Ken Preston's Blog, page 14

Joe Coffin Price Cut!

Just a real quick post today to let you know that I have slashed the cover price of Joe Coffin, Season One, to 99c/99p. That’s a whopping 60% cut in the price.

Or, to put it another way (because, you know, why say something once when you can say it lots of times?) that’s LESS THAN HALF PRICE!

Yes, I konw, I shouted there. I couldn’t help it, I’m excited.

I mean, come on people! What can you buy these days for less than a British Pound, or an American Dollar?

Not a whole hell of a lot, I can tell you.

But for the next few days, yes you can! Joe Coffin, Season One is over four hundred pages of vampire mayhem, sex, action, violence, adventure, suspense, quickfire dialogue and maybe even some romance. (Just, like, maybe.)

Or, if that deal isn’t good enough for you, you can always sign up to my VIP subscriber list, and get the whole darn thing for FREE!

(Don’t ever tell me I’m not good to you.)

But if you do insist on buying it from Amazon, just follow the link. But be quick, because Joe Coffin, Season One is going back up to full price on Wednesday 9th December.

And you don’t want to miss out on a deal like that, now, do you?

The post Joe Coffin Price Cut! appeared first on Ken Preston.

Kindle Paperwhite Giveaway

Somedays it seems like I just love giving stuff away. Because here I am again, and guess what? Yup, I’m giving stuff away.

But not just any old stuff.

Nope, when it comes right down to it, in the history of stuff that I have given away, this is a whole new category of stuff.

Because I know how you feel. I feel the same.

EVERYBODY, or at least everybody who writes for a living, is giving away an ebook. Sometimes two or three or four.

And it’s tempting to think, meh, ebooks are easy to give away. After all, it doesn’t cost a single penny to give away an ebook. Doesn’t even take any effort.

(Except for all of the blood, sweat and tears that went into writing the damn thing! But that’s another story, another blogpost.)

So I got to thinking, what can I give away that has value attached to it that people can relate to? Especially people who love reading.

A Kindle, of course.

But not just any old Kindle.

How about a Kindle Paperwhite?

Now, I’d love to give you all a Kindle Paperwhite, I really would, but you know us writers, we’re poorer than a Southern sharecropper on hard times after a year long drought, when the locusts have swarmed over what meagre crops he managed to eke out of the hard soil and ate them all up.

And no, I’m not exaggerating.

So, I’ve only got the one Kindle Paperwhite to give you.

Which means I’m going to have to draw names out of a hat.

This is the deal, then. Click on the link below to go to my Kindle Paperwhite Giveaway page. Then, all you have to do is answer a super easy question, and pop your email address into the box before December the 9th.

Yes Please I want a Kindle Paperwhite!

And that’s it!

Except, and this is the really cool part, if you share my giveaway, and those people enter, you will up your chances of winning 3x for every person who enters.

Oh, I almost forgot, which is crazy because this part is even awesomer (and yes, awesomer can be a word if I want it to be, okay?) but EVERY single person who enters gets a free ebook copy of Joe Coffin Season One.

So what are you waiting for?

If you want a Kindle Paperwhite, go click that link now!

Yes Please I want a Kindle Paperwhite!

The post Kindle Paperwhite Giveaway appeared first on Ken Preston.

Free Short Story

Everyone loves the idea of something for nothing, right?

But everyone is suspicious, too.

I mean, come on, if it’s free there’s got to be a catch. Because no one gives away stuff. Especially valuable stuff.

Well, I’m here to prove you wrong. Because i’m offering you something right now, absolutely free of charge, and I’m not asking for a single thing in return.

I’m not going to ask you to review it, or share it, or sign up to a newsletter to access it.

It’s yours.

A free short story.

Oh! I her you groan. A free short story! I thought you said it was valuable!

Let me tell you, friend, short stories are valuable.

Like a kiss, or a whispered secret, a short story can change your life. Like a car crash, or a word spoken in hasty anger that you can never take back, a short story can haunt you for the rest of your days. A short story can put into words a feeling you have had all your life, but never been able to express. Or it can show you the way when you thought you were hopelessly lost.

A short story can change you.

And here is my short story, a gift to you.

It might not change your life, it might not haunt you or show you the way, but I hope that at the very least it entertains you.

This particular story is called, The Man Who Murdered Himself.

I’d like to tell you a little bit about it, but that might spoil it for you. I think it’s best if I just let you read it.

THE MAN WHO MURDERED HIMSELF

Cable Nash paused outside the glass frontage of the Tyrell Building to finish his cigarette. He was old enough to remember when smoking was still allowed inside public buildings, although he had been too young to smoke. Whenever Wendy started nagging him to quit, what about the cancer, think about her and the kids if he didn’t care about himself, he’d remind her of all the movies he’d sat through with his dad, watching the film through a fog of cigarette smoke caught in the projector beam, wondering if the kids sat in the non-smoking section of the cinema could see any better, or had the smoking side’s pollution filled the whole auditorium, and their lungs, too?

After a while, Wendy quit asking Nash to give up on the cigarettes. She could see it was annoying him, and when Nash got annoyed, that’s when the other guy would show up. And that other guy was one nasty, fucked up son of a bitch.

Besides, Wendy never understood what he was talking about, never got the point. Nash’s mother and father had both been chain smokers, back in the days when a person had the right to light up anywhere they wanted. And young Cable Nash had been their constant companion, an only child, subject not only to their second hand cigarette smoke, but their incessant arguing, and violence too.

Good old Mom and Pop, they were the real problem, not the cigarettes. They’d both been dead many years, but the damage they had done in Cable Nash’s childhood lived on.

That was what Dr Egelman had told him, on his first visit to the clinic.

“They gave you cancer, son,” he had said, pointing a long finger at him from behind his desk, a shock of white hair falling over his forehead. “And I’m not talking about the kind of cancer that you’ll get from smoking all those cigarettes, either.”

