It occurred to me, however, that all of this is meaningless unless people know that the book is out there and, in order to do that, I’m going to have to advertise. I’ve run the figures, got quotes from some of the major horror print magazines and websites, and I figure that £1000.00 should cover a decent  burst of initial publicity. I also want to produce a limited edition hardback version of the book, since it’s going to be the first release for which I am solely responsible, and that’s going to set me back another £750 or so. There’s so much that needs to be invested, but I refuse to do things by half measures.

That being said, I’m not made of money, either. I’m a husband and a father-of-two and, frankly, two grand just doesn’t pop up out of nowhere. So, I’ve decided to run a Kickstarter campaign to raise the advertising and hardback print funds. There are plenty of rewards for any potential backers, in the form of electronic, paperback and hardback copies of Dark Lightning, together with my heartfelt thanks.

If you choose to think of this as the cyber equivalent of a dirty of tramp with his hand out for money…that’s fine. If you’d prefer to think of it as a way of pre-ordering an extremely limited edition version of the debut release of a horror writer who could move on to great things…that would be better.

Either way – CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY KICKSTARTER PAGE – have a look around and see if you can afford to back me. Any donation, large or small, is greatly appreciated.

Life after the freeze is a difficult and arduous one, and I was fully prepared for the novel to be just that – a post-Apocalptic tale, in the same vein as The Day After Tomorrow, in which the harrowing conditions of day-to-day survival are sufficient to provide the drama, but…no. There is a Hell of a lot more than just snow and ice to contend with – wild beasts, wild men and something else – something coming from the North, as deadly and implacable as the icy glacier itself.

It is a moment of geniune shock, about a quarter of the way through the book, when the enemy (or at least one of the enemies) first makes its appearance. I had to go back and re-read the page a time or two, to make sure that I wasn’t misreading a clever metaphor, or that I had missed a sentence informing me that the narrator had eaten some dodgy food, or been on a bender, prior to discovering what would amount to his ultimate adversaries. Nope – it’s all real…the most audacious “what the fuck?” moment in literature that I’ve come across in many a year. To spoil the surprise would be unbelievably cruel of me, because I want you to have the same sense of wonder and bewilderment that I had, but I promise it’s an absolute cracker.

What impresses me more, is that Davies manages to make this absurd scenario so believable. The underlying premise is gritty and realistic, then you get these…things…coming out of the wintery storm, which really raise the stakes against our protagonist, Norman Leonard. The whole story could have crumbled there and then, but Davies bravely fights through it with his writing, determined to make you believe. In a sense, Davies is doing to us what Norman is doing to the other characters that he meets during the remainder of the book, trying to convince us that these creatures are real and, just like Norman, there are times when he skates dangerously close to complete failure on that point, but just manages to pull it off.

Hard Winter is a good, fun read, but there are some issues with it. I find the character of Norman, who narrates the tale, to be really annoying at times. By turns both paranoid and petulant, even when he finally mans up and does something incredibly brave, I’m not thinking “bravo” but, rather, “it’s about bloody time!” However, the character is written consistently, so this is clearly Davies’ intention, and I guess that a reaction like mine beats no reaction whatsoever – I just didn’t like him. Grr.

I also think that the ending came too quickly, and too easily. This is a problem I have with a lot of modern literature – novels seem to be so well structured, and with such strong characterisation, building towards the inevitable climax and then, a dozen or so pages later, it’s all over. Again, that probably says more about how much I enjoyed the story, that I found the ending to be abrupt, but there you are.

Overall, with the benefit of a few weeks’ hindsight, I have to say that, yes, I did enjoy Hard Winter. It wasn’t just that I recognised the locales, or that I was impressed by the audacity of Davies’ main antagonists (although those are both key features); he writes well, he creates characters that I enjoy, even if I don’t always like them, and he has taken the tired sci-fi standard of a freezing earth, and breathed new life into it.

Heartily recommended.

Amazon (USA) – Amazon (UK)

Anyway, thanks goes to Jonathan Ward, Angela Pritchett and Sonia Peacock, for allowing me to use their names for the characters in this bloody little tale. As far as I know, the similarities end there but maybe you want to keep an eye on them…just in case.

This is probably the bloodiest story I have ever written, which wasn’t my intention, but it seems oddly fitting when celebrating a holiday about some guy getting tortured and killed, before coming back from the dead with holes in his hands and feet.

With that light-hearted, if thoroughly blashphemous, thought out of the way, please enjoy your Easter Tale.

Honey Bunny

by

Kevin G. Bufton

The badge pinned to the assistant’s blue shirt said “Jonathan Ward: Happy to Help” but, in truth, he seemed to be anything but. The dark rings around his eyes suggested that he could do with a good night’s sleep and, Sonia considered, a decent wash wouldn’t go amiss.

“Are these the only ones that you’ve got?” she asked.

Jonathan sighed. “Yes, Miss Peacock,” he said. “Rabbits are very popular at this time of year.”

She looked from one bunny to the other. There didn’t seem to be much to choose between them. One was a smoky grey colour, and seemed to patrol up and down the length of its enclosure, as if trying to escape. The other was more tawny, and sat in the centre of the display area, staring contentedly through the clear plastic barriers with beautiful amber eyes that matched its lustrous coat. How anyone had been able to leave this little thing behind, she could not begin to imagine.

She turned to Angela, who was peering intently at the rats in the next aisle, lined up in adjoining cells like inmates on death row.

“What do you think, Angela?” she asked.

