Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102746
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
Autumn Chill - Richard L. Tierney Inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Tierney's poetry has been collected in Dreams and Damnations, The Doom Prophet and One Other, the Arkham House volume of Collected Poems, Nightmares and Visions, The Blob That Gobbled Abdul and Other Poems and Songs and Savage Menace and Other Poems of Horror. S.T. Joshi has described Tierney as "one of the leading weird poets of his generation." The Lemon in the Pool - Simon Kurt Unsworth "In the summer of 2009, I went on holiday with my family - the extended version. As well as my wife and son, Wendy and Ben, there were my parents, my sister and her husband, and my mother-in-law all sharing a villa in Moreira, Spain. "One of the delights of the holiday was having a private pool, and seeing Ben enjoy himself in the water, where over the course of seven days he learned to swim. Perhaps even more fun was seeing his joy when things started to appear in the pool on a daily basis - a tomato, a lemon, two courgettes, three green chillies. "I have no idea where they came from, but I suspect that children in a neighbouring villa were playing a joke on us and Ben loved it. It got to be one of the most exciting things about the holiday, waiting to see what would appear that day. After the appearance of the courgettes, my sister said, 'This'll find its way into one of Simon's stories,' and everyone laughed and someone (I think my mum) said, 'Even he couldn't write a story about this.' "Mum, if it was you that said that, this story is entirely your fault." Losenef Express - Mark Samuels About the story, Mark Samuels explains: "I think most fans of horror will recognise at once the late, great American author upon whom the central character of this tale is based (or, perhaps more accurately, filtered through my imagination). We never met, although I did once catch sight of him across a room at the 1988 World Fantasy Convention in London and, prompted by curiosity, took a hasty, half-obscured photograph. "A number of my friends knew him well, and I regret I myself never had the chance to do so. Sadly, I only discovered his brilliant work years after his untimely death." As Red as Red - Caitlín R. Kiernan "I don't know that 'As Red as Red' had any single source of inspiration," says Kiernan. "It coalesced from numerous experiences and accounts of the supernatural in Rhode Island. Also, I very much wanted to write a non-conventional vampire story which was also (and maybe more so) a werewolf story and a ghost story. "It's also true that I was just coming off having finished The Red Tree, and, in some ways, 'As Red as Red' is an extended footnote to that novel. I was still trying to get The Red Tree out of my system."
Author: Trisha Telep
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1849011796
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 655
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Book Description
You never forget your first time with a vampire. Whether reaquainting yourself with some of your favourite, sexy creatures of the night or getting bitten by the vampire romance phenomenon for the very first time, let the biggest and brightest names in the business help you explore your dark side. Witness the bewildering array of complex vampire codes of conduct, dark ritual and dating practices as they chat up the locals and engage in the most erotic encounters you will sink your teeth into this side of un-Death. Because vampires never really die, do they?
Author: Steve Rasnic Tem
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102622
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 15
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Book Description
The author reveals the following story "...began with a dreadful image at the end of a dream. I couldn't remember the other details of that dream, but I was determined to find out where that image might have come from."
Author: Michael Marshall Smith
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102614
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 23
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Book Description
Taken from The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22, edited by Stephen Jones. As Smith recalls: "This story came about in the simplest way, the way I always enjoy most - something happening in real life that makes you think 'What if?' "Our household gets a lot of its food via an online delivery service, and one day when I was unpacking what had just been dropped at our house I gradually realised there was something...not quite right about the contents of the bags. "There's two things that are strange about that experience. The first is that - given that every household is likely to buy at least some things in common - you don't realise straight away that you've been given the wrong shopping. You don't immediately think 'This is wrong', more like . . . 'This is weird'. The second is how personal it is, gaining accidental access to this very tangible evocation of some other family's life. You can't help but wonder about the people the food was really destined for. "In real life, I just called up the delivery guy and got it sorted out: but in fiction, you might tackle things slightly differently . . ."
Author: Nicholas Royle
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102436
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 18
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Book Description
The Reunion" is based on actual events," reveals the author, "but the story only really came into focus for me when I was invited to contribute to Ellen Datlow's Poe anthology. Poe is brilliant. I was at a conference recently where a teacher revealed that she had read Poe's 'The Black Cat' to a lecture theatre full of schoolchildren. She switched off all the lights and used a torch to read by. A number of parents lodged complaints, which she took as a measure of the event's success. My tale is inspired by a different Poe story.
Author: Simon Kurt Unsworth
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102401
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
When I was first asked to contribute to Exotic Gothic 3 (which was to feature Gothic-influenced stories in non-Gothic environments), I agreed without really thinking about it," Unsworth explains, "and then spent a long time struggling, trying to work out how, precisely, I was going to manage it or quite how to make a start. "I knew what I wanted to do, sort of, but not exactly how to do it, so one day alarmingly close to the deadline I did a fun thing: I freewheeled through Google. Using a small document about Zambian myths and cultures I found online (I set the story in Zambia for no reason other than an old family friend lives there and it seemed exotic in Gothic terms), I used one Zambian word from it as a search term and read what came up, took one intriguing Zambian term from the search results and searched for that, etc, and disappeared into Google's merry depths. "I ended up with an academic paper about a particular myth, a travel blog about a sort of beer made from corn and a weird little 'my God's better than your God' blog by a kid in Africa, and somewhere in the middle of that, the story appeared.
