Adam L.G. Nevill's Blog, page 7

MY VIEWING HIGHLIGHTS OF 2023 - FILM AND TV

I've enjoyed a lot of films this year and my favourites were: Something in the Dirt, Tar, Talk to Me. The latter is probably the only pure horror film selected, though the other two were sufficiently weird, disturbing at times, and possessed the spirit of the uncanny.

Other notables in horror were: Skinmarink, Deadstream, Satan's Slaves: Communion, Hellhole, No One Will Save You, Boogeyman, Don't Breathe 2, Infinity Pool, The Pope's Exorcist, Evil Dead Rise.

Special mentions: The Killer and Saltburn.

On TV, I really enjoyed Copenhagen Cowboy, Last of Us, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Slow Horses 2 & 3, Special Ops: Lioness, Foundation, Fall of the House of Usher.

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY READING IN '23 - A RETURN TO THE UNCANNY

Roll on to December/January and no matter what I read through the other seasons, I tend to reserve Christmas for the uncanny.

I've enjoyed the Baranger/Lovecraft series at Christmas for a few years now and it's the right time to read them; for me, there are echoes of reading big illustrated books as a kid. This copy of The Dunwich Horror took some procurement. But well worth the effort. Like the other three volumes, it is excellent.

This might be my favourite Ramsey Campbell novel since Born to the Dark too, and Reggie Oliver always transports me with that combination of the macabre, sublime characterisation and a touch of whimsy.

Currently enmeshed in Our Share of Night and always eager to get back to it.

MY 2023 READING HIGHLIGHTS

2024's reading for me has been a sabbatical into non-fiction and, for the best part, fiction beyond horror; not only as a matter of taste but reading widely has always been essential for my writing.

I've been absorbed by Georges Simenon's 'hard novels' and devoured The Paris Review Interviews, one through four in succession this summer. Real treasures that I've dipped into for years but I read/reread every interview carefully in 23.I thought Cormac McCarthy's last two novels were sublime and I read them with reverence.

Max Hastings' encyclopaedic histories of the war in the Pacific (Nemesis), and the final period of the war in Europe (Armageddon), were compelling but sobering - and considering how perilously close to destruction western civilisation came less than 80 years ago, it's gravely disappointing to look at the east of Europe now. Nothing learned.

Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Deadis one of the best novels I've read. As is Celine's Journey to the End of the Night. Two classics that I read for thefirst time in 2023.

From the annals of weird masters, I devoured Bruno Schultz's The Street of Crocodiles and Ramsey Campbell's Fellstones.

Marcus Aurelius's Meditations have been straightening my thinking before bed. A considerable source of comfort.

NEW MERCH - RITUAL LIMITED BLACK METAL JERSEY

The third and final new item for 2023, is a companion piece to the "Black Metal Tee". We've added a long-sleeved Ritual Limited jersey, featuring our "Black Metal" logo.I've been looking to find time, for years, to expand the "merch" and I found that time this autumn. Now, this jersey is in keeping with the ethos and aesthetic of Ritual Limited's original intention: to create a press for my work, with similarities to the indie heavy metal record labels that I so loved as a teenager (and still do at 54!). And the new jersey is soft but feels and looks "metal". That was important. As much as anything, for me, the new shirt is a bit of fun and levity, and such things should not be overlooked in these times of woe and uncertainty.Available only at my website - www.adamlgnevill.com[Model, hat, glasses not included]

AN ACCUMULATION OF DREAD - EBOOK BOXSET

The second new item released from Ritual Limited this year, as a means of offering something during the season when I traditionally publish a new book, was the omnibus, or eBook box-set – An Accumulation of Dread – collecting all three of my short story collections into one volume. We've never published a box-set before at Ritual Limited, mainly because I don't write books in series, but it's good to have one at our press now. An Accumulation of Dread ­is out there and clawing its way into ereaders.

NEW RITUAL LIMITED HARDCOVERS AVAILABLE

On the work front, amidst varieties of change and turmoil this year, I pretty much spent the second half of 2023 publishing - an eBook boxset, a new laminate hardcover edition of each Ritual Limited title, and the first four formats for All the Fiends of Hell (published April 2024). And I love how these new harcover editions (no dust jacket) look and how solid, velvety and substantial they feel in the hand.I created the new hardcovers for folks who missed out on the limited first edition but who prefer hardbacks. So, we have moved up to five editions of each of my books. There was a time when my books only appeared in mass market paperbacks and an eBook. Those days are over.The new hardcovers now available anywhere weird books are sold, including my webstore if you want a signed or personalised copy.

A HAUNTED SPACE.

Now, I thought I'd share some intimate details of my writerly life, by revealing my most recent workspace, and a precious studio that I inhabited daily for nine years and ten days. A few readers have asked me to offer an insight into where I work, so, this is a good opportunity and I even took some pictures.

 

I am sentimental about the places in which I have lived, and particularly those spaces in which I have spent my time meaningfully, not least by advancing my horror to new levels (of productivity and madness). My former office/studio was one of the main reasons we bought the house in 2014, and it was my first dedicated workspace for writing. Prior to 2014, I wrote anywhere that was convenient - kitchen tables, dining rooms, corners of bedrooms, my lap, public transport. And often in shared housing in London. A good grounding, though, because it taught me that I could, and would have to write anywhere if I was to get anything finished. I never became precious; I couldn't afford to be. The luxury of possessing an actual room, dedicated to writing, was a pipe dream. I never coveted the idea and wrote my first six novels and first collection of stories across a plethora of places and spaces, in various countries, towns and cities. So, when it came into my possession, I never took the studio for granted. Inside that space, across nine years, I wrote the entirety of Under a Watchful Eye, The Reddening, Wyrd and Other Derelictions, Cunning Folk, The Vessel and All the Fiends of Hell. I also completed Lost Girl there and wrote the second half of the stories that are collected in Hasty for the Dark.

