Conrad Williams's Blog, page 14

Forbidden Planet Halloween Signing

No Tricks, just Treats this Hallowe’en as the greatest names in British horror gather downstairs at the FORBIDDEN PLANET LONDON MEGASTORE (https://forbiddenplanet.com/) to sign their terrifying tomes on Saturday, October 25, from 1:00–2:00 pm.
 
Here’s a list of the authors, artists and editors who participating:
 
Pat Cadigan
Ramsey Campbell
Michael Chislett
Adrian Cole
Peter Crowther
Les Edwards
Jo Fletcher
Christopher Fowler
Amanda Foubister
Stephen Gallagher
Stephen Jones
Paul Kane
Alison Littlewood
Paul McAuley
Gary McMahon
Lou Morgan
Mark Morris
Kim Newman
Thana Niveau 
Reggie Oliver
Sarah Pinborough
John Llewellyn Probert
Joe Roberts
Lynda E. Rucker
Mark Samuels
Robert Shearman
Laurence Staig
Lavie Tidhar
Simon Kurt Unsworth
Stephen Volk
Conrad Williams
 
There will be in-store give-aways and, for the first 10 people to buy all five ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! titles on the day, a prize draw for the latest Sony XperiaTM Z3 phone (worth more than £470!) to tie-in with the publication of ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! ENDGAME.
 
For those who cannot make it into London, you can pre-order your signed books through the FORBIDDEN PLANET website.
 
Following the signing, many of the authors will move across to The Bloomsbury Tavern, 236 Shaftsbury Avenue, where THE BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY is hosting an Open Day in the Upstairs Bar, and where you will be able to socialise with the writers, artists and publishers into the early evening. There will also be a raffle of books featuring some of the authors present.
 
So, please come along and join us on Saturday the 25th for THE GREATEST HALLOWE’EN HORROR SIGNING EVER!

Forbidden Planet Halloween signing

More information soon…

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Doctor Wh-aaargh!

Здравствуйте!

So this is what my name looks like in Russian:

Thanks to editor Stephen Jones, who recently gave me a copy of his 1997 anthology The Mammoth Book of Dracula (in which my story Bloodlines appears), I can now say I’ve been translated into Russian. The one thing he told me as he handed over the book was that the figure of Count Dracula on the cover was actually Doctor Who. Now I can’t get William Hartnell out of my head… пока!

Graham Joyce

I stayed at Graham Joyce’s house on the 1st March last year. We were reading at an event at Warwick University. He wasn’t feeling too good. I was hoping he’d be up for a monumental Leicester curry afterwards, but his appetite was shot. His lovely wife Sue made me ham sandwiches instead. I slept in his study at the top of the house, the room where he spun gold.

Howz yer guts? I emailed him, a few days later.

Not great. Just had to cancel talk I was doing tonight. Doc thinks it muscular, so I’m on strong painkillers. Hope it goes away. Enjoyed seeing you the other night. Bright light in a dull evening.

It was a Graham Joyce sort of day, yesterday. The sun was out and the clouds were high and light. There was a touch of autumn in the air. I was out all day, working. By the time I got round to thinking of heading home, I received a phone call. Graham had died.

For some reason I thought of him at my wedding in 2002. At the time, Graham was adapting his novel The Tooth Fairy for a Hollywood production company. After the ceremony, after lunch, he stood with me and my dad. Dad was in the police force for 25 years, and then for seven after that he ran pubs. He’s no stranger to industrial language, but he has no truck with those who speak it. I dare not utter an oath within earshot of him, even now. In the past I’ve seen him harangue gangs of teenagers on street corners for trading four-letter insults.

‘Dad, this is Graham. Graham’s a writer. He’s doing stuff over in Tinsel Town.’

‘Really?’ Dad asked. ‘How are you finding it?’

Graham (normal talking voice, ie. loud): ‘They’re a bunch of fucking cunts, Grenville. Bunch of fucking cunts.’

It says something about Graham that he charmed the bristles smooth on my dad within seconds. To this day my parents still talk about that meeting. ‘He had a way of telling a story, didn’t he?’ my dad says. Too true.

I don’t remember getting back to my tram stop, but I remember walking through the park. I was expecting to see a ladybird. I was trying to see Graham in something. If anybody could reach through, it was him, this amazing writer who wrote so beguilingly about nature, who sometimes seemed so very close to the liminal, the numinous, that he was also somehow of it. I was looking for a sign.

The last time I saw him was on Boxing Day. My wife’s parents live in Leicestershire and we’d often take advantage of that to drop in on Graham, Sue, Ella and Joe. We all went on the walk in Wistow he describes in his final, stunning blog post. It was a glorious day. He was in good spirits. There was much laughter and we talked about writing and guitars and football and family. When we got back to his house he got the karate gloves out and sparred with my boys.

Yesterday I cried and my kids hugged me and I smelled their gorgeous heads and thought of Smoking Poppy. I hadn’t seen a ladybird. Or a heron. And there are no hares in Didsbury that I’m aware of. Later, my wife said: ‘Have you seen the moon?’

