"The modern master of the gamebook format" (Rob Sanders)... "Can do dark very well" (Jonathan Oliver)... "Green gets mileage out of his monsters" (SFX Magazine)... "It takes a firm editorial hand and a keen understanding of the tone of each piece to make a collection this diverse work, and Green makes it look effortless" (Starburst Magazine)... "A charming blend of camp creatures, humour, and genuine horror" (Set the Tape)
Long time readers of this blog will know that I have self-published an eNovella called The Serpent's Egg - A Dark Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos. Well the audiobook, narrated by Mark Rice-Oxley, is now available from Audible. But better than that, I have some promo codes for the audiobook to giveaway. That's over two hours of listening pleasure for absolutely no money whatsoever!
With Halloween season upon us, you might want to download another audiobook of mine - The Doll's House, narrated by Lesley Dessalles. I have some free promo codes for this one as well.
If you would like a promo code for either audiobook, please email me at info@jonathangreenauthor.com, but please bear in mind that The Serpent's Eggin particular is most definitely 18-rated!
I have been wanting to share this particular piece of news with you since April! And thereby hangs a tale...
When the world went into lockdown I had an idea; I would use ACX to produce audiobooks of some of my stories, which people would then download by the score and listen to while they were off work and trapped at home, providing myself with another income stream. The trouble is, every other writer on the planet had the same idea and, unbeknownst to me, ACX reduced their workforce quite dramatically.Meanwhile, I put The Serpent's Egg out to tender, listened to audition samples, and finally chose Mark Rice-Oxley to be the voice actor who would record the Lovecraftian novella for me. This he promptly did, and a fantastic job he did of it too. However, the approval process, which I was expecting to take a month at most, ended up taking much longer than expected...
After three months, ACX rejected the audiobook, claiming that there were all sorts of things wrong with it - which there weren't - and so Mark re-submitted it to me and I re-submitted it to ACX for approval.
Fast forward another three months and ACX finally approved The Serpent's Egg audiobook for sale this morning. It only took six months(!), and in that time Lesley Dessalles' recording of The Doll's House was approved straightaway (after only another three months), but I am delighted that you can now download it and listen to it yourself.
To find out more, click on the audiobook cover below.
Today is Charles Dickens' 207th birthday, so it seems like an appropriate time to remind you that I have written two stories, riffing off one of the author's most famous creations - A Christmas Carol.
“I come this night to ask for your help, Ebenezer,” the ghost said.
A year on from the events of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge finds himself visited once again by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who brings with him a new proposition. Just as Marley helped Scrooge to avoid the cruel fate that the last of the Three Spirits foretold, Marley wants Scrooge to help him reduce his time in Purgatory.
And so begins an epic adventure that will see the former friends face off against all manner of phantasms, freaks and fiends, with only one thing at stake… Everything!
"An entertaining, well-written sequel to 'A Christmas Carol' with plenty of fun twists."
Fantasy Book Review
“The layers of the dead lie
deep here,” the ghost said.
Ebenezer Scrooge and his ghost-hunting partner Jacob Marley (already a ghost himself) visit the cathedral city of Cloisterham in order to investigate the disappearance of a young man... A certain Mr Edwin Drood.
The second book in the new series by award-winning author Jonathan Green.
“I come this night to ask for your help, Ebenezer,” the ghost said.
A year on from the events of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge finds himself visited once again by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who brings with him a new proposition. Just as Marley helped Scrooge to avoid the cruel fate that the last of the Three Spirits foretold, Marley wants Scrooge to help him reduce his time in Purgatory.
And so begins an epic adventure that will see the former friends face off against all manner of phantasms, freaks and fiends, with only one thing at stake… Everything!
"An entertaining, well-written sequel to 'A Christmas Carol' with plenty of fun twists."
Fantasy Book Review
On the twelfth day of Christmas I visited the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn. Despite having lived in West London for over 20 years, this was my first visit and I couldn't have timed it better, since the house was decorated for Christmas.
Unless this is the first time you have visited my blog, you may have noticed that I've been a little bit obsessed with Dickens' A Christmas Carol of late. Unsurprisingly, considering the season, the museum was hosting an exhibition about the most famous Christmas story in the world (after the Nativity), which included costumes from the recent film The Man Who Invented Christmas, and delved into the origins of the story.
It may not be Christmas any longer, but the first Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) tale, The Haunted Man, is still available as an eBook from Amazon, and I fully intend to write further stories over the coming year, as long as there's enough support for the books.
On a side note, is it just me or is The Carol of the Bells absolutely everywhere now around Christmas time? Ten years ago I don't think I'd even heard of it, but now it's everywhere, in adverts, on TV shows and film soundtracks... there's no getting away from it. Not that I'm complaining, I think it's great - especially this version.