“Hmm?” she said, turning her attention away from a particularly cute dumbo rat, sat nibbling its feed.

“Which one should we get?” Sonia repeated.

“Oh I don’t know,” she said. “Either of them will do.” She gave a small sigh. “When you said you were getting me a rabbit for Easter, I thought you had something else in mind.”

The assistant smirked, as Sonia’s face turned crimson. “Angela!” she squeaked.

“We’ll take that one,” Angela said, suppressing her own smile.

“The palamino?” Jonathan asked.

“If that’s the gold one, then yes,” Angela replied.

Jonathan reached in, and carefully removed the rabbit from the pen. Sonia had expected a struggle, but it just hung there, placidly, its long hind legs swinging a little, as the young man carried it by the scruff of the neck.

“Have you got all the other stuff?” he asked as he gently placed it into a cardboard carrier.

“You mean a hutch, food, water bowls – that sort of thing?” Angela asked. The assistant nodded. “No, still got to get all of that. We’ll only be a few minutes.”

Jonathan sighed theatrically, and moved the box down behind the counter, where it could not be accidentally dislodged by the straying hands of customers. There were times, he thought, when he hated this job. No, scratch that – the job was fine, the animals were fine; it was the bloody customers that made his brain ache. Still, it wasn’t every day that he got to serve a couple of lesbians. He smiled at the accidental innuendo, and wondered what they would be getting up to when they got home.

“Come on, Son,” Angela said, throwing straw and assorted treats into the basket – yoghurt drops, parsley squares, and carrot-flavoured cereal bites.

“Coming,” Sonia said. The remaining rabbit had ceased it’s prowling of the pen’s perimeter, as soon as the palamino had been removed, and was sat in the centre of the enclosure, chewing at an errant strand of hay. The change in its demeanour was remarkable, from anxious escapee to contented domestic, in a matter of seconds.

They completed their shopping and, as Jonathan scanned their purchases through the checkout, a smirk etched on his face, Sonia blushed and avoided his eyes. She knew full well what was going through that dirty little mind of his; you didn’t live in a small community like this, in an openly same-sex relationship without prompting your share of knowing looks and whispered comments. Jonathan reached under the counter and pulled out the box containing the rabbit – their rabbit, she supposed – and placed it down gently.

“Shit!” he shouted, yanking his hand away.

“What’s wrong?” Angela asked.

“Nothing,” he said, sucking his finger. “The little bastard just bit me, that’s all.” There was a moment’s awkward silence, as he realised what he had said. Angela stared at him, a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. “Um, I mean I must have scared him a little bit,” he stammered. “When I put the box down, I mean.”

“Well, be more careful next time,” Sonia said. “There’s a living creature in there, you know?”

“Yes, Miss,” he said, his response muffled somewhat by the finger in his mouth. Angela and Sonia gathered their shopping and left the store. As the automatic doors opened, Sonia turned to say something to the assistant; just a simple, polite “good-bye”, to show that she had not been intimidated. He did not respond, merely stood where she had left him, finger in his mouth, as he continued to suck at the wound.

“Sonia, come on,” Angela said. She turned to follow her girlfriend to the car.

***

The journey back home was a sullen one.

“Oh, Son,” Angela said, taking one hand off the wheel and running it gently, but firmly, up her leg, “it was only a joke.”

“I don’t like you joking about things like that,” Sonia said.

“Are you ashamed of me?” Angela asked.

“You know I’m not.”

“But you don’t want anyone to know what goes on behind closed doors?” Angela asked.

“It’s not that,” Sonia said, “I just don’t see that it’s anybody’s business.”

“You went down on me for forty minutes yesterday,” Angela said. “You made me cum so hard that I’ve got nail marks in my palms from clenching my fists so tight. Look!” she said, removing her hand from her lover’s knee and turning it palm-up.

Sonia looked down at Angela’s hand and spotted the quartet of tiny, crescent shaped markings, where her immaculately manicured nails had broken the skin. “I love you,” she said, afraid to look at her face. “It’s just that I’ve never been in a relationship like this before and…I…I just don’t think it’s anyone else’s business.”

“I love you too,” Angela said, returning her hands to the wheel, but her words were colder than the chill Spring air.

***

Angela was woken by a scream. Hurriedly throwing on her silk nightie for the scant modesty it afforded, she raced from the bedroom, taking the stairs two at a time. By the time she had reached the living room, the screaming had stopped.

“Sonia?” she called.

“I’m in here,” she answered. “I’m okay.”

Angela entered the room, and saw her lover sat on the floor, cross-legged. The palamino rabbit sat in her lap, staring intently at the doorway, as thouugh it were expecting her. Sonia was looking down at the rabbit, as she gently stroked its fur. If either of them resented her coming into the room, neither showed it.

“I heard a scream,” Angela said. “I thought you were hurt.”

“It was just Honey,” Sonia replied. “I think I startled her.”

“Honey,” Angela said.

“I called the rabbit Honey,” Sonia explained. “You didn’t seem too keen on naming it, so I thought I would.”

“Sonia,” she began.

“It’s okay,” she said, “I know it was a silly gift, I just thought it would be nice.”

“I’m so sorry,” Angela said, sitting down beside her. The rabbit looked up at her, amber eyes boring into her own. She felt uncomfortable under its gaze and, foolishly, she adjusted the neckline of her nightdress into a more modest arrangement.

“It’s fine,” Sonia said, refusing to meet her eyes. “I think I scared her, though, when I took her out of the cage.” She raised her hand, and Angela saw the thin tracery of scratches across the back of it.

