Top 10 Horror Reads 2024

It's been awhile since I did any book recommendations on here, so I thought I'd see if I could come up with my favourite horror reads of 2024. After some deliberation, and in no particular order, here's the result:

Last Night Of Freedom, Dan Howarth (Northern Republic)

A story of a stag-do gone horribly wrong (and not in the strippers and vodka shots kind of way) this was like an English version of Deliverance and it kept me absolutely gripped all the way through. Bloody violent and bloody good.

The End, Kayleigh Dobbs (Black Shuck Books)

A mini-collection in the Black Shuck Shadows range, featuring six tales about the end of, well, everything. Who can end the world six different ways and still keep you guessing until the last page? Kayleigh Dobbs can. 

Stone Gods, Adam Golaski (NO Press)

Adam Golaski might be the most underrated author working in horror/weird fiction at the moment? Maybe it's because he's surreal as much as scary, or maybe it's because he's not exactly prolific—I think this is his second collection of such fiction. And like his first, Worse Than Myself, Stone Gods contains many tales that demonstrate what a travesty that like of recognition is.

Subject 11, Jeffrey Thomas 

An author new to me, and one I immediately vibed with, if that's the right word. This is a novella-length work about ten people undergoing some weird kind of experiment where they're living together in an abandoned factory. Identify-warping weirdness ensues. Loved it.

The Weird Tales Boys, Stephen Jones (PS Publishing)

A book about horror rather than a horror book, this tells the story of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard, and also the broader story of Weird Tales magazine and pulp publishing at the time. Odd praise for a nonfiction book, but I found it a real page-turner. I knew a bit about HPL's life but not really the others, so some of the tragedy they faced was an actual shock to me.

Dirt Upon My Skin, Steve Toase (Black Shuck Books)

A mini-collection in the Black Shuck Shadows range (hey wow, deja-vu...), each of the stories here is a weird and twisted take on the theme of archeology. Original, well-written, creeps you out - what more could you ask for?

Uncertainties 7, ed. Carly Holmes (Swan River Press)

It's kind of hard to praise an un-themed horror anthology in a couple of sentences without just going 'all the stories are amazing!' but guess what: here, all the stories really are amazing. The Uncertainties series continues to set the bar for original, literate horror fiction in the short story form.

Ivy Grimes Grime Time, Ivy Grimes (Tales From Between)

I'd never heard of Ivy Grimes at the start of 2024, but she's firmly on my radar at the start of this year, based on this mini collection and a smattering of other stories I read in various places online. I hate the word quirky, normally, but it seems to fit these well-written, messed-up and psychological messy tales.

Charlie Says, Neil Williamson (Black Shuck Books)

The minute I read the description of this—basically, urban folk-horror based around the fears and implied rituals of those fuck-creepy 70s public information films—I pre-ordered it. (The fact it's by the always great Neil Williamson was a selling point, too.) And it very very much rewarded me for doing so.

The Return, Rachel Harrison (Holder & Stoughton)

An utterly brilliant horror debut, mixing a creepy hotel, a changed person who's returned after they vanished, and a subtle, funny, and realistic depiction of female friendships, this is really creepy and compulsively readable.

Recommendation: The Headsman by Cristina Mîrzoi

There's a real pleasure, I think, in stumbling across a piece of art - a book, a film, an album - that's obviously special but which no one really knows about yet, and which you weren't even expecting yourself. And it's a vanishing pleasure in our increasingly homogenised and instant world. I used to discover new bands by listening to the radio or going to record shops; I used to find new authors by browsing the secondhand shelves in Blackwells Oxford and taking a chance on something that I had little idea what it was but which looked interesting...

Maybe times have changed, or maybe I'm just old now, but such serendipitous stumbling into something unknown but exciting happens less and less for me nowadays. But when it does happen, I'm still thrilled. 

So:

My friend and editor-supreme Dion Winton-Polak posted he'd recently edited a new book, The Headsman by Cristina Mîrzoi. If I'd not been looking at Facebook on my phone at that exact moment, I probably would have missed it, something special lost amidst the horrendous world news, the Wordle scores, the shit-posting and endless adverts. But I did see Dion's post, and thought the book looked interesting, so I picked up a copy.

Having read it, I can say it's far more than 'interesting'. It's really, genuinely, fantastically good. The real deal.

The Headsman is a story told via series of interconnecting chapters, each titled after a figure in the same village (time and place deliberately and pleasingly unspecified): 'The Duke', 'The Maid' etc.  Each piece is told from one perspective but together they form a single, whole narrative, the reader realising each is a  different pieces of the same jigsaw. Once you work out how the book works, there's an almost addictive feeling starting each new section of the story, trying to work out how it's going to fit into the overall picture. The sections in The Headsman jump around in time as well as perspective, but regardless it's clear the story is heading in one direction only, and towards one ending: death. The titular Headsman is the village's executioner (he uses an axe, hence his name) and it's no real spoiler to say more than one of the characters in the story meet a swift and inevitable end at his hands...

I read The Headsman in a single day and loved every minute of this dark and accomplished narrative. Formally inventive but fable-like in its tale of archetypes, I highly recommend it, and I'm definitely looking forward to future works by Mîrzoi. And if, like me, you're getting older and miss that feeling of stumbling across something new and exciting and unexpected that no one else knows about yet, use this blog post as a catalyst to go out and buy The Headsman now:

The Headsman (UK | US)

 

Recommendation: And So The Night Did Claim Them by Duncan P. Bradshaw

I've known Duncan Bradshaw for a few years, mainly for two things: his love of good beers and his fiction, a very distinctive blend of humour and over the top horror. His readings at conventions are always laugh-out-loud funny/groan-out-loud disgusting (check out Congratulations! You've Accidentally Summoned A World-Ending Monster. What Now?, a riff on the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series, for an example). Fair to say, although we're both writing horror, our approaches our worlds apart...

So I was more than intrigued when Duncan approached me for a blurb for a forthcoming release which he said was... serious. I think he even used the 'literature' word. But even if he didn't, I will: And The Night Did Claim Them, from Black Shuck Books is a masterful piece of serious horror literature. It's still got moments of trademark Bradshaw humour, but now part of a story which is a dark and unrelenting slide towards doom. I genuinely loved it, and after some thought I had this to say about it:

“A creepy, absorbing novella about loss, regret, and the blackness awaiting us all. Bleak as hell; dark and silky as a pint of Guinness - I loved it.”

