Mark West's Blog, page 5

Don't Go Back update

As hard as it is for me to believe, my debut mainstream thriller  Don't Go Back  (published by those good people at The Book Folks) has been available for a fortnight. And what a two weeks it's been!
Having come out of the UK small press I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but the reaction has been better than I could have imagined. People - some my friends from real life and Facebook, others I had never interacted with - were hugely helpful and supportive, sharing my posts and tolerating me talking about the book a lot and letting their friends and followers know that Don't Go Back was out there.
The book went straight into the Hot New Releases Chart in the top twenty and as I write this on Sunday 6th it's currently sitting at #31 which I am really happy with - after all, if I'm known for anything at all, it's as a horror writer, not a thriller writer. Even better, the book charted in the US, Australia and Canada which is hugely gratifying, especially for a novel that is set in a very typical English seaside town.
Reviews and ratings have been very good and we're showing a 4.5/5 on Amazon and 4.39/5 on Goodreads (and Steve Bacon was good enough to blog his review too). People seem to have taken well to the dual timeline which is pleasing because the writing process for that and trying to get it all tied together seemed - at times - to be a never-ending headache.
So if you're one of those people who bought, rated and/or reviewed Don't Go Back then I want to thank you (with a special mention for Ross Warren). Like most writers, I create the stories because they're in my head and I enjoy the process of getting them out onto paper but to know that someone else derives pleasure from it makes all those painful parts (why won't this character do what I want her to, why isn't this part working, why on earth did I think it was a good idea to have a dual timeline?) worthwhile.
And if there's anyone you think might like a dual timeline thriller novel set in an English seaside town with some funny bits, a few scary bits, a couple of sad bits and a whole lot of suspense, please tell them all about Don't Go Back . 
A captivating thriller about a woman whose past suddenly catches up with her
When Beth receives news that a once-close friend has died, after years away she reluctantly returns to the seaside town where she grew up.
Beth becomes increasingly unsettled as she attends the funeral, encounters people from her past, and visits her teenage haunts.
She is forced to take herself back to the awful summer when she left for good. Yet it is not just memories that are resurfacing, but simmering resentments.
Someone else hasn’t quite so readily put their past behind them, and unwittingly Beth will become the key to their catharsis.
As she puts two and two together, the question is: whatever possessed her to return?
DON’T GO BACK is a truly nail-biting read that will appeal to fans of Claire McGowan, Vanessa Garbin, Teresa Driscoll, Linwood Barclay and Anna Willett.
This is the best book you’ll read all year!


Click here for the universal Amazon book-link



Tell all your friends!

Don't Go Back, by Mark West

I'm pleased to announce that Don't Go Back , my debut mainstream thriller published by The Book Folks, is now available.
A captivating thriller about a woman whose past suddenly catches up with her
When Beth receives news that a once-close friend has died, after years away she reluctantly returns to the seaside town where she grew up.
Beth becomes increasingly unsettled as she attends the funeral, encounters people from her past, and visits her teenage haunts.
She is forced to take herself back to the awful summer when she left for good. Yet it is not just memories that are resurfacing, but simmering resentments.
Someone else hasn’t quite so readily put their past behind them, and unwittingly Beth will become the key to their catharsis.
As she puts two and two together, the question is: whatever possessed her to return?
DON’T GO BACK is a truly nail-biting read that will appeal to fans of Claire McGowan, Vanessa Garbin, Teresa Driscoll, Linwood Barclay and Anna Willett.
This is the best book you’ll read all year!
* * *
The book is set in Seagrave, a British seaside town that feels very much like Great Yarmouth and is, indeed, just down the coast from Lowestoft, the novel is told in two timelines and was great fun to write.  It was written during the lockdowns and plotted out with my good friend David Roberts on one of our Friday Night Walks. It took a few twists and turns in its progress from idea to finished tale and the novel features tension and suspense, some scary parts, some funny bits and a few sad moments too.  I'm really proud of it and very pleased it'll start my career with The Book Folks.
Click here for the universal Amazon book-link

Paperback edition coming soon

Tell all your friends!

Visions Of Ruin, from NewCon Press

I am pleased to announce my forthcoming horror novella, Visions Of Ruin , is now available for pre-order at the NewCon Press website. It will be published on March 30th 2022.
A week in a seedy caravan at 'The Good Times Holiday Park' is not exactly the holiday sixteen-year-old Sam has been dreaming of, but he knows his mum is struggling and doing the best she can. At least he meets someone his own age to hang out with – Polly – but neither of them is prepared for the strangeness that ensues. 
Beautifully paced and full of deft touches that bring the 1980s setting to life, Visions of Ruin is set during a rainy weekend at a caravan park on the edge of rundown seaside town. 

