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In Stone (Dark Cities, 2017, Titan Books Ed. Christopher Golden)
The brief for this anthology was something like “scary, haunting stories set in an urban environment”. Having spent twenty years of my life living in Newport, South Wales, I had plenty of inspiration! This story drew very heavily on times in my late teens and early twenties when I used to go into Newport drinking with friends. Even back then we weren’t really fans of nightclubs (apart from the epic Metro’s on a Tuesday evening which was Heavy Metal Night! There are many stories to tell about that, probably enough to fill another collection). Instead, we usually favoured a handful of pubs where we could have a few beers and a chat, and invariably we were on our way home before midnight. This story is set after midnight. The streets and alleys, the shadowy places and the hollow, haunted breaths through dark streets, all have a very particular place in my memory, and whilst writing I realised I was plumbing all the little fears I always had about the urban environment. Because sometimes, Newport didn’t feel particularly safe. It wasn’t often I’d walk home alone, but when I did it was quickly, via routes I knew. Places I didn’t know might hide anything. Urban legends whispered in smoky, dimly lit pubs resurfaced then, muttering back at you from deep shadows where rats scampered and claws scratched. The city at night was an altered place with different rules, and this story was a way to invite past me to take a step into that domain.
Trick of the Light (House of Fear, 2011, Solaris Ed. Jonathan Oliver)
I’ve written plenty of ghost stories, but this might have been my first actual haunted house tale. I wasn’t sure I could do it to begin with—haunted house stories seem to have a particular set of rules I wasn’t certain I’d be able to follow and also come up with something original—but I let the writing flow, and managed to not worry about rules much at all, and I came up with something I was very pleased with. It’s a gentle story, and sad, and quieter than much of my fiction (quietness is something I seem to be embracing more and more in my writing as I get older, and maybe that’s just age, or maybe experience. Whatever, I welcome it). I can’t remember an awful lot about the writing of this story—that tends to happen a lot, as I usually just launch in with an idea or a character and see where the story takes me. For me, short stories are very rarely planned. In this case, I believe I started with a place.
Clown’s Kiss (Blurring The Lines, 2015, Cohesion Press Ed. Marty Young)
I’m not an orderly person. I have a mess of files and folders on my computer for short stories. Short Stories Completed. Short Stories Bits & Pieces. Current Short Stories. There are duplications, partial files, ideas scattered all over the place, and often when I open a file I haven’t touched for five years, or sometimes fifteen years, it’s to see one line. That was the case with this: “It was the day the clowns moved in next door.” That single line no longer starts the story, but as is so often the case it was my way in, a line that conjured an image or a series of images that expanded and grew into something more. I’ve never been someone who’s afraid of clowns, but I had fun writing this story and trying to unsettle or frighten those people who are. It was also written as I was edging into middle age, and this might be one of the first stories I’ve written from an elderly person’s point of view. Maybe that fear of clowns comes as you get older. See more weird things you can’t explain. Like that old, tumbled-down house in the village that no one ever talks about . . .
Relics (Streets of Shadows, 2014, Alliteration Ink Ed. Maurice Broaddus & Jerry Gordon)
Well, not all my short fiction is quiet. This story begins with the line, “I know where you can buy a dragon’s cock.” Sometimes a single line is how a story starts for me, and when this line popped into my head I knew I had an interesting starting point that might open up into a whole new world. And when Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon approached me to write a story for their urban horror & magic anthology, I grabbed onto that first line—that dragon’s cock, if you will—and decided to see where the flight might take me. An adventure which, I have to admit, the producers and writers of Game of Thrones really missed out on. The result was Relics. And this is one of those occasions where a random thought—one line in this case—can lead to something much bigger. Because the short story Relics was the inspiration for my novel of the same name, and that novel became a trilogy. Sometimes that’s the way things go! One day over a beer I’ll tell you about how writing the novelisation of 30 Days of Night led to me and Chris Golden joking about “vampire Polar bears”, and how that resulted in us writing a trilogy of novels, which were then optioned by 20th Century Fox and they hired us to write the script! That story could only have ended better if they’d made the film, but as so often happens in Hollywood that didn’t come to pass. But I digress! Relics...yes, enjoy this adventure into London’s dark, sometimes furry and scaled underbelly.