And I stand by every word.

(Disclaimer: I received some beer from the author as a thank-you for this blurb, which was 8% and gave me a mild headache and some grumpiness the next morning. What a bastard. Don't buy his books.)

And The Night Did Claim Them (Pre-Order)

A Re-Recommendation: Probably Monsters by Ray Cluley

Ray Cluley's debut collection is being rereleased - today, if I've got my timing right. So I thought I'd repost my original recommendation for the book, which was originally posted October 2015. As you can tell, I liked it very much and I stand by every word of what I said about it back then.

The new edition from Vulpine Press Probably Monsters can be found here: (UK | US)

Recommendation: Probably Monsters by Ray Cluley

A few words of recommendation from me for the debut collection from Ray Cluley, Probably Monsters. Cluley is a writer I've liked for awhile; I'd read a number of the stories in this book before, in Black Static and the like, but it was a real pleasure to read so many all in one go. (Not always the case with single author collections, I find, sometimes a lack of variety can make a collection a real slog.)

But there's enough variety here to mean that's not a concern, even over the course of twenty stories. The settings range from rundown British housing estates (The Festering) to pristine Russian wilderness (Where The Salmon Run); the style varies from the dark as hell Knock Knock, through weird Westerns, to the Hollywood cliche parodying Shark! Shark! The latter in particular is a joy, a magic trick where you can't see how it's done: fourth wall breaking narration and overt cinematic references somehow coming together to make a superbly scary story. Other highlights include Beachcombing, Night Fishing and my own personal favourite, I Have Heard The Mermaids Singing (I'm a sucker for a TS Eliot reference), a story about decompression sickness and human corruption and possibly even mermaids themselves that, upon finishing (and picking my jaw up from the floor) I immediately turned back and read again.

I'm purposely avoiding saying to much about the plots of these stories because they're so well constructed; everything dovetails so neatly together that if I started to describe the opening of one of the stories here I wouldn't know where to stop. So rather than risk saying too much, I won't start.

Accomplished, atmospheric and an admirable showcase for Cluley's undoubted talents, Probably Monsters is likely to be up there with the best collections of the year.

Recommendation: Sometime's We're Cruel by J.A.W. McCarthy

This will be no surprise to any long-term readers of this site, but I read a lot of horror/weird/strange short-fiction. And I try to make sure I'm reading work not just by the established names but by newer authors - by which I mean those who've yet to release a first collection. Of course, a lot of these stories prove to be not so great, but when I do read a new author whose work seems promising I'm sure to make a note of their name - to include them in my end of year short story lists; to keep them in mind for future books I might edit; and of course to remind me to buy their debut collection when it is released.

J.A.W. McCarthy's debut was definitely on my list to buy, and I'm here to tell you that her first collection Sometimes We're Cruel definitely doesn't disappoint. In fact it's one of the best debuts of the year.

There are twelve stories here—six reprints, six original—and every one is original in conception and accomplished in execution. McCarthy takes varied and disparate horror tropes— including ghosts, psychic invasion, wicked (step)mothers, doppelgängers, body horror, Frankenstein-ish creations—and fuses them together with unifying themes and imagery. The stories speak to each other, echo each other, without ever becoming samey or indistinct. I get the sense that, as well as carefully crafting each of these individual stories, McCarthy has taken the time to order and structure this book as a collection as well. As someone who approaches the ordering of a collection in the same way I used to make mix-tapes for friends at university, I appreciated this very much.

I talked above about this book in the context of a first collection, but that's not really fair: Sometimes We're Cruel isn't a 'promising' first book, it's a collection of fully realised brilliance by an author who, whatever she goes on to accomplish, has already created something very special. 

Sometimes We're Cruel (UK | US)

Recommendation: My Life In Horror #1 by Kit Power

Kit Power's My Life In Horror #1 is a non-fiction collection of essays originally published on Gingernuts Of Horror. In each, Kit describes a formative encounter with the horror genre in his childhood or young adulthood: not just books and films, but also music, a role-playing game, and real-life events. Kit's definition of what counts as 'horror' is pretty flexible, which makes for some delightful surprises in what he's included—as well as Hellraiser we get Robocop, as well as The Wasp Factory we get Sleepers. I thought I'd already read most of the content, but it turns out there was quite a lot I'd missed, especially where they relate to music. As an aside, Kit is very good writing about music, making we want to listen to tunes I either doubt will be to my taste (The Wildhearts) or even already know I loathe (bloody Queen). 

Kit and I are of a similar age, so I encountered a lot of the works he mentioned in my youth too (and I was struck by the notion, hinted at throughout the book, that the news we see as kids influences our view of horror as much as fiction; that footage of Hillsborough, Zeebrugge, the Challenger explosion, or the Ethiopian famines, form a bedrock of shared cultural experience and imagery similar to liking the same films) but I suspect nearly all fans of the genre will get a kick out of these pieces. And...

.... and, oh look, who am I kidding? This isn't how I wanted to write about this book.

There's a great moment in B.S. Johnson's Alberto Angelo where he interrupts his own novel by saying "fuck all this lying" and proceeds to tell the supposedly real-version of events that inspired the fiction up until that point. And while I've not been lying above, I have been circling round the real reason I loved this book: 

It's 2020.

It's Covid-time.

I haven't seen my writing friends in months, nor am I likely to for months more.

Like many I'm sure, my writing has taken a hit this year. My routine's all changed, I've lost some mojo. And part of it is that the conventions are cancelled, those semi-regular catch ups with fellow authors. I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets a burst of motivation & enthusiasm following Fantasycon or Edge-Lit, and while some of that is from the scheduled events, a lot is from being surrounded by so many amazing writers and fans and creatives, from talking to them during the day and well into the night.

Reading My Life In Horror feels as close to one of those conversations as I'm going to get this year. Indeed, the first chapter is about Stephen King's IT, and one of my favourite FCon memories is a late night conversation with Kit and Mark West when we talked about how much we loved IT for hours. And the great thing about this book is it's so personal, so much Kit's take of the horror genre, that it feels like a one-way conversation with him. My responses to the essays in the book weren't objective judgements, but me thinking what I would want to say back to him, if I could. (You're so wrong about Don't Look Now, Kit.)

