Paul Finch's Blog, page 22

This week only ... get your horrors FREE!

Anyone tempted by my latest e-collection of horror stories and novellas, DON’T READ ALONE , may be interested to learn that it will be FREE to download from midnight tonight, October 23, and will remain so until midnight on October 27.
From that point on, it will be subject to a special Halloween promotion, enabling those still interested to download it for only 99p. That deal in turn will run until November 10.
In case anyone is still undecided, allow me to fill you in a little on the book itself. Though I’m better known for writing crime and thriller novels these days, I have dipped into the horror market on a number of occasions, primarily to pen movie scripts but also short stories and novellas. I’m certainly no stranger to having collections of my stories published, though up until now only a handful have appeared electronically.
Anyway, all that is now set to change.
The first of these new e-collections, DON’T READ ALONE – which I repeat (because I reckon it’s worth repeating) can be yours completely FREE from midnight tonight until midnight on October 27 – comprises 70,000 words of hopefully chilling and challenging fiction.

It features five long stories in total, each one of which I’m fairly proud of – just read on for further details, snippets and such.
(I should point out that the images scattered throughout this column, while for the most part do not relate directly to these stories, should give some indication of the kind of horrors you’ll find in there).

THE OLD NORTH ROAD(winner of the International Horror Guild Award, 2007)
A disgruntled writer pursues the legend of the Green Man, only to run into trouble of a less ethereal kind on the isolated Old North Road …
“So … the Green Man, he wasn’t actually supposed to have existed then? He wasn’t like a god or spirit?”“Well … no.” Drayton was caught on the hop: she’d clearly understood his introduction. “No, he’s more of a symbolic figure. His original meaning, if there ever was one, is lost to us now. He’s often associated with paganism of course, and fertility rites … but that’s all bollocks. It’s just New Age fantasy. In medieval times he was a representative of Nature … an embodiment of all its beauty and danger. The Church used him as an allegorical figure; an image of what Man could turn into if he didn’t stay on the straight and narrow.”“Yuk!” she interrupted, and he knew immediately what she was looking at. Among his notes, he’d inserted a variety of cut-outs and original photographs, the majority of them depicting the so-called ‘foliate heads’, the original and most common way in which the Green Man was presented to his mystified audience. These were invariably carvings, drawings or mouldings, usually found in religious buildings, and nearly always they’d feature a humanoid head that was either peeking out through dense vegetation or which had actually become part of that vegetation. In most cases, the semi-transformed heads were quite beautiful, their normal human features melding flawlessly into concentric layers of crisp new leaves, their hair hung with fruit and flowers, though one or two – and these were undoubtedly the ones that Shirley had just found – were more gory; in their case, thick vines tended to uncurl from the face’s gaping mouth, buds hung from the nostrils, branches often sprouted from the eye sockets, having first, presumably, popped out the eyeballs. They made for a very ugly sight, and Drayton had often thought them reminiscent of rotting corpses through which natural undergrowth had penetrated.

THE POPPET
When two college friends fall out over the same girl, one of them turns to withcraft, and unwittingly unleashes a nightmarish force …
I took the kettle from the cupboard, filled it at the sink and plugged it in, then went to close the blinds and draw the curtains, and as I did I glanced out of the window – down onto the quadrangle. And for the second time that evening I stopped dead.Someone had just vanished out of sight below. Someone who had just walked diagonally across the quadrangle.The chill went to my very bones.There was nobody else here, I told myself. Aside from Cheerwick, and it certainly hadn’t been him. I tried to recall who it was I’d just seen. But no answer was possible, because who could there be in Crawford House who was less than three feet tall and walked with an ungainly limp? A child maybe? But there were no children here. And in any case, when did you ever see a child wearing a headscarf and old, peasant-type clothing? Downstairs, I heard the swing and bang of the door being violently opened.      A terrible second passed, before I threw myself across the room and yanked my own door open. What sounded like heavy but strangely hollow feet were clumping up the stone stair.

GRENDEL’S LAIR
A suspected murderer leads a bunch of a cops into a network of derelict air-raid shelters to find a missing child – where a hideous evil awaits them!
“Where the fuck are you taking us to?” Brunton asked. He was still coming the heavy, but the eyes were darting about, rabbit-like, in his red, pudgy face.“We’re almost there,” Grimwood answered, a curious half-smile twisting his mouth.A few minutes later they entered an area of tunnel more heaped with debris than anything they’d so far seen; huge sections of its roof and walls had long ago collapsed. In consequence, this space was the tightest and dingiest yet. A black fungus coated the damp and rotted fragments of wall that were still visible – it seemed to leach away what minuscule light there was, and fuelled the sensation that the party had now burrowed to the deepest point of the air-raid shelters. In that respect, when Grimwood suddenly stopping to think, chuckled and, hunkering down, began to scoop bricks and dirt away from the piled rubble with his cuffed hands, it filled the three cops with revulsion.“Can you imagine,” Craegan said, “this slimy little toe-rag brought a child down here!” His gun was trained firmly on Grimwood’s back; sweat gleamed on his pallid face.Lockhart glanced warily at the firearms man. “That’s behind him now though, isn’t it? Eh … Gordon?”Grimwood made no reply.“Confession’s good for the soul,” Lockhart added.“So’s prison,” Craegan said, his voice rising. “Too good. He should’ve been strung up for what he did!”Grimwood ignored him and continued to dig.“Easy, Craegan,” Lockhart advised.      “Easy?” For the first time, the firearms man looked round at the chief super. “Easy? He’s had it easy … for way too long!”

HELL IN THE CATHEDRAL
When holiday-makers are marooned in a Mediterranean sea-cave, they at first think it's a joke, only to find themselves at the mercy of a relentless and voracious beast …
“We may have another problem,” Dolph said. “This cave-system is of course tidal ... it may be that with high tide, some of these passages become impassable.”The terror of that thought gripped us like a vice.  “Let’s go now!” I said urgently. “Now!”We moved in a group towards the tunnel, at a steady breast-stroke – but not before Dolph handed us two flares each in case any of us got separated from the rest, though we were only to use them one at a time. The two Germans were proving themselves good companions – they both took off their flippers and fastened them to their harness, so as not to get too far ahead. As we swam, Karen came up beside me and asked if I was sure I could make it. I could have laughed. What choice did I have? I could never have imagined however, just what a feat of strength and endurance was required even to make it out of that deepest chamber. Anyone who has ever tried to swim against a rising tide, even in shallow water off some pleasant beach, will know how difficult it is. For every three yards we made towards the black crevasse that was our first exit, the current pushed us back two. We gasped and grunted and strained every muscle, yet at the same time we knew we couldn’t afford to overtax ourselves. Just thinking about the distance between us and the outer world was unbearable. Mind you, I doubt in that particular moment that any one of the four of us knew the real meaning of fear.One second later, we did.It was Karen who first saw it coming up behind us. She was in front of me and had glanced around, concerned that I was dropping behind, when I saw her face change. She gave a shrill, prolonged scream. I looked around too, and had a fleeting vision of some vast shape barrelling towards us, under the surface.      Before I could cry out, a huge object – squashy, rubbery, freezing cold – bundled into me with such force that I was catapulted out of the water and into the midst of the others.

