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I had a dream 8 Jan 2022 8:01 AM (3 years ago)

 Simply that...

I had a dream

Not One of Us - Liesel 4 Oct 2020 3:54 AM (4 years ago)

 

Dahlia 13 Jul 2020 3:33 AM (4 years ago)

As I sit at my kitchen table, leg jitterbugging with its usual anxiety, trying to work on a short story about giant typewriters and rotting meat, and despairing, I am proud to have at least accomplished the nurture and growth of this gorgeous flower.

Finally living up to my name.

When a Book is an Event 28 Jun 2020 6:37 AM (4 years ago)

Regular readers (hello, Bestwick) will know I've posted about all of the books I've read this year. As I was ahead with my blog posts, you may not have noticed (but I did tell you about it, Bestwick) that I haven't been adding new blogs. I lost the joy. First off, I read two books that I really enjoyed (The Fears of Life & Death by Belinda Bauer and Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle by Paul McDonald), then I read a piece of classic science fiction (The Changeling by AE Van Vogt) which didn't really work for me, and finally I got stuck with three books (which, I'm not going to name). Then I lost the joy of listing the books I was reading and it all became a chore.

Reading should never become a chore.

I'm probably, possibly, who the hell knows, not going to continue with reviewing each book I read. I might mention ones I really like, or I might cobweb everything. I am going to mention what I'm reading at the moment - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. I'm a huge Hunger Games fan. This is an event book for me. An eagerly anticipated, must savour book. I've only 5 chapters in and I already love it.

While savouring it, I also need to finish it within the week (oxymoron - hey, I'm the only moron here), as I'm back in the office on Monday July 6th and don't want to cart a heavy book with me. I'm not certain I'll be able to cart the heavy weight that is me. Thankfully, I'm only in the actual office (I've been working from home since mid March) for two days each week in July, no word on the beast that is August yet. The company are providing parking spaces so people don't have to use public transport (only a handful of the 300 staff are going back - aren't I the lucky one!), which is great only I don't have access to a car. Of all the things I regret in my life, it's not learning to drive. Well, I tried but it was disastrous and I didn't continue. If you're reading this, if you can't drive and your nerves aren't shot, please take lessons. If you can afford them. Don't steal a car and practice because that is frowned upon.

Catch you later, I'm heading back to Coriolanus Snow and the tenth annual Hunger Games.

Read 2020 - 63 - Interzone #278 12 Jun 2020 9:09 AM (4 years ago)

Interzone #278, Nov-Dec 2018

Bit behind with this issue - she understates.

There's an excellent editorial by Tim Lees about how we need true voices in fiction. The first story in the issue, Soldier's Things is also by Tim Lees. The landmarks were familiar, but I'd no sense of geography, how one place fitted with another. A soldier returned from a war that he may or may not have experienced, returned to a world that isn't quite what he remembers. A clever look at how we cannot always trust our own memories.

Xenophobia is the undercurrent in Doomed Youth by Fiona Moore, in a story about a giant ant invasion. "Oh her again. ANT-THEM! for Doomed Youth). As it turns out, the ants aren't really the threat here.

A car's memory is transplanted into a human body in Eliza Ruslander's decidedly weird Heart of an Awl.

Now I need to check on the gammon, which is slowly boiling on the stove and is probably the size of a pea by now.

Read 2020 - 62 - The Pretence by Ramsey Campbell 10 Jun 2020 2:21 AM (4 years ago)

I worried that whatever book followed Frances Hardinge's 'A Skinful of Shadows' was going to struggle after the memory of that book. I needn't have worried. I very much enjoyed the intriguing The Pretence by Ramsey Campbell, a novella published by PS Publishing back in 2013. We probably picked this copy up at World Fantasy Con where it was released in 2013. It is shameful how long books have remained on my to-read-list.

The world was supposed to end at midnight. Only it didn't. Did it?

At first read, I thought The Pretence an Invasion of the Body Snatchers deal, but it was more about how real are we, and is all of this an illusion. It kept me intrigued throughout, there was a claustrophobic atmosphere to it. Highly recommend.

Story Sale - Liesel 8 Jun 2020 5:49 AM (4 years ago)

I am delighted to announce that my short story, Liesel, has been accepted by John Benson of Not One of Us for a future issue, possibly October 2020.

