Adam L.G. Nevill's Blog, page 37

NEW FREE ADAM NEVILL BOOK – BEFORE YOU WAKE: THREE HORRORS

In the next wave of strange disturbances from Ritual Limited, the first book on the beach will be a new free book, BEFORE YOU WAKE: THREE HORRORS. It went out to the subscribers of my newsletter this morning, and will be on a general release in the future.

It also marks the first publication with a cover designed by my brother, Simon.

These horns are rising …

If you want to read Before You Wake now, sign-up at my homepage: here. I’ll resend the link until this book is on general release.

 

 

SOME WILL NOT SLEEP EBOOK 99P OR $1 DOLLAR FOR ONE WEEK!

From today, and until the 23rd of July, SOME WILL NOT SLEEP: SELECTED HORRORS is in a Kindle Countdown Deal. The eBook will be priced around 99p or 99c.

If you know anyone who might like to read my first full collection of short horror stories (for the price of 30 minutes parking in my town), then I raise both horns and all four hooves in thanks.

Get your book from Amazon.com here

Get your book from Amazon.co.uk here

What the reviewers have said about Some Will Not Sleep:

“There is not one single tale which feels less than the others, none which seem to be mere ‘filler’. They are beautifully crafted, original and complete works.” This is Horror

“an outstanding anthology of career spanning short stories” Gingernuts of Horror

“In ‘Some Will Not Sleep’ nothing is sacred, nothing is safe, and goodness me, if you like horror fiction you’re going to absolutely love every damn minute.” Pop Mythology

“Eleven wonderfully macabre tales that cover the whole gamut of the horrific. The supernatural rubs shoulders with the bizarre, body horror and psychological trauma walk hand in hand.” The Eloquent Page

“Verdict: A collection full of creeping dread, well worth a read. 9/10” SciFi Bulletin

“It isn’t often that I read a short story collection and enjoy every entry, but with this book I did.” The Grim Reader

“Here you’ll find monsters (including those of the human variety), ghosts, arcane rituals and some of the most disturbing imagery” Anthony Watson

“An excellent collection, recommended for anyone interested in the current surge in weird fiction or short stories in general.” Unsung Stories

UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE – PUBLICATION DAY (PAPERBACK UK)

Just wanted to give you all a heads-up on today’s paperback publication of Under A Watchful Eye (in the UK).

In many ways Under a Watchful Eye was an intentional return to my roots in British supernatural horror, by way of the lingering influence of M. R. James, Robert Aickman and Algernon Blackwood, and through an emphasis on psychic terror and psychological horror within the story. Here’s the blurb:

‘Seb Logan is being watched. He just doesn’t know by whom.

When the sudden appearance of a dark figure shatters his idyllic coastal life, he soon realizes that the murky past he thought he’d left behind has far from forgotten him. What’s more unsettling is the strange atmosphere that engulfs him at every sighting, plunging his mind into a terrifying paranoia.

To be a victim without knowing the tormentor. To be despised without knowing the offence caused. To be seen by what nobody else can see. These are the thoughts which plague his every waking moment.

Imprisoned by despair, Seb fears his stalker is not working alone, but rather is involved in a wider conspiracy that threatens everything he has worked for. For there are doors in this world that open into unknown places. Places used by the worst kind of people to achieve their own ends. And once his investigation leads him to stray across the line and into mortal danger, he risks becoming another fatality in a long line of victims . . .’

And this is what the reviewers have said so far:

“You don’t read an Adam Nevill horror novel: you live it” (Guardian)

“original, surprising, and eyes-to-the-wall terrifying” SciFiNow

“Compelling … full of big ideas” SFX

“tasty and fiendishly well plotted supernatural thriller … Although this is most definitely a horror novel I’m sure there are plenty of thriller readers out there who would enjoy a dabble into the supernatural. Another winner from a true craftsman of the horror genre.” Gingernuts of Horror

“this book offers great quality horror writing for those who particularly enjoy suspense and, in this case, an unusual approach to astral projection.” Nudge

“imaginative, well written … with the tension building throughout to create some spine chilling moments … Definitely recommend for lovers of the supernatural.” Shotsmag

“a novel in which the metaphysical becomes the metafictional. It’s a book which is as much about the process of writing as the horrors contained within its twisting and surprising narrative. I loved it and can’t think of a better recommendation to begin 2017’s horror reading experience.” Dark Musings.

