Absolutely beside myself to announce that my new short story collection, Hand-Me-Downs, will be published very soon. In the past, the contents of my collections have been a mixed bag of genres and styles selected from everything I’d published in the previous decade or so, but Hand-Me-Downs is different in a couple of ways. It’s my first purely horror collection and it’s the first time I’ve written the stories to a theme with the aim of having enough for a book.
What’s the theme? Read on…
A few years ago, I wrote a story, Thirty-Two Tumbling Teeth, which was published in Black Static. It was only in retrospect that I realised that what I’d been writing about in that story was a strange sort of reversed inheritance. I liked the idea and decided I wanted to explore more how ideas get passed on along with objects bequeathed by the dead to the living. How personality traits and emotional baggage are transferred along with physical things that we choose to inherit. And, because I don’t think there’s any point in writing scary stuff that doesn’t personally scare me, I also found myself taking a particular interest in the traits of toxic masculinity.
I made lists of items that are commonly inherited. Houses, furniture, art, etc. got me off the ground, but I quickly had dozens of increasingly odd ideas to choose from. Mundane items like tools, kitchen equipment or a garden gate. Grisly ones such as teeth, skin and bones. Was this madness? I started sending the stories out. They got published, so I took that as permission to carry on.
There are tales in Hand-Me-Downs of all kinds of personal connections. Of parents and children, of spouses and partners, friends and strangers. And, as I said, there’s a focus on toxic masculinty, which I see as both a societal infliction and a self-imposed purgatory. There are a fair few whiny men in these pages, Some of them deserving sympathy, others less so. Possibly the biggest horror for me is that even in 2026 so many men don’t believe they can change who they are, or even think they need to. There’s little personal growth in these pages, I’m afraid. It wouldn’t be as horrific if there was.
It took a few years to assemble enough of what I called my ‘strange bequest’ stories to form this collection. Some of them did pretty well – The Salted Bones was reprinted in Best Horror Of The Year and A Little Seasoning was shortlisted for the BSFA awards – but I kept a few back exclusively for this book, including a brand new novelette. About a (possibly) haunted cheese.
I can’t imagine a better publisher for this book than PS Publishing. I’m so very thankful to John Jarrold, my agent, for making it possible and to all of the PS team – Nicky, Pete, Marie, Mike and Tamsin – for turning Hand-Me-Downs into such a gorgeous artefact. And I’m especially grateful to the wonderful Vince Haig for his utterly stunning cover design. I’ve been wanting to work with Vince for years and am so delighted to have had the chance now.
I’m so proud of this book. It’s the kind of thing you’d leave to your kids, perhaps. With a warning scribbled inside.
Hand-Me-Downs is available to pre-order direct from PS Publishing in gorgeous trade paperback and signed limited edition hardcover formats. Or ask the bookstore of your choice.
ayeahmur 