Sole Survivors (Scaremongrel, 2015, Pigeonhole Ed. Anna Jean Hughes)
I met Anna Jean Hughes when she edited my novel Coldbrook for Arrow/Hammer. A couple of years later I was in London, and met Anna for a beer at Paddington station where she told me she was employed by a new venture, the excellent Pigeonhole. She asked me to write her a story, and Sole Survivors was the result. I can remember very specifically where the seed for this tale was planted. In 2010, 33 miners were trapped in a mine collapse in Chile. The world watched as efforts were made to rescue them, and after a couple of months they were pulled out, one by one, into the glare of sunlight and media attention. And because I’m a writer and I muse upon stuff like this, I remember thinking, What if 33 were trapped but 34 were rescued? It’s an intriguing idea and I did nothing with it for a while. But no idea is ever wasted, and when Anna asked me for a story the concept expanded and winnowed itself into Sole Survivors. I’m very fond of this story and I’ve revisited it several times, thinking about how it might be a novel or a movie, or perhaps even a TV series. Maybe one day.
Skin & Bone (The Doll Collection, 2015, Tor Ed. Ellen Datlow)
When Ellen Datlow asked me to write a story for her new anthology which at the time she was just calling “the doll collection” and which became—because of course it absolutely had to—The Doll Collection, I knew at once that I didn’t want to write a story about a haunted doll. Or even, a doll. Instead I had a good think about what dolls are, where they come from, and what it is about humans that makes us want to build representations of ourselves. Is it ego? Superstition? Art? Sometimes all three combine, but sometimes it’s something else entirely. Maybe race memory.
Strings (Adam’s Ladder, 2017, Written Backwards Ed. Michael Bailey & Darren Speegle)
The idea for the great anthology Adam’s Ladder was to examine how humanity might evolve in the near future, whether by our own hands, nature’s input, or something more mysterious. Now, I’ll get it out there up-front that I’m no scientist. Even so, I’m fascinated by science and often inspired by it—the weirder and more exotic, the better—and I’ve often spent time researching various scientific subjects to give my writing at least a sheen of realism (multiverse theory for Coldbrook, nanotech for my novella The Origin of Truth). With Strings I’ll admit that I let the idea of research slip a little and just went with it, looking for the horror in what we might find when we start trying to better ourselves with science, altering our destiny, our evolution, or even our own realities. Sometimes, Here Be Monsters.
Strange Currents (Innsmouth Nightmares, 2015, PS Publishing Ed. Lois H Gresh)
This is one of those stories I can’t remember an awful lot about. It happens. Sometimes they come with a splash and a hit, and they’re usually the ones I remember. Sometimes they’re a worker, a tale that is more dream-like than a memory of something solid that really happened. So yes, someone in a lifeboat (and it’s not the first time I’ve started a story this way), strange shapes in the ocean beneath and around him, and the hope—and perhaps the fear—that he is about to be saved.
A Man Walking His Dog (Phantoms, 2018, Titan Books Ed. Marie O’Regan)
I should write a companion story to this called, “A Jogger”. You know what I mean. Bodies found in woodland by a man walking his dog or a jogger, and it’s too obvious to write a story about that man or that jogger actually being the murderer, isn’t it? This was a fun, quite gentle, sad story to write, exploring my love of dogs and the countryside, and it’s partly inspired by an incident that happened close to me, the discovery of the body of a man who’d gone missing from a nearby village. He was found in woodland just off my local canal towpath, after having been missing for several days. I honestly can’t remember how he was found or by whom, but knowing the canal as well as I do I suspect it probably was a jogger or someone walking their dog. There’s a bench in place there now with a plaque dedicated to the dead man, it’s well-kept and wellused, and it’s such a sad monument to someone’s life. So this story is partly inspired by that, but it’s also about getting older, and maybe even accepting more strangeness into your life. I’m in my early fifties now, and my agent has noticed that I’m writing more and more about the processes of ageing, and the effects it has upon us. It’s not something I do consciously, but I guess it’s natural.