Sure, he didn’t have any tumours, Egelman had continued, and a blood test wouldn’t show anything abnormal, but he had cancer all right. A cancer of the soul, of his psyche. As Egelman continued talking, Nash felt that he had finally found someone who understood him, realised the torment he had suffered all these years, even had empathy for him. Nash’s own doctor had diagnosed him as depressed. He’d prescribed anti-depressants, and Nash had seen countless psychiatrists. But no amount of psychobabble, or energy sapping drugs, did anything to release his head from the white static that filled it, or the lump of grey despair that sat in his chest.

“And this cancer,” Egelman had said, “has been allowed to grow and evolve over the years. It has become another side to your personality. The aggressive side, the bully, the abuser. That’s why you feel like you are two people, sometimes, why your own head can argue with itself, be bullied by itself.”

Oh yeah, Nash could identify with that, all right. All those nights he’d lain awake in bed, that voice in his head, telling him, You’re a fucking waste of space! Why don’t you do everybody a favour, and check out, buddy? Nobody’d miss you, in fact they’ll all be better off without you.

Nash would give anything to be free of that voice.

Nash flicked the cigarette butt onto the sidewalk and ground it out under his shoe. After a quick check to see if anyone had noticed, (the NYPD were like fucking Nazis these days, pick you up for anything) he checked his watch. He still had ten minutes before his appointment.

He lit up another cigarette.

It had taken years of failed relationships, and a continual build-up of anger, the kind he could only vent with his fists, before he had begun to think that something might be wrong. His second wife, that slut Janelle, (and what the fuck had he ever seen in her?) she had told him he was a psychopath. That was in the middle of a blazing row, while she was hurling kitchen knives at him.

You stupid bitch! he’d wanted to shout back. You’re the one throwing the knives at me!

But he had been too busy ducking and dodging, trying to stay alive, to say anything.

Nash had spent the next few years in and out of jail, on assault charges. No matter how hard he tried to hold onto it, to control the darkness within, he inevitably found himself in another bar, drunk and bitter, and ready to destroy something, or someone.

He got married again, had a kid, a sickly, skinny little thing, who didn’t survive its first winter. Cops had got involved on that one, seemed to think there might be a case against the parents for neglect, or something like that. But nothing came of it, and Nash got divorced again, and then he met Wendy.

Wendy was the first woman he met who wasn’t like him, or those skanks he’d been married to before. What she saw him in he didn’t know, and really, she should have stayed clear, she’d had her own bad relationships over the years, too many that wound up her being a punching bag. She told him, when they first started getting serious, she said, you lay a finger on me, and I’m gone, baby.

I’m gone.

Nash took one last drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt away. As soon as his treatment was complete, and he was better, Nash had promised himself, and Wendy, that he was going to give up the filthy habit.

The Tyrell building was one of those exclusive places, where you had to be buzzed in by a security guard, and then they looked you up on the monitor on the desk, and then made a phone call, until finally you got to ride in the elevator to your appointment. There were several businesses occupying the Tyrell building, none of which Nash had ever heard of. Just like Egelman’s clinic.

A friend of a cousin to a friend of Wendy’s sister, was how Nash got to hear about Egelman.

“You been tellin everyone about our private business?” Nash had yelled, the anger bubbling up with frightening ease.

“No, of course not,” Wendy had said. “But this woman, this friend, her partner was abusive, he was angry and depressed all the time. I think he was in Iraq, maybe suffering with, you know, post-traumatic stress.”

“And what, he went to see this quack, and he’s cured now?”

“Yeah, that’s what Sandrine says.”

“Probably gave him a fucking lobotomy. Betcha he sits around the house all day, watching reruns of Mork and Mindy, while his girlfriend feeds him baby food, and wipes his ass for him.”

After that, Wendy went into a sulk. Nash thought that was the end of it, but a couple of days later she started in on him again, and before he knew it, she’d worn him down, and Nash was looking this guy up, and making himself an appointment.

Nash got buzzed in, and soon he was exiting the elevator on the 32nd floor, and walking down the wide, carpeted corridor towards a door, with a brass plaque, reading, ‘The Egelman Clinic’.

A petite blonde was sitting behind the desk, tapping on a keyboard, and she looked up as Nash entered and gave him a dazzling smile.

As usual, his stomach did a tiny little flip, and he got that tingle, that tightening, down in his balls, and he thought to himself, I sure would love to have some of that fucking ass of yours.

And then he thought of sweet, sweet Wendy, and he felt small and mean.

“How are you today, Mr Nash?”

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you,” Nash said, giving her his best smile.

Chantelle glanced at her computer. “I see it’s your last appointment with Dr Egelman.”

Nash’s smile faltered a little. “That’s right, although, I’m not sure it should be my last. I feel like I need more.”

“Don’t worry, everyone feels that way, I promise you. But today’s the day all your other sessions have been preparing you for. You’ll walk back out here a changed man.”

Nash leaned his hands on the desk. “Are you sure? Because, you know, I still feel just as shit as when we started. Uh, sorry about that.”

Chantelle laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard worse. And yes, I promise you, you come out here a different man, and leave all your problems behind, in the treatment room. I’ve seen it happen lots.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“I say so,” Chantelle said, and smiled. “Take a seat, Dr Egelman will be with you in a moment.”

Nash sat down in one of the comfortable waiting room chairs. The craving for another cigarette hit him, and he had to resist the urge to bolt for the elevator and outside. Nerves, that’s all. Today was the big day, the one all the others had been leading up to. As far as Nash was concerned, he was in the last chance saloon, and this was it.

And he was pretty sure Wendy felt the same, too.

“You’re like two different people,” she’d said to him once. “There’s sweet, lovely, caring Cable, the guy I met and fell in love with, who’d stop the car to rescue an injured cat by the side of the road, or run through gorse briar to save a kid’s balloon that got snatched from him by the wind. And then there’s that other guy.”

They were in bed, Nash lying on his back, Wendy cuddled up to him, her head on his chest, a hand on his stomach. Nash hadn’t replied to that.

He knew all about the other guy.