In a very real way, it's fired me up like a convention would (I even read it Friday to Sunday, the same timescales as Fcon) and made me want to get back to my own writing, to my own life in horror. So it's pointless for me to pretend to describe this book like I did at the top of the review, to compose an objective sounding discussion of its many strengths and odd weaknesses. 

My Life In Horror #1 was quite simply just what I needed right now, in 2020, and it might be just what you need too. 

Recommendation: Underworld Dreams by Daniel Braum

I was honoured to advance read Daniel Braum’s forthcoming new collection, Underworld Dreams, which is now available to preorder:

“To read a Daniel Braum story is to step from the familiar into another room, through a doorway not present a second before. At first, things in the other room feel familiar, comfy—but don’t get too comfortable. You’ll notice the off-notes, the strange discrepancies, in this place Braum has transported you to soon enough. You might be tempted to stop reading and close the book, to go back through the door to where you felt safe. But Braum is too good a writer for that, and you keep reading, and you step further into the other room…

And besides, if you did turn around, who’s to say the way back would even be there?”

It contains, among many other dark delights, the story 'How To Stay Afloat When Drowning', which was originally published in Pareidolia.

You can (and definitely should) preorder it from Lethe Press here.

Recommendation: Exercise In Control by Annabel Banks

With life being what it is at the moment, I don't really have the time to do this book justice. But I did want to write something about Exercise In Control by Annabel Banks (from Influx Press). It's a book of short stories, and if you love short stories as much as me you'll want to check it out.

These stories are dark, stylish, funny, and disturbing. While not supernatural in the literal sense, the realism of the writing is undercut/enhanced by the sense that something disturbing or off-kilter is happening just out of sight... As you might expect, that disturbing element is brought to light when the stories reach their conclusions - sometimes in a way that's blackly comic ('Harmless'), sometimes disturbing ('Payment to the Universe') and sometimes weirdly touching ('Rite Of Passage'). Naturally, each of these endings only works because the prose and narrative leading up to it is precisely controlled and exquisitely written. 

There's more than one story here I immediately wanted to reread, but special mention must go to the title story, 'Exercises In Control', which pulled me up short not once but twice at the brilliance/nastiness at what I'd just read. 

See, I told you I wouldn't be able to do this book justice. But buy it anyway, alright?

(Influx Press / Amazon)

The 101 Club & We All Hear Stories In The Dark

So, Robert Shearman then.

Anyone who's had the distinct pleasure of reading Robert Shearman's stories before will no doubt agree when I say he's one of the best, most distinctive, most original short story writers in the UK at the moment. Let's take that as read. And a bloody nice guy as well, if you've ever had the opportunity to chat to him at a convention. And one of the best writers at reading aloud his own work. Let's take all of that as read...

Because he's just pulled off something incredible. He's released a collection with one hundred and one short stories in it. Not pokey little micro-fictions or flash-fiction, but actually short stories. Which each reader will get to read in an entirely different order, depending on answers they give to questions at the end of each story they read. It's called We All Hear Stories In the Dark, and is published in three volumes by PS Publishing (you can buy it here).

Faced with such an incredible—if not lunatic—achievement, Jim McLeod of Gingernuts Of Horror decided to match it, and commission a review of every individual story in the collection. And so the 101 Club was born, and I was delighted to be asked to review two tales, 'The New Adventures Of Robin Hood' and 'Canon Fodder'. One's about Robin Hood—sort of—and one is about Shakespeare—sort of. Naturally, I decide to start my reviews of them with a, uh, Public Enemy lyric.

You can find Jim McLeod's introduction to The 101 Club here, along with links to the five pages of reviews. It's a huge undertaking, but one which a writer of Rob's talent and kindness totally deserves. And I think I speak for all the reviewers when I say it's been a true labour of love too. I do hope you'll give it a read, and purchase the book.

Recommendation: Terrible Things by David Surface

The world's a crazy, somewhat scarier place than it was just a few weeks back (and it was hardly a bed of sanity & roses then) and there's little I can do about 99% of it all. But like everyone, authors and small-presses will be affected by coronavirus and its economic impacts, especially those launching books at now-cancelled conventions. So I'm going to periodically post about some of those books on here, and encourage you to throw some money their way if you can.

First off is Terrible Things by David Surface, published by Black Shuck Books. I was actually asked to blurb this book, so here is what I had to say:

"David Surface’s first short story collection is a reason to rejoice for all lovers of disturbing, off-beat, and ghostly fiction. Well-written and multi-layered, these stories are unpredictable in the best possible way: the author doesn’t allow the cliches of the genre to dilute his own personal vision. Put simply, these stories are some of the very best weird fiction has to offer."

And I stand by every word. You can preorder Terrible Things here.

Strange Story #24: Starfish

Strange Story #24: Starfish

Director: A.T. White / Starring: Virginia Gardner

You know what used to be my dream? For everyone to just disappear.

So, it's been six years since I last posted a 'Strange Story' piece on here. But as soon as I had the idea to write about the artsy-'horror'(maybe) film Starfish, it seemed appropriate to resurrect the idea. After all, starfish can regrown lost limbs can't they?

I've never written about a film as a 'Strange Story' before (unless the one in House Of Leaves counts...), probably because I'm not very qualified to do so. So I'll not really mention here the technical aspects of direction or cinematography (although there are some striking visual images), the score (although the music both original and by bands like Sigur Ros is brilliantly used) or the acting (although Virginia Gardner's central performance, alone as she is for most of the scenes, is a key part of what makes this movie work). Okay, so I have mentioned all those things. But really I want to write about how all those elements work together to make this film feel so different: the production, the sound, the imagery, the performances, the plot...

The plot—I should be able to write something about the plot, as a writer. But even that is not easy to do. Starfish begins with the claim it is based on a "true story" and possibly this might seem plausible for the first twenty minutes or so of the film. The main character, Aubrey (and we'll soon know a lot about her, and very little) is at the funeral of her friend, Grace. Aubrey is not okay: isolated, withdrawn, dissociated from what is around her. She leaves the wake and breaks into Grace's apartment which hasn't been cleared out yet, and finds the first of seven mixtapes her friend has left for her, presses play, goes to sleep...

... and then the world ends.