Embers (Nightmare Magazine, 2014, Ed. John Joseph Adams)
I guess in some ways this is another story about ageing, but it’s also about ghosts from the past, and revisiting old haunts, and old memories of happier times. It’s one of those stories that is informed by a couple of separate ideas or inspirations—that happens a lot, and it’ll often bring a cool, staid idea alight. Part of this tale is about me and my cousin Andy tearing it up in our childhood village, having adventures, scrumping apples, getting sunburnt, riding our bikes and causing trouble, and having the sort of fun that just seems to stick with you, and is the sort of fun you don’t seem to have enough of as you get older. I don’t know why that is—maybe it’s the power of nostalgia giving memories that tantalising gleam—but I honestly think that even at the time we knew what was happening. Each day stretched out before us, each week was an eternity, and the six-week summer holiday lasted forever. I still have a sense of returning home whenever I revisit that village, even though I haven’t actually lived there in over forty years. Another aspect to the story is more local—the several pillboxes scattered around the countryside where I live now*. They always interest me, probably because of their age and intended use. It’s as if they are automatically inhabited by ghosts simply because of these factors. “Embers” is another gentle ghost story. Or is it? I’m not even sure myself.
(*Tens of thousands of pillboxes were built during WW2, constructed from bricks and concrete and intended to form lines of disruption in case of a German invasion. Thrown up quickly, thousands still remain to this day).
Flotsam (The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories, 2015, Spectral Ed. Mark Morris)
I write about grief and loss a lot, but never really understood it until my mother died. This story is about loss, and also the mysteries of the sea. I love the ocean, enjoy swimming in it, but there’s always the tingle of fear and doubt about what else is in the water with you. I’m also fascinated with the idea of messages in bottles, and how long they can bob about on the sea, carried by strange currents around the globe until they’re delivered, eventually, into the hands of the person they were always intended for.
Into The Death Zone (Slices Of Flesh, 2012, Dark Moon Books Ed. Stan Swanson)
Since I’ve been more into outdoor exercise, I’ve become more and more interested in extreme adventuring such as climbing Everest. There was even a brief time a few years ago when I thought about how great it would be to have a go at it myself! But that idea was never serious and didn’t last too long, and I certainly don’t want to add to the problems of mountaineering tourism. And one of those problems is...a lot more dead mountaineers. I’ve read plenty of books about mountaineering and watched documentaries, and I’ve always found it shocking and haunting that there are still scores of bodies up on Everest. Many of them are in inaccessible areas, so it’s too dangerous to bring them down. Some even provide navigation points for those climbing the mountain. Just a few years ago there was news of a team’s efforts to bring down some of these bodies, and I instantly saw a story in that. This is a very short story, but it’s one of my favourites, and it’s gathered together in this book with “Embers” and “Flotsam” because it has that same ambiguous haunting tone that I love so much.
Emergence (New Fears 2, 2018, Titan Books Ed. Mark Morris)
This is another story influenced by the area where I live. I’m lucky enough to live close to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and all around us is gorgeous countryside. One of my favourite local mountains to walk and run (and occasionally cycle) around is the Blorenge. There’s an easy way up this mountain, and a hard way, and sometimes I’ll run, walk and crawl up the hard way, trying to beat my previous times and always with the gorgeous views at the top as reward. Halfway up the woodland ascent there’s an old brick tunnel built into the hillside. It doesn’t go far, at least not that I can see—I’ve never been far inside to check, because it’s very old and looks pretty damn precarious. But I just can’t imagine why it was built where it is, and what might once have been on the other side! Well, actually I can imagine...and that’s where “Emergence” came from.
