Boo Books and Trying To Be So Quiet

Well.
 
I'd planned to do a brief blog post today about some new reviews for my Boo Books novella Trying To Be So Quiet - and I still am going to mention that - but they've been slightly overshadowed by the sad news from Alex Davis that Boo Books is to close. Boo Books have released some fantastic books and I'm proud to have been part of their rosta. And I'd like to thank Alex for all his hard work and encouragement, and wish him good luck with his future ventures.
 
The good news is that Boo Books titles are all still available as we speak, and I can personally recommend Andrew David Barker's The Electric and Dead Leaves, the Haunted anthology, and, based on her reading at Edge-Lit, Tracy Fahey's collection The Unheimlich Manouver.


Oh yeah, and those Trying To Be So Quiet reviews:
 
"If you like your quiet, stealthy, and throat-achingly sad, this one is for you." Tracy Fahey
"A must read, wonderful.", Yvonne Davies, Terror Tree


Trying To Be So Quiet is available as a hardback and ebook (UK | US). 

Recommendation: Dead Leaves by Andrew David Barker

Dead Leaves is a new novella from Andrew David Barker, whose story of a haunted cinema, The Electric, turned a lot of heads last year (including mine).

The two books have a number of similarities, both being coming of age tales and both having a cinematic connection. But Dead Leaves is a darker and in some ways more cynical tale; it is set in Derby during the time of the early 80s 'video nasty' scare. Scott, Paul and Mark have finished school and are adrift, on the dole, the only options for employment seemingly the same dead end jobs they've seen their parents suffer with. All three of them love horror films but there's one none of them have seen: so they resolve to seek out the ultimate video nasty, the ultimate horror film: a VHS copy of The Evil Dead.

Their pursuit of this MacGuffin drives the story; as in The Electric, this is a story which underneath the plot is about friendship and growing up - the dynamics of the changing relationship between the three protagonists are expertly portrayed by Barker. But the portrayal of young adulthood is less idealistic than in his previous book, in part due to the grimmer backdrop of mindless tabloid censorship and the realities of Thatcher's Britain. Friendship feels more fragile, something which can be torn apart by an adult world that doesn't care for such things. This added grit, along with the shorter length and tighter focus, means that for me Dead Leaves more than equals The Electric. Which is saying something.

But there's hope and optimism too; their search for The Evil Dead allows the three friends to project their own meaning and values onto a world they seem to have no place in. A love letter to the horror genre and what it means to people, without being a horror story itself, Dead Leaves is, in short, absolutely fantastic.

You can preorder it from Boo Books, including a special limited edition in a VHS style case.

Recommendation: The Electric by Andrew David Barker

A brief post about a book I wish I had the time to write more about, The Electric by Andrew David Barker. I picked up a copy of this at last year's Edgelit, after many people had recommend it to me. And I can see why - The Electric is a wonderfully written supernatural coming of age story, about a group of three teenagers who find a strange, abandoned cinema near their home town. But despite being long shutdown, there still seem to be films shown at The Electric, and to a very niche audience...

The book genuinely captures the feeling of being a teenager, on the cusp of adulthood, and all that that entails. In tone, this is similar to Stephen King's The Body or the work of Ray Bradbury. The author's love of cinema really comes across as well, although you don't need to be a film buff to thoroughly enjoy a book as good as this. The only minor irritant I had with it was that sometimes the scares associated with the supernatural elements of the plot seemed a bit nebulous, but this is one of those stories that isn't really about the ghosts anyway but about growing up, friendship and the pain of nostalgia. 

And, like all the best movies, it's a bit of a tear-jerker as well. Recommended.