“I come this night to ask for your help, Ebenezer,” the ghost said.
A year on from the events of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge finds himself visited once again by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who brings with him a new proposition. Just as Marley helped Scrooge to avoid the cruel fate that the last of the Three Spirits foretold, Marley wants Scrooge to help him reduce his time in Purgatory.
And so begins an epic adventure that will see the former friends face off against all manner of phantasms, freaks and fiends, with only one thing at stake… Everything!
"Can do dark very well." ~ award-winning editor Jonathan Oliver
"Jonathan Green's books have a wonderful way of making you smile; like the Cheshire Cat that got the cream." ~ Kit Cox, creator of Major Jack Union and author of How To Bag A Jabberwock
I have a list of artists and illustrators I hope to work with one day and Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) provided me with the perfect opportunity to work with Garen Ewing, creator of The Rainbow Orchid. I thought his ligne claire style would really suit the characters and the setting, and I was delighted when he agreed to work on the project, happening to have a free slot in his very busy schedule.
And I was just as delighted when he sent through first his pencil sketches, then the inks, and finally the fully coloured cover image, which you can enjoy in all its glory here. (Simply click on the images below to enlarge them.)
I only discovered today that Charles Dickens' perennial favourite A Christmas Carol was published on this day* in 1843! And it just so happens that my latest novella, which was inspired by the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Three Spirits, is almost ready to be unleashed upon the world.
It is an idea that I've wanted to work on for a long time and I was starting to make more concrete plans back in 2013. However, other work commitments meant that it kept getting pushed back, or when I thought of working on it again there simply wasn't enough time to get it done in time for Christmas on the year in questions. The BBC's historical mystery drama Dickensian, which ran over the Christmas period in 2015, also put the kibosh on the project, for a while at least, as I didn't want people thinking I'd nicked the idea from there**.
But this autumn I made a commitment to myself to have the first Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) story ready in time for Christmas, and it very nearly is. To whet your appetite, here's the introductory blurb:
A year on from the events of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge finds himself visited once again by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who brings with him a new proposition. Just as Marley helped Scrooge to avoid the cruel fate that the last of the Three Spirits foretold, Marley wants Scrooge to help him reduce his time in Purgatory. And so begins an epic adventure that will see the former friends face off against all manner of phantasms, freaks and fiends, with only one thing at stake…
Everything!
It's not the first time I've supplanted characters from other classic Dickens' novels and put them into A Christmas Carol. I did it back in 2001, when I turned the novella into a play that was performed at the school where I was working at the time. I wonder if that's when the seed for Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) was first planted.
“When oblivion comes, it is forever, as endless as the slumber of those beings that lie buried beneath the roots of the world, dreaming in darkness.”
A writer’s research into the legend of the Lambton Worm takes a horrifying twist when he uncovers the true origin of the story: a legend that stirs, knowing the time for its rebirth is near…
A chilling tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, written by award-winning author Jonathan Green.
"Can do dark very well" ~ award-winning editor Jonathan Oliver
"Green gets mileage out of his monsters" ~ SFX Magazine
A warning to my younger readers: this one's not for you and definitely comes 18-rated!
What's that you've got there, Cthulhu? Come on, boy, what is it?
A hardback copy of Dreaming in Darkness, you say? Why, that's a rare find and no mistake.
And what's that you've found? A story by me in there?
Why yes, I did write a novella called The Serpent's Egg that saw print back in 2013 in Dreaming in Darkness, but I hadn't actually seen a physical copy of the book until last weekend, when Adrian Chamberlin kindly gave me one at the Shakespeare Vs Cthulhubook launch. I believe there are only about 50 in existence.
So there you go...
One Amazon reviewer on The Serpent's Egg:
"With particularly strong resemblances to the likes of 'The Wicker Man' (1973) or indeed 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' (1936), Green's story gradually builds upon a worrying layer of mistrust with the community in which his narrator is staying. And it's from this small nugget of an idea that the tale snowballs into a tension rich occult story; unveiling a veritable avalanche of horror and Lovecraftian weirdness in the last few chapters to end the tale on a tremendous action-packed finale."
If you back Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland on Kickstarter at the £10 WHITE RABBIT level pledge or above, you will receive an eBook of the Pax Britannia novella White Rabbit* as part of your reward, courtesy of those thoroughly decent chaps at Abaddon Books - the home of Pax Britannia.
In White Rabbit, dandy, detective and adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver journeys into a world of madness and murder, meeting some sinisterly familiar characters along the way.
In other news, we've already passed the £4,000 mark on the Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland Kickstarter and are more than 50% funded.
All her life, all Courtney has ever wanted is a quiet, settled life. But life never works out as planned, and Courtney's about to find herself in the middle of a nightmare from which she can never escape, when the dead wake...
