Yank Amazon - the bio/photo there now are pretty much holders until I get around to sprucing it up properly.


If you're American, enjoy your holiday weekend - everyone else, be safe, be well.

Positive words for Amy-Lou

Very nice review of Night Terrors here that made me happy for obvious reasons!

Almost...

Cover for SICK THINGS revealed!

Frontlines - now live!

War of the Worlds:Frontlines is now available from the awesome Northern Frights Publishing.

'No one would have believed that in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched...

These words marked the beginning of H.G. Well's classic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds...and marked the end of man's child-like belief that we are alone in the universe. Published in 1898, The War of the Worlds is one of the greatest works of science fiction ever written, and it cemented H.G. Wells' legacy as a founding father of science fiction.

A 1938 radio play by Orson Welles caused mass panic when it hit the airwaves, and frankly we haven't been able to trust aliens ever since.

Here now, are bold new visions of Alien and Human conflicts on many different fronts.'

Contents:

1. After Welles by Michael Scott Bricker

2. Weird Fruits by Camille Alexa

3. Killers by Vincent L. Scarsella

4. The Dodo Dragon by Sheila Crosby

5. The Virus of Memory by Gerard Daniel Houarner

6. What Makes You Tick by David Steffen

7. The Broken Hand Mirror of Venus by Mark Onspaugh

8. Common Time by Bruce Golden

9. Steve's Really Cool Movie Blog by RJ Sevin

10. Moth Tamuth Robotica by Kristen Lee Knapp

11. Empire of the Moon by Harper Hull

12. The Spacer and the Cabbages by Auston Habershaw

13. John's List by Brent Knowles

14. Tequila Sunset by Michele Garber

15. Another End of the World by Michael Penkas

16. A Sweetheart Deal by JW Schnarr and John Sunseri

17. The Rainmaker by Mike Barretta

18. News on the March by Edward Morris

19. My Beautiful Boy by Jodi Lee

20. To Love a Monster by Victorya

21. The Candle Room by James S. Dorr

22. Usher by Davin Ireland

Comet Press - TOC/Author page now live

The lovely Comet Press have released the TOC for Sick Things here

There's also an author page with bios and photos here

What a line-up, I'm quite in awe of being a part of this one!

The release date is June 15th

'Transcendence' by Lance Red

Gorgeous artwork for the cover of While The Morning Stars Sing due for release in July

The Bullets That Point

* Re-organised the website for ease of use and to make it less of a fustercluck

* Two of my favourite unplaced shorts getting worked up - one a rewrite for a very cool editor, the other a snipping of 600 words to be submissible to a collection I really like the sound of

* The Surprise anthology is now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions!

* Coming to the end of the first draft of a new story set in Hanging Rock

* Congratulations to last night's Nebula winners, the ladies really owned the awards this year!