I went outside and there was a breathtaking, swollen supermoon rising over the village. Of course Graham would die on a day such as this. How could he not?

But he isn’t gone. He’s in the words of the extraordinary books he wrote, of course. And he’s larger than life (if that is at all possible) in the memories we have of him. He was a man of laughter and mischief and generosity. He was one of my very best friends and I’ll miss him enormously. But I felt self-conscious about my grief yesterday, and I imagined him with that twinkle in his eye, pressing a pint into my chest, telling me to cheer up, you soft bugger.

Conrad Williams signs deal with Titan Books

Joel Sorrell will return after world rights were sold to Titan Books for Blonde on a Stick plus two further novels. A revised edition of Blonde on a Stick (containing a new short story, Do Not Resuscitate) is to be published in November 2015 under the new title Dust and Desire. Book two in the series, Sonata of the Dead, will be published in July 2016 and Hell is Empty will follow in November 2016*.

I’m thrilled that Joel will be given a new lease of life at Titan, an exciting, energetic publisher with a fine stable of authors and a deep love for and commitment to genre. I’d always envisaged Joel belonging to a sequence of books, so this deal will give me a great opportunity to develop him, and the narrative arc underpinning the series.

Editor Miranda Jewess said: ‘I’m incredibly pleased to say that Titan Books have acquired Conrad Williams’ fabulous Joel Sorrell thriller series, a dream of mine since I first met Conrad and discovered a fellow crime enthusiast. We’ll be publishing in both the US and UK, so an American audience will get a chance to meet Joel, and with two brand new books in the series planned, British readers will finally find out what happened after Joel’s last adventure, not a moment too soon.’

*All dates/titles to be confirmed.

The Spectral Book of Horror Stories

I’m delighted that my story The Devil’s Interval, is to be included in the inaugural edition of this new annual anthology from Spectral Press, edited by Mark Morris. Here is the full ToC:

ON THE TOUR – RAMSEY CAMPBELL

THE DOG’S HOUSE – ALISON LITTLE WOOD

FUNERAL RITES – HELEN MARSHALL

SLAPE – TOM FLETCHER

THE NIGHT DOCTOR – STEVE RASNIC TEM

DULL FIRE – GARY McMAHON

THE BOOK AND THE RING – REGGIE OLIVER

EASTMOUTH – ALISON MOORE

CARRY WITHIN SOME SMALL SLIVER OF ME – ROBERT SHEARMAN

THE DEVIL’S INTERVAL – CONRAD WILLIAMS

STOLEN KISSES – MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

CURES FOR A SICKENED WORLD – BRIAN HODGE

THE OCTOBER WIDOW – ANGELA SLATTER

THE SLISTA – STEPHEN LAWS

OUTSIDE HEAVENLY – RIO YOUERS

THE LIFE INSPECTOR – JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT

SOMETHING SINISTER IN SUNLIGHT – LISA TUTTLE

THIS VIDEO DOES NOT EXIST – NICHOLAS ROYLE

NEWSPAPER HEART – STEPHEN VOLK

Mark, a lifelong horror fan and champion of the short story, had this to say of his new project: “I grew up reading and loving the Pan and Fontana Books of Horror and Ghost Stories, and have always harboured an ambition to edit an annual non-themed horror anthology of my own. I would love it if The Spectral Book of Horror Stories became a long and fondly-regarded series. My aim is for each volume to showcase the very best that the genre has to offer.”

You can follow Mark on Twitter @MarkMorris10.

The British Fantasy Awards

Hot on the heels of the Shirley Jackson nod for Raptors, I’ve been informed that my short story, The Fox, is a finalist in the British Fantasy Awards. It’s up against some strong competition, but it’s nice to have made it on to the shortlist. Congratulations and good luck to all the nominees.

The Shirley Jackson Awards

We sat in the car. I switched on some music. An old tape of Clapton. She held my hand between both of hers. I closed my eyes and it was like being caressed by two different people. Her nails scored the tender part of my inner arm.

   ‘You’re a minor chord, Warrington,’ she said.

   ‘Minor?’ I asked. ‘That’s nice. Why can’t I be major?’

   ‘Because major chords are happy sounding. Positive. Minors are fragile, sad things.’

   ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Thanks a bundle.’

   ‘E Minor,’ she said. ‘The saddest of all chords.’

I’ve known for a week but I can now reveal that my story, Raptors, published online by Subterranean Press, is a finalist for the Shirley Jackson award in the Best Novelette category. It’s great to be on the shortlist again. Congratulations and good luck to all the other nominees. Thanks to Bill Schafer at Subterranean for taking the story.

The Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 6

Cover art: Pierre Droal

I’m thrilled to have made the cut for Ellen Datlow’s annual ‘best of’ anthology for the second year running. My story The Fox is reprinted within. The book is due to hit the shelves some time in June. a full ToC can be found here.