THE BALEFUL DEAD
An ageing metal band reunite to make one last album, but the country mansion they choose for a venue has a history of madness, massacre and necromancy …
“Luke! Luke …wake up man!”But it was too late. Because suddenly they were onto me, ragged hordes of black and ragged things swarming out from either side of the path. I ploughed into them, crunched headlong into their midst as though driving through a cluster of saplings. There was a grinding of metal, a tearing and snapping of fibrous limbs, and then bodies were being hurled aside or going down flailing beneath my wheels. The next thing, the world turned upside-down: the quad bike flipped over and I was flung hard onto the verge. I took the brunt of it on the right shoulder and the right side of my head. It knocked me senseless, and for some time I lay grovelling in the leaf-rubble and what I assumed was a pool of my own vomit. But even groggy, I knew that I wasn’t alone. With agonised dizziness, I was able to look up. The crash had put out the headlight, so I was denied much detail, but I sensed as much as saw them standing all around me – those still capable of standing, for I had mown a good number down, and I had the distinct impression that beneath their dented plate and mildewed leather they were more bones and filth than actual flesh.

(The witch doll image is by Malcolm Lidbury, the image of the Green Man costume is by David R. Tribble, and the image of the Green Man in stone by Johanne McInnis).

Green men, maniacs and ghastly sea-beasts

To continue the horror theme from my last post, as opposed to the thriller theme I’ve concentrated on for so much this year, I can now announce that DON’T READ ALONE , a new e-collection of my stories and novellas is available for pre-order at Amazon, with an official publication date of October 11th this year.
Here is the cover, as provided by the ever-reliable STEVE UPHAM .
There perhaps isn’t an automatic cross-cover for readers between thrillers and horrors. Some are content to indulge in both, others less so. But as a writer, I have long been fascinated by the two sub-genres and have regularly worked in both, finding many overlaps between the two. It’s only in this last couple of years, of course, that my thriller novels, the likes of STALKERS and SACRIFICE (with HUNTED due out from Avon Books in February) – action-fuelled crime tomes following the investigations of DS Mark Heckenburg – have become bestsellers and have subsequently started to occupy much of my time. But before then, I had a long history of producing horror stories and novellas for magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 300 have been published to date, going back to the early 1990s; two of these have been the recipient of the British Fantasy Award, and one of them won the International Horror Guild Award (so I like to think I knew what I was doing).
However, by the nature of the beast, many of the titles in which these first appeared are now deleted, out of print or were the work of small printing houses since defunct; either way, completists are finding them elusive to collect, and new readers can only ever find them as titles in back-lists. As such, in the age of the e-book, it seemed an obvious thing to look at the best of these again, tighten and trim where necessary, and re-issue them as e-collections.
That, somewhat loosely, is the new plan.
DON’T READ ALONE will hopefully be the first in a rolling programme of new e-publications – each containing about 70,000 words – drawing on the best of my short horror stories and novellas, and each one assembled with tales specifically chosen to complement each other but also varying in subject matter so there should always be something for everyone (the one overarching feature, if I say so myself, is fear – I prefer my stories to be as frightening as possible, or at the very least suspenseful and unnerving).
Audio versions and even paperbacks may follow in due course, though I’m not totally sure how that latter scheme will pan out at this early stage. If you’re interested in that, keep watching this space.
The table of contents for DON’T READ ALONE is as follows:
The Old North Road (first published in Alone On The Darkside, 2006, and winner of the International Horror Guild Award): A writer investigating the myths surrounding the Green Man has a terrifying chance encounter on a lonely woodland road ...
The Poppet (first published in Enemies At The Door, 2012): A self-centred student does the dirty on a college pal, only to find his fate interwoven with a mysterious faceless doll ...
Grendel’s Lair (first published in Beneath The Ground, 2003): A callous cop, a brutal criminal, a missing child - and something unspeakable in a derelict air-raid shelter ...
Hell In The Cathedral (first published in The Shadows Beneath, 2000): Brit tourists in the Med are taken on the boat-trip of a lifetime, but find themselves at the mercy of a voracious sea-beast ...
The Baleful Dead (first published in Groaning Shadows, 2009): An ageing metal band hook up at a lonely country manse to record one last album, unaware that their scheming manager has a 'foolproof plan' to summon assistance from beyond ...

Ten times the horror - Black Book is back!

Very pleased this week to announce that another volume in one of my current favourite series of horror anthologies, THE 10thBLACK BOOK OF HORROR (the artwork to which is pictured left), will soon be published.
As many may know, penning short horror stories is one of my favourite past-times – I have a back-catalogue of such that goes back into what feels like ancient history – but given the amount of time I’ve been putting into my new series of cop thriller novels from Avon Books, I’ve had almost no time at all of late to write pieces of short fiction.
It isn’t a complete non-starter. I still manage to crank them out now and then, but they are, alas, few and far between these days. That said, the BLACK BOOK OF HORROR series (MORTBURY PRESS) is one I will always try and contribute to. The brainchild of editor Charles Black, it is very much heir-apparent to the famous PAN HORROR series of the 1960s and 1970s in that it sees the publication of an annual anthology of horror stories, which vary from the most gruesome and disturbing kind of contes cruels, to clever psychological mindwarps, to the kinds of eerie supernatural mysteries that hark back to the golden age of the English ghost story.
The 10th BLACK BOOK OF HORROR is due out very shortly, and it will the ninth one I’ve been fortunate enough to have a story included in (the only one I’ve missed thus far is BBH#2, though I sort of doubled up in BB#8, as the cover featured an image of my severed head – which was a little bit unnerving). Anyway, my contribution to BBH#10 is a story called MARSHWALL, which, without giving too many spoilers away, concerns a lonely house on the edge of a desolate, waterlogged wilderness, and its less than savoury occupants.
I can’t actually give you a date when this book will be available, but for anyone fortunate enough to have a ticket, it will most likely be getting an official launch at World Fantasy in Brighton at the end of October. If anyone still needs convincing, here’s a LINK to a rather neat little video put together to celebrate this series by regular contributor and resourceful mistress of the night, ANNA TABORSKA.

And if that isn’t enough for you, here’s the TOC for BBH#10:
STIFF by Angela Blake; THE EASTER BUNNY by Tom Johnstone; THE LAST TESTAMENT OF JACOB TYLER by David Surface; THE WAR EFFORT by Carl P. Thompson; THE PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTING by David A. Sutton; CHRISTMAS IN THE RAIN by Chris Lawton; DEEPER THAN DARK WATER by Gary Power; MARSHWALL by Paul Finch; EXPLODING RAPHAELESQUE HEADS by Ian Hunter; THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER by John Llewellyn Probert; THE PYGMALION CONJURATION by Mike Chinn; THE BOY by David Williamson; THE LAST WAGON IN THE TRAIN by Andrea Janes; DAD DANCING by Kate Farrell; GUINEA PIG GIRL by Thana Niveau.

Plenty of prizes for Cotswolds curiosities

It's always nice to see your choices vindicated.

Okay, I suppose I should explain that statement.

