David A. Riley's Blog, page 100

Flowers of the Sea by Reggie Oliver

I picked up Reggie Oliver's latest collection of stories from the Post Office this morning. I think I am probably one of the last people to get the book before it went out of print. I'm looking forward to dipping into this over the next few days. What with getting the DVD of Schalken the Painter in the post yesterday, and not this, things are getting off to a good start for the weekend.

R'ha - an incredible 6-minute film created by a film design student

Kokatu.com posted an amazing short film called R'ha created by a 22 year old digital film design student called Kaleb Lechowski who, apart from the voices (by David Masterson) did everything himself. This is an incredible piece of work and I'm sure we'll all hear a lot more about him in the future.

Whispers from the Abyss - Book Review

WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSSA collection of H. P. Lovecraft inspired short fictionEdited by Kat RochaCover by Josh Finney01 Publishingebook
Lovecraft has never been more popular, and there seem to be more books inspired by his tales out today than ever before. This anthology, edited by Kat Rocha, contains 33 stories by many writers unknown to me, but a few I am familiar with, like Nick Mamatas, Charles Black, and Aaron J. French.
My first fear was that with so many stories there would be a repetition of theme and style, but that was quickly dispelled. Though most are quite short, they are refreshingly wide ranging. If there is a frequent theme it may be the use of Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, but even here the approach to this trope is broad. Jason Andrew’s “Fear And Loathing In Innsmouth: Richard Nixon’s Revenge” is perhaps the most original. Written as if by Hunter S. Thompson, it follows the Gonzo journalist during the presidential election towards Innsmouth and the source of Nixon’s campaign money. Visiting the Arkham Asylum the narrator has this to say about one of the residents. “He had thick jowls, bulbous eyes, and a suspiciously Nixon-like jump nose. I made certain that he was always two steps ahead of me and always in my line of sight.” A great story, totally in keeping with the character of its narrator.
Charles Black contributes two stories, one of which must be a contender for the shortest horror story ever written. Called “The Last Tweet” it is exactly what it says, a tweet. Incredibly Black manages to encapsulate an entire short story into 19 words, and even manages to use an old cliché of many bad Lovecraftian pastiches – which for once makes sense and works. About this I am saying no more. Read it for yourself. It won’t take you long.
Nick Mamatas’s “Hideous Interview With Brief Man” is a bizarre interrogation, whose true horror only materialises in the final few sentences.
“My Stalk” by Aaron J. French turns for inspiration towards Lovecraft’s fantasy writings, though written in its own style, which is both fluid and almost hypnotic.
There are too many stories to highlight more than a few, but I failed to find any that was not well written and distinctively individual. If I had one complaint it could be the preponderance of first person narratives, but that may be because I have a preference for the third person singular. Not a serious defect, and one which most readers may not even notice, especially if they tend to dip in and out of anthologies.
The book has a gorgeous cover by Josh Finney, whose beauty I would love to see in print one day rather than almost lost on my Kindle in black and white.
A great, engrossing and varied anthology of Lovecraftian fiction, I would recommend it to anyone who likes this type of story.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Alasdair Stuart
“Iden-Inshi” by Greg Stolze
“Pushing Back” by J.C. Hemphill
“Nation of Disease: The Rise & Fall of a Canadian Legend” by Jonathan Sharp
“When We Change” by Mason Ian Bundschuh
“Nutmeat” by Martin Hill Ortiz
“The Last Tweet” by Charles Black
“Secrets In Storage” by Tim Pratt & Greg Van Eekhout
“The Well” by Tim Jeffreys
“The Neon Morgue” by Nathan Wunner
“The Deep” by Corissa Baker
“Fear And Loathing In Innsmouth: Richard Nixon’s Revenge” by Jason Andrew
“My Friend Fishfinger By Daisy, Age 7″ by David Tallerman
“Chasing Sunset” by A.C. Wise
“The Thing With Onyx Eyes” by Stephen Brown
“I Do The Work Of The Bone Queen” by John R. Fultz
“Suck It Up, Get It Done” by Brandon Barrows
“The Substance In The Sound” by W.B. Stickel
“Stone City, Old As Immeasurable Time” by Kelda Crich
“Hideous Interview With Brief Man” by Nick Mamatas
“The Sea, Like Glass Unbroken” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“The Decorative Water Feature Of Nameless Dread” by James Brogden
“Henry” by Lance Axt
“My Stalk” by Aaron J. French
“Give Me That Old Time Religion” by Lee Finney
“Afraid Of Dobermans” by Chad Fifer
“Leviathan” by Nicholas Almand
“Horrorscope” by Charles Black
“The Jar Of Aten-Hor” by Kat Rocha
“The Floor” by Jeff Provine
“Waiting” by Dennis Detwiller
“Other People’s Houses” by Sarena Ulibarri
“You Will Never Be The Same” by Erica Satifka
“Death Wore Greasepaint” by Josh Finney

