Grandfather groomed with all new voiceover
you will believe a man is a seven year old girl – my narration of my story Grooming my Grandfather, now on the Alphanumeric podcast from Zoetic Press
Tag: horror
Grooming my Grandfather
This story of mine was based on many years of a very similar dream. I would visit my mother’s father as he sat on a chair on a concrete slab in the backyard of his home. It was a yard I knew well from my childhood. Though he was dead and would not speak, he […]
Bigfoot, or why does Max Brooks hate Australians so much?
I have just finished “Devolution” by Max Brooks. It was fine, although I was disappointed by the lack of easter eggs regarding a certain band from Akron, Ohio. I’ll just have to assume that the blurb on the cover reading “one of the greatest horror novels I’ve ever read,” is a reference to that writer […]
You’ll Never Find Me
I am receiving constant reminders of how the Covid knockdown and working from home has knocked me for six. Today it was the effort it took to get me off my arse and out the front door for a day out on my own, and to make the decision all by myself as an adult […]
My Wonder book of Snails and Slugs
My latest publication, My Wonder Book of Snails and Slugs, is available for your free reading pleasure (?) in the new edition of Penumbric. I think of it as a sometimes melancholy, sometimes sinister tale of love, loss and survival, and also of snails, a sea of slugs, a sea monster, bat faced cardigan monkeys […]
Crop Rotation Podcast
For your aural pleasure, my story Crop Rotation is available as a podcast from 29 December at The Nights End Podcast. My thanks to James Barnett and Dissonance Media.
A nice little mention in Best Horror of the Year 13
Thanks very much for the mention Ellen Datlow, and thank you Jon Padgett, and Matt Cardin and Michael Cisco at Grimscribe Press for publishing “Grooming my grandfather”.
Horror as optimism
I knew what books she liked … – gloomy horror stories, Gothic novels with crumpled covers featuring a drawing of a Bat. Perverted monks, severed hands that murder people, coffins flushed out of graveyards by floods. Evidently reading this sort of thing confirmed her in the conviction that we are not living in the worst […]
KABOOM man
Well, that was a lot of fun. With that title – “The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man”, and my love of his Fractured Europe series, I was always going to read this novel of Dave Hutchinson‘s. However, I am never early to the party, and I see that it has been out in the […]
The Father
Anthony Hopkins won the Oscar for his performance, so you don’t need me to tell you that his performance is brilliant, nor that The Father is a … film. What adjectives to include? Strong. Very, very good. Cast, writing, direction, every technical aspect, very, very good. Harrowing. Unsentimental. Heart breaking – in the best sense, […]
Nobody is looking 