Each year, US editor ELLEN DATLOW brings out her rather marvelous tome, BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR . It's a kind of American cousin to STEVE JONES 's MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR , though very rarely do the selected short stories in the two anthologies overlap - a sure indicator of the two editors' eclectic tastes (and a great bonus for fans of the genre like me, as that means I'm fully justified in buying both).

Each year, Ellen also includes a long list of 'honourable mentions', which is basically a list of those stories she wasn't able to include in the book because of space limitations, but which she heartily recommends her readers to seek out anyway.

Now ... it's a moot-point as to how satisfying it is for an author to see his/her work on this list rather than reprinted in the book. You don't get paid for inclusion on a list, after all. But I've always felt that, if nothing else, it's nice to at least be recognised by an industry professional like Ellen. It shows that she's read your work and enjoyed it to the point where he has no hesitation in drawing to the attention of others - which is some kind of result, even if it's not the sort that sets your pocket jangling.

For this reason, I'm pleased and rather proud that in this year's list of HMs - as it appears in the BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR #5 , Ellen as chosen to include 12 stories from my TERROR TALES series' 2012 output. We released two volumes last year - TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS and TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA - and both have hit a number of sixes for us. COTSWOLDS has of course been short-listed for the British Fantasy Award in the capacity of Best Anthology, and both COTSWOLDS and EAST ANGLIA have seen stories selected by STEVE JONES for MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR , (but I don't know if I'm allowed to name those yet, so I won't), but the following are now immortalised on Ellen's world-famous list:

TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS

The Shakespeare Curse - Simon Clark
Hoxlip And After - Chris Harman
In The Dark And In The Quiet - Alison Littlewood
Wassailing - Steve Lockley
Straw Babies - Gary McMahon
Charm - Reggie Oliver
The Cotswold Olimpicks - Simon Kurt Unsworth

TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA

Shuck - Simon Bestwick
Wicken Fen - Paul Finch
Deep Water - Chris Harman
Like Suffolk, Like Holidays - Alison Littlewood
The Spooks Of Shellborough - Reggie Oliver

So congratulations to all you guys and gals. Well done indeed.

And just to put any of you guys who haven't already bought these amazing anthologies into the mood, here are some pics taken from mine and Cathy's recent trip to the Cotswolds. Topside, I walk one of the inner circles at Avebury Henge - a complex neolithic religious site. In the middle - there are many ancient hill-figures carved into the overlapping landscapes of the Cotswolds and West Country; here is one - the Cherhill White Horse (though unfortunately, this one isn't quite so ancient - it only dates from 1790). And at the bottom (just overhead) I take my life and soul in my hands by entering deep into the mystical heart of Oldbury prehistoric barrow.

SACRIFICE hits the shelves - thanks to all

Today is publication day for SACRIFICE , the second in my new series of police novels following the investigation of Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg.
The internet appears to have been going mad on this matter in the last few days. Friends, loved ones and comrades-in-pens – of which I’m fortunate enough to have very many – have been hugely supportive, re-tweeting my tweets on the matter, sharing my Facebook posts and generally spreading the word (I can’t thank all you guys enough, but I shall endeavour to in due course – I think I owe a lot of people a lot of drinks). The remarkable image above is a screen-capture from the Apple iBookstore, which shows us sitting right in the middle of its new banner.    Amazing – that’s all I can say. And a great honour.
The net-result of all this is that, in terms of statistics alone, SACRIFICE has now officially become the most anticipated book in HarperCollins history. I still can’t quite get my head around that. Before today, it had racked up over 14,000 pre-orders, which apparently has never happened before for any book produced by that great publishing house. Equally bemusing to me are the sales figures now accrued by its forerunner, and the first in the Heck series – STALKERS . The last time I checked, it had sold around 160,000 copies since February, which is simply bamboozling. It would be quite staggering if SACRIFICE was to match that figure, but that’s in the hands of God.
Again though, I have to thank people – readers, fans, friends – for trusting my story-telling skills sufficiently to dip into their pockets and take a chance on me. Hopefully I won’t disappoint. I must also thank my agent, Julian Friedmann, for all his support and advice as we evolved the concept of Heck, my editor at Avon, Helen Bolton, who has been the massive and benign driving-force behind the series (not to mention her many, tireless colleague), and my wife, Cathy, who for 25 years now has been the rock upon which this writing career of mine was built.
So thanks again to all of your who’ve played your part, no matter how small.
I’m off to the HARROGATE CRIME-WRITING FESTIVAL later today, where once again I’ll be among like-minded individuals, scribblers of edgy fiction, whose minds range darkly and yet who are among some of the best guys and girls you could ever hope to meet. How well that’s fallen for me. I don’t believe I could think of a better place to spend Publication Day.

Freebies, give-aways, samples - go get 'em!

Well, it’s another lovely sunny day in July, and there is a tranquil mood over most of the UK, but it’s actually the commencement of quite an important week in my little corner of south Lancashire.

First of all, I’m off to the HARROGATE CRIME-WRITING FESTIVAL on the Thursday, which will be a new experience for me. I’m an old hand at horror and fantasy festivals, but still a relative newbie to the crime and thriller scene, so I’m anticipating this one with a mixture of excitement and nervousness.

Secondly, SACRIFICE – the next in my new series of DS Heckenburg novels – is published on Thursday (July 18), and even though it’s still only Saturday, I’m already detecting a bit of press and publicity activity on this front. I had to field a couple of phone-calls from journalists this last week regarding the new book’s record-breaking pre-orders, which was a nice experience even if I wasn’t really able to answer the main question, which in both cases was: “How did this happen?”

At least I’ve been able to direct all those interested, both journalists and readers alike, to a free sample of SACRIFICE , the first two chapters of which can be accessed online HERE . 

In another Heck-related development, the audiobooks for both STALKERS and SACRIFICE will also be launched on Thursday, as read by experienced film and TV man,
Still on the subject of freebies, a SACRIFICE give-away is being run on GOODREADS from Monday morning until Thursday night. Apparently there are 20 copies to be had, so it’ll be well worth popping in there from Monday onward.

 And now, as they say, for something completely different. The SACRIFICE cover a little further up this column speaks for itself, but you may wonder what purpose is served by those others dotted here and there through the text. Well … these are a bit of an appetite whetter.

I’m pleased to say that the DON’T READ ALONE series is a new venture I’ll be starting in the very near future, and, (if you hadn’t already guessed), these are the covers for the first three volumes: GHOSTS, KILLERS and MONSTERS (thanks again to the indefatigable STEVE UPHAM for his incredible artistic efforts here, and to STEVE LOCKLEY for his editing and proof-reading skills).

Basically they are a series of ebook collections, about 50 to 60 thousand words each, comprising the best of my extensive back-catalogue of horror and thriller stories and novellas (in many cases reviewed, tightened up, improved, etc). I'll try to bring these books out at a rate of six a year, if possible, and will also from time to time be including new material in them, though that won’t be happening with every volume.

Anyway, the series isn’t quite ready to launch yet but it won’t be long. So keep checking in for availability details, tables of contents, and so forth.