I've been sitting on this one for a while now (nine months to be precise) but I'm thrilled to be able to reveal today that I am writing a series of zombie stories for Ultra Pro, the leading global supplier of investment protection products.
These new novellas are linked to Ultra Pro's Dead Wake line. The first tale involves a character called Courtney, who works at the aptly-named Flesh Vault, and who also happens to appear on deck protectors and a play mat, illustrated by award-winning concept artist Corlen Kruger. (Readers of a sensitive disposition might not want to check out the following link, but if you're a fan of savage, no-holds-barred, explicit, 18-rated, zombie, brain-chomping mayhem, and the rest, then click away.)
Hunger for Revengeis Chapter One in a planned trilogy of eBook novellas and you can read an opening taster (as it were) here.
Special thanks must go to m'colleague Iain Lowson, without whom I wouldn't be posting this post, and if you like what you've read so far, you can purchase the eBook at the bargain price of $0.99 or 77p here.
I would say enjoy, but instead I'll just say, its best to be prepared to be scared. ;-)
Yes, that's right, you did read that correctly. Dreaming in Darkness, the Cthulhu-inspired anthology that features my own novella The Serpent's Egg, had made the Ginger Nuts of Horror website Best of 2013.
"Dreaming in Darkness, brings together four excellent authors and invites them to have a play Lovecraft's universe. What sets this unholy anthology apart for the vast majority of similarly themed books is way in which the authors have tackled the source material. These are not just mere rehashes, each of the authors has given their stories a unique twist and voice."
On the subject of Dreaming in Darkness and The Serpent's Egg, both (I believe) are eligible for the This is Horror Awards 2013, in the following categories:
Dreaming in Darkness - Anthology of the Year
The Serpent's Egg - Short Fiction of the Year You may only nominate two items per category, but of course you'll only be nominating one in each category, won't you? (If you do nominate more than two This Is Horror will only recognise your first two nominations.)
You may nominate in as many categories as you like but all nominations must be emailed to awards@thisishorror.co.uk with the subject line ‘This Is Horror Award Nominations 2013′ by 12:01am GMT on 14 November 2013.
Dreaming In Darkness recently received a very detailed, and very pleasing, five star review on Amazon.com. Here are just a few choice comments:
The tales of H.P. Lovecraft have inspired generations of writers. Indeed, Lovecraft has become a genre unto himself, as have his mythos. Dreaming in Darkness represents the finest efforts of four great writers to inherit and increase Lovecraft's legacy by taking it in new directions. From New York crime scenes to the English countryside to the very outer regions of eldritch terror that spawned the Great Old Ones, Dreaming in Darkness is a tour de force of some of the best themes and tropes of the Lovecraftian genre with four novellas written in unique and uncompromising style... Jonathan Green's "The Serpent's Egg" takes us into what we expect is familiar territory, with its treatment of the legend of the Lambton Worm. However, rather than revisit Stoker's Lair of the White Worm or the film of the same name, Green takes the reader for a spin through the tried and tested satanic cult genre. However, rather than dish up the same old bill-of-faire, Green injects enough originality into his story to make it well worth our while.
Our protagonist is a writer seeking to put a new twist on the legend of the Lambton Worm. While staying at the manor house of the Earl of Lambton, the would-be writer encounters an orgiastic cult seeming to approximate some horrid ritual from De Vermis Mysteriis (another title in Lovecraft's imaginary library of the occult) and his nights become plagued with bizarre visions.
The novella treats us to many of the thrills of occult fiction. There are dusty tomes in a stately library, nightly creeping about the English countryside, a romantic interest, and all manner of occult goings on. Green maintains an orderly narrative that lulls the reader into a state of complacency before dashing cold water in your face. In a horror novella, that effect is absolutely essential, and Green manages the changing rhythms of his plotline with marvellous aplomb.
Green also achieves a remarkable consistency throughout his work. From the drawing room to the grotto of the cult of Shudde M'ell (a nod here to Brian Lumley), we are treated to all manner and shade of suspense and excitement. Dennis Wheatley would have been proud... It is clear that these writers have brilliant careers ahead of them, and I hope to read more of their dark and sinister offerings as time goes by.
The Ultimate Reich, the great enemy of Magna Britannia, the unwavering stronghold whose power extends from the depths of Africa to the outlands of Mexico, and even across the barrier of time itself. For more than half a century, the Führer’s empire has plagued the world, but thanks to the efforts of a brave handful, the Reich’s most terrible secret may be on the verge of exposure.
Follow an Italian monk, a century-old Russian vampire, a couple of British analytical engineers, a pair of Welsh mercenary soldiers and one clever, resourceful Indian girl through a string of stories set across the world of Pax Britannia, showing corners of the globe never seen before and changing the balance of power forever...
Written by David Thomas Moore, this exclusive ebook novella will be available soon from Abaddon Books.
