A-Z Cities of Death - available now!

This one kind of slipped under the radar, but another of my short stories has just been published for the first time, after a long gestation period.

A-Z Cities of Death, edited by Dean M Drinkel, is available now via Amazon and CreatSpace. Twenty-Six stories about twenty-six cities by twenty-six writers.

My contribution is U is for Ur - City of the Moon, a story I wrote back in January 2012.

The entire table of contents is as follows:

A Is For Adelaide by Steven Gepp
B Is For Baltimore by Ron Koppelberger
C Is For Calais by Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet
D Is For Darktowne by Ran Cartwright
E Is For Erum by Robert Tangiers
F Is For Fortune by Paul Woodward
G Is For Gotham by John X. Grey
H Is For Harbin by G.R. Yeates
I Is For Intrepid by City George Wilhite
J Is For Johannesburg by Suzanne van Rooyen
K Is For Kathmandu by Dave Fragments
L Is For Lobo by Sandra Norval
M Is For Miami by Rachel Chipp
N Is For Necropolis by Richard Salter
O Is For Ottawa by Carrie Orr
P Is For Paris by Dean M Drinkel
Q Is For Quito by Sean Monaghan
R Is For Ripon by Philip Meeks
S Is For Stoke-On-Trent by Jan Edwards
T Is For The Greatest City In America by S. Wayne Roberts
U Is For Ur by Jonathan Green
V Is For Venice by Edward McKeown
W Is For Waddington by Jason Brawn
X Is For Xanadu by Steven Gepp
Y Is For York by R.S. Pyne
Z Is For Zebulan by Justin Miles

You can pick up your copy of A-Z Cities of Death here.

Short Story Saturday: The Demonologia Biblica

I popped up on Tracie McBride's blog Exquisite Corpse yesterday, talking about my contribution to Dean M Drinkel's horror anthology The Demonologia Biblica.

You can read the guest post here, and order a copy of The Demonologia Biblica here.

Short Story Saturday: The Demonologia Biblica

According to legend, at his trial in 1438, it was claimed that Gilles Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais (the fifthteenth century serial killer) had sought out individuals who were purported to summon demons. The summoning words they used were put into a Grimoire fashioned from human skin and which was commonly known as the Demonologia Biblica. 

This book mysteriously vanished after de Rais’ execution but was often talked about in certain dark circles. Imagine the power one could wield with such a weapon!

Now editor Dean M Drinkel has compiled his own Demonologia Biblica, an A to Z of demonic fiends, featuring stories by twenty-six different authors. And one of them's me.

You can grab Demonologia Biblica for your Kindle now, from here. Enjoy...

 

Get thee behind me, Demon...

 

Short Story Tuesday: The Demonologia Biblica

Okay, I know, it should be Short Story Saturday, or Tie-in Tuesday, but I just had to share this bit of news with you all!

The Demonologia Biblica is a horror anthology (in case you hadn't already guessed) edited by Mr Dean M Drinkel. I've been in a couple of Dean's anthos before, and I'm in this one too, filed under 'J' for 'Jerobaal'.

Here's the front cover...

And here's the back cover, including the full list of authors appearing within...

More news as and when... :-)

Short Story Saturday: Fear to Tread... Happy Halloween!

Last January, Phobophobia was published, featuring my short story Fear to Tread. The story was inspired, in part, by a house in Bradford-on-Avon that my dad and I used to drive past after swimming club on a Friday.

I was in Bradford-on-Avon again on Tuesday and drove past the same house, but the broomstick and cauldron that used to stand outside the door were gone - and a 'For Sale' sign had gone up outside.

You can see the house here, and if you've got a spare £329,000 you could buy it too!

Short Story Saturday: Phobophobia

Dean M Drinkel's horror anthology Phobophobia - featuring my short story Fear to Tread - has been featured on the German website Zauberspiegel International.

Just can find out more by clicking this link.

Phobophobia at the Big Green Bookshop

So last night myself, Dean M Drinkel, Adrian Chamberlin, and Birthday Boy G R Yeates* gathered at the Big Green Bookshop** in Wood Green, North London, for the inaugural meeting of the Out Of This World Book Group. We weren't just there to add a bit of glitz and glamour to the proceedings; we were actually there to work, promoting Phobophobia.

Simon Key, the bookshop owner, kicked things off and then Dean gave the Book Group an insight into the nature of the anthology before introducing each of us in turn. We each then read from our stories in the anthology, and under a spotlight no less! There were few questions at the end and we concluded proceedings with a book signing.

The Out Of This World Book Group await THE horror reading/signing event of the week in excited anticipation!

 The Usual Suspects.

 Simon Key - owner of the Big Green Bookshop - kicks things off.

 Dean explains the origins of the anthology.

 Mr G R Yeates delighted the audience with his poetic prose (for which he is renowned).****

 Mr Adrian Chamberlin had everyone on the edge of their seats with his story of a certain Witchfinder General.

Four very proud and very relieved authors.

Thanks to everyone who came, and who hung around to chat afterwards, but thanks especially to Simon for hosting the event and my fellow authors for a very pleasant evening of literary conversation over a couple of beers afterwards.

Here's to the next one!


* 32? 32! He still has his whole life ahead of him.***


** It's a great bookshop - it had copies (plural) of Pax Britannia: Evolution Expects on the shelves!


*** It turned out that I'm the oldest of the bunch. Not that I'm fixating on this fact or anything...


*** Greg recently interviewed me about my experiences of writing Fear To Tread for Phobophobia over on his blog here.

Phobophobia signing tonight

Just a quick reminder that I shall be at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Lane this evening, signing copies of Dean M Drinkel's horror anthology Phobophobia. The event will take place from 7.00pm to 9.00pm, and you can find out more details about it by following this link.

