Monday 28 September 2015

Onyx Horror...

Onyx Neon Shorts presents... Horror Collection 2015 is on its way with 13 scary stories, including my Sylvia's Pictures and should be available in both digital and paperback versions in mid-October.

The stories in the collection include:

  • Ellie Hill
    "When a late-night university excursion into the English countryside ends up at the cursed village of Ellie Hill; three students find out that disrespecting a place's painful past carries with it a terrible price."
     
  • 82 Rungs by Brit Jones
    "Two men working what appeared to be a routine sewage clearance job find themselves isolated from their employers, no escape from the underground bunker in which they work, and the environment of the bunker undergoing subtle, disturbing changes. Things become more complicated when monstrous and extremely hostile wildlife invade their workspace. Unprepared for this it becomes a battle for survival in the tunnels far beneath the city surface." 
     
  • What Little Remains by Franklin Murdock
    "Seamus hides a horrible secret in the back of his barn in Palmer, Kansas.  It is a pit where he casts the remains of those whose destiny he has chosen to change.  Little does he know that the dead have desires of their own and that Seamus isn't the only one with murder on his mind."
     
  • Insanity
    "Insanity follows Vanessa, a young girl in a mental institution and her doctor as they both try to get to the bottom of the of her seemingly harmless delusions."
     
  • Something Nasty in the Woodshed by Tracy Fahey
     "'Something Nasty in the Woodshed' offers a twist on the classic horror trope of a ghastly, life-changing space of encounter. The title is a wink to the famous line from Stella Gibbons' 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm where the wonderfully named Ada Doom hints mytersiously throughout at an unspecified 'something nasty' she saw in the woodshed which has damaged her beyond repair. This story takes this parodic idea and treats it seriously. 'Something Nasty In The Woodshed' gives a nod to popular home invasion narratives and torture narratives in contemporary cinema, but interweaves them with a Gothic sense of terror that owes more to the idea of the unheimlich, that uncanny moment when the familar becomes strangely unfamiliar...and even horrific."
     
  • Up In The Window by Elizabeth Myrrdin
    "A woman seeks to satisfy an irrational, nagging obsession. Unsettling occurrences during the late night trek heighten her sense of alarm, but stubbornness propels her to the destination. She learns the answer to the self-created mystery, and regret settles in. Knowledge, in this instance, is not power, but lasting dread."
     
  • Analogue by Jarl Nicholl
    A man pursued by grief after the death of his wife. After finding the stone likeness of a part of her face, he becomes convinced that an occult force has disassembled and scattered her physical form over the earth, and that it is his job to put the fragments together and bring her back to life.
     
  • Sylvia's Pictures by DJ Tyrer
    "Sylvia sits alone, drawing pictures of the Raggedy Man. Is it just a cry for attention now that her baby brother has arrived, or do the pictures hold a deeper, darker meaning? And, does her stepmother really want to learn the truth?"

  • The Guard by B.T. Joy
    "Since moving to Bristol and taking up a position as a night guard at the Metropolitan Museum, Harry has found himself becoming increasingly curious about one of the exhibits there. But what begins as idle interest soon escalates into a dangerous obsession as the guard discovers that the “Metro mummies,” the three-thousand year old remains of a pair of Philistine devotees, have more secrets to tell than he first imagined. Now Harry must unravel the mysteries of the sounds and strange blue lights that inhabit the gallery and what connection they have to the weird, pre-Semitic god he sees only in his nightmares." 
     
  • Sacrificial Version
    "Like a rectangular tumor, a door sprouts from the floor, accessible to a single sojourner. Beneath it, concrete steps descend to a subterranean nightclub filled with bizarre celebrants. The bartender's lips are sewn shut; the music is discordant. Even the drinks are peculiar. Upon exiting that club, the sojourner will pass into a new set of circumstances, as he has many times previously."

  • The Man Who Left No Footprints by Matt Teeter
     "An elderly woman receives an unexpected visitor one cold winter morning."
     
  • The Lake House by Joseph Rubas
    "After losing his wife to cancer, novelist Jim Conner retreats to a cabin in the mountains of Vermont, where strange things begin to happen."

  • Cold Harbour by Ro McNulty
    "a social worker working with a blind woman, who begins to suspect there is someone else living in the woman's house with her. "

Friday 25 September 2015

On its way...



























Chilling Horror Stories contains my story Justified. Copies are going out now and you can order a copy of this lovely book - and its siblings - via Amazon.

Fancy some free fiction?

Pop over to Horror Addicts' Free Fiction Friday and you can read my story Mould and Blood (from my Black & Red booklet/ebook, described by Neal Wilgus as "Rather grim, but well done.")


The world is indeed comic, but the joke is upon mankind - HP Lovecraft

Fighting the good fight...

Super Hero Monster Hunter: The Good Fight from Emby Press sees supepowered heroes take on the worst monstrosities there are and include my story Up In The North Slope, in which something unpleasant has defrosted in northern Alaska...

The book is available to order in paperback and on the Kindle from Amazon.

Coming soon...


Thursday 24 September 2015

On the horizon...

Corpus Deluxe: Undead Tales of Terror (Indie Authors Press) is the latest anthology to be added to my list of  forthcoming publication appearances and will feature my story Night Walker (which previously appeared in Undead of Winter).

There are several others on that list, including the fourth volume of Short Sharp Shocks (this time it's Hammer Horror!) from April Moon Books, State of Horror: Tennessee from Charon Coin Press, and Gothic Tales of Terror from Verto Publishing. One I really want to mention is Altered Europa (Martinus Publishing) - I'm particularly proud of the story (The Archers) that is included in this anthology of altered European history... Also from Martinus Publishing, Temporal Element II should be out very shortly with a Hallowe'en tale of time travel...

Thursday 10 September 2015

Ill-Considered Expeditions and Poetic Endeavours


Fans of Victorian heroes rampaging across the Dark Continent will doubtless enjoy my romp, The White Goddess, in Ill-Considered Expeditions (April Moon Books) - available in paperback from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk - in which an aerial frigate full of seasoned adventures sail off across Africa in search of a lost city and the White Goddess said to inhabit it. Fixated on visions of Phoenician wealth and beautiful white royalty in need of a British husband, they soon sail into trouble..

On the poetic front, my Yellow Mythos poem Curtail Not Your Yearnings can be found in the latest issue of Fungi magazine, while another poem, Social Protest, can be found on a new give-out sheet available from Marymark Press (this can be obtained by sending a SAE to me at 4 Pierrot Steps, 71 Kursaal Way, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 2UY, United Kingdom or to Mark Sonnenfeld at 45-08 Old Millstone Drive, East Windsor, NJ 08520, USA).