“I see him mainly when you get drunk,” Wendy had continued, after a pause. “But sometimes I catch flashes of him even when you’re sober. He’s a nasty, psychotic bastard, and part of me wants to cry to think of what you went through as a kid, for that side of you to have been created.”

“And the other part?”

Wendy had lifted her head off his chest and looked him in the eye. “The other part of me wants to run away and hide.”

“Cable, how nice to see you! Come on in, come on in.”

Nash stood up and shook hands with Dr Egelman, and followed him into his office.

Egelman was tall and lean, looked to be in his late sixties, but in a handsome, craggy movie star way. He always wore expensive shirts and ties, a different one each visit.

Nash headed for his usual chair, the one where he had sat and cried when he spilled out some of the stuff he had done, and some of that other stuff. The things that had been done to him.

“No, don’t sit down. Today’s different, Cable. Follow me through into the treatment room. Today’s the day we cure you.”

The treatment room looked like a private hospital room, except there wasn’t one bed, but two. There was no window, and Nash couldn’t help but notice that there had been a lock on the outside of the room’s door, but there was no lock on the inside.

“In a moment, I’m going to leave you to get changed into a gown, and then I will return with a nurse and we can start the treatment. Before that, though, I do need to offer you one last opportunity for you to reconsider. As I explained in our first session together, the process is a radical one. If you have any qualms about the treatment, any questions I haven’t answered yet, anything at all, this is your last chance. We’ve already been through the paperwork, and you’ve signed your consent, but you can still refuse the treatment if you so wish.”

Nash glanced at the door, at that blank plate where the lock should have been. Thought about asking why that was, but decided, no, fuck it, he’d come this far, they obviously had their reasons.

“I’m good to go, Doc, let’s get on with it.”

Egelman clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man!”

The doctor left him alone, closing that door with a quiet click, and Nash got undressed and into the hospital gown. He folded his clothes up and placed them in the holdall that Egelman had left for him, and then sat on the bed and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long before Egelman returned with a nurse and an orderly. The orderly gave him an itemised form to sign for his possessions and then took the holdall away. Egelman asked Nash to lie down on one of the beds. The nurse took his arm and swabbed the inside of his elbow.

Egelman held up a syringe, the needle tip glinting in the room’s soft light.

“This is a light, short acting sedative. It’s simply to put you out for a few minutes while we perform the procedure, and then you will quickly come around again.”

“And then I’ll be better?”

Egelman smiled. “Remember, Cable, that’s up to you. You have to be strong, and think on how you can beat this. Don’t be weak, don’t give in, no matter how hopeless it might seem to be in the next hour or two.” Egelman placed his hand on Nash’s shoulder and squeezed. “Fight the good fight, Cable, and you will walk out of here a changed man. A better man.”

Nash nodded. His mouth was dry, and he wanted a cigarette, and he kept thinking about the door with the blank plate where the lock should have been.

Egelman gave him the sedative.

Nash leaned his head back into the soft pillow, and closed his eyes.

Egelman had said the sedative was a light one, but it seemed to Nash that no sooner had he closed his eyes than he was being sucked into a pit of cloying darkness. At the last moment, he wanted to scream, No! I can’t do this, let me out!

But the darkness swallowed him, and although Nash was scared that he would suffocate in its embrace, the darkness suddenly spit him back out again, to consciousness.

Nash lay on the bed trembling, his heart pounding, his hospital gown and the bed sheets damp and cold with his sweat.

“Hey, buddy, welcome back. I thought you were never gonna wake up.”

When Nash turned his head to look at the man who had spoken, he thought he had gone insane. His identical double was standing only a few feet from his bed, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest.

And he was completely naked.

Nash pushed himself up in the bed, his hospital gown sticking to his back, its clammy touch making him shiver. “Who are you?”

The man chuckled and straightened up, scratching absently at his hairy chest. “Do you really need to ask that? I’m you, you fucking dummy. I’m that part of you that you’ve been trying to bury all these years, that side of yourself you always tried to hide from everybody else, the part of you that you came here to kill.”

Nash swung his legs off the edge of the bed. He noticed the other bed’s sheet was rumpled, and had damp patches, as though someone had been sleeping on it, and sweating.

“No. This is some kind of sick joke. Or it’s a part of the therapy, isn’t it? You’re an actor, playing the part, that’s right, isn’t it?”

“Like I said, you’re a fucking dummy. A loser, a fucking waste of space. I don’t know how he did it, but that creep Egelman separated us. Must have been something in that screwy injection he gave us, or maybe he’s been fucking with our minds all along, you know, getting us ready to be separated.”

Nash looked at the door again. At the blank plate where the lock should have been.

“Yeah, I noticed that, too,” Nash’s twin said. “And since I woke up, lying on that bed as naked as the day I was born, I’ve been thinking on it.”

Nash had been thinking about it too, since he woke up, and found his doppelganger waiting for him. And he didn’t like the conclusion he had arrived at.

“Yeah, you got it,” Nash’s double said, cracking his knuckles. “There’s only one of us meant to get out of this room alive, right? Egelman said that himself, didn’t he? We’ve got to fight the good fight, that’s what he said. And then one of us will walk out of here a better man.”

“No, he said I’ve got to fight, that I would walk out of here a better man. Not you.”

Nash’s double grinned. “There you go again, being a dummy. Who the fuck do you think I am? I’m you, and you’re me. Egelman was talking to me, just the same he was talking to you. You think he cares which one of us walks out of here?”

“Maybe not.”

“That’s right. So who’s it gonna be buddy? Think you got what it takes to finish me off? I get the feeling there’s a camera hidden away in this room somewhere, and nobody’s gonna be opening that door until one of us is dead.”

“I guess so,” Nash said, tensing.

“Yeah, you guess so,” his double said, and lunged for him.

* * *

Chantelle looked up as Egelman’s office door opened.

“Wow, that’s some radical therapy you got going there, Doc,” Nash said, as he shook hands with Egelman.

“But highly effective, yes?” the doctor said, pumping Nash’s hand enthusiastically.

