David A. Riley's Blog, page 75
May 7, 2015
Kitchen Sink Gothic - update
Anybody who has submitted to Kitchen Sink Gothic but hasn't heard back from us yet, now that Classic Weird is in print we are concentrating on reading through the manuscripts we have on hand and will be making decisions during the next week, though the deadline for submissions is still the end of May. We are aiming to publish the anthology in June.
Proof Copy received for Classic Weird
Just received a proof copy of the eighth book published by Parallel Universe Publications, Classic Weird - and I am absolutely delighted with it. I gave it approval straight away! The cover looks as stunning as I hoped it would.The next task is to finish reading submissions for Kitchen Sink Gothic. The cut off date for submissions, though, isn't till the end of this month, so final selection won't be made till June. We're hoping to be able to publish this anthology sometime next month, definitely by July.
The paperback version of Classic Weird should be available via amazon later today.
May 6, 2015
Price reduced for kindle version of Goblin Mire
The price to download kindle copies of my fantasy novel Goblin Mire have been reduced from £2.97 to £1.99 and from $4.50 to $3.01.trade paperback:
Amazon.co.uk £8.99
Amazon.com $12.00
ebook:
Amazon.co.uk £1.99
Amazon.com $3.01
Classic Weird now available on kindle
Classic Weird is now available on kindle. A paperback version will follow shortly.
Amazon.co.uk £1.31
Amazon.com $1.98
May 3, 2015
Classic Weird
I have now finished proof reading my selections for the forthcoming collection from Parallel Universe Publications: Classic Weird. The stories in the book, which will soon be available as a paperback and ebook, are:
The Monster-Maker
W. C. Morrow
The Man Who Went Too Far
E. F. Benson
The Interval
Vincent O’Sullivan
The Doll’s Ghost
F. Marion Crawford
The Dead Smile
F. Marion Crawford
The Ghost-Ship
Richard Middleton
The New Catacomb
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lost Stradivarius
John Meade Falkner
The House of the Dead Hand
Edith Wharton
A Wicked Voice
Vernon Lee
Phantas
Oliver Onions
The next book after this will be Kitchen Sink Gothic.
May 2, 2015
Their Cramped Dark World reviewed on the Vault of Evil
David A. Riley - Their Cramped Dark World and Other Tales
(Parallel Universe, 2015)
Hoody (When Graveyards Yawn, Crowswing Books, 2006)
A Bottle of Spirits (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 2, 1972)
No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought (Peeping Tom #20, 1996)
Now and Forever More (The Second Black Book of Horror, 2008)
Romero's Children (The Seventh Black Book of Horror, 2010)
Swan Song (The Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012)
The Farmhouse (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 1, 1971)
The Last Coach Trip (The Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011)
The Satyr's Head (The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror, 1975)
Their Cramped Dark World (The Sixth Black Book of Horror, 2010)
A bit cheeky perhaps, as I've not yet got a copy, but I've no hesitation in recommending Their Cramped Dark World. Why? Because, most unusually, I'm already familiar with all bar one of the stories. So, collected from around the board and tarted up ever so slightly, a patchwork instant commentary.
Hoody: "Black Magic Link To Serial Killer. In the wake of a fatal stabbing outside The Red Dragon, Laurence Huxtable, computer artist, grows fearful of the lonesome hoody who has taken to hanging around the car park at Highgate Station and watching his flat. It transpires that the murder victim, Paul Gilligan, was himself a serial killer whose freezer was stocked with the thumbs of his five victims - one of whom was killed after he'd been pronounced dead ....
A Bottle Of Spirits: As revealed to aspiring medium Phyllis Harker. After watching a performance at the Grand Theatre in Clayborn, Rob is so fascinated by the uncanny ability of mind reader Sebastian Preskett that he murders his elderly assistant to create a job vacancy. Rob just HAS to know how the guy gets it right every time so he can steal his act and make loads of cash. Studying him at close hand, Rob is convinced the key to Preskett's powers must lie in the fairground organ and outsize phosphorescent bottle he uses as props. Increasingly worried that Preskett has known all along who murdered his friend, Rob decides it's time to leave. But first, he'll remove the stopper from that weirdly glowing blue bottle if it kills him ....