The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror - Kindle Promotion

Shadow Publishing (David A. Sutton) is having a special Kindle promotion for one week commencing 21st November. The e-book edition will be discounted from $3.00 to $1.99

Check out the US/UK pages here:

USA: Amazon.com
UK: Amazon.co.uk

Frankenstein's Army

Sometimes you come across a film that is incredibly realistic but as whacky as hell - and they don't come much more realistic or as whacky as Frankenstein's Army. Filmed on the dreaded hand held camera, this technique works for the most part here because it's in the hands of a cameraman in the Red Army during the closing months of the Second World War. Ostensibly there to make a propaganda movie for Comrade Stalin, there is more to this than meets the eye. The small group, fighting their way forwards against the retreating German Army stumble across a factory whose huge underground cellars house a frightful secret: the redoubt of mad scientist Dr Victor Frankenstein, recruited by the Nazis to create a monstrous army of the dead to fight the Russians. Not only does he reanimate patched up corpses, though. He goes one stage further - and creates an even more nightmarish concept of bodies welded to a bizarre range of bladed weapons, including chainsaws.


The Russian soldiers are brilliantly depicted, with some outstanding performances by the actors, so that they come over as real people, however insane everything else becomes. And the insanity of the place they are trapped in is remarkable, with flickering lights, grotesque machines within grotto-like concrete passages through cellars that lead to rooms filled with body-parts, gruesome surgeries and homicidal mash-ups between men and machines.

I must admit I have never seen anything like this before. Yet, for all its craziness, it works. As does the plot, where there are plots within plots, culminating in a final twist at the end. Even the hand held camera works, lending an even more nightmarish touch at times. Recommended - though not for the faint at heart.

The Casebook of Eddie Brewer

Eddie Brewer (Ian Brooker) is a one man psychic investigator who has a regular spot on the local radio station, spending his days travelling from place to place to check everything from inexplicable bumps from an adjoining empty house to the malevolent activities of what could be a poltergeist.
When the story starts Eddie is  accompanied by a film unit doing a documentary about him.
The unit follows Eddie as he visits a mother whose young daughter, a strange, sometimes sinister little girl, may be responsible for poltergeist activities in their home, aided by an invisible "friend" she calls Mr Grimaldi, an eighteenth century clown. Next Eddie visits a rundown mansion which the local council is renovating, some of whose offices are already there, though there doesn't appear to be more than a handful of people working in the building yet. Old coins seem to appear from nowhere in the building's cellars and Eddie, while inspecting them by himself, glimpses what he only realises later must have been the ghost of a woman. From now on odd things begin to occur more frequently, culminating in a sort of Most Haunted visit by a film crew,  a psychic medium (obviously mimicking the dafter aspects of Derek Acorah), a hostile academic skeptic, and Eddie. With a mixture of normal and handheld cameras reminiscent of The Blair Witch, the film retains a semi-documentary realism, using minimal special effects. As the night progresses members of the cast and crew panic at inexplicable events inside the cellars, with the psychic medium falling into a fit induced by some sort of diabolic possession.
Excellent naturalistic acting and a story that never reveals too much - or offers any comforting explanations - help to build an atmosphere of supernatural dread. Eddie, our nominal hero, is disturbingly and all too obviously vulnerable, with no easy solutions to offer anyone for what is happening, And, indeed, in the aftermath, it is clear he too can become a victim of supernatural enmity as easily as anyone else. The final words in the film, when you think everything is finally over, will chill you, when it becomes obvious that what has happened so far is only the beginning for Eddie.
An excellent film, that is both engrossing and disturbing. What more can you ask than that?

Dark Visions 1 - Grey Matter Press

My contributor's copies of Dark Visions 1 published by Grey Matter Press arrived from the States in the post today - and handsome looking books they are!

My 12,000 word story Scrap is included in it.