HarperCollins pre-orders record smashed

I'm pleased to be opening today's bulletin with the gratifying news that SACRIFICE - the second in my series of novels concerning the investigations of Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg - has officially become the most pre-ordered book in the history of HarperCollins.

At the time of this writing, some 12,825 readers have paid their money are now impatiently awaiting the arrival of said tome, even though it is still two weeks off. The publication date is July 18th (the first day of this year's HARROGATE CRIME-WRITING FESTIVAL as it happens, which is a happy accident - and which is where I'll be for the Thursday and the Friday, so please say 'hello' if you're there).

This rounds off a rather amazing few days for me, I must say.

I attended the HarperCollins summer bash last Tuesday night at the Orangery in Kensington, and had the honour of chatting to several writers I haven't met before. ROBIN JARVIS is a thoroughly decent chap, and having a good natter with him stirred fond memories of when my children were little and used to read his marvelous DEPTFORD MICE books. ASH CAMERON is also a smashing lady. A fellow ex-cop, she's also something of a force of nature; a term of phrase I don't use lightly. Her first book, CONFESSIONS OF AN UNDERCOVER COP , due out this September from THE FRIDAY PROJECT, just screams to be bought. Some of the tales she was telling knock a few of my own experiences into the shade.

It was a great night all round, and a hot one, I must admit. But I was still on Cloud Nine to a certain extent from a meeting I'd had the previous morning. In a nutshell, I'd met with a Hollywood producer who didn't just treat me to breakfast at Claridges - there's a first time for everything, as they say - but also expressed interest in optioning a number of my short stories and novellas for movie and TV development.

It wouldn't be truthful to say that I've had this kind of experience before. Okay, there are a number of us who've had projects optioned - and I'm one of them - but quite often these projects go nowhere. This felt significantly different. At least, that was the feeling I got. I'm not going to mention any names as yet - either of personalities or companies - but one key project, which I'm being hired to script as well, could be shooting as early as next November. That would be a hell of a turn-around given that this ball only started rolling for me a couple of weeks ago. Ultimately of course, we'll have to wait and see.

Back on the subject of my crime writing, people may be interested to know that I'll soon be launching a new website. It'll be linked directly to this one but will deal exclusively with Heck's investigations. We've got two books in the barrel now, with STALKERS and SACRIFICE , while the third, HUNTED, will be out next February, and the fourth, which has no title, will follow next summer. The new site has no title yet either, but it is very near completion, and I'll be shouting about it all over Facebook, Twitter and this blog, when it goes online. So keep your eyes skinned.

And now, as promised a couple of weeks ago, here's the full transcript of a recent chinwag I had with RACHEL ABBOTT , a remarkable lady and fellow crime-author, but one who's enjoyed phenomenal success despite having done it all by herself (she really is an expert when it comes to self-publishing, and her views and opinions are well worth taking on). Her novels ONLY THE INNOCENT and THE BACK ROAD have sold astonishingly well to date and have gleaned over a thousand online reviews between them.

This conversation recently appeared on Rachel's own BLOG , and basically concerns the differences we've both experienced in the writing game to date, Rachel having made her way to best-seller success along the self-publication route, and me having gone via the more familiar the mass-market publisher avenue. Anyway, enough of my gabbling. Here we go:


I’m enjoying my journey as a self-published author very much and that’s partly because one of the great things about the self-publishing community is how supportive indie authors are of each other. We often compare notes, and offer each other advice. But I don’t really know many traditionally published authors, so I was delighted to be introduced recently to Paul Finch, whose novel Stalkers has been in the Kindle top 100 for over a hundred days. We had a chat about the similarities and differences in our experiences.RA: We are both lucky enough to have been in the Kindle top twenty recently, but we became bestsellers by quite different routes I think. Would you tell me a bit about how Stalkers came to be published?PF: The idea behind Stalkers came from one of my brain-storming sessions, where I simply devote a day or two to hatching high-concept ideas and jotting them down. Not necessarily ideas aimed at any particular project … just anything that strikes me as the basis for a good story, be it for a novel, a novella, a short story or even a screenplay. Stalkers originally began life as an idea entitled The Nice Guys Club. It just hit me one evening…this idea about the most terrible kind of secret club. At first I thought it would only work as a horror story – it was too dark to imagine it falling into the realms of crime or thriller fiction. But I’d been massively impressed by US cop shows like The Shield and The Wire, and have long felt that we are painfully lacking in this kind of stuff over here. In all honesty, you have to go back to The Sweeney to find that kind of edgy, gritty, fast-moving crime series in a British setting. Several times I’d spoken to my agent on this same subject, and he’d always responded: “if you can give me one, I’ll try to sell it”. The Nice Guys Club seemed a perfect fit for this new police hero I was evolving – an affable but isolated character, hard-boiled as hell, and loaded with baggage – but it was also obvious that it would be near enough impossible to place this story on television; the subject matter was simply too disturbing.RA: I love the idea of brain-storming for a couple of days. I might try that. The starting point for me is to base my books on people that any one of us might meet, and I focus on the lengths that ordinary people will go to in order to protect themselves and their lives. My villains are usually well disguised as somebody that you or I might know, without realising that they have a very dark side. Like you, though, I felt that the whole idea of stalking was a great basis for a book, and The Back Road touches on the subject in various ways.  I think it’s a popular theme for readers and authors at the moment because it strikes at particular fears we have as a result of living our lives online. I first became interested in the concept of one of my characters being tracked down and followed when discussing some of the dangers of social media with a friend. In The Back Road a girl is contacted on Facebook by someone who is able to hide their identity while forging an intimate and dangerous friendship. Another character makes a mistake in her personal life and as a result finds herself being hounded in a more conventional way – with phone calls, texts, and signs that her tormenter has been in her home.When I started my research, I was staggered by just how easy we all make it for people to know everything about us, so that however safe we think we are, there may be an enemy lurking around any corner, with too much information.I shared my idea for The Back Road with my agent at quite an early stage – when I had an outline and a couple of chapters – and she gave me some useful feedback. This was a huge contrast to the way I wrote my first novel, Only the Innocent, when I had to feel my way through on my own, the way all new writers do. At what stage did you share your book with your agent, and what happened when they sent the book out to publishers?PF: I mentioned the book to my agent, Julian Friedmann, a couple of times, but Julian is a busy guy and I didn’t expect him to give me masses of feedback on a bare bones premise, so as soon as I’d planned the book out I got down to writing it in full. I’d reached the stage in horror and fantasy where this was something I hadn’t really had to do very much – a few sample chapters and a detailed outline would normally be enough to acquire a commission. But I had no track record in crime or thrillers, so it was apparent from the start that I was going to have to write this book on spec. And that’s what I did, and I actually didn’t mind, because it allowed me to really fill in the blanks. In fact, it seemed predestined – it literally flowed out of the keyboard. I’d written it in about two months. Julian was very pleased to have a finished novel to hawk around, and though it was a big step away from the horror/fantasy novels I’d written in the past, he managed to find an interested publisher, Avon Books at HarperCollins, fairly quickly – though initially, after some debate, they had said ‘no’. I’m not sure why – I think they simply didn’t have space for a new crime writer on their list. But within a year that had changed, and they came back to me again. I signed a three book deal with Avon in late 2011 and the first book came out in February 2013.RA: The time gap between finishing a book and being published is interesting. I’m always really keen to get my book out there quickly for all sorts of reasons. I was worried that the gap between Only the Innocent and The Back Road would be too great if I didn’t publish as soon as I could. After the launch of Only the Innocent I’d spent several months marketing, and then my agent, Lizzy Kremer, and an editor she works with helped me to develop a new draft of that novel, which took another few months. So to have gone down the traditional route with The Back Road would have caused further delays. I also worry that somebody else will come up with the same idea, or the topicality of a story will be lost. Do you think there are advantages of publishing more slowly?PF: Well, with Stalkers in particular, I don’t think it was that slow a process.  Once it was agreed that we were selling to Avon, there was the usual one or two months spent negotiating the contract, then, when I’d signed, I went down to London to meet the team, and after that had several editorial meetings with Helen Bolton, who is my editor at Avon. Perhaps I’m just very fortunate in that Helen and I sing from the same songsheet. She’d really liked Stalkers the first time she’d seen it, and she loved DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg, who is the central character and someone she felt we could build a whole series of adventures around. There were of course some changes required, but nothing too complex. I must be honest, I pride myself on being easy to work with. I’m not precious about my own material, and will do whatever is necessary to make it work for my publisher. Sure, there are times when I disagree radically and will say so, but thankfully Helen and I have always been able to reach easy compromises. Anyway, from my POV, the book was done and dusted and had left my desk by mid-2012, and I was already working on Sacrifice, the follow-up. I hear your concerns about projects losing topicality and so forth – my biggest fear with police-related material is that laws and police powers and procedures change on a constant and regular basis. But when I was down at CrimeFest in Bristol last month, I learned that most crime-writers share the same anxiety. It’s just something we have to live with.RA: I found the whole experience of working with an editor completely inspiring, but I like to get input from readers too. My agent is the first person to read the initial draft of my books. She gives me so much guidance about keeping the story on track, and suggests improvement to plot points and character traits. Sometimes this drives me into ‘stomping around the house’ mode as I realise that one simple change that she has suggested would make a tremendous difference to the book, but although it looks like a line on a page, it’s actually a significant amendment with all sorts of ramifications. I get cross with myself because I missed it, and should have spotted it first time round. But the changes are always worth the trouble. Once the plot has been clarified, the editor and I go through two or three iterations – each of which seems to reveal more ‘duh’ moments as she gently points out areas that need tweaking. But I love it, because I’m learning all the time.Before I publish, I like to send my novel to maybe half a dozen trusted readers – people who read voraciously and are not afraid of commenting. In a plot that’s as complex as The Back Road this was essential because I needed to see whether there were any holes. As a result of their feedback, I made a fairly fundamental adjustment to one of the threads. But I was still very nervous when I launched the book, in case everybody hated it (which thankfully, hasn’t been the case).With a publisher behind you, I imagine you feel confident when the book is launched that you have their support and that they wouldn’t have allowed your book to hit the shelves if they weren’t sure that it was good. Is that the case? Are you in regular contact, or do you just hear from them when there is something exciting to report?PF: Well … having an editor at a company like HarperCollins certainly helps to underpin your confidence in a book. I don’t need to tell you, Rachel, that your editor’s first role is that she/he is a professional sounding-board. They don’t miss much. They make ideal proof-readers, copy-editors, etc etc. But my current experience is that they also live the book alongside you. They’re completely immersed in the subtext and the undercurrents – they get into the character’s skin, almost as much as you, the author, do. At least, that’s how it’s been while I’ve been at Avon. I remember one semi-surreal lunch I had with Helen in Hammersmith, when we found ourselves discussing Heck’s future love-life as if we were gossiping about a friend. It’s a huge advantage to have someone onside who has so bought into the material. Of course, we don’t live on top of each other. Writing, as you know, is by its nature a solitary endeavour. I have to get through the bulk of it alone in my office at home, but I tend to stay in contact with Helen on a once-a-week basis, either by phone or email. If I get a radical new idea midway through, which will necessitate big changes to the narrative, I test it out on her. If I have doubts about anything – if something just isn’t working for example, we’ll talk it through. If I’m concerned that the pace is dragging, she’ll suggest cuts that I’d never thought of, and so on. I can honestly say, I’ve never yet had a chat with Helen at the end of which I felt “that didn’t help very much”. I’m not saying this is everyone’s experience of working with a publisher, but it has certainly been mine.RA: It was great to see Stalkers doing so well in the charts. I can’t help wondering whether traditionally published authors are as obsessed with checking chart positions as self-published authors?  As The Back Road was heading up the charts, I was checking almost hourly – getting up in the middle of the night occasionally (only if I woke up, though, I’m not sad enough to set my alarm!).PF: To answer your question bluntly, yes I have been massively excited by the book’s rapid ascent up the charts, and I wasn’t expecting it. I just assumed, as I did with all my previous books, that it would make slow, steady progress and would eventually plateau out at somewhere respectable. However, within two weeks of publication I began to get emails from Avon, informing me that something exciting was happening. I started checking online, and was flabbergasted by the number of copies it was selling – within a relatively short time it was far and away my best-selling title.  