“Nevill writes thoughtful, frightening stories that are calculated to infect a reader’s imagination and leave them scrambling for his back list.” This is Horror

“UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE is an amalgamation of morbid visuals, reeking odours and sheer despair, all shrouded in the strange and the weird that constitute par excellence Adam’s trademark because no one defines PECULIAR  like him.!” Blogging from Dubai

In the UK the book is available here, and in Waterstones nationwide.

A new US publisher for this book, and the others on my backlist that don’t have US editions, is in the pipeline. More news about that when I have the schedule etched in stone.

Many thanks to all who pick up a copy, and have done so, and I really enjoy reading your reviews and ratings on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever they appear, so many thanks in advance to anyone to leaves a review.

THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR: VOLUME 9

Delighted to have a story included in THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, VOLUME 9, Ed by Ellen Datlow.

The book is out now in four formats.

Here are the amassed terrors:

Summation 2016 – Ellen Datlow

Nesters — Siobhan Carroll

The Oestridae — Robert Levy

The Process is a Process All its Own — Peter Straub

The Bad Hour — Christopher Golden

Red Rabbit — Steve Rasnic Tem

It’s All the Same Road in the End — Brian Hodge

Fury — DB Waters

Grave Goods — Gemma Files

Between Dry Ribs — Gregory Norman Bossert

The Days of Our Lives — Adam LG Nevill

House of Wonders — C.E. Ward

The Numbers — Christopher Burns

Bright Crown of Joy — Livia Llewellyn

The Beautiful Thing We Will Become — Kristi DeMeester

Wish You Were Here — Nadia Bulkin Ragman — Rebecca Lloyd What’s Out There? — Gary McMahon

No Matter Which Way We Turned — Brian Evenson

The Castellmarch Man — Ray Cluley

The Ice Beneath Us — Steve Duffy

On These Blackened Shores of Time — Brian Hodge.

Honorable Mentions

You can find it here

HOUSE OF WINDOWS BY JOHN LANGAN – NEW EDITION

A new edition of John Langan’s super first novel, HOUSE OF WINDOWS, has been published. It was an honour to write the introduction. Hard for me to pick a favourite book of John’s, but this is where I began reading him: the first rune he cast at me, and now I’m trapped … I pass it on to you.

Read more here.

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THE RITUAL – FILM POSTER AND TRAILER, RELEASED TODAY AT 2PM

There’s been an exciting development this week: the trailer and posters for The Ritual film have been released by eOne (the backers and distributors). For the last three years, I’ve had to keep nearly everything about this project under my skullcap, but it’s good that I have some material to share beyond the press release. It’s been a really exciting few years, watching this project grow from the first meeting to this stage, and at some point I’d like to tell my own story about this film’s coming into being.

The release is set for October 13, 2017. The film will also enjoy a wide theatrical release in the UK and internationally, and it’s going to be very well supported by eOne in many promotional channels. I’m delighted that the film – an independent British horror film, made by the fabulous Imaginarium – is being given such a chance. There may even be a special edition of the novel to support the film. Watch my newsletter for film and book updates … Just sign-up at the homepage of my website.

Meanwhile, take a look at this trailer

And check out the website and social media channels too!

www.TheRitualFilmUK.com

www.facebook.com/TheRitualFilmUK

www.instagram.com/TheRitualFilmUK

#TheRitual

[image error]The Ritual the film, ada

NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE REVIEWED BY READ. READ. SAID.

A book of mine that occasionally causes offence, here and there, and also gets condemned as torture porn. But every now and then, it finds an ideal reader and it’s like a tight, hot hat has been removed from my head.

Read. Read. Said. dug it, and we salute them with our withered, mummified hands.