Well, maybe.

Aubrey wakes up alone in a frozen, depopulated world, with signs of a much larger disaster off-screen: we see smoke on the horizon but not what's burning, blood in the snow but not the bodies. There's an monster lurking in the abandoned town, and the voice of another survivor on a radio says the devastation has been caused by an alien radio single, which has some connection to the mix-tapes left by Grace. If Aubrey can find all the tapes and play them then...

But. Is this really what is happening? There's a dreamlike quality to Aubrey's predicament, an oddness to the world she's in (it reminded me of It Follows and that film's deliberate ambiguity about when the film is set). More than that, there's an aptness to her situation, her literal isolation in an empty world echoing her emotion isolation at the start of the film. When she's not fleeing from the monstrous creature in the streets, Aubrey's perceptions seem odd, surreal, and the stylistic choices the film makes become bolder, and at the same time more disjointed... very much, in fact, like a mixtape from a friend lurching from genre to genre.

We start to realise that this is as much a film about Aubrey's past, and her relationship with Grace, as it is a film about alien apocalypse. Her quest to find the mixtapes might save the world, but she's also trying to get closer to the memory of Grace and atone for some prior wrongdoing... Her flashbacks show us snippets of a fractured narrative, her guilty memories fixated on certain key scenes she replays over and over, rather than allowing us to know the full story.

Based On A True Story—maybe that's more true than it seems, not a postmodern fake-out at all. Everything that happens, everything we see—whether 'real' or hallucinatory in the context of the film—is an attempt to represent something "true" underneath. But the beauty of Starfish is that it doesn't attempt to fully undermine its genre-based alien invasion narrative; there's no Matrix-style different levels of reality, one more real than the others. Both aspects of the narrative work together, it's a picture both of a duck looking left and a rabbit looking right: unfocused your eyes and you can see both. It's something more than the sum of its parts, even if you're not sure what that 'something' is. It's not quite the same as anything else I've ever seen, and I'm still thinking about it a days later. Not for everyone I imagine, but if you like the kind of fiction I've mentioned on this blog before, it may be for you. I loved it.

Oh, and Grace has killer tase in music.

Starfish (Amazon)

Kit Power's Life In Horror

My life with Kit Power:

• He wrote a book which, when I reviewed it, all I could manage as a first sentence was, "Well, fuck."
• Two reading slots I've done with him involved hammers
• Myself, Kit and Mark West spent what felt like hours talking about IT at the con bar at Fcon Peterborough
• Umpteen political disagreements
• I've featured him in a forthcoming short story, although he doesn't know that yet. Nor that in it, I claim that he isn't real
• Those trousers
• The support he's shown my own writing, especially his kind words about Paupers' Graves

So anyway, he's crowdfunding what sounds like a brilliant book, My Life In Horror Volume 1 and he's   written this piece, to persuade you to donate your hard-earned towards it. Which you definitely should - did I mention the hammers?

Take it away, Kit:

Sure, it’s a cliche, but it’s also true; life comes at you fast.

It’s January 2014. Having completed an Open University course the previous summer, I’ve discovered I have 10 - 12 hours a week I could be using for something other than watching bad TV. Having also over the summer of 2013 devoured King’s On Writing, I’ve decided to start writing.

Since then, I’ve written one 17,000 word piece I’m optimistically calling a novella, another 12K piece, another 6K piece, and a handful of short stories. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but I am having fun.

The 17K piece is called Lifeline, and I’ve shopped it to a few small presses with no success. Most of the feedback suggests it may be a bit… much. I think it probably is, too, but that’s what I like about it. Then, one small press explicitly says it’s too much but if I have anything else, I should send it - they really want a novella and they like my style.

So I send over the 12K piece, and say I know it’s too short, but I have a 6K piece that might pair with it and bring the wordcount up… and they go for it.

Just like that, I'm going to be a published writer.

And then, hot on the heels of that moment; I should probably figure out a way to tell people about the book.

Enter: Gingernuts of Horror.

Green as I was, I knew the site was a big deal; respected by indie and named authors alike, pulling in some huge interviews, and covering a dizzying range of books and movies. Jim Mcleod, the site proprietor, had also already struck me as a fearsome figure - passionate about the genre, but clearly unwilling to suffer fools gladly, or really at all. Landing a review there would clearly be A Big Deal. So I made the approach, via email.

I heard nothing back.

Undeterred, I continued to plug the book, finding blogs willing to take a review copy, and doing author interviews. And at some point, I completed the Gingernuts ‘5 minutes with…’ template and subbed that. At the same time, I mentioned to Jim that, in the unlikely event no-one of any importance had yet signed up for it, I’d love to take a crack at an essay on Stephen King’s IT for the site’s ‘The Book That Made Me’ series.

To my utter astonishment, he said yes.

So there I am, February 2014, writing a non-fiction essay for one of Europe’s biggest independent horror review sites, about one of Stephen King's biggest ever novels (in terms of both sales, and page count).

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I had fun.

Flash forward a week or so. I’m on Twitter. I am new to Twitter. In what you’ll have already realised is a pattern, here, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m having fun.

There’s a twitterbot. Whenever you tweet a tweet that contains the word Robocop, it replies to your tweet saying ‘I’d Buy That For A Dollar!’ This is clearly the funniest thing I have so far encountered on Twitter, and during a tweet interaction with Jim, I tell him about it, hoping to impress him.

And it doesn’t work.

I track down the tweetbot, annoyed and a little embarrassed, and discover it’s creator has turned it off in protest at the recent Robocop remake. I explain this to Jim, still a little embarrassed, and then, more or less off the cuff, and certainly intending it to be a goof, I tell him if he ever does a series called The Film That Made Me, I could write him a doozy about Robocop.

Let’s do it, he says.

You can write the first article, he says.

Fantastic, I say.

I have no idea what I am doing.

So I write. And write. And write some more. I discover memories tied to this movie that have sat in my mind, unearthed and apparently unremembered since puberty. And yet here they are, vivid and alive. I write, I remember, I write some more, I get excited, I start cutting loose, and somewhere around the two thousand word mark I realise I am asserting, in an article for The Gingernuts Of Horror, that Robocop is the greatest horror movie ever made.

I read it back. Shamefully, I admit to laughing at my own jokes.

So I send it to Jim.