“Oh, babe,” she said, taking Sonia’s hand in both of her own. The rabbit remained motionless on her lover’s lap, as she examined the injury.

“They’re quite deep,” she said, gently tracing her fingertips along the scratches. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I promise, I’m fine,” Sonia said. “It just startled me a bit, that’s all.”

Angela picked up the unprotesting Honey and put her back in her cage. Returning to Sonia’s side, she took her hand and gently kissed the wound. Some of the blood smeared across her lips and spilled into her mouth, but she didn’t mind. It wasn’t the tacky, coppery taste that she was expecting; it tasted sweet, with a slightly salty undertone that was far from unpleasant. She had never tasted anything quite like it. It tasted of honey, and salted caramel. She sucked and licked at the shallow wounds, turning Sonia’s hand this way and that to get the most of it into her mouth. She closed her eyes, her tongue probing and lapping, the taste flooding her mouth like nothing she had ever experienced before.

She wanted more.

“Oh, Angie,” Sonia said, her eyes closed in delirious bliss. “Angie, stop.” Angela paid her no heed and continued to work at the lines on her hand with a passion. “Please, Angie,” she asked again, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps, as Angela began to nibble at the skin around the scratches. She wanted to pull away, but she could not. Neither she, nor Angela were prudish about their bodies, but this felt too intimate, an invasion of her privacy, as well as her body.

“Ow!” she cried. “Angie, stop it!” She pulled her hand away, and looked at her lover with fear in her eyes. Around the central scratch that Honey had inflicted were a set of teeth marks.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Angela’s eyes had been glazed over, but they cleared under Sonia’s indignation. She looked down at her hand, and absent-mindedly wiped blood away from her lips, smearing it across her face.

“Oh, Sonia,” she said, tears forming in the corner of her eyes. “Sonia, I’m sorry!”

***

Sonia lay alone in the large double bed, and found sleep difficult to come by. She was scared for herself and worried for Angela. She had never experienced a sensation like she had whilst Angela was tonguing the wounds on her hand. She had been on the brink of an orgasm when Angela had sunk her teeth into her, and she suspected it would have been one of knee-trembling proportions.

She wondered what had come over her. Certainly, Angela was the more sexually assured of the two of them, and she could even be a little rough with her at time, but to actually bite her – that was not like her at all.

Angela had not come to bed with her, and Sonia had not pressed the issue. The vacant look in her eyes had scared her more than she was prepared to admit. Let her come to her when she was ready, when she had sorted the episode out in her own head. She wouldn’t even ask her for an apology, she decided, just an acknowledgment that what she had done had been a step too far.

She didn’t know how long she had lain in her bed, nor if she had managed to sleep in the meantime. She did not wear a watch to bed, and Angela did not like having clocks in the bedroom. Neither of them kept to regular shifts – Sonia was an artist, Angela a writer, a truely bohemian couple – and Angela regularly insisted that there was always time for a bit longer in bed.

The darkness outside was broken by the moon that hung over in the West, shrouded by a layer of cloud. Past midnight, Sonia thought, and she was still the only person in this bed. She slipped out from the warm sanctuary of the bedclothes and padded downstairs, wondering what was keeping Angela up so late. She didn’t call for her, in case she had decided to sleep on the couch. She wondered if she would be disappointed to find out that she had, that this woman that she loved, who had always been so strong, so determined and so secure, would rather spend the night alone than come up and face her. She decided then that she would not wake her. She would cover her up with an extra blanket, enough for her to know that Sonia had seen her, and then she would return to her bed.

A light was on in the living room, and she breathed a sigh of relief that she was not even aware she had been holding. Angela choosing to sleep on the hard leather couch was worringly out of character; sitting up to read a book and failing to notice the time, that was much more like it.

As she reached the doorway, Sonia heard her other half moaning. Ah, she thought, so it’s that sort of book. Smiling, she decided to take her lover by the hand and lead her back to their bed, without a word of explanation. Let them talk about it in the morning. Tonight, she needed to feel her flesh against her own, to let her know that she was loved, and to feel loved in return. Words could wait.

The smile fell from her face as she entered and saw Angela squatting on the rug in the centre of the room. Her nightie was soaked with blood and clung tight to her body. Thick gobbets of flesh clung to her face and neck, the occasional morsel sliding down the slick incline of her chest. In her hands, she held something dark, red and matted, as though it were a votive offering.

As Sonia watched, appalled, Angela lifted the dripping thing to her mouth and bit deep into it. The sound of her teeth tearing against flesh, gnawing through sinew and skittering across bone made hot acid lurch in her stomach. She lifted her own hands, blessedly empty, to her face, as she noticed the door to the rabbit’s hutch hanging open.

“She’s sweet,” Angela said, her mouth filled with the raw rabbit meat she was masticating furiously. She laughed a little, a dangerous, crazy sound, even beneath the bright glare of the living room lights. “Honey’s so sweet.” She laughed again, throwing her head back and gargling hot, red blood in her throat until it sounded as if it were choking her. She swallowed, and looked back to face Sonia. Where before her eyes had appeared glazed, locked in her own little world, now they were clear – perfectly blue, and without a single trace of sanity behind either of them.

“You tasted so good, Sonia,” she said, in a girlish whisper. “I never tried anything like you before.” She smiled in what she probably thought was a coquettish manner, and a piece of bloodied fur dropped out of her mouth. “But you didn’t want me, did you?” she said.