I think the plethora of very positive reviews helped, but Avon have the full marketing muscle of HarperCollins behind them, and I’m not naive enough to imagine that this wasn’t massively significant in the book’s success – the deals they have with the supermarkets are also an enormous factor. That has helped me shift an awful lot of paperbacks. On top of that, they priced the ebook at 99p, so that flew as well. Occasionally, the price was raised, but throughout its shelf-life, Stalkers has remained massively affordable.As a self-published author, I’d guess there’s much more onus on you to do your own marketing. Is that the case? If so, it must be quite a challenge, and almost as time-consuming as the actual writing.RA: There is no doubt at all that I feel entirely responsible for the marketing, but to start with I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. It’s really interesting about your expectations regarding the slow and steady progress. When I released Only the Innocent I was completely new to all this, and I was over the moon when I sold more that a couple of books a day. But then I got the bit between my teeth and realised that the success or failure of the book was all going to be down to me. So my business hat came on, and I sat down and wrote myself a marketing plan. I had to attack this from two angles: immediate sales, and long-term brand building. As the book had already been launched I had to consider what could be done straightaway, and that included looking in detail at the Amazon site and working out how best to make my book discoverable. But I also wanted to make sure it was instantly recognisable so that if a reader came across it, they would think “I’ve seen that book somewhere before” and so those were the most urgent areas to focus on. I also had to think of the future, and so building my sales platform became another huge priority. Each element of the plan had an objective, a list of actions and targets – just as I would have done in any other business.It was worth it. It took three months for Only the Innocent to get to the top of the Kindle chart, but it stayed at number one for four weeks – and every day I was more and more staggered by the sales. The Back Road has taken a slightly different path – and although I priced the ebook at £1.99, the Amazon 99p promotion for May has been useful in raising the book’s profile. It took off more quickly than Only the Innocent and reached number two in the charts – which is better than I would have imagined possible.You’re absolutely right about marketing being time-consuming as well.  I would say that I have to allow three months after launch before I can get back to any serious writing. My days are totally occupied with marketing. Do you get involved in any marketing effort at all – such as speaking at events, books signings, etc? And do your publishers organise things like this for you?PF: I always did a bit of my own marketing. When I was writing horror, Dr Who etc, I regularly attended fantasy conventions, did public readings, book signings and so forth. I also started my own blog - http://paulfinch-writer.blogspot.co.uk/ - on which readers could keep up with all the latest developments.I found it too enjoyable to actually classify it as work, though ever since I’ve worked as a full-time writer, I’ve loved my job to a degree where it has never felt like ‘real work’. However, when I moved back into writing crime with books like Stalkers, much higher levels of self-publicisation were expected. I have had novels published mass-market before - Stronghold, Dark North and Dr Who: Hunter’s Moon - but with a huge operation like Avon and HarperCollins it was a different ballgame. They of course have done a phenomenal amount of marketing on my behalf, especially online – their work with Amazon and other online retailers, their comprehension of algorithms and so forth, enabled the book to make a huge impact very quickly – but it’s part of the deal that I do my bit as well so I am now finding that my writing day is frequently interrupted by promotional breaks, which though it’s a new thing for me, is clearly paying dividends. It may be hard to believe, but I’ve only recently started tweeting. I still maintain my blog, but I’ll soon be launching a dedicated Paul Finch crime-writing website, and I’m attending all the main crime festivals this year – Bristol, Harrogate and such, and will be part of a special crime/horror Twisted Tales event at Waterstones, Liverpool One on August 2nd. But I’m fascinated and vaguely horrified to hear that you have to write off an estimated three months after a book-launch. My schedule simply wouldn’t allow that, but surely it gives you a headache as well?RA: Well yes, in that I have had the next book in my head for months now, and it’s bursting to break free! Although I’ve sketched it out, I have only just started the writing. The marketing does slow me down, and I struggle to write more than a book every twelve months.  But I had no followers on Twitter when I launched Only the Innocent, and during the course of the last year I built that to 14,000 – and I’m active in forums, Goodreads, Facebook and my own blog, which I originally set up to help other indie authors at http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com. I also developed and manage my own website at www.rachel-abbott.com and I set up one for media at www.rachel-abbott.info – both of which I enjoyed doing.And if I’m honest, I don’t know how I would feel about handing over complete control. I would want to have an input to a strategic plan – a mix of price and marketing strategy – and I understand that isn’t the relationship between most authors and their publishers. There may be times in a career when volume of sales is the driver, and others where it’s about building a brand or maximising revenue. Each of these requires a different strategic plan.Another one of the brilliant things about doing so much marketing myself is that I am constant contact with readers – through all the social media sites, forums, etc – and that’s a definite upside that I wouldn’t want to lose.  So despite it taking a lot of time, there are some very positive aspects.PF: I’m looking forward to meeting readers at The Twisted Tales event in Liverpool, where I’ll be reading selected passages from my next crime novel, Sacrifice. I’ll admit to always being a bit nervous at these events, actually. You’re never sure, of course, how your work is going to be received. Some folk love it, but others inevitably don’t. Only once have I ever been put on the spot by someone who was highly critical to my face, though that was an obnoxious drunk at a horror convention in Birmingham, who told me he enjoyed what he’d seen of my writing but wouldn’t pay for it as he’d never give money to “a Nazi pig”, referring to my former career as a police officer. I can’t remember what I said to him, but I guess there was even less chance of him buying my books afterwards.On a more serious note, I can’t imagine that you have any fears when you publish – 14,000 fans on Twitter, who you’ve obviously won over by the quality of your work – must be hugely comforting. You’ve hit the spot with your books.RA: Thanks! But I am very interested in your comment about the way you wonder how your work is going to be received. How do you feel about bad reviews in general? Isn’t it extraordinary to think that only a few years ago, authors would not be able to read readers’ views on their books at all, unless they received a letter in the post? And now so much rests on one’s ratings…it’s so gratifying for me to see people enjoying my book, just days after publication. As a self-published author I am not likely to see my book reviewed in magazines and newspapers. But then reader reviews are mixed, of course, and it’s tricky to keep them in perspective sometimes. We all get comments from negative reviewers such as ‘don’t buy this book’. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I genuinely don’t expect everybody to like my books. But it is odd when people get abusive. How do you feel when you get one of those?PF: To be honest, I just take it on the chin … or try to. As you say, everyone is entitled to their opinion, though some of these I find highly suspicious, especially if the reviewer in question has never reviewed anything else, or has only reviewed a new brand of coffee or something, and yet suddenly seems to go to town on this particular novel. If I didn’t like a book I’d paid for, I wouldn’t post any comment on the retail site where I’d got it from. I might mention why it didn’t appeal to me in forum chat, but I would never go hunting down the place of sale and make comments like “that’s 99p I will never get back” or “I will never read any of his other books and I urge other readers to do the same”. That amounts to sticking the knife in and twisting it simply because you can. Likewise, stuff like “I have only read 30 pages and gave up” make me laugh – they’ve read 30 pages out of 450 and yet still feel qualified to comment! The best laugh, of course, is to see the handful of negative reviewers commiserating with each other in the ‘comments’ columns as if they can’t understand why everyone is wrong except them.But ultimately, the naysayers are more than made up for by the good comments, which – thankfully where Stalkers is concerned – have been in an enormous majority. Even if they weren’t, I’d take the view that if we consciously put our stuff out there in public, we must expect some people to throw stones.Of course, whatever happens once the book is published, it helps that I have the support of a big publisher. That’s something you, as a self-published author, don’t have. In that respect, you must feel alone at times?RA: I do, because I know that whether the book sinks or swims, it’s my responsibility. If everybody hates my books, I have nobody to blame but myself, and whether it sells twenty a day or two thousand a day, it’s all down to me. Without an advance, I could have worked for a year for nothing – so I feel very exposed.However, I struck very lucky indeed with my agent, Lizzy. She and her team give me no end of support with my writing, and they’re always available if I’m feeling in need of somebody to lend an ear. I published The Back Road through the Amazon White Glove programme – where the agents and Amazon liaise and take over the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) relationship. That seems to have worked well, and there have been some definite pluses – not least that I have somebody to talk to about the whole publishing process. And as an agency, David Higham Associates has a terrific translation rights team and film and TV department, so I’m well looked after and well supported in those areas.There is no doubt, though, that seeing my books in print on the front table at Waterstones does have huge appeal, as does leaving somebody else to worry about the marketing. While it is good to work at my own pace, I am quite driven and rarely take a day off. But I’m overwhelmed by the positive experience I’ve had in sharing my work with the public directly. It’s been a rollercoaster ride for me, to be able to write a novel and share it with others so quickly. I’ve also seen it as a business challenge – I’ve made a good living so far, and I’ve learned a lot of new marketing skills. And I’ve made some excellent friends! Best of all, I’ve been writing….something I love to do. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to my new novel. It’s about obsession, and the dreadful things that people may be driven to in the name of what they believe to be love.Can you give us a sneak preview of what’s going to happen in your next book? I know it features the same policeman, but is it a continuation of the same story?PF: It’s interesting you should ask that question. In Stalkers, Heck takes on a brutal crime syndicate called the Nice Guys Club. Several readers have assumed the sequel will be a direct continuation of this story. It won’t, but Heck isn’t done with the Nice Guys Club. Readers can rest assured – those very nasty men will be back in the near future. In the meantime, Sacrifice sees Heck and other members of the Serial Crimes Unit hunting an unknown killer who appears to be celebrating popular holidays and festivals with grisly but appropriate human sacrifices. A drunken man racked and burned on Bonfire Night, a courting couple shot through their hearts with the same arrow on Valentine’s day, etc. I think it will probably be a more nightmarish experience than Stalkers was, simply because of the rapidly rising body-count and the uncertainty surrounding each forthcoming date in the calendar as Heck and the other murder detectives watch the days tick by and wonder who and what will be next.RA: It has been great talking to you – I’m looking forward to reading your new bookSacrifice, and meeting up with your extremely brave policeman – Heck – again.PF: Thanks very much, Rachel. I look forward to reading your next novel as well. I’m hugely impressed by what you’ve achieved as a self-published author, and it’s been interesting to learn how much work has gone into it.