Land of Many Seasons (The Dreaming Isle, 2018, Unsung Stories Ed. Dan Coxon)
This is another story set on the Blorenge mountain, and another tale of ambiguous hauntings, beautiful countryside, and a painter falling in love with that enticing place. If you’ve read this far in the book or story notes you’ll have gathered that I love the countryside over the urban sprawl any day of the week, and more often than not my fiction reflects that. The Blorenge really is a lovely place, and those culverts and brick tunnels really do exist. There are also leftover mine workings, and places on the mountain where it can sometimes feel no one has ever been. Who knows what else is up there?
The Lonely Wood (Letters To Lovecraft, 2014, Stone Skin Press Ed. Jesse Bullington)
This was an interesting anthology concept from writer and editor Jesse Bullington (check out his brilliant novel The Sad Tale of The Brothers Grossbart). We were asked to read Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and pull a quote that might inspire and inform a short story. This resulted in a very varied anthology, and my piece was inspired by this quote:
“But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head; so that no amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimneycorner whisper or the lonely wood.”
In this tale I take a trip to St Paul’s Cathedral and play with belief and doubt, and what happens when the two collide.
In The Dust (The New Dead, 2010, St Martin’s Press Ed. Christopher Golden)
I love zombies. One of my favourite novels I’ve written is Coldbrook, a multiverse zombie apocalypse novel which I’m currently working on developing as a TV series, in collaboration with a good friend of mine. Wouldn’t that be lovely? So, when Chris Golden asked me to write a zombie tale for his anthology The New Dead, of course I jumped at the chance. “In The Dust” is set in my local town of Usk, and it plays around with the whole zombie tropes—when the plague happened, how it ended, how far it spread. My characters are desperate and contained, struggling to survive and wondering whether they even should. I wrote the story over a long weekend in a cottage in Wales with a few other writers, and some mornings after the night before we resembled those shambling, pale creatures. You can’t beat a good zombie story, and The New Dead is full of them.
May The End Be Good (Seize The Night, 2015, Gallery Books, Ed. Christopher Golden)
I’ve been tinkering for a while with a trilogy of historical fantasy novels collectively called The Lords of Stone, each set in one of the Norman castles built in efforts to quell the Welsh uprisings after William the Conqueror’s invasion of 1066. I like the idea, have written a good portion of the first novel, but it’s one of those projects I drift away from. I’ll get back to it one day and hopefully finish the first novel...but in the meantime there’s this story, inspired by a famous and desperate quote of the time following the Harrying of the North. An unknown monk said,
“Things went ever from bad to worse. When God wills, may the end be good.” My idea for the trilogy is that in those awful times of plague, famine and pestilence, there were plenty of opportunities for unknown creatures to exist in the land and prey on the helpless. This story was written for a vampire anthology, and the theme seemed to fit well with the period I was researching. It’s one of the grimmest stories I’ve written. I love it.
Sleeper (Appalachian Undead, 2012, Apex Publications Ed. Eugene Johnson)
Back to Coldbrook, and zombies. I set that novel in the Appalachians, even though I’d never visited. I did a lot of research about the place and I was told by a few readers that I’d carried it off OK. So I was pleased when I was asked to contribute to Appalachian Undead! Perfect...a zombie antho set in Appalachia. It was almost as if it was meant to be.
The Gleeful Ones (Barbers & Beauties, 2013, Hummingbird House Press, Ed. Michael Knost & Nancy Eden Siegel)
I never thought I’d write a superhero story. I’m still not sure I have. That’s how odd this one is. This is also a great example of how a particularly narrow theme can make your imagination work harder. “Write a story set in or around a barbershop” I was asked. Anyone who knows me will realise I haven’t visited a barber’s in several decades, and I think that probably helped me think laterally on this one. And so of course I wrote something about maybe-superheroes and killers and plenty of other weirdness. Like the first story in this collection “In Stone”, I took inspiration from the city of Newport where I used to live, trying to capture that edgy feel of potential danger that the nighttime streets of the city centre sometimes exude. This one stands out as one of the stranger stories I’ve written, and
I love it because of that. Sometimes focussing the mind on a tight theme really works wonders!