Now and Forever More: Holidaying at a typically welcoming Cornish coastal village ("You'll be glad to leave 'ere, I s'ppose?"), John and Julie Daniels fall foul of the local inbred degenerates, a bunch of goat-worshipping Satanists presided over by Marsh, the landlord of The Broken Mast. Moral. When in the West Country, never let a native overhear you mention that he's inhospitable, deformed and would benefit from the occasional shower, or he might take offence.
Romero’s Children: Twenty years after the OM (Old Methuselah) eternal youth wonder-drug hit the street, and those who either resisted it's lure or simply were yet to be born now have to live with the consequences - a world full of drooling cannibal zombies. Fortunately, these undead are of the ambling, mindless variety and easily picked off with a shot to the head. Until ...
Stocking up on tinned food supplies from the remnants of a Wal-Mart, ageing loner, Jack, and punky young survivalist, Candice. chance upon Lucy, who can not only talk but seems to have shaken off the effects of the drug. Against his better judgement, Jack brings her home and cleans her up ....
Swan Song: A Black Book Of Horror classic. "Nights In White Satin. Overrated, degenerate trash, just right for a pair of ancient hippies high on drugs." Three elderly Right Wing thugs - retired schoolteacher, Bennett, Pinky Pinkerton, chairman of the Conservative club, and self-made businessmen, Sam Nedwell - make it their business to rid the local park of a pair of decrepit tramps. Bennett and cronies pack their baseball bats, confident this last hurrah will prove the most one-sided confrontation of their brutal campaign versus "undesirables." But the Huntingtons are not the pushovers they seem. Filthy rich ancient hippie philanthropists, Cider Man & Wino woman own a villa on the exclusive Maple Road. Back in the day they ran a refuge for the homeless until it closed amidst rumours of Black Magic and mysterious disappearances ....
The Farmhouse: Kendale, near Tavistock. Surrealist Biblical artist Preskett committed suicide here by turning himself into a human torch amid much talk of ritual murder, drugs, and orgies on the hill. Stopping at the deserted house, hikers Melbury and Janet discover a metal box hidden in the wall, inside which they find several books. The one Melbury picks up opens on a quote from Poe's The Conquering Worm.
Later, Janet leaves Melbury asleep in the tent they've erected and returns to the farmhouse for the books. He comes awake with a terrible sense of foreboding, and goes off to find her ...
Perhaps my all-time favourite story.
The Last Coach Trip: It's the Hemer Street Working Mens Club's final day out to the Ripton races and veteran Eddie is taking it as a bereavement. Harold does all he can to cheer up his old friend, but it's no use. Eddie arrives late looking like death, skips the traditional fry up and - to the incredulity of all - hardly touches a drop all day. Any other year, and they'd have to carry him back and forth from the coach. It's only as they're returning home to Edgebottom that Eddie perks up and Harold realises to his horror that these boozy excursions won't be coming to an end after all.
The Satyr's Head: Yorkshire. Student Henry Lamson's world is one of Wimpy bars, pubs, going to watch the Rovers play on a Saturday afternoon, and attending screenings of The Shuttered Room at the film society with his friend Alan Sutcliffe. He's been dating Joan for some time but she's shown no interest in sleeping with him.
Walking home across the Moors one night Henry encounters a filthy, diseased tramp who proves impossible to shake off - the malodorous one even sidles up next to him on the bus. Turns out he wants to sell him a relic for a nominal fee. Despite himself, Henry shells out on the evil looking bauble ... and that's when his nightmares begin, nightmares in which he's visited and raped by the original of the satyr.
When he next catches up the tramp (who is by now pretty much decomposing on his feet), the old boy sneers that the relic chose him because he is the "right sort" and Henry, mortified that he may indeed be a homosexual, books a session with local prostitute Clara Sadwick. But where Henry goes, his incubus goes too ...