 

 

Added to the prose, I wrote my first four screenplays in that studio. I took hundreds of hours of meetings on film developments too. On my phone, I watched Aston Villa relegated and then come back up from the Championship. Oh the language, the despair! The euphoria. Those long steady hours of endless rewriting. And, besides the writing and my forays into the film industry, this is the space in which I created, and then ran Ritual Limited with my wife. I realised the idea and dream and figured it all out in that room, and then stored the limited edition hardbacks inside with me thereafter. The press has grown each year since its inception and become a family trade - even the little one helps out.

 

I took something of a sabbatical in 2016 in the studio too, to study indie publishing, and combined that training and research with what I'd learned from eleven years as an editor in trade publishing. In 2018, I took another training year to study screenwriting. So, in that office, that also stored so many of my treasures - my music, film and comics collections - I do believe that I spent my time wisely. It was a great space in which to work and think and dream. A sanctuary. I often passed through the glass doors at 5am and departed after midnight. Soundproof too; ideal if you could hear the music I listen to. Through the doors I could see my fleet of kayaks and the garden that I tended so carefully to promote wildlife. Through the skylight, I gazed at the heavens. On the patio outside the office, I sank a few beers over the years, while listening to music and catching the late afternoon and early evening sun. From the age of three to twelve, my Nipper would race round to see Daddy and smile through the window at me. I loved that studio and I am so grateful to have spent so much valuable time inside it. Leaving it behind was a wrench. Five minutes before we had to leave the premises and post the keys, my daughter and I finished dusting and mopping it for the new arrivals.

 

I hope they look after it and don't trigger the elaborate system of curses that I left behind ...

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM THE YULE GOAT!

Sending you all Christmas greetings from the Bay!

We're where we want to be this year - at home. Beside one Christmas in Tenerife, the Sea Nevills tend to stay in our comforting rock pool (with quick access to the sea should shit go south). This year we're in a new rock pool, though it's on the same reef and not far from the last one.

A few eats, treats, strolls, films and footie on the telly, is the intention. Continuing the family tradition since 2006, we'll watch Lord of the Rings together in the evenings. This year, however, on bluray. First part of the Fellowship of the Ring spins tonight.So, I salute you all with both horns and hope that you find some joy - or just peace - at this time of year.

For those who displeased me in '23, brace yourselves for the Yule Goat! As its snorts and mephitic breath draw you rudely from sleep tonight, the first thing you will see is its ghastly silhouette, erect on bony hind legs beside your bed. It has instructions, directions and addresses. Scrabbling on Christmas Eve to delete that review on Goodreads won't help. Too late for that.

REMEMBERING MARK SAMUELS

I turn on Facebook today and see that Mark Samuels has passed away. I'd been thinking of Joel Lane recently, as it must be ten years since Joel passed, in what appears to be a similar manner to Mark. Sad and a shock in each case (and it feels uncanny today). On my shelves I always place their books together.So, it's a blow to lose another stridently independent figure from British horror, who also wrote and spoke well, and with authority, about the field. I think Mark wrote some fine weird fiction too, particularly during a period when horror exuded an appalling smell in publishing houses. There wasn't much encouragement from publishing, or the book trade, for literary horror and writing it could feel like a desperately futile endeavour. PS Publishing, Tartarus, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Jones, Conrad Williams, Reggie Oliver, Mark Morris, Tim Lebbon, Joel and Mark, and others in a loose group, or scene, were a shining pyramid to me back then, as I slowly and painfully emerged from my own London cellar in the early noughties.I can't claim to have had a meaningful friendship with Mark, and I hadn't seen him in around 15 years; I think we were more akin to friendly peers who often met through shared esoteric and literary interests. This was during my early years in London, and we attended the same literary walks with Nicholas Granger Taylor's London Adventure Society (Mark's guided Machen walks were superb). We attended the same events at Treadwells and the BFS for a few years too, until around 2009, I think.This was a key period in my own glacial development, when I met horror writers with similar aesthetic goals for the first time. I also met Michel Parry and Mark on the same afternoon, and he's also gone now. Banquet for the Damned had been published and I was laboriously writing and rewriting Apartment 16, so meeting other writers, like Mark, and listening to them was always consoling and encouraging. They had an effect, at the right time, and it was exciting to share ideas, books, and a little camaraderie. It was the first literary scene I'd encountered. A special time too that felt as if it belonged to another time, or an earlier century.The White Hands and Glyphotech' were my favourites within Mark's body of work and I wrote one of my (personal favourite) stories as a tribute to his idiosyncratic creative vision - 'White Light, White Heat' - for the Snuggly Books' collection, 'Marked to Die'. I have no idea what he thought of it.I'd I like to imagine that Mark has now found the kind of wondrous and numinous realm that he and Machen strived for.

HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS ILLUSTRATED AND PUBLISHED IN GERMAN.

The German translation of (probably the craziest novel that I have yet written), House of Small Shadows, has been published by Buchheim Verlag/Cemetery Dance Germany.

The hardcover volume has also been blessed by the superb vision of illustrator, François Vaillancourt. His interpretations are, simply, superb.

François and I signed every copy too.

Thank you, Buchheim Verlag