Sonia said nothing.

“You didn’t want me,” Angela repeated. “Not good enough for something as tasty as you, was I?”

“Angie,” Sonia began.

“Didn’t matter,” Angela said, either ignoring her or not hearing her. “I found someone else who was even tastier.” She nodded towards what remained of the carcass and then drove her face deep into it, chomping and slurping noisily.

Sonia wanted to leave, wanted to barricade the living room door and flee this madness, but she could not tear herself away. As Angela devoured its innards, the palamino’s head swivelled lifelessly on its shoulders. Those beautiful amber eyes looked out from its head as it swayed back and forth.

“It wasn’t you,” Angela said, pulling her face away from her feeding, enough to be able to speak. “You weren’t what tasted so good.” Her tongue traced a line from its neck to its tailbone, slurping up all that she could get. She wiped the red filth from her mouth with one hand and shook the remains of the animal with the other. “This was it,” she screamed, all pretence at rationality abandoned. “This is what made you sweet!” She flung the carcass at Sonia, who shrieked as it struck her full in the face.

Angela started to cry, rocking backwards and forwards in her blood stained nightie, tears clearing fresh channels of skin through her crimson mask.

Sonia scrubbed at her face with the sleeve of her pyjamas, ruining them instantly, though that was the last thing on her mind. The only thing she cared about was getting this blood…

…sweet…

…off her face. This blood…

…hot, sweet…

…off her body and out of her mouth. She looked at Angela, crying and rocking, drenching from chin to waist in the rabbit’s innards.

…hot, sweet, tasty…

She watched her as she slipped a finger into her mouth and began sucking on it. She thought of the man in the pet shop, and wondered what filthy fantasies would be going through his mind right now, if he could see Angela’s tongue at work. It travelled up and down her finger, cleaning the blood…

…hot, sweet, tasty, honey…

…an inch at a time. When she had cleared away the excess, her eyes locked with Sonia, and she bit deep, splitting the skin and driving teeth through to the bone. She didn’t scream, only moaned, her eyes closing in ecstasy, as her own blood…

…hot, sweet, tasty, honey, wet…

…filled her mouth.

Sonia stopped scrubbing at her face. Angela was lost in her own little world, and was no longer paying her any attention. Her eyes closed in bliss, her jaw working furiousy around the tattered remains of her finger, and blood…

…hot, sweet, tasty, honey, wet, juicy…

…sticking her thin nightie to her body. Sonia had never before found her so desirable. She moved towards her, her heart pounding in her chest, and licked her lips.

They tasted like Honey.

What do I do with free time? Stuff more books into it!

Anyway, in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out from the offset that I like Brandon Cracraft. I mean I really like him. He’s submitted stories to a couple of the anthologies that I have edited, and he always produces something different. Not for him the rehashing of horror standards, or another bloody zombie story (don’t worry, I’ve got a whole rant on them, still to come), his stories are unique in both content and style. I’m also friends with Brandon, inasmuch as anybody is in this technocentric age. We chat occasionally of Facebook, and exchange the odd e-mail. Certainly, Brandon was kind enough to send me a copy of this very novel so, you know, we’re tight.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m about to say a lot of very nice things about Mr Cracraft and his debut novel Family Values, and I wanted to admit upfront that I both know him and like him, lest somebody find that out at a later date and think that there are some shenanigans going on – there aren’t.

Anyway – on with the review…

It’s difficult to go into great detail about the plot of Family Values without giving away some fairly major spoilers, something that I am loathe to do, since I hope that anyone reading it will hit the same bumps in the road that I did. It centres around a messed-up teen called Ethan, and the miserable existence he has living with his alcoholic grandmother and simpleton of an uncle, since his father is dead and his mother is locked away in an institution.

Sounds like a bundle of laughs so far, right?

Well, the good news is that Ethan’s life takes a turn for the better, pretty early on, as he is taken into foster care by a loving couple, but…come on…this is a horror novel. We all know that’s not going to last. Everything comes crashing down with some dark and sinister revelations about his family tree and he has to decide where his true loyalties lie – with his past or his future.

Family Values is a beautiful novel. For a book that contains savage beatings, cannibalism and, at one point, a guy getting a hook plunged through one of his testicles, that may seem an odd description, but nothing else really fits. It is written in the first person, and Brandon’s style of writing gives the whole thing a darkly psychedelic quality. There are some dream sequences in there that a wonderfully surreal, but the main narrative doesn’t stray too far from that, making you wonder if the narrator sees the whole world slightly skewed. Given what happens to Ethan throughout the course of the novel, that would not be too outlandish a possibility. On first reading I thought that some of the characters were lacking depth but, considering the story is told through Ethan’s eyes, it makes perfect sense that his grandmother and his uncle would come across as a little flat, where his foster parents, being more important to him, are considerably more textured and layered.

This also comes across in the descriptions of the different places that he lives, from the utter squalor of his grandmother’s trailer, to the neat, well-tended and homely condition of his foster home, and the condition of his other family’s house, which I won’t dwell on for fear of spoiling. It’s as though the physical being of each location is affected by his perception of it, mirroring his feelings in each place, all adding to that strang sense of disconnection that pervades the novel as a whole.

There is a lot to enjoy in the book – for the gore fans, there are plenty of descriptions of people being torn apart, heads getting caved in, people getting shot in the face, or eaten alive…all good stuff, and written with a light touch, all things considered. But there is so much more to it than blood and guts, terrible revelations and dark secrets. This is also a book about family and about sexuality – about exploring both and ultimately understanding neither. In an odd way, it’s a classic coming-of-age tale, just with supernatural creatures and horrific maimings thrown into the mix.