Urban Ghost Story (1998)

Not a new film by any means, but its blend of supernatural horror and gritty working class conditions are just up my street, and often these days just the kind of thing I ham-fistedly try to create in some of my own stories.

After a terrible car crash which leaves her boyfriend dead, consumed in flames, Lizzie Fisher (Heather Ann Foster) starts to attract supernatural incurrences, with furniture moving of its own accord, inexplicable disgusting smells and noises. She lives with her mother (Stephanie Buttle) in a grim block of flats in Scotland. With her mother threatened by a vicious loan shark and surrounded by people hooked on drugs, she finds little sympathy with her plight until her mother contacts a journalist (Jason Connery) who has recently had articles published in the local paper about poltergeists - which is what, at this point, seems the likeliest thing to have been drawn to Lizzie.

To me this has one of those all but perfect supernatural horror story plots, complete with believable characters and grimly realistic backgrounds. The acting is great, the dialogue convincing, and the area in which it is set a nightmare in itself without the incursion of a hostile supernatural force. The twists in what happens are riveting, as is the final revelation, which pulls no punches.

I saw this film for the first time at the Halifax Ghost Story Festival and was so impressed with it that I immediately ordered it on DVD. Highly recommended.

Lurkers in the Abyss & The Vault of Evil

Kevin Demont (known to all and sundry as Demonik) who runs the Vault of Evil has started a special thread on that site with an ongoing summary and critique of my collection, The Lurkers in the Abyss.

"With a novel and umpteen collections on the go, swore I'd resist even the tiniest peek at this for time being, but, you know, Mr. Sutton's typically informative introduction only runs to four pages, what harm can it do, etc. It was the fatal reference to the theme of Writer's Cramp cracked my resolve ....

After Nightfall: Cheery anthropologist Elliot Wilderman arrives in the decrepit hamlet of Heron to room at the solitary inn. His generosity at the bar soon wins over the taciturn locals, and in no time he has accumulated much valuable data pertaining to local tradition and legend. But still one mystery remains. Why do the populace hide themselves away behind stout locks at nightfall, and, stranger still, what's with the plates of raw meat they leave outside their doors? His landlady, Mrs. Jowitt, cautions him to do as they do, stay indoors nights and avoid the mouldering huts on the edge of town, but Mr. Wilderman is of nosey disposition. A fog descends on Heron. What harm can it do to lean out of his window and watch for those who come to claim their meal?

The title story is perhaps better known, but for this reader, After Nightfall is Mr. Riley's 'seventies masterpiece. The author likely had the typical Lovecraft New England setting in mind for his location, but, for me, Heron anticipates Chetwynd-Hayes' Loughville.

Writer's Cramp: With a deadline impending and the new issue still eight pages shy of completion, Cartwright-Hughes, slimy literary editor of Digest of Horror magazine, plagiarises the plot of a submission from unknown author A. J. Dymchurch of Oswaldtwistle, Lancs. Rubbish writer he may be, but Dymchurch is an accomplished Black Magician, and, unless he receives a very public apology, Cartwright-Hughes is for the chop.

Out of Corruption: Set in 1934, very Lovecraftian in feel but - mercifully - minus any Cthulhu Mythos overkill. Our narrator, Raymond Gregory pays a visit to his friend John Poole who has recently moved to the grim and depressing Elm Tree House in Fenley Wood. Poole, an occult dabbler, gives Gregory the guided tour and the more his guest sees of the place, the less he likes it. The house gives off terrible vibes, most notably the pentagram of slime in the cellar. Neither is he over-keen on the tramp-like fellow who has taken to prowling nightly in the garden.

Gregory learns from local librarian Desmond Foster that Elm Tree House was built on the site of a 13th Century Abbey torn down when the locals discovered the Holy Fathers were worshippers of Satan. The Monks were the lucky ones - they were merely slaughtered on the spot. The Abbot was half-hung, disembowelled and quartered alive. His last sneered utterance - "The dead rise and come to me" - suggests he didn't mind such treatment in the slightest. His gibbeted remains mysteriously disappeared that same night.

With Poole reduced to a gibbering imbecile, it's obvious to Foster and Gregory that their friend's foolish meddling in the dark arts has revived the Abbot and his rotting accomplices. The worst news is, the Abbot firmly believes in taking his revenge in kind ...

Read more: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/posts/recent#ixzz2kQAHK8Rc"

Another Ebay sale - Robert Laymon Books

13 Robert Laymon novels (3 hardcover and 10 paperbacks) have been put on ebay.