“Oh yeah, yeah, just the best.”

“Now remember, you signed a confidentiality agreement, I can’t have details of this leaking out. And remember, the check’s due by the end of the week.”

“No problem, buddy,” Nash said.

Chantelle gave Nash her best smile as he approached the desk.

“You just need to sign out, and then you’re all done,” she said.

“Thanks.” Nash scribbled his name in the visitors’ book. “Have you got a waste bin behind that desk of yours?”

“Sure,” Chantelle said.

Nash reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. “Would you mind throwing these into it? I’ve decided I’m giving up, right this instant.”

Chantelle laughed, and took the packet from him, dropped it in the bin. “Good for you. So, was I right? Did you leave your problems behind in the treatment room? Do you feel like a changed man?”

Nash closed the visitors’ book and winked at Chantelle.

“Honey, I’ve never felt better.”

I hope you enjoyed your story. If you want to read more like that, I have a collection of them called Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense. You can have the entire book for free, plus my novel Joe Coffin, Season One if you sign up to my newsletter. (Now come on, I just gave you something for free, and now I’m offering you even more stuff for free. I’m allowed to do a little bit of sales patter, aren’t I?)

If you would like to receive these two free books, and my newsletter with further special offers and other freebies, just follow the link below.

The post Free Short Story appeared first on Ken Preston.

The Screaming Mimi, by Fredric Brown

Written in 1949, The Screaming Mimi is probably Fredric Brown’s most popular book. It is certainly one of my favourites. I first discovered it in my early twenties, back in the days when I used to browse the bookshelves in real bookshops, rather than virtual ones. Remember those times? It was also around about that time I also discovered Raymond Chandler, and his tough, cynical, knight in shining armour, Philip Marlow.

Brown’s protagonist, William Sweeney, a reporter for the Chicago Blade shares much with Marlow. He is a tough guy, mixes with some pretty disreputable characters, has a soft spot for the ladies, and is quick with a sarcastic comeback.

The Screaming Mimi is set in the 1940s, during an oppressively hot Chicago summer, as a knife wielding serial killer, dubbed The Ripper by the newspapers, is terrorising the city..

Coming down from one hell of an acloholic bender one night, Sweeney is drawn by a crowd to a hotel doorway. On the other side of the glass door a beautiful blonde woman is lying face down on the floor, a large dog (It must be a dog, here in Chicago; if you’d seen it out in the woods you’d have taken it for a wolf) crouching over her. The police arrive, intending to shoot the dog, but then the woman slowly climbs to her feet, a knife wound visible in her abdomen. The astonishing scene that follows next sets Sweeney on his path to sobriety, and a date with a killer.

The blonde woman, Sweeney later learns, is stripper Yolanda Lang, and The Ripper’s intended fourth victim. The dog is called Devil, and performs as part of her act. Yolanda only received a shallow stab wound to her stomach, the ferocious, loyal dog having protected her from further harm.

The book’s opening hook is irresistible, and the language remains a constant throughout the story.

You can never tell what a drunken Irishman will do. You can make a flying guess, you can make a lot of flying guesses.

You can list them in their order of probability. The likely ones are easy: He might go after another drink, start a fight, make a speech, take a train…You can work down the list of possibilities; he might buy some green paint, chop down a maple tree, do a fan dance, sing “God Save The King”, steal an oboe…You can work on down to things that get less and less likely, and eventually you might hit the rock bottom of improbability: he might make a resolution and stick to it.

I know that’s incredible, but it happened. A guy named Sweeney did it once, in Chicago. He made a resolution and he had to wade through blood and black coffee to keep it, but he kept it.

Sweeney’s resolution, after seeing the beautiful Yolanda Lang, is to spend a night with her. He quickly determines the best way to do this would be to catch her attacker.

Sweeney soon makes a connection between the killer and a ten inch high statuette sold to him by his first victim in a gift shop. The statuette is called The Screaming Mimi. This is not only a play on the phrase to have the screaming meamies, but here also a mnemonic for the clerk working at the company that produced the statuette, its catalogue number being SM 1.

Here is Sweeney’s first encounter with The Screaming Mimi –

He saw what Reynarde had meant. Definitely there was a virginal quality about the slim nude figure, but that you saw afterward. “Fear, horror, loathing,” Reynarde had said, and all that was there, not only in the face, but in the twisted rigidity of the body. The mouth was wide open in a soundless scream. The arms were thrust out, palms forward, to hold off some approaching horror.

Sweeney buys the statuette, believing the serial killer to have kept the other copy sold to him by his first victim.

To reveal more of the plot would ruin it. The narrative is propelled along at a fast clip, mainly by the smart, wisecracking dialogue –

“Stella Gaylord was a B-girl on West Madison Street. The Lee girl was a private secretary.”

“How private? The kind that has to watch her periods as well as her commas?”

– and the swift exchanges between the characters, many of whom mistrust each other.

Sweeney took another sip of his drink. “You know, Doc, I hate you so damn much I’m beginning to like you.”

“Thank you,” said Greene. “I feel the same about you.”

Throughout much of the story, Sweeney is suffering from a hellish hangover. He has to work hard to keep on top of his game, especially when he discovers his straight edged razor has been stolen from his apartment. Does the killer know Sweeney is on to him? And can Sweeney discover his identity before he kills again?

The Screaming Mimi is a product of its time, the characters’ dialogues littered with casual racist remarks, homophobia and misogynism.

When looking at the statuette’s contorted, fearful figure,, a bartender remarks to Sweeney, “No dame is that afraid of being raped or something.”

Is this a reflection of the author’s own beliefs, or more a reflection of the time and culture the novel’s characters live in? Whichever, it certainly adds authenticity to the narrative and atmosphere.

Sweeney finally achieves what he set out to do, and finds The Ripper, but there’s a twist, propelling Sweeney back to the bottle, where we found him in the first place.

I’ll leave you with one more excerpt, where Sweeney and Captain Bline, in charge of The Ripper investigation, with one of his cops, have gone to see Yolanda Lang’s act in a scuzzy, downtown night club.