An Evening of Horror

Just a quick heads up to let you know that I shall be part of a posse of six writers signing copies of Dean M Drinkel's horror anthology Phobophobia at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Lane next Thursday, 3 May 2012.

The signing/reading event will take place from 7.00pm to 9.00pm, and you can find out more details about it by following this link.

Phobophobia - Fear of Reviews

To be honest I couldn't find the technical term for an irrational fear of reviews, but all too often we writers do fear them. If a writer reads ten good reviews and one bad one, of something they've written, you can guess which is the one that will stick in their mind.

But thankfully I haven't read a bad review of Phobophobia yet (Dean M Drinkel's alphabetical anthology of anxieties, which features my story Fear to Tread, all about Wiccaphobia). So here are just a couple of choice phrases in praise of the book:

"This is a very well put together set of 27 stories, one for each letter of the alphabet and a bonus story, and each having to do with a particular phobia. It was great to read an anthology where every story was well thought out, and very good... I am looking forward to anything else that the editor of this collection, Dean M. Drinkel produces. Very highly recommended." (Amazon.com)

"I read most of this over the Festive period and the good thing is that there are no stocking fillers, all the stories are worthy... In short there is plenty here for everybody to enjoy." (Paul Woodward)

And here's what The Ginger Nuts of Horror had to say about my story: "This was another highlight of the candles anthology for me. Imagine the essence of Hammer's House of Horror distilled into a short story. Done that, then what you'll have is this story. Reading this story you won't be able to stop yourself from picturing a young Jenny Agutter being terrified out of her mind in a old English cottage."

Remember, you can buy Phobophobia here.

More Phobophobia news

The Dean M Drinkel-edited horror anthology Phobophobia is the subject of a new newsletter. Cenobite Barbie Wilde's story gets a plug, there's a report on the London launch of the book, and a link to a review which tackles every story in turn.

Here's what Jim McLeod has to say about my own story Wiccaphobia:

This was another highlight of the candles anthology for me. Imagine the essence of Hammer's House of Horror distilled into a short story. Done that, then what you'll have is this story. Reading this story you won't be able to stop yourself from picturing a young Jenny Agutter being terrified out of her mind in a old English cottage.

You can pick up your copy of the anthology here. It's time to learn your A to Dread…

Finding the shape of a story

I've now written - (pauses to count on both fingers and toes) - twenty-eight short stories (not including all the RPG colour text I've written over the years), but that didn't make writing the twenty-eighth any easier.

Now don't get me wrong; not every short story is the marathon this last one has been. I've been doing this long enough to have picked up a few tricks of the trade along the way and sometimes the process goes like a dream. However, I really struggled with this last piece and it was all to do with finding the shape of the story.

Let me fill you in on a little background. I pitched the idea for this story some months back, during the course of a Facebook conversation between myself, Sandra Norval and Dean M Drinkel (he of Phobophobia fame). The idea just came to me there and then and everyone seemed to agree it was a goer, but at this stage - and this is the important thing - it was only an idea.

As any writer worth his or her salt will tell you, that's the thing about ideas. They're just ideas; some good, some bad. When people ask me where I get my ideas from I'm sometimes tempted to reply with another question: "What, you don't have ideas?"

A writer will have half a dozen 'ideas' before breakfast. The trick is being able to separate the wheat from the chaff, to know which to run with, which to twist or add to a stronger idea, and which to dump altogether, like barrels of toxic waste off a cliff.*

The particular idea in question was for a story for the forthcoming Cities of Death, about the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. I thought (as did the others) that this idea could go the distance but as I sat down to write it I realised I needed to beat it into shape, to literally** find the shape of the story.

When I plot a novel I can spend days writing notes in one of my large notebooks, gradually teasing out the strands of story hidden within all the crazy ideas I want to include, before I even set fingers to keyboard to produce a synopsis for my editor to see. With this story I went in cold, and that was the problem.

I spend a lot of time thinking about short stories when I'm writing them. Even if I only manage a couple of hours during the day I'll find myself thinking about the story I'm currently writing when I'm in the shower, at lunch, at the supermarket, in bed just before I drop off to sleep, in the morning when I first wake up...

This particular story left me with all sorts of confounding questions. Do I write it in the past tense or the present tense? The first person or the third person? Do I present it as a series of 'found' documents? Do I write it in reverse chronological order, encountering different people throughout different historical periods?

By day three it still wasn't working for me. So I started it again. And again. And again.

In the end I beat the thing into submission, but it was a battle, I can tell you. This was how my work space looked as I came to the end of my revisions on version... oh, I forget... of the story:

It's not particularly long (it's less than 5,000 words) but it's taken far longer than it should to actually write the damn thing. But was all that time and all those re-starts worth it? We'll just have to wait and see - I'm yet to hear back from Dean.

Here's my work space now:

I'm researching, and have started writing, the next short story on the slate, a tale for Pandemonium Fiction's forthcoming Stories of the Smoke. Only now this story's starting to misbehave too - hence me taking the time out to write this blog post.

Let's hope it doesn't take as long as the last one. Wish me luck!

So until next time...

~~~

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

(Gene Fowler, American journalist, author and dramatist)

~~~

* Today's post was brought to you by the letter S for 'Similie'.

** Literally? Perhaps not 'literally' literally!

Phobophobia up for two awards

Dean M Drinkel's Phobophobia (which features my story Fear to Tread) has been nominated for two awards over at the Critters Workshop.

The awards in question are Best Anthology of 2011 and Best Cover Artwork for James Powell's striking image of a self-harming angel.

So why not pop along there and vote now?

You can pick up a copy of Phobophobia from my Amazon Associates store here.