Sacrifice at last takes a real, physical form

At last, my new Mark Heckenburg novel, SACRIFICE , has a physical form – and here it is. I can now relax in the full knowledge that it actually exists.
I’m being mischievous, of course.

The book received its final proof-read several weeks ago, so it was only a matter of time before it rolled off the presses, but it’s always a joy for an author to see your dreams and imaginings take a solid, tangible form.
SACRIFICE is the second in the Heck series, following on from STALKERS , and it takes more of a police procedural line as Heck and the rest of the Serial Crimes Unit are pitted against a so-called ‘calender killer’, a maniac working on a monthly cycle as he celebrates holidays and festivals with gruesomely appropriate human sacrifices. Folk can rest assured, however, that the action quota will be as high as it was in the first book, if not higher, and that I’ve gone out of my way to make it as scary and disturbing as possible.
On a different matter, but still on the subject of scares, I’m very proud to announce that TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS , the second in my ‘round Britain’ series of regional horror anthologies from GRAY FRIAR PRESS , has made the final ballot for the British Fantasy Award in the capacity of Best Anthology. This series originally stemmed from my love of regional British folklore and myth, and in all cases the authors contributing were asked to bear this in mind when writing their stories. So for example, with TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS , Thana Niveau told a tale concerning the famous Uffington Horse, John L. Probert discussed the magical properties of Cotswold stone, and Simon Clark reawakened a Shakespearean curse on the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon, among many others of course – there are usually about 13 original stories in each of these anthologies. One of the unique features of the series, though I will admit to having been influenced by the late, great Ron Chetwynd-Hayes in this regard, is my determination to intersperse true-life instances of folklore-related terror between the stories – just a page or so in each case, a palate-cleanser before the next dish is served.
Four titles have now been published in the series – LAKE DISTRICT , COTSWOLDS , EAST ANGLIA and LONDON , and though COTSWOLDS is the first to be honoured with a final nomination for the British Fantasy Award, several tales from the other volumes have been selected for reprint in various Year’s Best editions, so overall they are making an impact.
On the same subject, the next book in the series, TERROR TALES OF THE SEASIDE, is now in the latter stages of compilation. As editor, I’m very happy with the stories thus far residing in it, and feel strongly confident that we’ll have this next book out in time for WORLD FANTASY at Brighton over the Halloween weekend. Those attending must keep their eyes peeled; we'll only have so many, and with luck they'll go like the proverbial hot cakes.

Heck to hunt down more merciless killers

I'm rather pleased to announce that STALKERS has finally earned itself 500 reviews on Amazon. It's even nicer to report that 278 of them have awarded it five stars, and 139 have given it four, a grand total of 417 who've given it the big thumbs-up. Nothing pleases an author more than knowledge that the audience is enjoying his/her work. The total sales of STALKERS , which is my first thriller novel - published by Avon Books (HarperCollins) in February this year - now stands at just over 145,000, which is way more than I anticipated when I first made the sideways jump from horror into crime.

The immediate follow-up to STALKERS , and my second outing for Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg, SACRIFICE , is due for publication next month, and though it's six weeks away, we already have 10,777 pre-orders on that, which I'm now informed - and this really blew me away - makes it the second most pre-ordered book in HarperCollins's history (and the company's current record-holder is not necessarily safe - we still have plenty of time yet).

Just out of interest, for anyone in the UK who's yet to get hold of a copy of STALKERS , here's an opportunity you may want to take advantage of. Just follow this link to GOOD READS , where there are five copies of the book to be given away.

I can also now officially break the news that, in consequence of all his, I have a agreed a new five-book deal with Avon, to kick in as soon as the third book in the current Mark Heckenburg series, HUNTED, is published next February. So that's eight novels in total I'll be writing for Avon. At a guess, at least three of that next five will be further Heck investigations - maybe all of them will be, but it's highly possible that I may write a couple of stand-alones too. It often pays to spread your wings a little, as they say.

Anyway, if you'll forgive me a personal insight, I'm finding all this incredibly exciting and will be celebrating with a few glasses of bubbly at the HarperCollins summer party in July. If anyone happens to be there, please introduce yourself and we'll chat.

Also, don't forget (if you're interested, of course), that as per the advert reprinted above, I'll be attending Waterstones at Liverpool One on Friday August 2, and sitting on a special TWISTED TALES panel with two fellow crime/horror authors, SARAH PINBOROUGH and ALISON LITTLEWOOD . We'll all be reading extracts from our new novels, answering questions and signing anything that gets put in front of us. As I understand it, tickets, which cost £3 (£2 with a loyalty card), are either available in store or can be booked on 0151 709 9820.

And now, on a completely different but hopefully equally chilling note, TERROR TALES OF LONDON , the fourth anthology in the round-Britain series of horror anthologies that I'm editing for GRAY FRIAR PRESS , has now been published, as demonstrated here by some absolute goon who clearly has no idea at all how to pose for the camera.

It looks and feels great, as they always do of course the first time you get your hands on them. I'm as delighted by this latest volume as I was with all the others, and I think you'll agree the TOC comprises some fairly hefty names from the annals of dark fiction (it includes such luminaries of the industry as ADAM NEVILL, MARK MORRIS, NINA ALLAN, CHRIS FOWLER and NICK ROYLE). The anecdotes in this particular volume have given me extra pleasure - by 'anecdotes' I'm referring to the non-fictional incidents of true-life horror with which I intersperse the actual stories. TERROR TALES OF LONDON is the first exclusively urban district that we've covered in this series, so, as you can imagine, there was a bit more scope than usual to include articles on madmen, murderers and other maniacs. Trust me, this one ain't just about ghosts (though we've got plenty of those too, and a few demons and monsters).

Still on the subject of horror, and to continue on the round-Britain folklore/mythology trail, I received some more welcome news this week, when I learned that GHOST REALM has now made it onto ebook courtesy of ASH-TREE PRESS .