Here be an extract:

Read 2020 - 61 - A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge 7 Jun 2020 1:05 AM (4 years ago)

Oh my! Frances Hardinge is one of the best writers working today. She is also an absolutely delightful person and I declared, after finishing A Skinful of Shadows that I'd like to live under her hat. I'm aware that I wouldn't actually fit. This beautiful hardback is going on my forever shelf - most of my books either go to dust-hell ie the Bestwick's study or to the charity shop. This was a Christmas present from my Bestwick.

Lord Fellmotte was not a man. He was an ancient committee. A parliament of deathly rooks in a dying tree.

Sent to live with her father's family as a servant, a house haunted by the Fellmotte ancestors, Makepiece finds she has a half-brother, James, and over the years they try to escape the family and its estate. This is a richly beautiful book full of intrigue and danger, adventure and plots and both nasty and loving ghosts. Most of all we have Bear. By page 26, Hardinge had already broken my heart.

Read it.

Five million stars.

Read 2020 - 60 - Chapbook & Magazine 4 Jun 2020 1:00 AM (4 years ago)

We have another two books for your delight, this time ones I read (see previous post - or don't). I'm counting them as one as the first was #98 in the mini set of chapbooks, We all here stories in the dark, this time the story was The Curtain Falls. I can't really class one story as a whole book read - well certainly not when I am racing through books this year. Other years and I would totally class it. This time Shearman visits the death of an old actor.

The other book - a magazine - is Black Satic #71, published in Sept 2019, so I'm not so far behind with this one.

Linda Rucker's column proved topical. Is it just me, or does the world seem more cosmically horrifying than usual? Oh, you sweet summer child. Ralph Robert Moore's column featured sequels and dentists.

This issue offered my second Sarah Read story of recent weeks (the other one mentioned in the post before last). Diamond Saw offered shades of Alice Lowe's Prevenge. Excellent read. Steven Shiel offered the incredibly creepy Residue. I almost left this story at the mention of a thumbnail. I was eating breakfast. After the death of her brother, Angie has to clean out his flat, but it is full of the stains of him.

I knew that I had not 'settled him in'. I had never seen someone look so unsettled in my life. Sean Padriac Birnie's  Other Houses is a trippy tale of a house, of a family's ghosts and their history, of life after the death of a father.

Read 2020 - 59 - Two Books 2 Jun 2020 8:17 AM (4 years ago)

This is a sad post.

This is a post about books that I couldn't get into.

This doesn't mean the books were bad, far from it I'm sure, but they didn't hook me, my mind wandered too much, and we failed to connect with each other.

The first was the above collection, a beautiful looking hardback, that I am sure is well worth your time. It's surreal. Very surreal. I'll the passing it onto a charity shop and hopefully it will find an owner who loves it.

The second book was a steampunk novel. I'd tried to read it once before and failed. We were not meant to be friends. I'm also not a big steampunk fan.

Read 2020 - 58 - Pareidolia edited by James Everington and Dan Howarth 31 May 2020 7:47 AM (4 years ago)

This is the third anthology from James Everington and Dan Howarth, the previous two were The Hyde Hotel and Imposter Syndrome. These anthologies deserve much more recognition and I look forward to their next (pick me, pick me). I was lucky enough to have a story in their first anthology.

Published in July 2019 (and signed by James Everington and Charlotte Bond), the anthology starts with the excellent Into the Wood by Sarah Read. A homeless girl survives by couch-surfing, when she meets a new man she moves in with him and his daughter, Thea. A disturbing story where the house wants to trap you in its walls. Really enjoyed, and my favourite of the anthology.

What can you do about a man like that? by Tim Major. An intelligent and subtle story about sound engineer Molly and the movie star who she once knew. The silence of an empty room speaks volumes.

The Butchery Tree by G.V. Anderson echoes Sarah Read's story. In a time of clans and princes, a butchery tree, where once boys hung, becomes a table. Madness and delusion stem from a terrible act that leads to one as vile. Anderson's words are delicious. That's all he had time for after pulling the boys' innards out, leaving them to swing by their necks, their broken ribs clacking like wind chimes.

The Lens of Dying by Charlotte Bond is a creeping, haunting tale of past sins revisiting. House of Faces by Andrew David Barker is a sad story about the aftermath of an apocalypse. Poignant given current circumstances. He didn't answer. He couldn't, he was made of windows and dirt. A gut punch of an ending.

Although I preferred the previous two anthologies, Pareidolia is still an excellent read.