Still half-crouched, the dog took a stiff-legged step toward the woman. He snarled again and crouched to spring.

There was a sudden, quick movement across the table from him that pulled Sweeney’s eyes from the tense drama on the stage. And at the same instant that Sweeney saw the movement, Bline’s big hand reached across the table and grabbed Guerney’s arm.

There was a gun in Guerney’s hand.

Bline whispered hoarsely, “You Goddamn fool, it’s part of the act. He’s trained to do that; he’s not going to hurt her.”

Guerney whispered back. “Just in case. In case he does jump her. I could get him before he got her throat.”

“Put back that gun, you Goddamn sap, or I’ll break you.”

The gun went slowly back into the shoulder holster, but Sweeney saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Guerney’s hand stayed on the butt of his gun.

Bline said, “Don’t get trigger-happy. The dog jumps her; it’s part of the act, Goddamn it.”

Guerney’s hand came out from under his coat, but stayed near his lapel. Sweeney’s eyes jerked back to the stage as a sudden intake of breath from the audience backgrounded a yip from a woman at a table near the stage, a yip like a suddenly stopped scream.

The dog was leaping.

The novel was also made into a film of the same name, and inspired Dario Argento’s giallo classic, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

The post The Screaming Mimi, by Fredric Brown appeared first on Ken Preston.

Southcart Scarefest

In an age when bookshops are on the decline, having been swept up by the combined might of supermarket juggernauts, WHSmith and book superstores, (no, I’m not using the Amazon word, because this is before Amazon then hoovered up the selling power of the book superstores, but that’s another story) it was nice to attend an event at a genuine independent book shop in Walsall.

Southcart’s 2nd Annual Scarefest involved author readings, wine, nibbles, fancy dress, lots of books and a great deal of laughter.

I doubt you could find bookshop owners who were any friendlier than Scott and Amy, even if they were dressed rather terrifyingly as Herbert West and Carrie. But then I was the one who began to feel slightly out of place as the shop filled up with a cast of weird and wonderful characters.

The author readings were all great, although a particular mention has to go to James Josiah for the reading of his short story, Voices. This creepy little gem about a lad visited by the ghosts of children murdered by a serial killer was utterly engrossing. Even more remarkable to me at least was the fact that James had written this story especially for the Southcart event.

Horror author Duncan Bradshaw also deserves a mention for his performances of various characters’ expressions and voices during his particularly gory reading from his zombie novel, Class Four.

And I doubt that I will ever be able to forget Jessica Laws’ Octokittens. Truly terrifying, for me anyway, there was no way on earth I could be persuaded to buy one of those things. But a few of them did manage to find themselves homes with other attendees.

And the very natty and well attired Austin Chambers, creator of the Sam Spallucci series, read us an entertaining short story about a monster at the bottom of a well, wondering why his ‘food’ never came to visit him anymore. The account of his journey out of the well to look for his ‘food’ was by turns hilarious and disgusting.

Special thanks also go to Scott’s mother for providing everyone with endless cups of tea and coffee.

Please go and support these guys. It’s not easy running a bookshop, and this one is a fantastic little gem. They regularly run events like the Scarefest, so go like their Facebook page or visit their website to find out more.

Well done guys. I had a blast!

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A Full Shop!

Octokittens! Eek!

Need I say anything at all?

The doctor is in the house, but the patient is not looking well.

Theresa Derwin about to treat us to a poem from her creepy Christmas book.

Jessica Law and her Octokittens.

Duncan Bradshaw has an epiphany during his moment in the reading seat.

Patrick Bateman…..erm….dancing.

The post Southcart Scarefest appeared first on Ken Preston.

Stories For Halloween

It seems everyone (well, almost everyone) loves a good, scary story at Halloween. There is something delicious about being able to snuggle up with a scary book, or switch on the television and watch one of those ghost stories the BBC used to be so good at making.

Even better is the idea of gathering a few friends and family together, turning the lights down low, ideally in front of a roaring fire while the weather turns nasty outside, and telling each other ghost stories.

I guess that’s where many of the urban legends we hear originated from, the idea that we love to be scared. Adding the possibility that some of these stories might actually be true maybe gives them an added frisson.

Of course many of these urban legends are utterly ridiculous.

Like this one . . .

A young couple in a car run out of petrol at nighttime in the middle of nowhere. The boy decides to walk back to the nearest town to get help. A few hours later, long after he should have returned, the girl begins to get anxious about her boyfriend. And then she hears a steady tapping on the car roof, directly above her head. Too scared to move, she sits in the car and waits for morning but the tapping continues throughout the night. When she finally does leave the car in daylight she find the tapping noise is the steady drip of blood onto the car roof, from her boyfriend’s murdered body hanging from the tree branch over the car.

Ridiculous, right?

But a great story to tell out loud, with a few embellishments, on a dark and blustery Halloween night, nonetheless.

I love ghost stories in particular, and I can still remember my sister’s boyfriend scaring me witless when I was young and they used to babysit me, by telling me a story about a couple of graverobbers and the gruesome fate that met them one night. A few years ago I took what I could remember of that story, and wrote my own version.

I’ve included it below as a PDF for you on Halloween night. Before reading it, I recommend you turn the lights down low, pull your chair a little closer to the fire, and make sure all the doors and windows are locked.

Mrs De Runtzens Jewels

And if you enjoyed that story, I have more scary short stories for you in my collection Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense.

You can get it for free on kindle and epub, along with the first in my Joe Coffin series of vampire books, by clicking the link below.

Enjoy Halloween.

And don’t forget to check in the wardrobe for any masked axe murderers before you turn the lights out.

The post Stories For Halloween appeared first on Ken Preston.

10 Best Horror Books I Have Read

The Rats – James Herbert

Quite possibly the first adult horror book I read. I can still remember standing in the shop, and seeing the paperback on display, alongside Night of the Crabs, by Guy N Smith.

