GSFWC charity anthology

The venerable Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle has assembled an anthology of short stories to raise funds to support charities helping those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The charities include: The Trussell Trust (Foodbanks UK wide) Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) Simon Community Scotland (Homelessness in Scotland) Edited by EM Faulds and featuring art by […]

Turning back to black

Yet another maundering on horror fiction, this time occasioned by my finishing the first horror novel in years that I’d say, on balance, I both enjoyed and found mostly successful. The book in question was Adam Nevill’s award-winning, The Ritual, and…yeah, interesting. I’m not going to go into a whole of detail here, but will touch […]

Charlie says…hands off!

One of the risks of being the kind of writer who has more ideas than they can focus on at any one time (and that pretty much is *all* writers, right?) is that sooner or later one of your really good back burner ideas will get picked up and used by someone else. Their treatment […]

Horror, Eureka!

Earlier this year I was moaning about my dissatisfaction with contemporary horror fiction. It was a bit of an inarticulate thrash around the subject to be honest. I just wasn’t able to put my finger on why I rarely found horror fiction never to be satisfying. Thank goodness, then, for Nina Allen. Over on her […]

Oh, The Horror!

Don’t know if I mentioned this or not, but I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about contemporary horror. The following is an attempt to work out why, and – being a rummage around inside my brain – may well be doomed to being malformed and half-baked. So, apologies in advance. I think it started […]