He runs it. It goes over gangbusters.

A couple of months later, he asks me if I want to write something regular for the site.

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. But I’m having fun. So I say yes.

We kick ideas about; Jim’s main suggestion is ‘something like the Robocop piece’, which is flattering and scary all at once, as I still have no idea where most of it came from. But eventually we settle on a monthly format where I explore works - books, movies, music - that messed me up as a kid in some way or another, and that I think of as horror or horror related.

In June 2014, I submit my first column, and My Life In Horror is born.

Fast forward to July, 2015. I’m at my first genre con - EdgeLit in Derby. I am there early, and I am nervous as hell. I’ve had a few shorts in a few anthologies, self published Lifeline as an ebook novella, and I am trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my debut novel, GodBomb! You’ll be astonished to learn I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote it, but I had fun.

I’m early enough that the venue isn’t even open, so I sit at a table outside, and soon, I am approached by a guy who knows my name. This guy is Neil Snowdon, and he knows me from Facebook, and in particular, a recent interview I conducted for the site with Stephen Volk - oh yeah, by this point I’m somehow interviewing Stephen Volk for the site. Guess how much I knew what I was doing. We chatted non-fiction and process (I can’t remember if My Life In Horror came up or not), and our shared love of the longform essay/interview. At some point, I confessed that I had no idea what I was doing. Neil opined that nobody else did, either.

Before the event had even started, I’d made a friend.

Fast forward to October 2016. I’m a podcaster now - as well as a blogger, reviewer, interviewer, and oh, yeah, still author too, the novel’s out now. My podcast is called Watching Robocop with Kit Power and every month(ish) I watch Robocop with a friend and record the resulting conversation. It’s huge fun, and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

I am also guesting on other people’s podcasts, including They Must Be Destroyed On Sight! - a movie show about cult cinema. I basically invite myself on to talk about two movies - Parents, and Ken Russell/The Who movie Tommy. My reason for picking the two films is simply that they are the two most cult movies I know and like, and they both kinda messed me up as a kid. I’m also double-dipping the subject matter - my plan is to write a My Life In Horror piece about Tommy, so I figure the rewatch and conversation will help with that. And so it proves.

And Neil Snowdon is listening too. And he gets in touch.

“I like what you had to say about Tommy and Ken Russell. Fancy writing a Midnight Monograph book about the film? I’ve been enjoying your My Life In Horror stuff, seems like Tommy could be a good fit for a longer piece.”

“Well, I don’t know, man, that’s really flattering and I’d love to give it a go, but I’m not really a film expert - in fact, most of the time I have very little idea what I am doing. It’d really just be my take on the film, you know, really personal.”

And then Neil said the words every writer longs to hear from an editor: “Well, that’s exactly what I’m after.”

I waited on making a final decision until after the My Life In Horror article dropped - I thought I’d give Neil a chance to back out once he’d seen me actually flinging written words at the subject. I sent him the link when it went live. “What do you think?”

“I think that’s the introduction.”

Flash forward. Its July 2019. I’m at Edgelit. Again. With Neil. Again. I’ve just interviewed Stephen Volk on stage about his new non-fiction collection, Coffinmakers Blues, which is launching at the event - alongside my own non-fiction debut, the Midnight Monograph book on Tommy. It’s turned out better than I could have dreamed possible - but, then, Neil is one hell of an editor.

Post launch, we break bread and chat, the conversation covering a bewildering array of subjects, before Neil casually asks “So, Stokercon 2020. What are you going to have coming out?”

I explain I have a couple of possible irons in the fire; a short short story collection with a press that specialises in such editions, and a novella I am racing to get finished for another press that I am hopeful will make the grade.

“What about a My Life In Horror collection? I’ve always thought they’d make a good book. Put ‘em in chronological order, it’s almost an autobiography. And you’ll never find a better crowd than Stokercon, it’s tailor made - all that 80’s and 90’s nostalgia.”

“Yeah, but it’s already basically too late to shop around, everyone’s going to have their plans already, I should have been thinking about it months ago to be in with a shot.”

“Self pub, maybe? A WARNING went okay.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The conversation moves on to other things.

But the idea festers.

Fast forward to November 2019. The novella is with the publisher. So is the short short story collection. I probably have two Stokercon 2020 releases set. I can relax.

I am not relaxed. The conversation with Neil is playing on my mind. Festering. I’ve put the first three years of My Life In Horror together in chronological order. I’ve revised and expanded every single essay.

I think I like it. I think it works.

So do the publishers I show it to, but it’s not for them, at least not for Stokercon. And that’s fine, I have two books coming out already, three might be considered greedy.

But.

It’s My Life In Horror.

Post Fcon, I’m chatting with another friend. We kick it about, and he names the publishers I’ve already approached. Then he casually tosses into the conversation “Of course, you could crowdfund it.”

Bloody hell, I think.

I mean, bloody hell, I guess I could.

I mean, I’d have absolutely no idea what I was doing.

But it sounds like fun.

Kit Power’s My Life In Horror Volume One is crowdfunding until 23rd February. The campaign features two limited edition hardbacks, both of which are exclusive to this campaign, signed paperbacks, ebooks, and audio recording perks. To back the campaign, please visit https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/my-life-in-horror-volume-one/x/22919255#/. If successful, books should be ready by Stokercon 2020.

Assuming Kit has the faintest idea what the hell he’s doing.

Some Ghost Stories

"... we do not know who or what is in the room with us..." Robert Aickman, on How Love Came To Professor Guildea by Robert Hichens

I was talking about ghost stories, last weekend. I was at the first (hopefully of many) UK Ghost Story Festival, a great three day event in Derby. I featured on two panels, one on why ghost stories and short stories are a perfect match, and one on the best ghost story writers of all time.

One of my fellow panelists, Mark Latham, has published a comprehensive blog post on the first of these; sadly you'll get nothing as detailed about the second from me (yes I'm crap). But I did want to mention a couple of ghostly tales - one short story, one novel - that I spoke about in reply to a question about 'lost classics'. Neither of these seem to be that well known, but both are well worth seeking out...