Read 2020 - 57 - The Migration by Helen Marshall 28 May 2020 3:01 AM (4 years ago)

Just after finishing my read of The Migration by Helen Marshall, I read on social media that the film/TV rights had just sold. Exciting news and I look forward to the finished piece. I picked up this book in Waterstones' just after its release. It's shameful that it took me this long to read it, but, like many of my friends, we have a shit-ton of books on our to-read piles*

A new disease transforming young people, a quest for a new identity, the changes in adolescence, with parallels of previous plagues. Will pass this book onto my niece and nephew.

*I have been working hard on reducing my to-read stack this year and have gotten it down to 63. Now I'm panicking I don't have enough books.

Read 2020 - 56 - Octoberland by Thana Niveau 25 May 2020 12:09 AM (4 years ago)

Octoberland is the second collection that I have read by Thana Niveau this year (not ever - I read her mini collection from Black Shuck books a couple of years ago).

Having read From Hell to Eternity earlier this year, I was excited when Dom, my number generator, picked this collection for me to read.* Released by PS Publishing in 2018, it has a superb introduction by Alison Littlewood, and is signed to my Bestwick. We did have words as to why most books he buys are signed to only him, while books I buy are signed to both of us, which also brought up the incident where I was signing at an anthology release and asked him to go along the line to get it signed for me and most signed it to him. A wee domestic.

The stories (excellent, of course). In Going to the Sun Mountain Lis is obsessed with the sharpness of letters, with numbers, and with never being touched, which can cause her to rub her skin raw. This is a journey of two sisters, of how one controls the other, of a fatality that will eventually consume them. It made a sound like a broken song when it hit the rocks.

In the atmospheric The Face, a face in the rocks behind a frozen waterfall in Wales leads to a tense and disturbing revelation. We have torture porn in Guinea Pig Girl where a man is obsessed with a girl in the 'guinea pig' movies and how they become too much even for him.

But I didn't like the way the palm trees tossed their heads as though they were laughing, or the way the darkened openings of temples seemed to watch us like eyes. Oh my, Xibala, has Mayan Gods, a terrifying journey through an unknown wonderland and insect overlords. Tense, tense, tense. I've only just unclenched my limbs.

Emma is left to babysit a six-year-old who can see things that live in the dark spaces in The Things That Aren't There. A short and brutal tale. As an aside, I looked after four-year old twins and their young brother when I was 9 or 10 (the 70s man) and nearly burnt their house down.

The Queen is absolutely horrifying. After the violent death of her partner, Angie becomes one with the bees, transformed by grief. This story sang to and stung my fears, such a hard (but excellent) read. The fantastical Tentacular Spectacular (a title worthy of Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge) sees Cthuluian (forgive me if I have that wrong) monsters, a stage show and corsets. Terrifyingly wonderful.

I'm sure I'm not mentioning every story, but by jove, I seem to be mentioning most. This truly is as spectacular as From Hell to Eternity. 

First and Last and Always is a fresh take on a love spell story. Bad Faith is a collaboration with the late Joel Lane. Told in the form of letters Vile Earth, to Earth Resign is a story of a blossoming romance during a zombie apocalypse. There is a fatalistic vein running through this story, a feeling of the inevitable. I love stories that are told in letter, diary or report form.

Two Five Seven is a haunting story of a little girl's voice trapped in the radio and a deadly family secret. I recall Thana reading this at World Fantasy Con back in 2013. We have another zombie story with Sweeter than to Wake. More visceral this time. Death Walks En Pointe is Niveu's Black Swan.  A tale of murder and maiming backstage at the ballet. Excellent stuff.

Finally we have the title story Octoberland, a poignant tale of siblings, of memories, of a horror that occurred during their childhood. A wonderful ending for a rollercoaster ride that kept climbing up and up with no dips between.

The cover art is by the wonderful Daniele Serra.

Roll on her next collection.


*I am also grateful when Dom picks a hardback book during lockdown as I know I won't have to tote it about in my bag. I'm more of a paperback girl. 

Read 2020 - 55 - Caught by Harlan Coben 23 May 2020 6:46 AM (4 years ago)

I am a big fan of Harlan Coben - I may have said this before. I especially love the Myron Bolitar books and it is apt to mention them here. Windsor Horne Lockwood III appears in Caught three times, and because of my previous association with him (from the Bolitar books), I found his presence a little distracting from the storyline. Also a little convenient.

This is a book about forgiveness. A teenager is missing, a suspected pedophile has escaped justice, and a group of ex-college buddies are being blackmailed. There are many haunting secrets in this twisting and turning story, multiple threads wearing a complicated tapestry.

I enjoyed and never thought I'd say this - it could do with less Win.