The Flow (Terror Tales of Wales, 2014, Gray Friar Press, Ed. Paul Finch)
I’ve always been fascinated at the idea of villages emptied of people and belongings and flooded to make new reservoirs. Who isn’t? Not only are these places that once thrived and bustled now empty of humanity—like the best of post-apocalyptic fiction set in empty towns—they’re also in an utterly changed and alien environment. I love the idea of walls still standing, roofs still on, and the phantoms of previous inhabitants wandering those watery rooms. Wales has several such places, and when my mate Paul Finch asked for a story from me for his excellent Terror Tales Of...series, this was the first idea that appealed to me about Wales. I combined it with another favourite theme of mine—going home. Of course, in a horror story it’s never quite obvious what you’re returning home to, and whether past sins might still be rich and raw, however long they’ve been forgotten or drowned from your memory.
The Protector (Peel Back the Skin, 2016, Grey Matter Press Ed. Anthony Rivera & Sharon Lawson)
This was a tough one to write. As a writer it’s my job to put myself in other people’s shoes, and to experience and even try to understand things I’ve never experienced, and have trouble understanding. I tried that here with a story about domestic abuse. But really it’s about something deeper—the power of the imagination, strength of character, the ability of a child to adapt and change, and survive. I think it’s a pretty powerful story, and ultimately upbeat. And while it has monsters and beasts and bloodied victims and fantastical terrors, its real horror is much closer to home. I’m lucky that I’ve never experienced anything like this story, but even so it was very difficult to write and live with for a while. I was glad when it was finished.
Carried Away on a Sunbeam (original to this collection)
This is one of two original stories I wrote for this collection. I’m fascinated with the idea of generation ships—huge vessels laden with millions of sleeping people, built to travel for hundreds of miles through space in the search for a new home for humanity. My novella Rime (also from PS Publishing) is set aboard one such ship, and I’ve also tinkered with the idea of a TV series toying with a similar idea. For this story I decided to remain on Earth and spend some time in the lives of two people left behind. It’s an upbeat story in many ways, and though the ending is ambiguous—sit down with me over a pint one day and we’ll talk about it, but I can’t guarantee I know exactly what this story or its ending really means—I’m very satisfied with how it turned out.
Searching For The Room You Can Never Find (original to this collection)
This story came from a couple of places, and it shows how sometimes a couple of ideas, often decades apart, will meld to form an idea. First, an experience I had in a convention in New York maybe fifteen years ago (I think it might have been when I was a guest at the World Horror Convention, or perhaps one of the Stokercons I attended in NY). I’d had a few drinks and decided to head back to my hotel room. The hotel lobby was quiet, and I ventured along corridors and up staircases until I found my floor, and saw room numbers on the wall signs. I tracked along to my room, and already I was noticing that the corridor seemed...tatty. I hadn’t noticed this previously. Strange. So, I tried getting into my room but the key wasn’t working. I tried again. Concentrating. But nope, no joy.
I wasn’t drunk. Squiffy maybe, so I concentrated harder, still unable to open the door. I headed back along the corridor to the staircase, frustrated that I’d have to go all the way back to reception to check my key. Once I arrived there and explained my predicament, the receptionist smiled and said, “Oh you’ve been to our shadow hotel, it’s being upgraded so no one’s staying there right now.” Shadow hotel, I thought, and that was really bloody weird. I went to my room—directed by the receptionist this time—and that strange experience really stuck with me. Much more recently, an episode of Black Summer (a great zombie series on Netflix) featured an abandoned ski lodge which seemed untouched by the flesh-eating apocalypse. These two ideas collided, and this story was the result. It follows a recent gentler pattern in my work, and I’m very pleased with where it went, even though as with the previous story I’m not quite sure where that was.