William Meikle's Blog: Latest, page 67

THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR – signed hardcovers in stock

I’ve wanted to do an old style gothic novella for a while, so when Dark Renaissance asked me to write a traditional haunted house story I jumped at the chance. Scotland, a misty moor, an old crumbling manor house, an owner with a scandalous secret, and something skittering in the rafters of the library – you’ll find them all here, along with more than a hint of a Hammer horror or two.

THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR is a new Scottish supernatural novella by William Meikle from Dark Renaissance, the second book in the Haunted House series. It comes in two hardcover editions, each with three full color illustrations, and three black and white illustrations by M. Wayne Miller.

Get it here >> Dark Renaissance

David Blacklaw and Hugh Fraser were celebrities in the days before it became a dirty word. They had done it all, in grand style — until the mysterious scandal that brought their fame crashing to an end. Now Fraser’s grandson, John, has come to the crumbling Blacklaw ancestral home on the Scottish moors, looking for answers, in search of a story that will make his career.

But what he finds is much more than a cover-up of a scandalous secret. A brooding terror lurks in the shadows of Blacklaw House, something that skitters in the eaves and rustles in the pages of the books in the old library — a dark entity that whispers in John’s ear, seducing and promising. Meanwhile, outside in the mist, something walks the fog-bound moors, getting ever closer to the house even as John closes in on the secret.

The race is on for John to find the answer and reap the prize, before the horror takes root in his soul.

100 Signed and Numbered Hardcover Edition Price: $25.00 – NOW IN STOCK

26 (A-Z) Lettered Deluxe Hardcover Edition: $99.00 – available on order

Page count: 148

The Deluxe Hardcover Edition is bound in smooth black leather, and the front cover stamped with a haunted house in red foil, further enhanced with solid black headbands and a red book ribbon. The book will be protected by a black slipcase and deluxe hardcover edition will be signed by the author and the artist.

The Signed and Numbered Hardcover Edition is bound with the printed front cover art. It is furthered enhanced with black headbands, and a black book ribbon. The signed and numbered hardcover edition is signed by the author.

Three years on…

Facebook reminded me… three years ago today the top shelf of my “Brag” bookcase where I kept my novels and story collections so far…looked like this.

And these are now… hardcovers first

…and paperbacks…

I appear to be in a golden period – I’ve also sold over 30 short stories at pro rates in the same three years, got a whole other bookcase full of anthologies with my stories in them, and I’ve got a load more books in the pipeline to add to the two new photies above, including three more novels and a novella from DarkFuse, a new short Holmes novel, a haunted house novella and at least one more collection from Dark Renaissance and some other interesting stuff I’m not even allowed to talk about yet.

I’ll also be adding German and Portuguese language paperback editions of The Midnight Eye Filesbooks in the near future

I sometimes get down on myself that I’m not as successful as I’d like to be. ( I’m still after that mass market paperback deal for example ) But looking back just three years, I’m definitely still heading in the right direction.

Onward.

To infinity and beyond.

THE WORST SOUND – Flash Fiction

What’s the worst sound you’ve ever heard?

Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about a death, a sound, and the end of a dream.

It was ten years ago and I was a young Church of Scotland minister. Yes, I know I don’t look a man of the cloth, but hear me out.

Matt Duncan was dying when I got to him, thin bubbles of blood at mouth and nostril. His wife had called, pleading with me to come, to help in his last hours. I was young and sure of my faith but the sight of those sunken eyes and the thin rasping from his chest made my heart lurch with pity.

He was trying to speak, and I had to lean close to hear him.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned,” he said. I tried to tell him I wasn’t Catholic, but he merely grasped my hand hard and began to speak.

I won’t bother you with the details. The life he related was full of theft and mayhem, of sexual depravity and of murder. I felt bile rise in my throat as he disclosed one particular story about a twelve year old girl, but my God is a merciful God. I prayed with him, telling him that God would care for him, and I had just reached the end of a prayer when I heard the death rattle in his throat. I placed his hand on his chest and bent my head. It was then that I heard it.

The room hummed with the far off sound of heavy machinery, then a bell rang, harsh and tinny, echoing around the small room.

There came a sliding, metallic noise of a door opening, and a deep voice intoned the words I’ve heard every night since…

“Going down.”

Two new stories published today

It’s always a good day when a new story comes out, and today there’s two, both of which were in the post for me this morning. Both books are really nice in their paperback editions, which is a bonus.

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF JACK THE RIPPER STORIES is one of those dream anthologies of the kind I’ve aspired to be in since I started writing – one of the big name publishers, an editor I’ve always admired, and a theme I felt right at home with.

My story is a new CARNACKI one, and takes place 21 years after the Whitechapel murders.

40 dark new tales by Martin Edwards, Michael Gregorio, Alex Howard, Barbara Nadel, Steve Rasnic Tem, Josh Reynolds, Adrian Cole and many more.

Includes my story THE KEYS TO THE DOOR.

AMAZON | AMAZON UK

A MYTHOS GRIMMLY is a different beast entirely, but again the theme just shouted at me at the time – a mash up of a Grimm’s fairy tale and a Lovecraftian viewpoint. Given my love of music, this one came naturally too…

Fairy tales and Lovecraftian Mythos collide in this mash-up anthology. Featuring Tracie McBride, Joseph S Pulver Sr, Peter Rawlik and many more.

Contains my story THE WONDERFUL MUSICIAN

AMAZON | AMAZON UK

Friday Freebie – The Persistence of Memory

The piano has seen better days. But the wood remembers the old tunes, remembers love and affection. Can Betty find her way back to happy times? Does the music still have its charms? Or are some things better off left quiet?

