Adam L.G. Nevill's Blog, page 25

THE REDDENING FIRST REVIEW – GINGERNUTS OF HORROR

What a delightful way to start the day: reading the first review for ‘The Reddening’ over at the Gingernuts of Horror website. Some detail about story is included in the review, though it’s artfully enigmatic and avoids giving the game away.

“Supernatural horror does not get much better than The Reddening. If you’re a fan of slow build-ups, heavy atmosphere, superb and intricate plotting, bloodletting and a novel which has a unique sense of time and place then you are going to love this quality story.” Tony Jones, GNOH.

Full review here.

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MANIFESTATIONS, A LAUNCH AND SIGNINGS – FOUR FORTHCOMING AUTHOR APPEARANCES.

Since Walker Stalker in March 2018, I’ve not attended a convention, or managed a single guest author appearance due to work commitments, but I will be back on the road very soon with four guest author & trader appearances:

On Saturday 19th to Sunday 20th October my hideous visage will be signing, trading & chatting at Bristol Comic Con & Gaming Festival Autumn. Great day out and inexpensive to attend. Updates on Facebook here.

Come Sunday October 27th and I’ll be making a ghastly appearance at Somerset Horrorcon signing & trading and yakking. Tickets are very good value again. Updates on Facebook here.

From 29th November until December 1st my loathsome spectre will be haunting the UK Ghost Story Festival in Derby, at The Quad, as a guest author. Facebook news here. This will be a programmed event with panels, interviews, films et al. I’ll also be having a book launch on the Friday for The Reddening. This will be my second ghost story festival; the last one in Dublin 2016 was superb.

THE REDDENING – MY NEW NOVEL. AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

Hark! Hear the Red Folk sing.

THE REDDENING. Publication date: Oct 31st 2019. My new horror novel is now available for pre-order in three formats.

Original artwork by the magical Samuel Araya.

The Story:

One million years of evolution didn’t change our nature.

Nor did it bury the horrors predating civilisation. Ancient rites, old deities and savage ways can reappear in the places you least expect.

Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.

Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh’s caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.

Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice. They were involved and condemned before they knew it.

The Reddening is an epic story of folk and prehistoric horrors, written by the author of The Ritual, Last Days, No One Gets Out Alive and the three times winner of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel.

At present, the limited edition hardback is exclusively available from my webstore here.

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The Reddening by Adam Nevill

NEW RITUAL INSPIRED ARTWORK FROM SAMUEL ARAYA.

Samuel Araya has created some new artwork inspired by ‘The Ritual’ novel. I find that incredibly flattering and generally awesome.

Samuel has also created the artwork for my new novel, ‘The Reddening’. I revealed this stunning original picture in my most recent newsletter and pre-orders for the limited edition hardback will be available soon. Newsletter subscribers get first shot.

If you want to sign up and pick up a free full-length eBook too – ‘Cries from the Crypt’ – just head over to my website: www.adamlgnevill.com

Check out Samuel’s artwork at his FB page and the links to his stores & website here.

 

THE 13 SCARIEST CGI MONSTERS IN MOVIES @ BLOODY DISGUSTING

Nice inclusion of our monster, although the Jotunn wasn’t actually CGI because we used a real god and let it go afterwards.

See the list here.

 

The Black Country Horror Films Festival.

I am preparing a special black cloth with which to cover my head as I am one of the judges of The Black Country Horror Films Festival. If you make horror shorts, check out the website.

In one hand I will hold a gavel, the other will rest upon my grimoire.

Get in here.

 

 

THE RITUAL ON NETFLIX UK. AND WINS BEST CREATURE FX CHAINSAW AWARD FROM FANGORIA.

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Saluting the Russells with both horns on scoring Best Creature FX from the awards where the carpet is not only red but also wet.

On the shoot, they invited me inside their trailer on the mountain in Transylvania and it was filled with the hideous attic folk, sitting up, leaning on walls and lying on the floor. I remember realising that an idea I’d had for a book, 8 years before that moment, had been eventually responsible for a caravan filled with emaciated dummies, in Romania.

Sometimes, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, ‘What have I done?’

And The Ritual has cantered onto Netflix UK. So all those folks that snorted and shrieked at me back in March 2018 about it not being available (via one depression of a rubber button on a remote), you too must now KNEEL!

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FILM, TV AND BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS.

Again, my recs have built up since the blog has been down. So I am listing some highlights here for those of you not on my mailing list or who don’t follow me in S.M.

Chernobyl: I never expected to be affected by this TV series in the way I have been, but have found myself responding to it as I would to good folk & cosmic horror. I’m getting a big Nigel Kneale aesthetic from the show, particularly episode one, and what I imagined would be a straightforward disaster-thriller made-for-TV, based on real events, achieves far more artistically.

There is a mythic sense of summoning an ancient, infernal power, as old as the universe itself, in a forbidding Russian landscape, followed by a failure to contain it, and dispel it with primitive technology. The consequences of unleashing the power of the radiation are ghastly, as if the victims looked into a star or into the face of a god. There’s a really interesting and continual pitch of terror in the series that hasn’t subsided across three episodes.

It also does, at least to me, demonstrate how misty the boundaries of horror are (particularly folk horror, and I’ve shared this in the FH group), perhaps how subjective they are. But the way they’ve presented the imagery of brutalist, futurist architecture and the shrill insect-like clicking of the machinery monitoring radiation levels, the atomic fire in the debris, is just as poignant, to my eye, as the use of ancient artefacts you’d traditionally associate with horror (the natural materials, bones, runes and ruins, ancient stones, etc). The conjured power also seems so similar.