I wrote the novella last year, after finishing Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine (coming very soon from The Books Folks, as I wrote about here) and I'm really proud of it. Combining two of my apparent obsessions - the 80s and rundown British east coast seaside resorts - this mixes quiet supernatural horror (which, I hope, is chilling) along with hints of a teenage romance.
“A taut ghost story that transported me back to the 80s, with plenty to intrigue and unsettle along the way. A pleasure to read, with a terrifically neat ending.” – Alison Littlewood
Visions Of Ruin  is available in paperback and Limited Edition signed hardback and can be ordered directly from the NewCon Press website.
£9.99 (Paperback)£19.99 (Signed Hardback, LTD ED)
Click here for pre-order details.
Visions Of Ruin is also available as one quarter of the NewCon Novella Bundle 3, along with stories by Stephen Deas, Stewart Hotston and Ida Keogh. More details here.

Thanks to Ian Whates for both asking for and then enjoying the story enough to want to publish it, Nick Duncan for sharing all those adventures with me on the east coast in the 80s, Teika Marija Smits who helped push me to start and, as always, David Roberts for the Friday Night Walks and the mammoth plotting sessions. 

The Mystery Of The Laughing Shadow, by William Arden

2014 marked the fiftieth anniversary of The Three Investigators being published and, to celebrate, I re-read and compiled my all-time Top 10 (safe in the knowledge that it would be subject to change in years to come, of course).  I posted my list here, having previously read all 30 of the original series from 2008 to 2010 (a reading and reviewing odyssey that I blogged here).

Following this, I decided to re-visit some of the books I'd missed on that second read-through, without any intention of posting reviews of them but, as if often the way, it didn't quite work out like that.  Happily, this is on-going and so here's an additional review...
Collins Hardback First Edition (printed in 1970 and never reprinted), cover art by Roger HallSlowly the massive gate swung open on creaking hinges.  The boys froze.  Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a grotesque, humpbacked shadow towered over them, its head jerking wildly.  Then an evil laugh shattered the night…
A tiny Mexican statue and an ancient message written in blood put The Three Investigators on the track of the priceless Chumash treasure hoard, lost in the mountains for two hundred years.  In a desperate race against time, Jupe, Pete and Bob battle to find the jewels…
illustration from the Collins Hardback edition (there
are no illustrations in the paperbacks).
Jupe & Bob hide from the Yaquali Indians at the
Vegetarian Society House, the sequence right before
the one shown on the format a paperback cover.Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw are on their way home from a day spent in the mountains and, as they pass the old Sandow Estate, hear someone call for help.  After investigating, they find a small gold statuette then see “a tall, twisted, humpbacked shadow with a beaky nose and small jerky head.  It utters a wild, shattering laugh.”  Terrified, they race back to Rocky Beach but when they tell Jupe the next day, they realise neither of them heard exactly the same thing.  When a young Englishman, Ted Sandow, calls at the Junkyard offering Uncle Titus to rummage through some old barns, it seems as though the boys were seen and some people are very keen to get their hands on the statuette - or what was inside it.

The first official entry in the series by William Arden (the pen-name of prolific mystery writer Dennis Lynds) even though he'd already written the excellent The Mystery Of The Moaning Cave  (credited to Robert Arthur), this proved the boys were in safe hands, with his assured style working just as well here.

The central concept - the laughing shadow - is a good gimmick but little more than that, similar to how The Mystery Of The Flaming Footprints captures the imagination but doesn’t really sell the story.  This features kidnapped Yaquali Indians, suspicious Englishmen and the long-lost treasure of Magnus Verde, the Chumash Hoard and is great fun.  Arden sets up some decent set pieces and gives the lads different things to do, allowing them to show their strengths all the way through the piece.  As with Moaning Cave, Arden makes great use of the Californian mountains, with plenty of action taking places on hills and in box canyons, creating a wonderful sense of bleakness to them.

Alfred Hitchcock has a decent part to play - setting the boys on the path to finding out about the Chumash Hoard - as do Aunt Matilda and Uncle Titus.  Worthington makes a welcome return and it’s always nice to see Mr Andrews (we even get a cameo from a sleepy Mrs Andrews).  As well written as you'd expect, with some gripping action sequences, this also has a nice line in humour.  One of the key supporting characters, Mr Harris, runs the Rocky Beach Vegetarian Society who operate from a fantastic Gothic house on Las Palmas Street ('It was the last house on the block, located right on the edge of town. The dry brown mountains came straight down to the road on the other side.').  After an incident there, Jupe asks, “Could one one of your assistants have told them?”  “No,” Harris tells him, “they’re old friends and staunch vegetarians.”