Read 2020 - 54 - Vixen by Rosie Garland 21 May 2020 5:30 AM (4 years ago)

I stole this book from my Simon, it is also signed to him. I believe (she says, trusting her memory) that he picked up Vixen by Rosie Garland at an event in Manchester near Heaton Park, where they were both guests. This is circa 2013/2014. I wish I'd read this book before.

Isn't the cover beautiful? Oh, and the words inside are a delight.

In 1347, as the Black Death sweeps England, we find a god-fearing populace, those who look for redemption in saints and relics. A new priest gains the attention of Anne, who is looking to make a match similar to that of her friend Margret (who is the 'wife' of the priest in the neighbouring parish). Life proves harsher than expected and joy is found in unexpected places. Vixen is a fable, a love story between Anne and her Maid in a time of cruel men and devastating disease. It is also very much a tale of modern women.

Highly recommend.

Read 2020 - 53 - Ormeshadow by Priya Sharma 18 May 2020 5:15 AM (4 years ago)

Any book by Priya Sharma is going to be a great book. And, I'm not saying that because she's my best-bestest-best friend (although she is). I'm not saying that because her alter-ego is Priya Poppins even though it is, or because she has a new nickname, one not as kind, Cruella.

This is a gentle (and yet brutal) journey from the richness of Bath to relative poverty in the shadow of the Great Orme, the hill above the welsh town of Llandudno. It is a story of grief, or hardship, of a brutal man and deceitful woman, it is of a boy learning to become a man. This is a fable of discovery, not just of dragons and riches, but that there are more important things in life than wealth, that once those things are gone they cannot be brought back.

Read it.


You may note that #52 is missing. That is because I haven't finished reading it. It's a book called The Now Habit and it's a self-help book to stop you procrastinating and guess what..? I'm procrastinating in reading it. This is not being done for comic effect.

Read 2020 - 51 - The Big-Headed People by D.F. Lewis 16 May 2020 4:00 AM (4 years ago)

My copy of D.F. Lewis's chapbook, The Big-Headed People, is dated 19.1.18 and signed by Des. I imagine I bought it shortly after or around this date. It contains the title story, and four other shorter tales.

These are dream-like stories of a place where it is a crime to slim-down your head, where things may or may not be real, of night time picnics and circuses, of hauntings. It is a superb little collection by one of the genre's finest.

Read 2020 - 50 - The Storm King by Brendan Duffy 14 May 2020 4:45 AM (4 years ago)

I have no idea where I picked up The Storm King by Brendan Duffy. It's a hardback (I'm not overly fond of them) and it's a North American copy. Perhaps it was in a bag at a convention or on a freebie table or it suddenly materialised one day on my to read shelf and figured it would be a good, dusty place to live. Whatever its origins it somersaulted from the dust and landed in my lap as my next read.

Nate McHale returns to his home town, he is a surgeon, a family man, but all these things go by the wayside when he returns to the small town and becomes reacquainted with old friends. It is almost as if he is another person. He is in town for the funeral of his ex-girlfriend, who went missing 14 years before. Secrets are beginning to unbury and sometimes you can't even trust yourself.

An enjoyable read, a good setting and decent mix of characters, three stars from me.

Read 2020 - 49 - Sanctuary by Robert Edric 12 May 2020 4:31 AM (4 years ago)

Sanctuary is the second book by Edric that I have read this year (the previous being The London Satyr) and I thoroughly enjoyed every word, fair raced through it. After loving the previous book so much, the Bestwick bought this for me in January. He's a love.

Read 2020 - 48 - New Music for Old Rituals by Tracy Fahey 8 May 2020 12:00 AM (4 years ago)

I bought New Music for Old Rituals at Sledge Lit in 2018 (don't kick me if I've got the date wrong - it was definitely a Derby gig)* and it is signed by the fair lady herself. Tracy did an excellent reading at the launch, who couldn't listen to that fantastic Irish lilt all day. Onto the book, because unless she's reading it to you personally, that reading isn't going to matter to you.

These are fairy tales rooted in the everyday, folklore hidden within your mother's washing or in the outside loo. I just made those analogies up, Tracy's are far more interesting. The collection begins with Under the Whitethorn, a quiet tale of grief, fairy wishes and the often catastrophic result of both. In The Crow War we have an ancient Irish goddess, a festival with crow masks and liquorice in candy floss (if I read that right and if I did - how disgusting!). There is a sinister truth beneath the pageantry.