I think the series conjures a profound sense of cosmic horror too, in which man’s insignificance before ineffable forces is terrifying. The theme of human sacrifice is persistent and chilling.

Anyway, for me it’s been great horror and gave me the same frisson that ‘Threads’ did in the 80s.

[On SKY in the UK, maybe HBO elsewhere]

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Suspiria: Bold horror filmmaking is always divisive but I thought the Suspiria remake was outstanding. Finally watched it over the weekend and I am still thinking about it.

I think if you’re going to remake a classic, then really “go for it”.

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Been looking forward to this book from the moment I finished the last Nathan Ballingrud collection, a few years back. And I read my copy of ‘Wounds’ right after the book arrived. One evening and the following morning was all it took and I didn’t want the stories to end.

As with Nathan’s first collection, I couldn’t leave this one alone. Genuinely entertaining horror containing all of the dread and hideous aesthetics of the best in the field.

The final novella – ‘The Butcher’s Table’ – is new to this collection and a work of the imagination that gave me genuine awe, bringing Conrad, Tolkien and early Barker to my mind. I’m still thinking about the depiction of hell that has the epic feel of the classic portrayals, the hells of Milton and Dante. A story worth twice the price of the hardback alone.

Get some.

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Read two more first class collections of horror/weird fiction last week and over the weekend. More uncanny marvels from Reginald Oliver including ‘The Game of Bear’ – an unfinished story by M.R James, completed by Reggie Oliver. I thought it excellent. Published by Raymond Russell and Rosalie Parker at Tartarus. This edition also contains the stories I hadn’t read from the impossible-to-find Ex Occidente anthology, ‘Madder Mysteries’.

Also enjoyed the best book from Mr Samuels since ‘Glyphotech’ imo. Jonas Plöger at Zagava has produced a paperback edition of the new collection, ‘The Prozess Manifestations’. The final story is one of the grimmest pieces of horror fiction I can remember reading.

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Just when you thought it was time to go to bed here are two more horror films well worth your time, if you haven’t seen them. One new, one not so new.

‘The Witch in the Window’ – the new Andy Mitton film (‘Yellow Brick Road’, ‘We Go On’ & the only good thing in the ‘Chilling Visions’ anthology) and the main reason I subscribed to Shudder. Not seen this film available anywhere else. Very good, I thought, and imbued with his signature uncanniness and uncomfortable strangeness (a quality too many modern horrors lack).

And ‘Noroi, The Curse’. Not a new film but one I’d never managed to see until last night. I bought this film on DVD years ago but it didn’t have English subtitles (that’s happened twice with Amazon traders). All the horror vitamins and minerals are packed into the final act of the film, but it’s well worth worth persevering to extract them. Bizarre and sinister found-footage.

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Another three recent favourites were all supernatural horrors that are a distinct cut above the usual. Ireland’s ‘The Devil’s Doorway’ (Prime) which reminded me of one of my fave UK films (‘The Borderlands’), Argentina’s creeptastic ‘Terrified’ (Shudder), and Canada’s ‘The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh’ (Shudder). The latter has one location, great atmosphere, set design and a terrific monster.

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I also enjoyed ‘The Dyatlov Pass Incident’ – a decent found footage film I’d not heard of until it just popped onto Prime. Australia’s ‘Killing Ground’ was almost too grim for me, but I couldn’t look away (also on Prime). ‘Echoes of Snowtown’ there.

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I thought I was done with zombies but was impressed with Korea’s ‘Kingdom’ series (Netflix) and Indonesia’s Evil Dead-esque ‘May the Devil Take You’ (Netflix). Also ghastly (the characters) but entertaining was Taiwan’s ‘Mon Mon Monsters’ (Shudder).

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Nevill Family teatime viewing – Chasing Monsters. We all love it. And as a longtime fan of River Monsters, this French Canadian show might even be better. Bit of anthropology and conservation, mingled with travel to remote places and some entertaining local sidekicks … But the stars of the show, the monsters he hauls out of the water, are positively prehistoric (he also puts ’em back with a kiss) …

On Netflix Kids of all places.

[Pic of Cyril wrestling the Amazonian vampire fish.]

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Amidst the teetering columns of books waiting to be read, this short novel was too intriguing to ignore. Contains many of my own aesthetic interests: the English landscape, peculiarly charged domestic spaces, a suggestion of the uncanny and a mind unravelling at the heart of it all. Restrained, precise, perceptive writing.

Lovely looking paperback too, with flaps. It’s out next week from Influx Press, and from the author of Folk Horror: ‘Hours Dreadful and Things Strange’.

Fine British weird. Get some.

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TOP SCARY BOOKS YOU SHOULD AVOID READING ALONE – INC’ THE RITUAL

Flattered to have one of my books make this list of “lesser known books” – I think it’s a pretty good selection that deviates from the usual. I’ve read them all, some several times. Number 1 being one of my biggest inspirations when starting out.

Review and feature available here on YouTube.

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THE RITUAL – NEW HORROR FILM LISTS.

“She is your god, and you will kneel before the god. If not, it will hang you from the trees”.

Delighted to see our God exalted here.

And Moder/the Jotunn takes its place in the pantheon here.

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