How Love Came To Professor Guildea by Robert Hichens is a piece I originally came across in the anthology Black Water (ed. Alberto Manguel); I believe the easiest place to read it now is another wonderful anthology, The Dark Descent (ed. David G. Hartwell). It's the story of the titular professor, a reserved, emotionally withdrawn bachelor who is haunted by an invisible entity that only wants to love him. There's no malice, no harm intended; but the ghost's love is an invasive, needy, clingy kind of love, sickly and intolerable to Guildea. It's an alluring combination of old-style ghost story and a more modern attitude to psychology, suppressed desire, and 'ghosts' as manifestations of what we seek to most repress. 

Strangers by Taichi Yamada is a novel written nearly a century after the Hichens story; but it is also a ghost story about emotional withdrawal, emotional blankness. The protagonist is not a bachelor like Guildra; Hideo Harada is divorced and living alone in a flat in urban Tokyo. Into his blank, placid life the ghostly element only gradually intrudes... and when it does the 'ghosts' here are earthy, fleshy, physical beings from Harada's past (saying more would be giving too much away), more real to him than the real people around him. If a good ghost story is about the past reaching for and influencing the present, Strangers gives us a story where the past is physically there alongside the present, just an underground train ride away. A wonderful, unnerving, novel of the uncanny.

Recommendation: The Finite by Kit Power

Well, fuck.

I recommend books for all kinds of reasons on here: the plot, the characterisation, the quality of the prose, the intellectual and thematic ideas underpinning the whole. (Normally, of course, if it's worth recommending it's for more than one element.) Fancy ideas which really all come down to one thing: did the book make an emotion impression on me? Will I remember scenes or dialogue or just the general feel of it? Has it, in however small a way, changed me?

I'll be remembering scenes from Kit Power's novella The Finite for a long time, I think. This one is going to linger. It's going to be hard to forget the ashy taste of it under my tongue, the gritty feel of it on my skin. It combines a real & genuine evocation of parental love with a gut-wrenching sense of absolute fucking fatalism and despair.

So look, you can read the blurb yourself, but basically The Finite is about a nuclear bomb going off and a father and daughter who survive the initial blast but have absorbed a fatal dose of radiation poison anyway. It's about their last, finite span of time together with that knowledge, and it's absolutely as devastating and soul-destroying as that sounds. (And, to repeat: it's also a book about love.)

It hardly needs to be said, this could all have gone horribly wrong. One false note, one poorly written scene or cliched character decision, and the whole thing would have become ridiculous and bathetic and easily ignored. But Power doesn't put a foot wrong, and so he succeeds in writing one of the most bleak and terrible things I've read since The Road. He succeeds in changing me in those small and awful and glorious ways that good fiction can. He succeeds into making horror into art.

And because it needs to be said a third time: this is also a story about love. And you should read it.

The Finite: Black Shuck Books

Recommendation: The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

I had the pleasure of being on a couple of panels with Laura Purcell at Edge-Lit this year, and in a like-the-cut-of-her-jib moment I bought her novel The Silent Companions as a result. And I'm very glad I did, because I enjoyed it immensely.

It's a story about a Victorian widow called Elsie, sent out to The Bridge, a country estate with requisite surly staff, strange noises, and locked rooms. Its structure is intriguingly modern, switching between three time-frames with ease, but at its heart this is a modern take on the gothic novel.

So, a confession: beyond the classics, I'm not a massive fan of the gothic mode in horror fiction. Something like The Woman In Black, for example, I found slightly underwhelming, the most disturbing thing being the faint but persistent sense of deja-vu its tropes induced. And The Silent Companions sure ticks all the gothic boxes: its period setting; its isolated country house; the cursed past implicit in present misfortunes; the gradual escalation of its haunting.

But there's a pleasing darkness and grit to The Silent Companions which to my mind elevates it behind mere literary mimicry. It's there in the intrusion of industrial London into its rural setting, in the way its doesn't flinch from the cruelty of the times it evokes, or draw back from the violence of its narrative. The spirit of both Henry and M.R. James can be felt, the former in the ambiguity about how much the haunting is real or psychological, the latter in the way any sense of a cosy narrative is punctured by scarily physical manifestations of the supernatural—like James, Purcell has the gift of being able to suggest such things with a single sentence or image that are all the more powerful for their compactness.

Its wonderfully done, and manages that rare trick of slowly building a sense of unease while also being a genuinely page-turner. I'd heartily recommend it.

The Silent Companions (UK | US)

Recommendation: Black Shuck Shadows Double Bill

I recently had the pleasure of reading two volumes from the Black Shuck Shadows line: The Death Of Boys by Gary Fry and Broken On The Inside by Phil Sloman. Each book in this series features 3-6 stories from a single author, all based loosely around a theme.

The Death Of Boys was a fun collection of stories. I've read a lot of Fry's fiction by now, and I think it's fair to say that much of it consciously & deliberately 'announces' its thematic concerns—I don't mean this as a criticism, it's his style. But the stories here felt a lot more like Fry was just playing with horror tropes, having fun, writing his equivalent of a horror B-movie. (Again, not a criticism.) Which isn't to say that thematic concerns don't crop up—it's probably no surprise from the title that these tales focus on boyhood, parenthood, growing up, adulthood, and death. 'Zappers' is the story of a young boy apparently hit by lightning yet seeming to suffer no ill-effects (initially). 'Cat-B' concerns that most boyish/masculine obsession, cars, and seems to be Fry's version of Stephen King's 'bad car' stories Christine and From A Buick 8. As good as these two preceding stories were, it's the final tale, 'The House Of The Rising Son', that really impressed me. Again, it plays with some relatively standard horror tropes to begin with, but builds to something that's both nightmarish and thematically apt—indeed it seems to both sum up and interrogate the themes Fry has been exploring for the entire collection. Exhilarating stuff.

Phil Sloman's Broken On The Inside is a collection of stories based around the theme of mental health, or lack thereof, giving us five tales of people damaged, at odds with reality, hunted, haunted or just struggling to cope. Unfortunately, I can't say too much about one of the stories here, 'Virtually Famous'—not because it's not good (it's the joint-best here, IMO) but because it was first published in Imposter Syndrome so I'm biased. I've no reason to be biased about the rest of the stories though, and I can say that they are also bloody good. Sloman switches effortlessly between surreal black comedy—see especially 'Discomfort Food'—and more ambiguous, serious work. Both 'Virtually Famous' and my other favourite here, the title story, mix the psychological with a sort of near-future techno-horror, to produce narratives where the distinction between what is real and imagined blurs and fractures. 'Broken On The Inside' is a the story that has a touch of Cronenberg about it, a touch of Black Mirror about it, of Roald Dahl's adult stories and old-school sci-fi. It's well worth a read.