The Changeling brings us a mix of emotions. For one brief moment, we have humourous revenge and then Fahey offers a devastating gut punch. My favourite story in the collection is Dark It Was Inside. A retelling of Little Red Cap travelling from Ireland to Germany. I'd like to see this story really examined as a novella.

In the heart of Dublin, a flourishing metropolis, there is a b&b just to the left of normality, where all new employees of the company stay. What Lies Beneath is both claustrophobic and a swathe of emptiness - a quiet, unnerving horror. There is a gentleness to many of these stories, followed by a tearing of the throat.

In the beautiful The Graveyard of the Lost an American writing a thesis on graveyards/cemeteries in Ireland comes upon a story of a mermaid's last resting place. Then in the excellently titled The World's More Full of Weeping, we have actual fairies, and a warning that they are quick to anger.

The Witch That Was Hurt with its curio of shops and curious shopkeepers reminded me a little of Effie & Brenda and the cast of characters in Paul Marr's Never the Bride. It's a story of the harm we can do to others.

An excellent second collection.

*wish I was in Derby now and in the fabulous Quad. I love that the conventions are held in the same place so there's no hunting for rooms (okay, sometimes a little hunting) and everything is familiar. I'm a creature of habit.

Read 2020 - 47 - Running with Scissors by Augusten Burrows 7 May 2020 4:29 AM (4 years ago)

I hate it when I can't get on with a book; they're supposed to be my best friends. Running with Scissors is a memoir by Augusten Burroughs. I picked this copy up at a charity shop in December 2018. I read about a third and stopped once I got to the rape by, though not called it in the book, a paedophile. This book is not quirky. It is not fun. It is highly disturbing.

Run away from it.

Read 2020 - 46 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty 4 May 2020 4:16 AM (4 years ago)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Caitlin Doughty aka Ask a Mortician is brilliant. The Bestwick bought me Smoke Gets in Your Eyes last Christmas, alongside another of her books (name currently escapes me). I've been desperate to read it, but am strictly following my number generator guidelines so that books don't end up on the shelf for years. Although, some have been and despite my best efforts (not really trying all that hard), they continue to do so.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Doughty's first book, details her early years in the Mortuary business, from when she joined a crematorium through to mortuary school. Interspersed are comments on death cultures across the world. I highly recommend this book.

If you haven't caught the Ask a Mortician blogs on You Tube, you should. They are full of wonderful death facts, historical and current.

Read 2020 - 45 - Arthur Miller's The Crucible 2 May 2020 3:55 AM (4 years ago)

I couldn't sleep.

After about five days of holiday, I'd ruined my sleep pattern with naps and too much caffeine. Wandering the lonely halls of my home, heading towards the only lit room, I found my husband sat hunched over his laptop, he too unable to sleep. I'd left the book I was reading in the dark of the living room and who knew what monsters were waiting down there - well possibly one slug that gets in every night and leads a slimy trail over my carpet. Git!

So, there I stood in the Bestwick's book lined study and did the unthinkable, I chose a book that a) wasn't on my to read pile/list and b) number generator hadn't chosen for me. I'm a rule breaker. Be afraid, be... a little wary.

Anyway, I read 'The Crucible' in a couple of hours. It is brilliant.

The End.

Read 2020 - 44 - Horror Stories by E Nesbit 30 Apr 2020 6:49 AM (4 years ago)

A collection of classic horror stories by childhood favourite E. Nesbit, author of The Railway Children and The Phoenix & The Carpet.

Inside we find tales of black magic, of ruined castles, ancient portraits and marble statues that walk, murderous plants and a mysterious and ghostly violet car. I enjoyed most of the stories.

Read 2020 - 43 - Split Tongues by Kristi DeMeester 27 Apr 2020 12:00 AM (4 years ago)

Oh my goodness, when did I buy this delightful-looking chapbook? I've enjoyed many of Kristi DeMeester's short stories, and recall having missed out on buying her chapbook, and then, they announced there were some proof/extra copies for sale and I bagged one. Chapbooks by Dim Shores come (or at least the ones I've experienced have) with a print copy of the cover and stickers. Who doesn't love stickers? As the wee book is dated 2016, I'm guessing I purchased it later that year or early 2017. It came with a copy of the anthology Looming Low. 

Fantastic photography is provided inside and out by Natalia Drepina. Reminded me of an autumnal Midsommar.

The chapbook contains two short stories Split Tongues and The Dream Eater, and are connected in theme by dreams and tongues. These are a trippy journey through lost faith and disturbing romance.

Read the book in an hour or so while enjoying the April sunshine in the front garden.