Those titles! Those covers! They filled my young head with their voices, screaming BUY ME! BUY ME!

How could I resist?

I snatched them up, paid for them out of my pocket money, and rushed them back to the holiday let we were staying in at the time. I can’t actually remember which one I read first, (so Night of the Crabs might have been the first adult horror book I read) but I devoured them both. And I expect my eyes were as wide as saucers and my face was as white as a sheet.

And I loved them. They were everything those covers, those titles promised, and more. Blood, gore, horror, sex.

SEX!

Yes, it turned out that although school had failed me in sex education, James Herbert and Guy N Smith stepped into the breach and told me all I needed to know.

And more.

You literary types can debate all you want about how good, or not, The Rats actually is, but if only for searing itself into the mind of this future writer, it deserves to be on this list.

 

The Shining – Stephen King

It took me years to get over the fear of looking in mirrors after reading The Shining. And bathtubs. Seriously, years. I was still way too young to be reading horror when I came across The Shining, but my parents didn’t seem that concerned. Boy this book freaked me out. Where James Herbert shocked and repulsed me, King managed to get under my skin and seriously creep me out.

I read it again years later and it still fascinated and creeped me out.

 

 

 

 

 

Night of the Crabs – Guy N Smith

Guy N Smith is the only horror writer (so far at least) who has traumatised me so much with a passage of writing that I burst into tears. It’s night, the crabs are out, and they find a victim. And they proceed to dismember him, a limb at a time, until he’s nothing but a torso pumping blood, BUT OH MY GOD HE’S STILL ALIVE!

I was too young to be reading material like that, and maybe it didn’t help that we were on holiday by the coast at the time. I suppose it added an extra frisson to the story. My cousin was with me, in the bedroom we shared at the holiday house we were in, and he wanted to take me downstairs to my parents. But I said no, perhaps realising that if they found out how much the material I was reading was upsetting me, they would stop me reading it.

And I didn’t want that.

Because it seemed after all that I enjoyed being traumatised.

 

 

Let The Right One In –

Maybe I didn’t burst into tears reading this one, but there are still some eyeball searing horrific moments within the pages of this book.

In particular I’m thinking of THAT scene in the basement with Eli and Hakan.

Look, I just can’t go there, okay.

Go read the book for yourself and sear your own eyeballs.

 

 

 

 

The Gypsy’s Curse – Harry Crews

Marvin Molar is a deaf-mute with no legs. He lives in a gym with a former stuntman who once had a car driven over his head, and two punchdrunk boxers. When Marvin’s girlfriend, Hester, moves into the gym she brings complications with her, and you just know it is not going to end well. To be honest it’s been so long since I read this novel that I had to look up a couple of reviews to remind myself what it’s about.

And I’m still no clearer.

What I do remember though, is the ending. I remember where I was when I read it, and I remember the very physical reaction it caused.

I gasped. I had to put the book down. The blood drained from my face. It took me a few moments to compose myself before I could resume reading and finish the last few paragraphs.

Reading a Harry Crews book is like arguing with a drunk at 2:00 am in a trashed barroom where they serve nothing but whisky and you can get punched in the face for looking at someone the wrong way. Reading a Harry Crews book, somedays I want to leap up and tell everyone what a genius he was, and how you should be reading this, and it will change your life. And then other times I just want to throw the book across the room in frustration and never pick the damn thing up again.

Reading a Harry Crews book . . . well, it’s like nothing else I can think of.

You might be wondering why I put The Gypsy’s Curse in my list of horror books.

I guess because Crews might have been writing about the human condition, but he was telling horror stories too.

 

Dracula – Bram Stoker

I first read Dracula when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. I bought the book through my school book club, and I think it was an abridged version. In many ways now I become impatient if I try and reread it. The story seems to lack structure, and the ending feels rushed. But still, the first section in Count Dracula’s castle, recounted in Jonathon Harker’s diary, remains creepy and unsettling. And Lucy Westenra’s nightly visits from Dracula in London, and the subsequent hunt for the woman known as the Bloofer Lady, have always stuck with me.

So much so I referenced the Bloofer Lady in my own vampire novel, Joe Coffin.

 

 

 

 

Heart Shaped Box – Joe Hill

A lot of readers don’t like this one. Maybe it’s the Stephen King connection, that people assume Joe Hill got an in into the publishing world because he’s King’s son. Who knows, maybe he did. But Heart Shaped Box is still a creepily effective ghost story, with a lot more going on than the initially simple narrative would have us believe. I loved that initial premise of a faded rock star buying a ghost off an internet auction site.

And then it just gets creepier and darker. I actually enjoyed this more than Horns.

 

 

 

 

 

Psychoville – Christopher Fowler

This was the first Christopher Fowler book I ever read. Reading it was like listening to the Sex Pistols at full volume. And then there’s a complete about face in the middle of the book, and it was even better than I first thought.

The second Christopher Fowler book I read was Nyctophobia, years after Psychoville.

Seems like he’s calmed down a lot since those early days.

Shame.

 

 

 

 

Salem’s Lot – Stephen King

I read Salem’s Lot as a teenager and it absolutely terrified me. I read it for the second time some twenty-five years later, and it terrified me all over again.

Even the David Soul starring TV adaptation scared me. I’m starting to think this says more about me than it does about the book.

But hell, I don’t care.

 

 

 

 

 

The Fog – James Herbert

I had to include The Fog as this is when James Herbert threw off the restraint he had shown in writing The Rats, and really went to town in his descriptions of perverse horror and sexual description. Will I ever be able to forget the crazed headmaster willingly submitting to a *ahem* penisectomy from one of his pupils in the school gym? With a pair of garden shears?

No, I don’t think I will.

 

 

 

 

 

So, my ten best horror books wot I ever read.

If you want to see how those books may have influenced my own writing, or you just want a damn good horror read featuring vampires and gangsters, well, you’re in luck.

It just so happens I am currently giving away the first in my series of books, Joe Coffin.