So – what don’t I like about the book? Well – there are a couple of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes peppered here and there, but you may be less irritated by that than I am. Certainly it’s not enough to ruin the book for me, but they do still niggle. Without wishing to spoil it (skip ahead to the next paragraph, if you want), there is a moment towards the end of the book, where Ethan decides to take a stand against the main villain, a guy who can easily outclass both Ethan, and his entire family and friends, and it turns out that every character we’ve met to date (who is still alive at least) has knowledge in some sort of disparate martial art or other fighting technique, and Ethan manages to coalesce all of this in a matter of months. That just seemed a little…convenient to me. I understand that it was a device to give us hope before the big climactic showdown, but it still felt tacked on.

Finally, some of the characters’ reactions seem a little odd, too. Throughout the novel some fairly major revelations happen and all of the major players seem to take them completely in their stride. Again, it being told through the eyes of Ethan himself, it could be that this was just how he perceived it and, on that level it works. His foster parents are the ones who accept everything a face value but, to him, they’re the heroes of the story, so it would make sense.

None of these points, however, detract from the fact that Family Values is a stunning debut from an exciting writer, and you owe it to yourselves to lay hands on a copy.

Usually, when I hear that someone in the public eye has passed away, I say “Oh, that’s a shame”, ask how old they were and, morbid bastard that I am, enquire as to how they passed on.

This time, it’s a little different.

When I was a teenager, cutting my teeth on the world of horror literature, there was an Unholy Trinity of authors, whose work I adored above all others – Richard Laymon, Stephen King and James Herbert. My dad had a bunch of their stuff on his bookshelves and, being too young to borrow these authors’ works from my local library, I diligently worked my way through dad’s collection.

Laymon’s novels were visceral and bloody, filled with sex and violence – compulsive reading for a teenage lad. King’s works were often epic in scale, but his characters anchored them into something that felt personal, in spite of the immense nature of the horrors he was depicting. In addition to these heavyweights, I devoured the body-horror stylings of Clive Barker, the Cthulhu tinged writings of Ramsey Campbell, the rapid-fire schlock (and I use that word as a term of endearment) of Guy N. Smith, and Shaun Hutson’s curiously British take on American horror standards. All of them gave me a new insight on the world of horror that I was rapidly becoming enamoured with. Each had their own style and, even now, some twenty-plus years later, I get a little shiver of anticipation when I hear through the grapevine that one or other of them have a new release in the pipeline.

All of that was true back then, and holds equally true today, but none of them had the sort of impact on my life as James Herbert did.

It is no exaggeration to state that I would not have started my own writing career – as low-scale as it is, at the moment – had I not read the works of James Herbert. His novels felt intimate, even when they involved the end of the world as we know it. He created characters that I cared about, not just whether or not they survived the supernatural doings in his books, but right down to the details. It bothered me that David Ash drank, because I liked him and I didn’t want to see him drink the nightmares away. When it looked as though Halloran and Cora were falling for one another in Sepulchre, it concerned me because neither of them was good for the other. In the midst of horrific tales of rats, psychosis-inducing fog, Nazi superweapons, ghosts, Sumerian demons, and evil fairies there was always this central core of solid, believable characters that were his trademark.

I think that’s what I took (and will continue to take) from his books – he made the people real, and once you’ve done that, the horror becomes ever more potent. Herbert was a great writer and every time a new novel came out, it felt like a big event. He wrote 23 novels in his lifetime, of which I’ve only got three left to go, and that’s a sad thought. As, indeed, is the notion that his last novel, Ash is actually his last novel.

But this is not a time for sadness. James Herbert remains a legend in the field of horror, and his stories will endure. He’s one of the few authors who has managed to scare me, in the quite literal “I’m not going to bed unless I’m leaving the light on” sense, and that is a wonderful gift. If you’ve not read his work, I recommend Haunted, Sepulchre, The Rats and The Dark as your primer of his substantial contribution to the genre.

Sleep well, Mr. Herbert. I can’t…I’ve read your books.

However, in between the editing, the formatting and general despair, I managed to pen the following short tale for Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.

Enjoy…

But what of the future? What happens when we enter 2014, and beyond? Surely, I should have an eye on something grander and more far-reaching than the end of this particular journey around the sun?

Oh I do, gentle reader, I do…

The concept of the bucket list has become very popular on the ol’ Internet, of late, and I can’t imagine the reason having much to do with the eponymous 2007 film, since watching that bordered on an exercise in masochism. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a list of things that you hope to do before you die (or kick the bucket, as it were…hence the name). Of course, most of these lists tend to have a few things in common – visit the Grand Canyon, swim with dolphins, go skydiving – uplifting, vaguely spiritual and utterly preditable.

Well, fuck that – I’m a writer. When I think about the Grand Canyon, I want to write a book about the eldritch abomination that caused it in the first place and still lives in a dreamless sleep beneath it. When I think about dolphins, I want to write about an undead bottlenose, prowling the black oceans, forever hungry, devouring tourists. When I think about skydiving, I want to write about a man whose ‘chute fails to open and, as he plummets to a certain death, he is visited by an angel and a demon, and has but a few minutes to decide to which of them to entrust his soul.

Words, baby, that’s what my bucket list is all about.

