Short Story Saturday: Dark Heart

Recently I've been plugging the German horror short story anthology DIABOLOS MMXIV, which includes a translation of my story The Doll's House. If you don't read German, you might be pleased to hear that the story is available in English as part of the collection of sinister stories that's called Dark Heart.

Talking of Dark Heart, I recently came across a couple of delightful reviews of my first short story collection, one of which cleverly summarised each of the stories, whilst also giving them all an individual rating out of 10. Here's what they had to say about The Doll's House:

"The Doll's House (10/10) When a struggling new mother finds that home life is running her ragged, she decides to root out the problem."

And here's what the other reviewer had to say about the whole collection:

"Seeing the name Jonathan Green on a cover of a novel, for me, sells it instantly, knowing this is a collection of short horror stories again, sells it. The best thing for me about collections like this is it generally cuts down the genre to just the bare essentials instead of giving authors way too much space to fill up and distract from the bones of the business and this is where Green is always at his best anyway. Direct, creepy as hell, and worth every second of your time."

If you've not yet picked up a copy of Dark Heart for yourself, you can do so here, in both ebook and processed-tree-carcass formats.

Short Story Saturday: World's Collider

There's a great new review of the shared world anthology World's Collider, edited by Richard Salter, here. The bit that's particularly pertinent to me is this:

"I was thoroughly involved in this ghastly scenario from the first story on. “Wraith Lights”, by Jonathan Green, sets the stage effectively from the first page, as he plunges us directly into terror before the first rather innocuous effects are even fully realized."

You can pick up a copy of World's Collider here. My story, Wraith Lights, also appears in my short story collection Dark Heart, which you can pick up here.

Short Story Saturday: Merlin's Mother

I was watching Tales from the Royal Bedchamber recently on BBC4 when suddenly, part way through the documentary, the expert being quizzed about what royal beds were like in the Middle Ages whipped out the following picture.

Presenter Lucy Worsley was delighted and amazed asking of the nun, "Who's that?" The expert went on to explain that it was a scene showing the conception of Merlin the wizard. To read a different take on the same incident, check out my story Incubus in Dark Heart: A Collection of Short Horror Fiction.

The Big Kindle Giveaway - Was It Worth It?

Well, I say big, there was only actually one book on offer, and only for five days, but here's how things panned out?

UK - 152 downloads
USA - 93 downloads
Germany - 7 downloads
Canada - 3 downloads
Japan - 2 downloads
India - 1 download

So that's a total of 258 free downloads over five days. I might have hoped for more, so, the question has to be, was it worth it? Well it generated some interest in my work at the time, and probably brought some new readers into the fold, but best of all the book received these 5 star reviews (which never hurts):

"Although creepy, there were no real shockers in there for me until the very last story (The Doll's House) which was also my favourite of the collection. A struggling mother gets dangerously close to losing it after the appearance of an unwanted childhood toy brings old nightmares back to life. It's one of those stories which you know isn't going to end happily ever after, so the only question is when and how bad is it going to be. Other stories which stood out for me were Necropolis - A criminals plans for an evening of getting up to no good backfire, and as panic and paranoia set in, the busy streets of London offer little hope. Also Fear to Tread - Always enjoy this type of story. A move to a nice quiet village turns out to be anything but as sinister signs are revealed and nothing is quite what it seems."

"The Dolls House (10/10) When a struggling new mother finds that home life is running her ragged, she decides to root out the problem."

"Seeing the name Jonathan Green on a cover of a novel, for me, sells it instantly, knowing this is a collection of short horror stories again, sells it. The best thing for me about collections like this is it generally cuts down the genre to just the bare essentials instead of giving authors way too much space to fill up and distract from the bones of the business and this is where Green is always at his best anyway. Direct, creepy as hell and worth every second of your time."

Congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of their son!

And now, like every other business in the country (or so it seems), in honour of the event, Dark Heart - my collection of short horror fiction - will be free to download to your Kindle for five days, starting from today.

Enjoy! (And don't let me hear you say the Royal Family never did anything for you.)

Dark Heart - A Collection of Short Horror Fiction

Just before Christmas, I released my first collection of short horror fiction Dark Heart in both eBook format and the still more traditional processed tree carcass paperback version.

So, in classic Blue Peter-style, here's one I made earlier. But if you'd rather own Dark Heart in eBook form, then follow this link.

A Little Christmas Shopping

Not sure what to get that special someone in your life, or wondering what to ask others to get you? Well if you (or they) are fans of speculative fiction, might I suggest the following?

Black Library Novels and Short Stories

Dark Heart - A Collection of Short Horror Fiction

And for a truly unique gift, why not pledge your support to the YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks Kickstarter?

Short Story Saturday: Dark Heart - now available in paperback

That's right, you can now buy my first collection of short horror fiction Dark Heart in paperback!

So, in classic Blue Peter-style, here's one I made earlier...

(If you'd rather own Dark Heart in eBook form, follow this link.)

Short Story Saturday: Ain't No Sanity Clause

It's Saturday again (already!) which means it's time for some more short story news...

I shall be appearing in new publisher Fringeworks' first collection of Christmas stories, Ain't No Sanity Clause, edited by Theresa Derwin. The brief for story pitches was to combine psychopaths and other lunatics with a Christmas theme. So that's what I did.

The book's out on 10 December and my story is called - appropriately enough - Claws.

Here's the cover by artist Harry Raymond.

Of course I've tackled psychos and Christmas together before in 2009's Pax Britannia novella Christmas Past, which is still available to download for free here.