A story I detested as a lonesome teenager because it made me feel kind of queasy on the grounds of it's subject matter, but on revisiting it several years later I found it an absolute peach.
Their Cramped Dark World: Fifteen year old's Pete and Lenny spend Halloween in a reputedly haunted house, derelict since the torture-murder of an entire family 25 years ago to the night. It soon becomes worryingly clear to Lenny that the rest of the gang aren't going to show and, what with Pete acting strangely, and the rats scratching from inside the walls, he's all for shifting their Vodka stash elsewhere. Pete won't - can't - hear of it .....
Wizard, 30 Sept. 1939
Read more: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6004/david-riley-cramped-dark-world#ixzz3Z1T8J0qy
Hoody (When Graveyards Yawn, Crowswing Books, 2006)
A Bottle of Spirits (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 2, 1972)
No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought (Peeping Tom #20, 1996)
Now and Forever More (The Second Black Book of Horror, 2008)
Romero's Children (The Seventh Black Book of Horror, 2010)
Swan Song (The Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012)
The Farmhouse (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 1, 1971)
The Last Coach Trip (The Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011)
The Satyr's Head (The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror, 1975)
Their Cramped Dark World (The Sixth Black Book of Horror, 2010)
A bit cheeky perhaps, as I've not yet got a copy, but I've no hesitation in recommending Their Cramped Dark World. Why? Because, most unusually, I'm already familiar with all bar one of the stories. So, collected from around the board and tarted up ever so slightly, a patchwork instant commentary.
Hoody: "Black Magic Link To Serial Killer. In the wake of a fatal stabbing outside The Red Dragon, Laurence Huxtable, computer artist, grows fearful of the lonesome hoody who has taken to hanging around the car park at Highgate Station and watching his flat. It transpires that the murder victim, Paul Gilligan, was himself a serial killer whose freezer was stocked with the thumbs of his five victims - one of whom was killed after he'd been pronounced dead ....
A Bottle Of Spirits: As revealed to aspiring medium Phyllis Harker. After watching a performance at the Grand Theatre in Clayborn, Rob is so fascinated by the uncanny ability of mind reader Sebastian Preskett that he murders his elderly assistant to create a job vacancy. Rob just HAS to know how the guy gets it right every time so he can steal his act and make loads of cash. Studying him at close hand, Rob is convinced the key to Preskett's powers must lie in the fairground organ and outsize phosphorescent bottle he uses as props. Increasingly worried that Preskett has known all along who murdered his friend, Rob decides it's time to leave. But first, he'll remove the stopper from that weirdly glowing blue bottle if it kills him ....
Now and Forever More: Holidaying at a typically welcoming Cornish coastal village ("You'll be glad to leave 'ere, I s'ppose?"), John and Julie Daniels fall foul of the local inbred degenerates, a bunch of goat-worshipping Satanists presided over by Marsh, the landlord of The Broken Mast. Moral. When in the West Country, never let a native overhear you mention that he's inhospitable, deformed and would benefit from the occasional shower, or he might take offence.
Romero’s Children: Twenty years after the OM (Old Methuselah) eternal youth wonder-drug hit the street, and those who either resisted it's lure or simply were yet to be born now have to live with the consequences - a world full of drooling cannibal zombies. Fortunately, these undead are of the ambling, mindless variety and easily picked off with a shot to the head. Until ...
Stocking up on tinned food supplies from the remnants of a Wal-Mart, ageing loner, Jack, and punky young survivalist, Candice. chance upon Lucy, who can not only talk but seems to have shaken off the effects of the drug. Against his better judgement, Jack brings her home and cleans her up ....