In essence, my list could easily consist of one item – I want to make living from my writing, sufficient to support myself, my wife and our children in relative comfort for the rest of our lives. That’s it – that’s the high concept pitch.

Breaking it down further, there are certain other milestones that I hope to pass in the course of my writing career. To date, I have been very lucky and I’ve already crossed off a small number of items, which I’ve left here, for the sake of completion. Some of these are obvious, being the goals of many a writer, so let’s get those out of the way first.

• Write a piece of flash fiction, and have it published
• Write a short story, and have it published
• Write a novelette, and have it published
• Write a novella, and have it published
• Write a novel, and have it published
• Write a collaborative novel, and have it published
• Compile a solo short story collection, and have it published
• Write a poem, and have it published
• Write the script for a graphic novel, and have it published
• Write a film screenplay, and have it produced
• Write the script for an audio drama, and have it produced
• Write a television screenplay, and have it produced

So far, so generic. I imagine most writers want to tackle the majority of those. The remainder of the list is more specific. These are the sorts of things I think about when I’m in the shower, or when I’ve just finished a piece and am putting it aside to ferment for a week or two before returning to edit it. They are much more in the spirit of the traditional bucket list, inasmuch as I want to do them, not for the money, or the kudos, or the fame, but because they would just be awesome.

• Write an episode of Doctor Who
• Have a story included in ‘The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror’
• Share anthology space with any of the following – Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Clive Barker, James Herbert, Graham Masterton or Shaun Hutson
• Have one of my characters acted or voiced byKevin Bacon
• Have one of my characters acted or voiced by Helena Bonham-Carter
• Be invited to do  Q&A session at a horror convention
• Pick up one of my books in my local branch of Waterstones
• Write an epic, book-length poem
• Win a Bram Stoker Award
• Have a book on the Sunday Times’ Bestsellers List
• Appear as a guest on ‘The Book Show’ on Sky Arts
• Have one of my novels condemned by the Church
• See one of my stories turned into a movie, or a radio play
• Write a novelisation for a horror film
• Get a story accepted and published by Cemetery Dance magazine
• Ghost write a wrestling autobiography (Tara from TNA, I’m looking at you, baby!)
• Present and write a TV documentary series investigating all the dark and bloody folk tales of the British Isles

That’ll do me for now. No doubt, as the months and years pass by, I’ll add a few more items to the list, but I think I could say I’d had a good career as a writer, if I even marked off half of these.

Of course, there are other things that I’d like to do, that do involve my writing – at least, not directly. I’d like to see the aurora borealis, and have ringside seats for WrestleMania, to name but two, but neither of those are the dreams that anchor my life, the way that my writing does.

By now, you may be thinking that these are the ramblings of  a typical wannabe author – always spending more time talking about writing, than actually getting some words down on paper, and you’re probably right. The fact remains that I’ve already started marking off the things on my list and that, in and of itself, is a massive impetus to do even more.

As it stands at the moment, I am a legal assistant, who also happens to write. As 2013 comes to a close, I want to be able to think of myself as a writer, who just happens to be a legal assistant.

As for the future…well, as I make my way down the list, maybe I’ll achieve suffcient success to introduce myself to new people in the following manner. “Hi, my name’s Kevin – and I’m a writer.”

More specifically, it’s a piece about the acclaimed horror writer, Poppy Z. Brite.

But, at its heart, it is a piece about language.

I want to start this blog entry by making a couple of points abundantly clear. I have been a fan of Poppy Z. Brite, ever since I read Exquisite Corpse, many moons ago. There aren’t many authors whose work can make me squirm, whilst at the same time having me firmly hooked so that I don’t want to put the book down, but Brite is one of them. For those of you that don’t know, Poppy is a transgender man, having been born Melissa Ann Brite and having undergone gender reassignment surgery, he is now a man, who goes by the name Billy Martin in his personal life.

So far, so good. I’ve got no problem with transgender people. In my opinion (and since you’re reading my blog, I hope you at least have a passing interest in my opinion) if a person is nice to me, if they are cordial and polite, I couldn’t care less what set of organs they started out with, nor what set they are currently sporting. Likewise, if someone is an utter arsehole, I reserve the right to think of them as such, regardless of the make-up of their chromosomes and what methods they utilised to deal with it.

This blog entry is not about the politics, the ethics or even the technicalities of gender reassignment – that is something I leave to people more passionate and more educated about the subject. My passion is the English language, and that it what we are discussing today.

So – Poppy/Billy is a transgender man, so he prefers to be referred to with male pronouns, as I am doing here. When discussing the man, the author, the very talented wordsmith, I should refer to him as ‘he’ or ‘him’. That’s fine – it makes perfect sense.

However, if I’m reviewing a story written before 2003, when he began the process, should I refer to the writer of that particular tale as ‘she’? Let’s look at Exquisite Corpse, written in 1996 by Melissa Ann Brite under the pen name of Poppy Z. Brite. If I were to review that book, would I be right to say that “she has penned a wonderfully modern take on the Gothic novel”?

Moreover, since his surgery, he has continued to write under the name Poppy Z. Brite. Now, since Poppy never existed (the birth name being Melissa), is that pseudonym a female pseudonym. If so, were I to review Soul Kitchen, published in 2006, by Billy Martin, under the pen name of Poppy Z. Brite, would it be right to refer to Poppy as a woman? I have no wish to appear ignorant here. I know that there are wider ranging issues to a transgender person than this sort of trivialty but, as a man obsessed by language, this is fascinating to me.