Author: Robert Shearman
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
I don't like writing at home much," admits Shearman. "Home is a place for sleeping and eating and watching afternoon game shows on TV. There are too many distractions. So, years ago, I decided I'd only write first drafts in art galleries. "And the best of them all is the National Gallery, in London, a pigeon's throw from Nelson's Column. I can walk around there with my notebook, thinking up stories - and if I get bored, there are lots of expensive pictures to look at. Perfect. "A lot of those paintings, however, have angels in them. They're all over the place, wings raised, halos gleaming - perching on clouds, blowing trumpets, hovering around the Virgin Mary as if they're her strange naked childlike bodyguards. And I began to notice. That, whenever the writing is going well, the angels seemed happy, and would smile at me. And whenever the words weren't coming out right, when I felt sluggish, when I thought I'd rather take off and get myself a beer, they'd start to glare. "I wrote this story in the National Gallery. Accompanied by a lot of glaring angels. Enjoy.
Author: Barbara Roden
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 147210241X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 27
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Book Description
"My cousin-by-marriage Sean Lavery, knowing my love for weird and outré websites, sent me a link to the Dark Roasted Blend site (www.darkroastedblend.com)," reveals the author, "where I found several pages featuring photographs of abandoned places. "My imagination was fired by pictures taken at Chippewa Lake Park in Medina, Ohio, which opened in 1878 and was abandoned in 1978, with the buildings and rides left to rot where they stood, and I began looking around for some information about the park. "I've always had a fondness for amusement parks, ever since I was a child visiting Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition with my father and my brother: an annual trip which was one of the red-letter days on my childhood calendar. The photographs of Chippewa Lake Park were equal parts eerie and sad, for anyone who has ever thrilled to the sights and sounds of a midway, and the story sprang, almost fully-formed, into my head; one of the few times that's happened." To see some of the pictures that inspired the following story, visit: www.defunctparks.com/parks/OH/ChippewaLake/chippewa-lake.htm.
Author: Christopher Fowler
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102606
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 21
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Book Description
'Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside' came about firstly because I was commissioned to write a story for the World Horror Convention souvenir book and, as the event was to take place in Brighton, it seemed logical to set a tale on the South coast of England. "I had written a fantasy novel, Calabash, some years earlier, hinting at the dark madness of such seaside towns, which are the antithesis of their Mediterranean counterparts. I thought of the depressing Morrissey song "Every Day is Like Sunday", which captures the awfulness of English resorts. "Coincidentally, Kim Newman and I were discussing the inherent creepiness of pantomime dames, and I decided it was time to give vent to my horror of these coastal pleasure domes. I wish I'd thought to include screaming gangs of hen-nighters as well. And I thought it was a nice touch to have everyone in the story telling the hero to 'fuck off' until he finally does.
Author: Angela Slatter
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472102665
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
The Pier - Thana Niveau "The pier exists," explains Thana Niveau, "and yes, it is decorated with strange plaques and cryptic memorials, although none are quite as morbid as I've invented. "It's mostly Clevedon Pier, which is where the story was born. I was reading the plaques one day and a couple of the quirkier ones made me wonder. What if they weren't written by the living to remember the dead at all, but were instead a channel for voices from somewhere else? "Somerset is the original Wicker Man country, after all. It's a place rich in pagan tradition and many of its strange rituals are lost to time. Or are they?" Fallen Boys - Mark Morris "Porthellion Quay, which features in this story, is a real place - only the name is different," says Morris. "My family and I spent a lovely, sunny day there one summer a few years ago during a Cornish holiday. "I love Cornwall not only because it's breathtakingly beautiful, but also because it is wild and rugged and desolate, and because past echoes and ancient legends seem to seep out of the very rock. It's a landscape which lends itself perfectly to the kinds of ghost stories I love, of which it seems there are far too few these days - stories which are not cosy and comforting and familiar, but which are dark and insidious, and evoke a crawling sense of dread." Lavender and Lychgates - Angela Slatter "'Lavender and Lychgates' is the second last story in Sourdough and Other Stories," recalls Slatter. "I had ideas I wanted to continue to explore - consequences of actions in an earlier story in the collection - and I had a picture in my head of a young girl in a graveyard. "Many years ago, a friend had told me a garbled tale of lilacs and lychgates, the details of which I cannot remember. I managed to garble it even more, and I couldn't get the words 'lavender and lychgates' out of my head, nor the image of shadows swirling in the apex of a lychgate roof above the heads of people passing out underneath. I also wondered what happens when you hang onto a memory too tightly." With the Angels - Ramsey Campbell "My fellow clansman Paul Campbell will remember the birth of this tale," he reveals. "At the Dead Dog party after the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, someone was throwing a delighted toddler into the air. I was ambushed by an idea and had to apologise to Paul for rushing away to my room to scribble notes. The result is here."