A free short ghost story on Amazon for Kindle or Smashwords for download in the other ereader formats. This story also appears in my collection DARK MELODIES from Dark Regions Press

AMAZON | AMAZON UK | SMASHWORDS

Have you read the UNSPOKEN?

My Dad has cancer. More than one kind in fact. He’s fighting hard, but cancer is a devious bugger. It hides, it lurks, and it pounces when you think it’s down and defeated.

Cancer is a monster.

It has been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember. I first came across it in the late Sixties. My Gran’s brother came back to town to die with his family. I was fascinated by this man, so thin as to be almost skeletal, wound in clothes that were many sizes too large for his frame, his skin so thin that I could see his blood moving… not pumping, for it had long since stopped moving enough to keep him alive long. He rarely spoke, just sat by the fire as if trying to soak up heat, his eyes frequently wet from tears, not of sadness, but of pain. He lasted for months in that condition until it finally took him and I knew then that cancer was a monster.

AMAZON COM PBCK | AMAZON UK PBCK

AMAZON COM EBOOK | AMAZON UK EBOOK

Since then it has taken others, both friends and family, a young mother with two pre-teen children, a cousin who was like a big brother to me, and a girl I never got to know for she was taken before her twentieth birthday. Other family members are still fighting. There’s my Dad, who meets it all with a good humour that is humbling, and my godmother who has battled bowel cancer into remission twice.

Cancer is a monster. I can’t fight it for them. But as a writer and as an editor there is something I can do. I rallied up some friends, and friends of friends, and asked them for some stories. They responded brilliantly. We’ve put them together in a wee book.

Johnny Mains and Peter Mark May at Karöshi Books have published THE UNSPOKEN as an ebook and paperback with all profits going to The Beatson Cancer Research Institute. We’ve sent them hundreds of dollars so far, and I hope to send them hundreds more.

The lineup is stunning.

Ramsey Campbell – Introduction
Tim Lebbon – Just Breathe
Simon Kurt Unsworth – Photographs of Boden
Steven Savile & Steve Lockley – The Last Gift
John Shirley – Where the Market’s Hottest
Anna Taborska – Underbelly
Stephen James Price – Pages of Promises
Scott Nicholson – Heal Thyself
Stephen Laws – Harbinger
William Meikle – The Unfinished Basement
Nancy Kilpatrick – Alien Love
David Riley – A Girl, a Toad and a Cask
Barbie Wilde – Polyp
Johnny Mains – The Cure
Guy N Smith – The Big One
Pete Crowther – Cankerman
Steve Duffy – X for Henrietta
Gary McMahon – Bitter Soup


Edited by William Meikle
Cover art by Simon Marshall Jones

Get it now, or miss out on some great stories.

Is it the end of the world yet?

Strange dreams last night, of the Sun exploding and us all getting fried. Which was nice. And it got me thinking again…

There’s something cathartic about seeing everything being torn down. It also makes for amusing daydreams when the boss is being a tool or when the commute seems to take forever. And who doesn’t think they couldn’t do better at building a society if given a chance?

PENTACLE novella hardcovers still available to order

PENTACLE pocket sized signed limited edition hardcovers are still available from DarkFuse in advance of the Dec 15th publication date. I hope you’ll pick it up and have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

It’s another of my weird houses stories, and pulls together some threads of stuff that has been interesting me over the past few years, so there’s timey-wimey stuff, how different people cope with grief, guitar playing and the power of old tunes, old CARNACKI’s pentacle and some very weird stuff from beyond the veil.

There are houses like this all over the world. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary. But some, those who suffer…some know better. They are drawn to the places where what ails them can be eased.

But that’s not the case for the residents of the Edinburgh house, for something has disturbed the quiet reflection in that old building. A creature has slipped through, sniffling and snuffling in all the dark places, disrupting the balance of time and space.

And it’s John’s job to fix it… and when he finds an old electric pentacle in the basement that seems to be in tune with his guitar, he begins to fight back, the only way he knows how.

DarkFuse | Amazon ebook | Amazon UK ebook

2 New Novels Sold to DarkFuse

The contracts are signed – I have 2 more novels lined up at DarkFuse, FUNGOID and SONGS OF DREAMING GODS.

FUNGOID is a Hodgsonian, fungal menace takes over the world novel, and SONGS OF DREAMING GODS is another in my weird houses series getting deep into the mythos of how they function. Both novels are set in my current home, Newfoundland, which has started taking as much a hold on my writing as Scotland has over the years.

More particulars as and when I know more.

DarkFuse are being very good for me.  Back in 2011 I sent them the NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO novel. They liked it, agreed to publish it, and so I sent them a novella, CLOCKWORK DOLLS. They liked that too, so much so that they offered me a contract to write three more novels and three more novellas.  I delivered THE HOLE, THE EXILED and THE DUNFIELD TERROR novels, and the BROKEN SIGIL, TORMENTOR and PENTACLE novellas. Then I got a contract for three more novels.

With the two new novel sales mentioned above, I now have just one novel left to deliver, and that’s next Spring’s project for me. After that? Who knows.

But I’m more than happy to sign up for more if they want me as they’ve proved themselves to me, with great production values, great editorial skills, and a focus on customer satisfaction for their readers that’s second to none.

Plus, the sales aren’t half bad, and I get nice, regular, royalty checks.

I also get to rub shoulders with a fine stable of established and up and coming writers.

If you’re looking for a great read, look no further.

You’ll find my currently available books over at their online shop here » DarkFuse

My escape plan

My website hosting company seems to be in more than a bit of trouble, so this WP blog has been resurrected to test the waters again and see if it’s still functional after a few years absence to serve as a backup plan in case of disaster.

Bear with me – there might be some stray posts and old stuff flying around for a bit as I test it out….