If you like vampires, if you like blood and gore and sex, and if you like gritty British thrillers, then I’m sure you will love Joe Coffin.

Just click on the link below to get your free book.

The post 10 Best Horror Books I Have Read appeared first on Ken Preston.

Harry Crews and Joe Coffin

When I started writing Joe Coffin Season One I felt I needed an image in my head of what Coffin looked like. I knew he was going to be big, and probably not good looking (I’m being kind there). Joe Coffin is a British mobster, a heavy, a big tough guy who might have a heart of gold, but then again might not.I had his character traits down pretty good from the start. He’s not a thinker, Joe, he’s a doer. He’s a man of action, who’s prepared to do what needs to be done at that particular moment. Not a planner or a strategist, maybe even not particularly bright. Doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the morality of his actions either.

But put him in a tight corner, and he’ll fight his way out, even if it means wading through a river of blood to do it.

Likewise, if you’re his friend and you’re in that tight corner, he’ll wade through that river of blood for you, too.

But physical characteristics?

I couldn’t quite pin down what he looked like, his appearance was more than a little out of focus.

And then it hit me.

Joe Coffin looked like Harry Crews.

I first came across Southern Gothic author Harry Crews when I was reading Lawrence Block’s Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print. (And if you are interested in the art of writing, Block is currently updating this classic for the digital generation. I recommend you grab a copy when it comes out.)

Crews, who died in 2012, wrote what has been described as Souther Gothic Literature. Flannery O’Connor on steroids as one reviewer put it.

But to me, he wrote horror stories.

I can still remember reading the final pages of The Gypsy’s Curse. I was on a packed commuter training travelling home from work. The Gypsy’s Curse had infuriated me as much as it had entertained me, maybe even more, and I had sometimes thought of giving up on it. But I stuck it out, and to this day it remains one of my most profound experiences in reading a novel. The ending had such an impact on me, my face turned cold as the blood drained from it, and I had to put the book down a moment to catch my breath.

It was that powerful.

But Crews the man fascinated me as much as his novels. His autobiography of his childhood is as horrifying as anything within his fiction, and his essay on how he dealt with the loss of his youngest son made me cry.

This is the man who, upon waking up in a pile of broken glass and vomit after a year long bender, said, “Hey man, the party’s over,” and checked himself into rehab. The man who got up at four every morning to write, because there was no one to call you on the phone, and nowhere to buy booze.

So Harry Crews became the physical inspiration for Joe Coffin.

To be fair, there’s no longer a resemblance. Coffin never had a moustache for a start.

But Crews was the starting point.

One of my short stories was also inspired by Harry Crews. I tried reading his novel Car a couple of times, and always gave up in frustration. One day I’m going to read it, but inspired by the concept of a man determining to eat an entire car, I dedicated How To Eat a Car to Harry Crews.

You can read it for free as a PDF here.

HOW TO EAT A CAR – FREE SHORT STORY

And if you like that, well, you can have the book of short stories in which it is included for free.

Just sign up to my mailing list. You’ll get Joe Coffin Season One first, but then I’ll also send you Population:DEAD!

How’s that for a deal?

 

 

 

The post Harry Crews and Joe Coffin appeared first on Ken Preston.

The Terror, by Dan Simmons

I’d never heard of Dan Simmons before, until I found one of his books in my local second hand bookshop. It was spine out on the shelf, in the Fantasy/Horror/Science fiction section. How these three distinct genres manage to get lumped together in one, I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that Historical Romance has its own floor to ceiling set of shelving is because of its popularity, but surely it wouldn’t take much effort to give a shelf or two to Horror, and the same again to Fantasy, etc.They might not be as popular, but these individual genres still deserve their own spots in the shop. Anyway, I digress.

As I said, the book was spine out on the shelf, but it stood out for two reasons. The first is that, at over 750 pages, it was one hell of a thick spine. And the second reason it caught my eye is that title: The Terror.

This big, fat novel is a fictionalised account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to the Arctic to force the North West Passage, in 1845 – 1848. Franklin was in charge of two ships, HMS Erebus, and HMS Terror, both of which were lost, with all their crew. Possible theories about the deaths of the 24 officers and 110 men, include scurvy, hypothermia, starvation and lead poisoning brought on from the poorly soldered cans of food, commissioned by the Admiralty for the long expedition.

So, a rousing historical adventure novel about the hardship of life in the Arctic, and the bravery of the English under incredibly dangerous and hostile conditions. What’s it doing in the Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction section then?

Because in Dan Simmons’ retelling of the tale, The Terror does not refer to the ship named so, but the thing on the ice that is hunting them down, and picking them off one by one.

We start the book at the midway point in the narrative, the two ships locked in place in the frozen Arctic sea, and having been trapped in that way for almost two years. The temperature is -50 degrees, and a man’s eyelids can freeze open if he stays too long out on the deck. We are introduced to Captain Crozier who, it turns out, will be the main character in a book full of distinctive characters, almost all male, apart from the mute Eskimo woman, nicknamed Lady Silence.

Crozier is summoned below deck to the Hold, where there have been reports of strange noises, attributed to the ghosts of the crew who have already died. But Crozier doesn’t believe in ghosts, and he suspects the real reason for the noises is far more terrifying. Down in the dark, rat infested bowels of the ship, Crozier and the ship’s carpenter discover that the hull has been breached.

The freezing air from outside rushes in so quickly that it almost extinguishes the lantern. Crozier has to shield it with his free hand to keep it flickering, sending the men’s shadows dancing across decks, beams and bulkheads.The two long boards from the outer hull have been smashed and bent inward by some inconceivable, irresistible force. Clearly visible in the light from the slightly shaking lantern are huge claw marks in the splintered oak — claw marks streaked with frozen smears of impossibly bright blood.

The Terror, Illustration by Mono

The Terror is an incredibly well written novel. There were times when I was convinced that I could feel the cold of the Arctic winter, and hear the groaning of the shifting ice as it slowly pulverised the two ships, rendering them unfit for sailing even if the long awaited spring thaw finally arrived.