Over a given period of time we have three people here – Melissa Brite, who was female; Billy Martin, who is male and Poppy Z. Brite, the brand, if you like, who is also female…right? If I wrote a book under a female pseudonym, someone reviewing that book would likely refer to the author using female pronouns, even though the person writing it was a guy. So, is Poppy Z. Brite – being the nom de plume of both Melissa and Billy – a female, or does one’s pen-name automatically undergo a sex change when the author does?

I want to stress again that this is not meant to be offensive or insensitive. This is a discussion about semantics, not about transgender issues, but if somebody could give me a really good answer that ticks all of the boxes, I’d be grateful.

First on the agenda, I need to pack in my job editing anthologies for Cruentus Libri Press. Don’t get me wrong - it has been a wonderful experience and, not only have I made the acquaintance (and, yes, even the friendship) of many fine and talented writers, but the quality of their work has forced me to raise the bar for my own writing. I had decided at the outset to include on of my own stories in each of the anthologies that I edited (hey, perks of the job!); however, I had promised myself that I would only include my story if it could match the quality of the other contributions to that particular collection.

I think I have managed to do that. There is not a single person upon this earth who is a harsher critic of my work than I am. Of all the stories I have submitted to magazines, websites and anthologies in the past, I have only ever received one rejection letter and I put that down to the fact that my stories are as good as I can make them – for that moment in time, at least. This is not empty boasting – if I’m not happy with my work, then no fucker gets to read it; not my wife, not my friends…nobody. I understand that not everybody will like my work, but I’ll be damned if I allow anybody the loophole to say that the reason they don’t like it is that it is poorly written!

Ahem…moving on.

So, I’ve released seven anthologies over the last twelve months. I’ve got another six in the pipeline, in varying stages of completion. The Dead Sea and Under the Knife are pretty much ready to rock. I’ve selected the stories for War Is Hell and Horror-tica and I’m in the process of selecting tales for Another 100 Horrors and The Best of Cruentus Libri Press. All six anthologies (thirteen collections in all) will be available on Amazon by the end of March 2013, which means that the remaining three quarters of the year will give me time to concentrate on my own writing career.

First order of business is to clear my back catalogue. I have penned about 70 stories since I started this crazy experiment all the way back in January of 2009 and about half of them have been published in various anthologies, magazines and websites. The first part of my plan for the remainder of 2013 is to finally get all of those stories out there in a trilogy of solo collections. The first will be Dark Lightning: 50 Flashes of Fearsome Fiction, which will gather together my flash fiction (that’s stories under 1000 words in length, for the uninitiated). The second release will be simply entitled 13 and will consist of the stories I’ve penned for each of the thirteen Cruentus Libri Press anthologies of which I have been a part. The final collection will be called In the Beginning… This will be a small volume – only six stories, totalling around 30,000 words. The nature of the collection is that it will consist of the six stories I wrote and completed between the ages of 16 and 30, when I finally decided I wanted to take a real crack at this whole writing lark. None of the stories were ever published (or even submitted) and, reading back over them now it’s little wonder, as they are appallingly amateurish, the work of a guy who knew what he wanted to be, and hoped he could rely on a baseline of talent to get himself there. For the purpose of the collection, all six stories are going to be thoroughly overhauled, edited, stripped down and, in many cases, started again from scratch.

In all likelihood, those three collections will be self-published. I have few illusions about the writing industry and I know that solo collections from fledgling authors are unlikely to be accepted by most publishing houses, but that doesn’t bother me. I’ll be releasing them as much to have my entire body of work to date in a trio of handy-sized tomes, as for any other reason.

I am also in the middle of writing a collaborative novel with Roger Perry, a fine writer from Lacey, Washington. I have never worked on a piece with another writer before, mostly because I’m something of a prick when I’m writing, but Roger seems to be sufficiently thick-skinned to handle my outbursts so, when he made the suggestion, I jumped at the chance. Our story spans both sides of the Atlantic and, even though it is early days, I love the feel that our different styles of writing bring to the tale.

And that, I think, will do it for me. If I can get the anthologies done, my three collections on the shelves and at least the first draft of my split novel concluded by the end of this year, it will have been a good one for me. In many ways, this year is my way of laying the foundations for a more substantial writing career to come, but such is the way of things. I have no delusions that I’m going to be able to retire off this little lot, but I hope to produce a small body of work, of which I can be justifiably proud and from there…who knows.

With that said, time to sign off from the blog for the evening and get some real work done.

Ahem.

Anyway, this is the first in a series of columns, in which I intend to address some common misconceptions about writers and writing that really get me hot under the collar. Anyone who knows me in the slightest will know that I am a rather genial chap, slow to anger, quick to laughter and generally a chilled out and mellow cat, who just happens to write stories about ancient cults, killer tumbleweeds and stillborn zombie babies. It takes a lot to get me angry, but there are so many myths, fallacies and snippets of received wisdom floating about the Internet, regarding my chosen vocation, that get me riled up, so I thought this would be a good a place as any to get things off my chest, vent my spleen and leave Happy Kevin free to write further atrocities in a good humour.

We’ll kick things off by exploding a particularly popular and pervasive myth…there is no such thing as writer’s block.

I’m sure there are one or two authors out there, fingers trembling with rage as they navigate towards the comment button, ready to lambast me for such an erroneous statement, but hear me out.

I think it is fair to say that writer’s block, as it is traditionally understood, comes in three distinct flavours – the word, the plot and the page.