And in other short story news, in case you didn't know about it already, by first horror-themed short story collection is available now in eBook form*.

Dark Heart collects six of my horror-themed short stories under one cover**, including The Doll's House that first appeared in Solaris Books' House of Fear anthology, and is something of an eBook experiment in self-publishing.

Simply click on the appropriate cover below to download your copy today.

* The print edition is on its way too.

** All be it a cover formed from zeros and ones inside the eReader of your choice.

DARK HEART - a.k.a. My eBook eXperiment, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Self-Publishing

Today* sees publication of my first short story collection - published by me!

Dark Heart collects six of my horror-themed short stories under one cover, including The Doll's House that first appeared in Solaris Books' House of Fear anthology, and is something of an eBook experiment. A way for me to test the waters or, to put it more bluntly, my popularity as a writer.

 

I'll be upfront with you here - all of the stories in the collection have been previously published somewhere else. And that was important to me when it came to bringing out a collection of my short fiction.

One of the reasons I haven't self-published before is because of the stigma surrounding the subject - the implication that self-published titles are shoddy, put out there without the critical eye of a professional editor checking them first. Well all of the stories in Dark Heart were originally commissioned and edited by professionals (and this collection has been copy-edited and proof-read again by the very wonderful Nimue Brown), it's just that I retained the rights to those stories so that today I can put out my own collection.

The full Table of Contents reads as follows:

• Wraith Lights (originally published in World's Collider)
• Fear to Tread (originally published in Phobophobia)
• Incubus (originally published in M is for Monster)
• The Pact (originally published in Demons: A Clash of Steel Anthology)
• Necropolis (originally published in Stories of the Smoke)
• The Doll's House (originally published in House of Fear)

Long time readers of my work will recognise the name Dark Heart as the title of a Warhammer short story I wrote back in the day. That particular story was supposed to be called something else but in the end its title was changed by Black Library editorial to Dark Heart . The title never sat particularly well with me and I feel that it suits this collection much better.

So why self-publish? Well, to put it simply, why not? The Black Library's own Bill King is a great advocate when it comes to self-publishing (for professional authors), and crime writer Michael Jecks has recently brought out his own self-published collection of short stories.

Now is a great time for us writers to be embracing new technologies and seizing new opportunities. When so many are decrying eBooks as the death of publishing, and with advances dwindling, I feel that those who don't embrace these new opportunities are the ones who will be left behind and suffer as a consequence (and not necessarily publishing itself).

Self-publishing is also a great way to get content out there, to what might only be a niche readership, and still make it worth your while. After all, writing is my job, and I don't feel I should be embarrassed in admitting that I'm also trying to top up the coffers here. As long as the Internet exists, Dark Heart will remain 'in print' as it were. And talking of print, if you're an old school bibliophile, the processed tree carcass edition will be available soon via CreateSpace.

I have plans for more self-published collections and possibly even a novella, just to test the waters once again. In the mean time, if you pick up (or download) a copy of Dark Heart and enjoy the stories in the collection, your reviews on Amazon would be much appreciated. ;-)

Until next time...

* Or rather, technically, last night at about 11.30pm.

Warhammer Wednesday: Dark Heart

Here's one from the archives (a.k.a. my old blog Unnatural History) but strangely pertinent, given my current project...

Having created the Kislevite mercenary Torben Badenov and his hard-bitten band of mercenaries for the story ‘The Hounds of Winter’ I decided that there could be some mileage in the characters, and so set about pitching further ideas to the editors of ‘Inferno!’ magazine.

The next to be taken up was ‘Dark Heart’ (although I originally proposed it as ‘Red Sky in the East’, which no-one really got), my first attempt at some vampire fiction. In the story, Torben and his friends have to prevent the resurrection of an evil vampire lord and meet a new companion along the way.

For this story I employed a conceit which I thought worked rather well. Throughout the tale (which is otherwise told in the third person past tense) I inserted brief passages of first person present tense text. These helped form one of the twists of the tale.

I also tied ‘Dark Heart’ to the first Badenov story in terms of how the two tales began. ‘The Hounds of Winter’ begins: ‘Running. He had to keep running.’ And ‘Dark Heart’ starts off with the line: ‘The wolves are running again.’

‘Dark Heart’ later formed one of the chapters of my first novel ‘The Dead and the Damned’ (as did ‘The Hounds of Winter’) but was re-written in the process, which saw the first person present tense passages changed into the third person past tense like everything else, and reduced their effectiveness considerably.

I always planned for one of the characters from the story, the Countess Isolde, to return in a later Badenov novel which, as yet, is still unwritten (and unlikely to be). However, she has lived again since (as it were) in my most recent Fighting Fantasy gamebook ‘Howl of the Werewolf’, just as the reading public has yet to hear the last of another popular creation of mine, Nathan Creed. (But more on that one another time...)

‘Dark Heart’ first saw print in Issue #5 of ‘Inferno!’ and was then re-printed in the anthology ‘Realm of Chaos’ (2000), as well as appearing in a slightly altered form in ‘The Dead and the Damned’ (2002).

Little did I know it at the time, but after the publication of ‘Dark Heart’ I was to enter my own long dark teatime of the soul, with nothing else of mine appearing in ‘Inferno!’ for over two years. In that time I remained in print with various magazine articles and the like being published, but, for the time being at least, there was a prolonged hiatus in my fiction writing. Fortunately, this uncreative time in my life came to an end when another Badenov story saw print in ‘Inferno!’ Issue #20. (But more about that another time too...)