“No One Gets Out Alive is everything a horror novel should be. Literally everything. The tension, the plot the description, the characters, and the twists! If this book doesn’t get made into 2, 2-hour films in the next 5 years, I will set someone on fire.”

Full review here

‘SOME WILL NOT SLEEP’ REVIEWED AT ‘CONFESSIONS OF A REVIEWER’

“his stories and novels have such a lingering, lasting effect on the reader”.

Something I am always thrilled to read and never take lightly. Full review here.

BOOK REC’: THE KINDLY ONES BY JONATHAN LITTEL

Finally finished Jonathan Littel’s THE KINDLY ONES last night, and at 1 a.m (but needed to be in bed by 11 – often happens). Only taken me 8 years to get to this novel. It received a controversial reception at the time of publication, but I agree with the critics that hailed the novel a masterpiece, though one filled with such belief-defying horror, I often found that reading 50 pages in one sitting was enough. 1000 pages of tiny font on royal hardback pages too: took me a month to read it with the care and patience that the book deserves. To my taste it’s a monumental work of literature, and horror in fact, much like The Road and 1984 are.The Kindly Ones is primarily an epic story of Dr Max Aue in WW2; a fictional autobiography of an intellectual and intelligence officer of the SS, mostly serving in the “East”. It’s a testament to the very worst of mankind and the worst in mankind’s potential, from the murdering sadists of the Einsatzgruppe to the complicity of the ordinary. No matter how much non-fiction I’ve read about war, it can become more tangible and vivid and awful when the inner life of the participants are explored by great writers of fiction.

Uncannily, a book of our time too – the action in this story only happened 70 odd years ago, in Europe. The danger of forgetting that resonates here. So this novel can serve as recognition of how hideous we have the potential to be, in many ways, in conditions favourable to disconnecting, or repressing, reason and our humanity.

A quote from Aue on the conflict between Germany and the USSR, in which 26.6 million died between June 1941 and May 1945. This comes at the book’s beginning:

“Thus for an overall total in my field of activities we have an average of 572,043 dead per month, 131,410 dead per week, 18,772 dead per day, 782 dead per hour, and 13.04 dead per minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of the given period, which is, as you will recall, 3 years, 10 months, 16 days, 20 hours, and 1 minute . . . If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also no one comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person. Because if you have the arrogance to think that you are, that’s just where the danger begins. We like to contrast the State, totalitarian or not, with the ordinary man, that insect or trembling reed. But then we forget the State is made up of individuals, all more or less ordinary, each one with his life, his story, the sequence of accidents that led him one day to end up on the right side of the gun or the sheet of paper while others ended up on the wrong side. This path is rarely the result of any choice, or even of personal predilection.”

It made my head hurt, heart break, and it infected my dreams. How often does a book do that?

BOOK RECS’ – TIM WILLOCKS

Extended action scenes, battle scenes, meaningful depictions of large scale violence, can be hard to depict in prose. I don’t tend to enjoy reading them; maybe the screen is a better medium in this area. But there are some masterly literary practitioners of combat on a large scale (Abercrombie, McCarthy, Doctorow spring to mind). Willocks is another writer who excels in this area, and not only does he excel at depicting the appalling savagery of historical warfare, he also excels at recreating history and making the past, and its citizens, live so vividly.

Two epic stories here, often heartbreaking, with excruciating inner struggles that characters endure between baseness and grace. ‘The Religion’ probably remains one of my favourite novels. I read it on publication in 2006. It takes The Siege of Malta (1565) as its subject. Reading it left me feeling physically and mentally fatigued. A desert island book for me. Not long finished ‘The Twelve Children of Paris’. Also a masterpiece imo, and based on the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris (1572); this one requires a strong stomach. Particularly poignant in a world still addicted to sectarian violence and both novels left me relieved that I was born in the late 1960s and not the 1560s. Each story completely transported me as a reader.

If you like grim but marvellous adventures of humanity in times of inhumanity, these are the first two books in the Tannhauser trilogy. I look forward to the third installment. One of the finest living British writers that I’ve read.

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