Swan Song: A Black Book Of Horror classic. "Nights In White Satin. Overrated, degenerate trash, just right for a pair of ancient hippies high on drugs." Three elderly Right Wing thugs - retired schoolteacher, Bennett, Pinky Pinkerton, chairman of the Conservative club, and self-made businessmen, Sam Nedwell - make it their business to rid the local park of a pair of decrepit tramps. Bennett and cronies pack their baseball bats, confident this last hurrah will prove the most one-sided confrontation of their brutal campaign versus "undesirables." But the Huntingtons are not the pushovers they seem. Filthy rich ancient hippie philanthropists, Cider Man & Wino woman own a villa on the exclusive Maple Road. Back in the day they ran a refuge for the homeless until it closed amidst rumours of Black Magic and mysterious disappearances ....
The Farmhouse: Kendale, near Tavistock. Surrealist Biblical artist Preskett committed suicide here by turning himself into a human torch amid much talk of ritual murder, drugs, and orgies on the hill. Stopping at the deserted house, hikers Melbury and Janet discover a metal box hidden in the wall, inside which they find several books. The one Melbury picks up opens on a quote from Poe's The Conquering Worm.
Later, Janet leaves Melbury asleep in the tent they've erected and returns to the farmhouse for the books. He comes awake with a terrible sense of foreboding, and goes off to find her ...
Perhaps my all-time favourite story.
The Last Coach Trip: It's the Hemer Street Working Mens Club's final day out to the Ripton races and veteran Eddie is taking it as a bereavement. Harold does all he can to cheer up his old friend, but it's no use. Eddie arrives late looking like death, skips the traditional fry up and - to the incredulity of all - hardly touches a drop all day. Any other year, and they'd have to carry him back and forth from the coach. It's only as they're returning home to Edgebottom that Eddie perks up and Harold realises to his horror that these boozy excursions won't be coming to an end after all.
The Satyr's Head: Yorkshire. Student Henry Lamson's world is one of Wimpy bars, pubs, going to watch the Rovers play on a Saturday afternoon, and attending screenings of The Shuttered Room at the film society with his friend Alan Sutcliffe. He's been dating Joan for some time but she's shown no interest in sleeping with him.
Walking home across the Moors one night Henry encounters a filthy, diseased tramp who proves impossible to shake off - the malodorous one even sidles up next to him on the bus. Turns out he wants to sell him a relic for a nominal fee. Despite himself, Henry shells out on the evil looking bauble ... and that's when his nightmares begin, nightmares in which he's visited and raped by the original of the satyr.
When he next catches up the tramp (who is by now pretty much decomposing on his feet), the old boy sneers that the relic chose him because he is the "right sort" and Henry, mortified that he may indeed be a homosexual, books a session with local prostitute Clara Sadwick. But where Henry goes, his incubus goes too ...
A story I detested as a lonesome teenager because it made me feel kind of queasy on the grounds of it's subject matter, but on revisiting it several years later I found it an absolute peach.
Their Cramped Dark World: Fifteen year old's Pete and Lenny spend Halloween in a reputedly haunted house, derelict since the torture-murder of an entire family 25 years ago to the night. It soon becomes worryingly clear to Lenny that the rest of the gang aren't going to show and, what with Pete acting strangely, and the rats scratching from inside the walls, he's all for shifting their Vodka stash elsewhere. Pete won't - can't - hear of it .....
Wizard, 30 Sept. 1939
Read more: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6004/david-riley-cramped-dark-world#ixzz3Z1T8J0qy
Series XI and XII of Red Dwarf "Green lighted" by Dave for 2016 and 2017
Great news that series XI and XII of Red Dwarf has been green lighted by Dave for airing in 2016 and 2017. Series X may not have been classic Red Dwarf but it was still worth watching, to me anyway.
Check out this link for the Sci-Fi Bulletin website for more details.