The Death Of Boys (UK | US)
Broken On The Inside (UK | US)

Recommendation: (Slight Return) by Neil Schiller

I first came across Neil Schiller's fiction when I read his debut collection, Oblivious. And what a debut it was: dark, brooding tales of people dealing with (or failing to deal with) everyday life, written with such an eye for detail, both physical and emotional, that saying things such as he's like a British Carver didn't seem entirely stupid. Or, if you prefer a more genre-related comparison, he's like a Gary McMahon without all that supernatural stuff.

Schiller's new collection, (Slight Return) is a set of stories based around music, with nearly all taking their title from a song, usually from the 90s (you can listen to a Spotify Playlist of them all here). If you think this might mean these stories are more hopeful and upbeat than those in Oblivious then, um... no. Not noticeably in most cases. While music might provide temporary release for some of the characters here, it's also a source of frustration for failed musicians, an indication of the lack of communication between father and daughter, a reminder of a lost and irrecoverable past.

If this all sounds to bleak, then it's worth pointing out that it's all wrapped in prose as insightful and gorgeous as this:

"There's something exciting about waking up in a city. Not the suburban sprawl that most of us spend our lives in[...] I mean right in the middle of a proper city—clattering heels, laughter, fast-moving traffic. The clamour of the stirring sheets reverberates; it echoes back from the municipal stonework and spirals up into a vast empty sky [...] I've felt this every time I've opened my eyes in London, no matter how grey and dirty the bed or couch or floor I've been on, and I feel this way now."

I guess if that doesn't convince you to buy this book (and Oblivious, if you haven't already) no further words of mine will. So I'll just end this review with one of my favourites of the title songs from this brilliant collection of stories. Play on:

(Slight Return) (UK | US)

All The Fabulous Beasts: Priya Sharma Interview

I couldn't have been more excited than when I heard Undertow Press were going to be publishing the debut collection from Priya Sharma. The stories I've read of hers over the last few years have always been superb, by turns creepy, beautiful, tender and terrifying. A whole book-load of them? Count me in. Especially one with such stunning cover art and design as this one.

I asked Priya a few questions about All The Fabulous Beasts, particularly focussing on the two stories new to the collection, 'Small Town Stories' and 'A Son Of The Sea' (spoiler: both brilliant).

So, without further ado...

JE: So, to warm us up, how do you think of your stories? Weird fiction, fantasy, horror? I wouldn’t know how to classify them myself (which I absolutely think of as a good thing). Do you find such categories useful as a writer, or limiting?

PS: Hello James! I find that a hard question, even now. I hope that All the Fabulous Beasts is all of the above. When Mike Kelly of Undertow put this collection together he was very careful about what he felt should go in (thankfully) as I've also dabbled in fairy tales, mythology and alterative history. If they'd been included, certain stories might have jarred with others.

The story that I'm writing dictates the form and flavours. I've had lots of rejections along the lines of "I like this but it's not horror". I certainly don't find strict definitions of genre helpful, but I think definitions are getting broader and more blurred.

My favourite books don't adhere to strict definitions and I think I've drawn on them. Things that are between the lines or bend genre are more interesting, such as novels like Beloved by Toni Morrison, Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut, and in the work of David Mitchell, Calvino, Helen Oyeyemi, to name a few.

JE: Regardless of how you think of them, your stories nearly all feature a supernatural element. What is it about the supernatural or surreal that appeals to you as a writer? What does it allow you to do that ‘straight’ realism couldn’t?

PS: I remember listening to Thana Niveau on a panel about horror and she said that she was drawn to it because it was hardwired in there somewhere, which I thought was very thoughtful, rather than it just being about exploring our personal fears. I feel like that about most speculative fiction.

The supernatural allows for a whole new level of allegory. Also, when it's done well it does double duty as there are thrills to be had.

I wish I could write straight fiction, and probably read more straight fiction than genre fiction. When I try and write 'literary' fiction it seems very flat on the page. I feel confined. I think I write speculative fiction because I am, in truth, an escapist. It's the perfect type of fiction for exploring big ideas, feelings, and for extrapolating, but also for having fun and pushing the limits. Human beings are all about the impossible (even at risk to ourselves and the planet).

JE: In both of the new stories in your collection, there’s a very strong sense of place — from the more exotic locations of 'A Son Of The Sea' to the very English, parochial English setting you use in 'Small Town Stories'. So I wondered how important you think a evocation of specific place is, to you as a writer?

It's a crucial part of worldbuildng for me, as important as character. We're all affected by our environments. You can character build in how a person interacts with that world. I always do more research for stories than I need and have to be selective about what I use. It's the same with the world that I'm writing about. There's more happening off page that never makes the cut. Sometimes it's as much as what I imagine for the characters themselves.

I love stories with a strong setting, that's crucial to the story. It's what I enjoyed most about The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley, for example. The Titus novels by Mervyn Peake blew my mind.

JE: I was especially taken with the titular setting of 'Small Town Stories' — a lot of British horror fiction seems to be either city based urban horror or rural folk horror, but these kind of backwater small towns seem very British and very scary to me. Was it a conscious decision, to write about the kind of place normally ignored?

PS: No, in that it wasn't a conscious decision - I just wanted to explore feelings I had about the town I grew up in- a smallish Cheshire market town, and when I think about that era it brings back the child in me, for reasons good and bad. That place still has a lot of power over me. When I go back I realise that I'm a stranger there.

The thing is, I don't recognise the place that I knew, not really. New build homes are where the industries that employed most of the town once stood. Supermarkets have replaced the veg shop and the butchers. There are more coffee shops and hairdressers, but nowhere to buy books or music. There used to be a thriving market each week but now it's just a carpark. And I'm not sure who shrunk the schools I went to.

Every small town has its urban legends and outsiders, and I wanted to explore that concept as well. Births, deaths, affairs. Nothing was secret for very long.

I wanted to write my own love story to it all.

JE: As well as a strong sense of place, both of these new tales seem to be about the past being something we can’t escape from, or even move on from - was this a conscious theme?