For those who don't know, GHOST REALM was a collection of my stories and novellas, which was first published in 2008. The two things that marked this one as being different out from most of the others were, firstly, that it contained only original pieces - none of the stories in GHOST REALM had been published previously and none have been republished since (until now of course). Secondly, they each represented a different corner of Britain, and told a spooky story particularly associated with that district, drawing on local myth, lore or history. In many ways, it was a forerunner of the TERROR TALES series, which kicked off two years later, though on that first occasion of course it was all my own work. It's something I'd love to do again - GHOST REALM 2 has a nice ring to it, as does GHOST REALM 3 and GHOST REALM 4 - but at present lack of time poses a big constraint.

Anyway, to whet your whistle about the original, here's a quick rundown of the contents:

The Killing Ground - A movie star takes a Christmas retreat in the snowy Herefordshire countryside, but first recruits a couple of private eyes to ensure there is no truth in the local rumour about a mysterious roaming cannibal.

The Gallows In My Garden - A woman fleeing an abusive relationship, seeks comfort in the wilds of East Anglia, only to find herself in a cottage close to the site where a maniac strangler was hanged in the eighteenth century.

Be He Alive, Be He Dead - A vengeful husband hatches a complex scheme, but his hideout in London's East End is compromised by a mysterious curse, annually preceded by the stench of burning flesh.

Tregeagle’s Cove - On a sun-drenched summer day, a tough Cockney businessman takes an ill-advised boat trip to an isolated beach on the very tip of Cornwall.

The Crannog - Twitchers travel to a secluded lake in the Welsh mountains, camping out on a eerie isle rumoured to be the last remnant of an ancient, sunken city.

This Place! - Bored South Coast teenagers break into an off-season theme park, but it doesn't inspire them much - until they start to suspect that they aren't there alone.

Bloody Essex - A left wing academic and right wing journalist clash over the truth behind the stories of Queen Boudicca, but it takes a turn for the nasty in the lonely groves of Epping Forest.

In The Black And Stinking Fume - A TV medium outed as a charlatan tries to rebuild his career by exposing witchcraft in the backstreets of modern day Edinburgh.

The Moon Rising Red - When a vicious Stone Age ritual is re-enacted, a woman in a lone Lake District farmhouse is terrorised by three nameless, nightmare entities.

Safely at home with the criminally minded

Well … I’m finally starting to feel as if I’m a genuine member of the crime-writing community.
You might argue that with STALKERS selling better than I ever imagined possible (soon to be launched in Germany, Hungary and Poland – whoohooo!), the sequel SACRIFICE due out next month and the first draft of the third book in the series, HUNTED, almost at completion, I’m already there. But I’ve always been slow to make positive assumptions about myself. I don’t know what it is – some flaw in my personality, but I always feel like as if I need more proof about my own stuff.
However, things are now starting to happen that I’m finding massively encouraging.
To start with, I spent last week at CrimeFest in Bristol. It was my first ever visit to this annual international gathering of thriller writers, and I felt home from home. I met and chatted for ages with some amazing people: LUCA VESTE , MARK SENNEN , HOWARD LINSKEY , NEIL WHITE , MATT HILTON , MARI HANNAH , NICK QUANTRILL , STEVE MOSBY , DAVID MARK , not to mention numerous others (some of whom get tagged later in this column, but apologies to anyone I've missed out entirely).
It was hugely gratifying for a former horror guy like myself to be welcomed so warmly. In many ways it was an education too. It seems that even the most successful, multi-selling crime writers are apparently plagued by the same uncertainties and doubts about their work: not just the technical stuff like characterisation, pacing, authenticity and so on, but also those often unspoken matters of taste, decency and morality. I attended one particularly fascinating seminar, which addressed the issues of sadism, violence and human degradation, and asked the question just how far, as writers, should we be willing or even allowed to go when this is essentially an entertainment medium.
It’s funny but those matters always seem more straightforward when I’m writing horror. At the end of the day, everyone knows that’s a fantasy. When you’re writing crime, it’s far less clear-cut.
Anyway, enough navel-gazing. Suffice to say that CrimeFest was an absolute blast of a weekend, and I’m now looking forward very much to the HARROGATE CRIME FESTIVAL in July.
The picture at the top above was taken during one of the nights in Bristol, when I went out for a smashing meal with, left to right: PHIL PATTERSON of the MARJACQ LITERARY AGENCY , a lady who never needs any introduction - the always irrepressible SARAH PINBOROUGH (who made the journey over from horror to crime before I did – more about Sarah later), PAUL CLEAVE, STEPHANIE GLENCROSS, KEVIN WIGNALL (hiding), SIMON KERNICK , my lovely wife Cathy, moi, and TOM WOOD .
Another crime writing thing that’s happened to me in recent weeks concerns the achievements of best-selling self-published author, RACHEL ABBOTT , whose first two novels, THE BACK ROAD and ONLY THE INNOCENT , have consistently topped the recent ebook charts, and all without the assistance of a major mass-market publisher.
I’ve chatted an awful lot with Rachel in the last few days; we’ve been tweeting each other, exchanging emails and as many ideas as possible, and finally Rachel came up with the rather cool notion that we should have an open-ended conversation, write it down and stick it on both our blogs. The result is here, on RACHEL’S BLOG , which has a stated aim to help authors going through the process of self-publishing their first ebook, and includes reviews of various indie publications. I’ll reprint it all on this blog sometime in the near future, but not today. It was Rachel’s concept, so she’s the one who gets first dibs. 
Any prospective author who’s thinking of following the self-publishing route ought to find Rachel’s views and experiences fascinating. Self-publishing is a complex procedure, as we all know – but RACHEL ABBOTT has made it happen in spectacular fashion. I strongly recommend that you check out her site and her books on a regular basis.
Now … I mentioned earlier that SARAH PINBOROUGH would be cropping up in conversation again today, and here’s the reason why. I’m very pleased to announce that on August 2 this year I’ll attending Waterstones at Liverpool One (12, College Lane, Liverpool), and sitting on a special TWISTED TALES panel, consisting of myself, Sarah, and another amazing thriller author, ALISON LITTLEWOOD .
In the now tried-and-tested fashion of TWISTED TALES , we’ll each be focussing on our latest gruesome offering. In Sarah’s Case, it will be the novel MAYHEM , a semi-supernatural jaunt through a late-Victorian London in which a ‘torso killer’ is giving Saucy Jack a run for his money; in Alison’s case it will be the novel PATH OF NEEDLES , in which a rookie cop is confronted by several horrific re-enactments of various fairy tales; in my case it will be SACRIFICE , the second novel in the DS Heckenburg series, and an investigation into a procession of ghastly murders apparently committed to celebrate famous folk festivals.
We’ll all be giving readings, answering questions and of course signing copies for people. I’m not sure whether the guys and girls at TWISTED TALES have devised a title for this particular event yet, but I think it will be something like HUNTING SHADOWS, the focus being on uber-dark crime novels but with mystical and Gothic elements woven into them.
Tickets are £3, I believe, (or £2 with a Watestones loyalty card). They are available in the shop, or can be booked on 0151 709 9820.

Hoping to see you all there.