Simmons piles on the tension, threading his way through a narrative that jumps back and forth in time, before settling on a straightforward account of the remaining survivors’ desperate trek across the ice, pulling sledges laden down with their dwindling supplies, as they abandon the ships and make a last attempt at reaching safety.This would have been a thrilling enough novel without the addition of a supernatural monster, and yet this fantastical element to the plot is woven skillfully in with the historical detail and well drawn characters of the book’s protagonists.

But, it is one hell of a long book, as noted by the reviewer in The New York Times, who said that reading The Terror ‘…won’t kill you, unless it falls on your head.’

Don’t let the length put you off, though. Or the fact that, according to history, all of the crew and officers aboard Franklin’s ill-fated expedition died. The mythical creature of the title is not the only antagonist in this massive novel, and, despite my fears to the contrary, there is a suitable, satisfying ending to the story.

Click on the link below to get yourself a copy.

The post The Terror, by Dan Simmons appeared first on Ken Preston.

Gristle and Bone, by Duncan Ralston

Looking at the cover and title of Duncan Ralston’s Gristle & Bone, a collection of short and novella-length stories from Booktrope’s new Forsaken imprint, you’d be correct in assuming that the theme is horror. The opening story, Baby Teeth confirms this expectation in a brutally gruesome fashion. I’m not sure I will ever be able to contemplate the miracle of pregnancy ever again without being reminded of that story’s horrifying and shocking ending.

And further horrors await.

But three dark and twisted tales into this collection and I began to detect a theme. One that transcends genre boundaries. You see, I think Ralston isn’t quite telling us the complete truth of the matter with that cover image and that title.

Because he isn’t writing horror stories at all.

He’s writing about the human condition.

And then he’s dressing them up as horror stories.

In the first story, Baby Teeth, Candace Murray is depressed that she cannot conceive, (at least he didn’t say barren) and a gulf grows between her and her husband as they both spiral into a melancholic, sexless marriage. I thought I could see where this story was headed, but then Ralston delivered a horrifying sucker punch at the end, whilst at the same time completely wrong footing me.

Beware Of Dog is the next tale, with Dean Vogel, recently dismissed from the armed forces and suffering from post traumatic stress, returning to his family in the eerily named Dark Pines. Dean starts seeing a psychiatrist, and is forced to confront not only his own damaged psyche, but the town bully too. Ralston skillfully weaves the past and the present into a single story, as we work our way towards a high noon type showdown with unexpected results.

To be honest this is not one of my favourites. I felt that the story was a little confused as to what it actually wanted to be, and the ending lurched into a completely different genre altogether from the one I had been reading. But one of Ralston’s strengths is his depth of characterisation, and this aspect of his storytelling skill shines through in Beware Of Dog.

Viral is story number three, about a youtube video of a depressed girl disappearing into the ether, scratching herself out of existence. Tara Maxwell, a wannabe serious journalist stuck writing the music column for a newspaper, decides to investigate. Ralston breathes life into the tired cliche of the hot young reporter chasing a story despite the opposition of the world weary newspaper editor, whilst skillfully negotiating a tale of teenage depression, lack of identity, guilt and redemption. There are no easy answers at the end of this story, which finishes with a weary dismissal and a return to the comfort of a warm bed.

Artifact (#37) starts with a bang as a naked girl is dumped from a van to the side of the road. But all is not what it seems. Actually, what I should have said was this: Artifact (#37) starts with what I now regard as one of my all-time favourite opening sentences.

They all had their jobs to do: Ugly Karl did the driving, Mad Bastard did the videotaping, and Meat did the girl.

This muscular prose continues, sketching out a supernatural tale of revenge, with some of the scuzziest characters I have ever come across in fiction. And yet, to Ralston’s credit, I actually cared about what happened to them. Down and dirty they might be, but Ralston gives them enough humanity to make them (just about) endearing.

//End User begins as a paranoid conspiracy thriller, when Mason Adler starts his day to find an email from himself residing in his inbox, with the subject line: READ ME. And of course, following in the footsteps of Alice drinking from the bottle labelled DRINK ME, and Neo swallowing the red pill to see “how far the rabbit hole goes”, Mason opens the email. Once again Ralston subverts expectations, turning this paranoid conspiracy thriller into a dark science fiction tale, in which he utterly and completely fulfills the promise he makes to us in the story’s opening.

June and David have driven to Monte Verde for their friends’ wedding in Fat Of The Land, and we first encounter them not quite having an argument. They seem to do this quite a lot, not quite have arguments. Their relationship is beautifully sketched out through their conversations and shared past history. We’re privy to June’s interior monologues, but not David’s, so we only ever get one side of the story. This tale of a relationship in which two people who aren’t quite right for each other but are struggling to make it work is deftly told, and when the horror finally arrives it almost seems an intrusion. But what horror it is. The clues are loudly signposted well ahead of the denouement, and the ending is none the worse for that.

Scavengers finishes off this collection of tales, narrated secondhand by the man to whom the horrifying crimes recounted here have been confessed to. It seems that we have the ending all sewn up and revealed to us right at the beginning of this story, but hang on in there, Ralston delivers one final sucker punch and leaves us with a whole host of unanswered questions by the time that last sentence has been read.

I love this collection of weird and wonderful tales, each one different from the previous. And this is where I really grind my teeth in envy, as Ralston seems to have the innate ability to tailor his style to the needs of any particular story. His writing can be as raw as freshly sliced flesh, or as subtle as a lover’s whispered secret. And he makes it work, managing to give the book as a whole a definite identity.

Ah, yes, identity, theme. What, exactly, is Ralston doing with this collection of stories? Is he writing horror? Or, as I said earlier, is he writing about the human condition, and dressing it up as horror?

Neither. Duncan Ralston is writing honest stories about real people, pitched headlong into extraordinary situations.

And that is what makes them so horrifying.

Buy Gristle and Bone
Amazon UK
Amazon US

The post Gristle and Bone, by Duncan Ralston appeared first on Ken Preston.