April 29, 2015
May Day Giveaway - Free Kindle Downloads of Things That Go Bump in the Night
Parallel Universe Publications will be giving away free kindle downloads of the bumper ghost anthology Things That Go Bump in the Night on May Day, Friday the 1st of May for two days. Simply click onto amazon.co.uk or amazon.com or whichever amazon site you use to download this book for free.Things That Go Bump in the Night edited by Douglas Draa and David A. Riley is available in trade paperback from Parallel Universe Publications. 365 pages long, this bumper volume contains 19 classic weird stories by Sir Hugh Clifford, Edward Lucas White, William Hope Hodgson, George Allan England, F. Marion Crawford, Frederick Marryat, E. F. Benson, W. C. Morrow, Amyas Northcote, M. P. Shiel, Lord Dunsany, Perceval Landon, Robert E. Howard, G. G. Pendarves, Henry Brereton Marriott Watson, Irvin S. Cobb, Huan Mee, Abraham Merritt, Nictzin Dyalhis, and Edith Wharton.
The Ghoul Sir Hugh Clifford
The House of the Nightmare Edward Lucas White
The Voice in the Night William Hope Hodgson
The Thing from Outside George Allan England
For the Blood is the Life F. Marion Crawford
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains Frederick Marryat
The Room in the Tower E. F. Benson
His Unconquered Enemy W. C. Morrow
The Late Mrs. Fowke Amyas Northcote
Xélucha M. P. Shiel
A Narrow Escape Lord Dunsany
Thurnley Abbey Perceval Landon
The Black Stone Robert E, Howard
Werewolf of the Sahara G. G. Pendarves
The Devil of the Marsh Henry Brereton Marriott Watson
Fishhead Irvin S. Cobb
The Black Statue Huan Mee
The Pool of the Stone God Abraham Merritt
The Sea-Witch Nictzin Dyalhis
The Lady’s Maid’s Bell Edith Wharton
April 27, 2015
Craig Herbertson's collection from Parallel Universe Publications, The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales, on the BFS website
There's a great review of Craig Herbertson's The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales on the BFS website.Check the book out on Parallel Universe Publications.
THE HEAVEN MAKER, AND OTHER GRUESOME TALES by Craig Herbertson, Parallel Universe Publications, pb, £11.99.
Reviewed by Stewart Horn
I hadn’t heard of Craig Herbertson before I picked this up, and this collection of twenty dark stories was a pleasant surprise.
The title story is probably the highlight: a grand epic told in a few short chapters about a man trying to rescue his wife from Hell. Reminiscent of Machen’s ‘Great God Pan’ in tone.
Several stories feature Mulholland the occultist, a splendid character who was great fun to spend time with. The best of those was ‘Liebniz’s Last Puzzle’, in which he is one of three academics trying to solve a fiendish puzzle, though none of them are clever enough to think it might not be a good idea. ‘The Anningly Sundial’ was another highlight, riffing on one of M. R. James’s best known stories.
Several stories are based in or around high schools – my favourite of those is ‘New Teacher’. You may have heard a classroom so rowdy it sounds like someone is being murdered.
Another group of stories is very much in the Pan Horror vein. Little nasty revenge tales or outlandish and implausibly horrific situations described with wicked glee. Look out for ‘A Game of Billiards and Soup’.
And there is poetry, a two page joke about Hibernian Football Club and the holy grail, lots of references to malt whisky, and a lovely little Christmas tale to finish off.
Overall, a satisfying read. A well written mix of the literary, the trashy and the darkly humorous. A fine addition to any horror lover’s library.
April 25, 2015
Free Kindle Download of His Own Mad Demons - Sunday 26th April, One Day Only
My collection, His Own Mad Demons: Dark Tales from David A. Riley will be available for free downloads on Amazon kindle for one day only - Sunday the 26th April.Amazon.co.uk (Normally £2.05)
Amazon.com (Normally $3.00)
His Own Mad Demons includes:
The Worst of All Possible Places
Lock In
Their Own Mad Demons
The Fragile Mask on his Face
The True Spirit
These were previously published in Houses on the Borderland edited by David A. Sutton for the BFS, The Black Book of Horror and the Fifth Black Book of Horror edited by Charles Black, Dark Discoveries #15 edited by James Beach, and Back from the Dead edited by Johnny Mains.