PS: Sometimes it is, sometimes it just seeps in there. It's a form of haunting, isn't it? The past is important to most people I know, whether they're trying to recreate/relive it or escape from it. I read a lot of Fay Weldon in my teens (thanks to The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil) and one of my favourite lines by her is "Wherever we go, we take ourselves with us". We can't escape our pasts. We can only learn to live with the horrors and joys of it.

It's funny that you've brought that up. I don't think I've ever started a story at the beginning of a character's journey. I'd actually find that too difficult to chart, in some ways. I like flawed people, in the thick of their struggles. What does that say about me?

JE: And finally, can you tell me a secret - name an author who’s an influence on your work that no reviewer or commenter has ever picked up on...

PS: Jim Crace. I think he's woefully neglected in the UK. His novels vary widely in subject matter but there's something about his prose that is poetic. It has a rhythm that I find addictive, almost iambic pentameter, which some people will mock. Reading his work, I get the feeling that every single word is considered and deliberate. I think his style is unique, and can only hope that one day, if I work hard enough, I might develop a unique style too.

My favourite works of his are Arcadia, The Pesthouse, Being Dead and The Devil's Larder.

You can buy All The Fabulous Beasts from the Undertow Press site, in both paperback or hardback editions.

Recommendation: The Wish Mechanics by Daniel Braum

My first experience of Daniel Braum's work was his story 'Palankar' in Nightscript III (which I interviewed him about here) and it was such a good piece of strange horror fiction that I had to go out and read more.

So I bought The Wish Mechanics as it was his latest collection, although upon reading the introduction I found out that the stories within are generally contemporaneous with those in his other collection, The Night Marchers. The tales in that volume are apparently more rooted in horror tropes and aesthetics; the stories in The Wish Mechanics are a more varied and eclectic bunch.

It starts with the wonderfully titled 'How to Make Love and Not Turn to Stone', a frankly brilliant story about a couple who live above a beach on which real-life basilisks roam. It's a beautifully handled concept, powering a narrative concerned not so much with the supernatural creatures and their ability to petrify, but with relationships and what we might risk by getting involved with another person. With the various ways our hearts can be hardened. As is common with many of the best stories here, the supernatural element is at once 'real' within the world of the story and metaphorical, not so much a 'symbol' as a concrete representation of ideas the author wants to evoke.

'How to Make Love...' pairs nicely with the final story in The Wish Mechanics, 'This Is The Sound Of Your Dreams Dying'. This is another tale about relationships, both how they begin and how they end. The uncanny element starts as a backdrop for the characters' emotions and dilemmas, but moves centre-stage with some powerfully creepy scenes.

In between these two pieces there are plenty of other gems. 'An American Ghost In Zurich', as well as having (again) a brilliant title, is another immensely impressive story. It is based around a particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider, and the scientific concepts it plays with—alternative worlds, retro-causation, quantum entanglement—are used to give it feeling of strangeness, of almost Borgesian other-worldliness, that's as strong & powerful as that which traditional genre tropes can evoke. It gains bonus points from me for featuring alternative-dimension songs from a band I love, School of Seven Bells.

Elsewhere, 'Tea in the Sahara' is a more old-fashioned styled story about wishes and fate and three sisters; 'The Canopy Crawlers' a 'straight sci-fi' story full of invention (which shows Braum can sure as hell write action, too), and 'The Water Dragon' takes us back to strange fiction again. There's further sci-fi of a dystopian nature in the title story, and the end of the world (literal or otherwise) in another favourite of mine, 'The Truth About Planet X'. Plus there's plenty of other fine stories to savour, too.

So, overall The Wish Mechanics is a varied, eclectic, accomplished set of short stories, with a number of genuine classics within its pages. Looks like I'll be buying The Night Marchers too then.

The Wish Mechanics (UK | US)

Recommendation: Ornithology by Nicholas Royle

As a boy, I used to go birdwatching quite a lot. All these years later, it's hard to tell how interested in it I actually was, but certainly enough to drag my dad to Wales at some godawful hour in the morning to see red kites (now I see them every so often without any effort, from a train window around Kettering station). But then teenage obsessions took over—music and books and drinking and whathaveyou, and I stopped. I still have an interest, though, and it would annoy me even today if I got a good look at a bird and couldn't work out what it was.

And it annoys me in stories when writers get birds wrong.

Nicholas Royle doesn't get birds wrong in Ornithology, a collection of uncanny stories each containing a literal or metaphorical bird. When he describes birds and their habitats (from wild cliff edges to dingy cities) he gets them very, very right. He refers in one of the stories to a bird book I still own, which was all about identifying birds not by hard to see details but their overall 'look' and character—an idea which has the unfortunate term 'jizz'. But it's a concept that seems to inform Royle's descriptions of birds; he captures their character:

"After the snow melted, the redwings appeared... If I approached, they would flap up into the lower branches, revealing the red flash under the wing, like a handbag clutched beneath the arm." 'The Blue Notebooks'

But much like my teenage self, let's move on from the birds to the stories.

See, I'm not making it up.

If you've ever read any of his work before, you'll know Royle is a hugely accomplished short story writer; his work word-perfect, artfully constructed, sparse but beautiful: a Raymond Carver of the uncanny. As such, Ornithology is hugely satisfying, a showcase for Royle's talents and for the short story form itself. The avian theme doesn't limit the range or variety of the pieces, and not all feature literal birds: there's the swallows from Ovid, the owl from Bladerunner, military aircraft named after birds of prey.

I don't want to say too much about the plots or themes of the individual tales, for fear of ruining their impact. The majority are short, their gaps and ambiguities as meticulously crafted as their prose. Each detail is telling, but each omission, each elision is too. They're stories you have to actively read, rather than let wash over you.

And they are nearly all superb. My favourites were 'Jizz', 'Unfollow', 'The Lure', 'The Blue Notebooks' and the absolutely sublime 'Pink', a tale about a birdwatcher trying to spot a bullfinch, a situation which in a few short pages Royle spins into something disturbingly surreal.

One of the short story collections of the year, in my view.

Worth saying too that Ornithology is a beautifully produced book from Confingo publishing, with sparse but attractive cover design that echoes Royle's prose style, and small pictures of the eggs of different bird species at the start of every story.

Buy here.