Eric Nash's Blog, page 4
August 19, 2023
HWA’s World of Horror
July 6, 2023
Saving the World in Horror Library, Volume 8
August 5, 2022
Magic
Magic now has bonus material!
June 11, 2022
Fiction
February 15, 2022
The Creased Spine Bookshelf 2/22
Welcome to this year’s second instalment of recently read fiction that’s made an impact on me.
Short fiction
Resting Bitch Face, by Lucie McKnight Hardy (from the collection, Dead Relatives and Other Stories, pub. Dead Ink, 2021), delivers a horror that’s almost delicious in its perverseness.
Opening with: ‘The wife knows it’s coming before it arrives. She can see it in his splayed-leg stance, the curl on his upper lip.
Nocturia by Nicholas Royle (from the anthology, Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon, pub. Unsung Stories, 2021). Royalties from the sales of this book go to the charity, Together for Mental Wellbeing. The story opens the anthology and is a sharp, perceptive, and clever piece by a master storyteller.
Opening with: ‘Nocturia is a country you visit only at night. It is a land of dark reflections in mirrors you had forgotten were there, so that you meet yourself coming back.’
Long fiction
In the CSB 1/22, I mentioned Milk Blood Heat, the short story from Dantiel W. Montiz’s collection of the same name (pub. Grove Press, 2021). I’ve now finished the book, and each story in there is a literary feast, which is rare for me to to come across in collections/anthologies. This is a book worthy of a place on any bookshelf.
We Need To Do Something, by Max Booth III (pub. Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, 2021). First time reading this guy and found the book, above all else, an absolute pleasure to read. A tense and chilling novella. And I love the ending. One to watch on screen too, as it is being made into a movie.
Opening with: ‘Our phones won’t stop screaming, each slightly our of sync with the other, making the noises jarring and insane.’
Featured image credit: Radoslaw Pujan 2014
January 7, 2022
Coffin Bell – Journal of Dark Literature
Coffin Bell has published my short fiction, The Memory of Hannah Babinski, in Vol 5, Issue 1 of their superb journal. Read the story and the rest of the issue, for free, here.
Babinski is a ghost story set in the atmospheric county of Cornwall, UK, during the bleak month of January. It deals with domestic abuse.
The freephone, 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline (UK charity Refuge): 0808 2000 247
January 2, 2022
The Creased Spine Bookshelf 1/22
A peak at some of the cracking fiction I’ve been lucky enough to read recently.
Short fiction
Things of Which We Do Not Speak by Lucy Taylor (from the collection, Spree, and other stories, pub. Independent Legions, 2021). This story maxes out the positive capabilities of horror fiction.
Opening sentences:
““Hit me,” said Elaine.
I thought I hadn’t heard her right.
“Hit me!” she demanded. I stopped midstroke. She might as well have screamed that the sheets were on fire. My cock slithered out of her like a clubbed snake.”
Pear of Anguish by Gemma Files (read in the collection, When Things Get Dark, ed. Ellen Datlow, pub. Titan, 2021). The cruelty of adolescence, of being despised, and the need to escape, the wish for magic. A story that sticks in your throat.
Opening paragraph: “Know what a pear of anguish is? Imogen asked me, that last day we spent together, and I shook my head. I’ll show you. Take a look.”
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (from the collection, Milk Blood Heat, first pub. Grove Press, 2021). A bitter-sweet lozenge of transformation, realisation, and grief.
Opening sentence: ““Pink is the color for girls,” Kiera says, so she and Ava cut their palms and let their blood drip into a shallow bowl filled with milk, watching the color spread slowly on the surface, small red flowers blooming.”
Long fiction
A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill, (pub. Titan Books, 2020). For me one of the strengths of this moving and surprising story was Hamill’s simple language that allowed effective characterisation.
Opening sentence: “I started collecting my older sister Eunice’s suicide notes when I was seven years old.”
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones, (pub. HarperVoyager, 2016). Street level shapeshifters. It’s SGJ. Nuff said.
Opening sentence: “My grandfather used to tell me he was a werewolf.”
(image credit: Martine’s Legs by Henri Cartier-Bresson)
December 28, 2021
Publication Review 2021
As we came into this year, I’d just completed my first collection of short fiction, and this continues along its publication journey. That, and the fact these past twelve months have been somewhat challenging, caused the number of fiction submissions I made to drop significantly. However, there were two great publications in 2021 in which I was honoured to be included.
In February, Mark Bilsborough from Wyldblood Press published “twelve grisly new tales of fur and fury” in the werewolf anthology, Call of the Wyld. My story, Rewilding, features in this monstrous volume, which is a story based on true events! About the anthology, Willwrite on Amazon writes: “A great collection of werewolf tales in diverse settings, covering the pain and horror associated with the transformation as well as the search for a cure.”; R Nuttal says: “Well worth a read, and left me wanting more.”
In August, the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers (GLAHW) published this year’s edition of Ghostlight. This magazine features story of mine of which I am particularly fond; Wounds are Lips Waiting to be Kissed, a haunting tale of a young artist struggling with his inability to feel pain.
As we move into 2022, I’m currently working on a second collection, and I hope to raise the number of submissions in the coming months. In the meantime, look out for the January issue of Coffin Bell, an online journal of dark literature, dropping soon. It includes my ghost story, The Memory of Hannah Babinski.
Wishing you good health and love in 2022.
Nash
August 18, 2021
Ghostlight, the magazine of terror
My story, ‘Wounds are Lips Waiting to be Kissed, appears in the Fall 2021 Edition of Ghostlight. Presented by the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers (GLAHW), the magazine contains horror fiction and dark poetry from new and established authors. Edited by Nicole e. Castle.