THE WORD relates to that moment when things are going along swimmingly. Words are slotting into sentences like a finely-constructed watch; those sentences are building paragraphs that are well structured and that, in turn, produce chapters, each one of which is a self-contained thing of great beauty and powerful resonance. As the pages begin to pile up, the going gets easier. Characters come to life before your eyes, intricate connections develop between them and, as their relationship, no matter its nature, reaches its inevitable dramatic crescendo you realise that one of the characters is a…hmm…what’s the word?

Gustave Flaubert called it le mot juste, and spent weeks at a time agonising over the perfectly appropriate word for any given situation. It is indeed a frustrating state of affairs. You know, more-or-less, how you wish to describe something but the only words in your head are vague approximations of the one you really want to use. You don’t want to describe your protagonist as jolly, as the word carries connotations of stoutness. Jovial sounds a little better, but suggests that this aspect of their character is forced. Carefree sounds flippant. Gladsome? Does anyone use that word any more? Idly you thumb through your thesaurus (an instinctive, but poorly-judged move – if you have to resort to a thesaurus, then whatever word you select will not be the right one). You curse the English language for its versatility and wonder if your fate is to die, forgotten and alone, your novel unfinished at 200 pages of immaculate text and a further 500 consisting of the word jolly, written and crossed out in an ever more erratic hand.

THE PLOT is more common and it happens to us all. It differs from THE WORD because, whilst THE WORD mostly affects writers who edit as they go, who do not wish to proceed to Chapter Two until they have thoroughly completed Chapter One in every details. Writers, in short, who plan. THE PLOT, on the other hand, affects writers who do it on the hoof, one way or another, writing by the seat of their pants. This particular strin of Writer’s Block manifests itself once you have introduced a few characters, given them some obstacles to overcome and you’re about to conclude another one. Only – disaster! – you realise that you can’t write them out of this one, because logic and reason won’t allow it.

Let us say that Alice and Bob are trapped inside a tanning factory by the zombie horde gathered outside. We know, from the characters we have introduced, that the only person who can save them is Calvin. Everyone else is dead, or tied up elsewhere. Unfortunately, for reasons crucial to the plot, we have already established that Calvin has a crippling aversion to leather. It’s too late in the day to convincingly add another character, it would be unrealistic for Calvin to overcome his fear of leather and, until we get out of the tanning factory, we can’t advance the plot. The whole story is effectively bottlenecked and we are stuck, twiddling our thumbs over where to go from here. The zombies are outside the door in our story, but that’s the least of our concerns in real-life, if we can’t get passed this damnable block.

Our final breed of writer’s block has, I’m quite sure, afflicted every author at some point in their career, no matter what their experience or talent. THE PAGE is when you have just finished one piece of work and consigned it to a publisher or the wastepaper basket, depending on what is most fitting, and you are starting a story anew. It might be a 500 word piece of flash fiction, or it might be a multi-volume epic spanning the entire gamut of human emotion and existence. You don’t know – you’ll never know – because all you can see is that blank oage in front of you, the cursor blinking in the corner, taunting you as you mine your brain for that all important first line, the one that will hook the reader.

In truth, this is the most frustrating of all. With THE WORD and THE PLOT there is, at least, a body of work already written. If you never get past that block again (which is how it can sometime feel) at least you can point to a pile of printed sheets and say “Look – I have created words!” to anyone who is prepared to listen. THE PAGE doesn’t even offer you that delusion of progress. It sits there, like an untouched blanket of snow, begging for someone – anyone – to make their mark, and you can’t do it…you just can’t do it.

I started this column by saying that there is no such thing as writer’s block, and yet I’ve just spent 1000 words or so describing three very common occurrences that bear all the markings of it. Every writer I know has suffered from one or more of these afflictions, so why do I deny its existence, in the face of all the evidence?

Simply because writer’s block is self-imposed. Like the common cold, it is responsible for hundreds of thousands of lost man-hours in writing but, unlike the common cold, there is a cure and I am here to bestow it upon you all.

Write something else.

You’re welcome.

Because, you see, that’s really all there is to it. Whether your particular strain of writer’s block manifests as the word, the plot or the page, the best thing to do is ignore it, and write something else. There is a fundamental truth, that many writer’s forget in the course of their scribblings, and it is this…until you actually submit your story to a publisher, it doesn’t matter what words are on the page. If trying to choose the right word to describe your character has causing your narrative to come screeching to a halt, just call him jolly for now and revisit it when the word pops into your head in a few days’ time. If you need to get Alice and Bob out of the tanning factory, use a new character now and then go back a dozen chapters and weave him into the narrative. Failing that, skip forwards – write about what happens once they escape the factory and fill in the pesky detail of the how later on…if you even need to by that point.

As for the dreaded blank page – just write anything. Anything at all – as long as you write in coherent sentences and don’t allow yourself to be mesmerised by that blinking cursor. Even if you just describe the room in which you’re writing, soon you’ll have a couple of paragraphs of description and then have someone – anyone – enter that room and do…well…anything. Even if you salvage two hundred words from the first two thousand, if they give you the basis for a whole new story, what does it matter. The only people who care about your book before it sees print are you, right now, and English Language professors a hundred years in the future, as they try to apply meaning to your novels through your original notes and scribblings.

Everyone else only cares about what’s between the covers once the book hits the shelves.

So go ahead – just write. When you get stuck – and you will – just write some more and come back when you’re ready.

Nobody will be any the wiser.

Just don’t go blaming your woes on writer’s block…there’s no such thing.