Good fun, told with wit and pace, this is very much recommended.
Armada format a paperback (printed between 1973 and 1980), cover art by Peter Archer
(cover scan of my copy) Armada format b paperback (printed between 1982 and 1984), cover art by Peter Archer
(cover scan of my copy)
The internal illustrations for the UK edition were drawn by Roger Hall, though they only appeared in the hardback edition for some reason.

Thanks to Ian Regan for the artwork (you can see more at his excellent Cover Art database here)

Valley Of Lights, by Stephen Gallagher (a review)

In a new edition of the occasional series, I want to tell you about a book I've just read and loved, which I think adds to the horror genre and that I think you'll enjoy if you're a fan.  In this case, however, it's a book that first came out in 1987 (yikes, 35 years ago!), so chances are you might have already heard of it.  I discovered it, quite by accident, in the fantastic LOROS bookshop on Queens Road in Leicester, when I was in town a couple of years back (for my 50th) with The Crusty Exterior (as I wrote about here).  Last year, my friend Mark Morris posted about the novel on Facebook and I decided to give it a try and I'm really pleased I did. cover scan of my copy, the 1988 NEL 2nd impressionImagine the heartbeat of a murderer - and that it's someone you know.  You kill him.
But he returns in another body.
And when that body lies cold in the morgue...
...he's still out there somewhere.
No matter what you do, he comes back again and again.
Because he will never die - and he doesn't have a name.
Imagine - and shudder.

In Phoenix, the brain-dead are rising from their hospital beds and when local children are found, brutally murdered, Sergeant Alex Volchak of the Phoenix Police makes the connection but it’s so fantastic, nobody in the department will listen to him.
First published in 1987, this is a winning combination of crime and horror, perhaps the perfect companion piece to the equally assured Falling Angel.  Alex Volchak is a great protagonist, world weary, lonely and bereaved, keen to see justice done but happy to bend the rules when it suits the common good and he’s blessed with an amusingly deadpan film noir style voice.  His tentative relationship with Loretta, his neighbour in the trailer park where they live, is beautifully observed but rather than her be the stereotypical “single mum whose child needs a father figure”, she’s gutsy, independent and amusing, a force of nature who drives some of the plot later on and whose child, Georgie, sets off the last act.  The villain is a supernatural entity and here is the only place time hasn’t been kind to the novel - back in the late 80s, this may have been a more unique angle but, like the antagonist in Falling Angel, it’s been ripped off so many times it does perhaps lose some of its force for people who weren’t there to witness it the first time around.  Having said that, Gallagher has a lot of fun with the malevolent being and some of his ‘disguises’ (it’s an old novel, yes, but I don’t want to spoil it completely) are cleverly utilised.  Once Alex makes the connection between the killings and the brain-dead bodies they keep finding around the city, he tries to explain it to his bosses - who, obviously, don’t believe him - and then it’s down to him to try and stop the supernatural killer.  There’s a beautiful simplicity and logic to this, as the two characters come together, one a contemporary cop who’s struggling to make sense of everything, the other an ageless monster who normally manages to move amongst the living without drawing too much attention to himself.  
Gallagher uses Phoenix well, a dusty desert town with plenty of dark alleys and dodgy motels and sets a lot of his horror in bright sunlight, adding an almost banal atmosphere to the darker happenings, which only serves to make them even more powerful.  
With a strong supporting cast, a great pace and voice, this is well worth a read and I would highly recommend it.
***Valley Of Lights might not the best known of Gallagher’s work these days (people are more likely to know the likes of Oktober and Chimera, as well as his numerous screenplay credits) but it was the first to bring attention to his name.  At the time he wrote it, he was “in the really low point of [his] career”, as he’d just shelved the novels The Boat House and Oktober “because nobody wanted to touch [them]”.  Happily, once Valley Of Lights sold, Oktober sold afterwards and The Boat House has also appeared.
There were plans for Valley Of Lights to be made into a film, as he told Paul Tomlinson in an interview that first appeared in the fanzine Other Times.  When Gallagher wrote the novel, he had an ongoing relationship with a director and they were looking for a film to make together.  He handed over some pages of the novel and the director showed them around in the USA and got some interest.  A producer took out an option and Gallagher wrote a screenplay but they couldn’t generate enough interest (“now the truth of this situation is that everybody in Hollywood, and everybody in the film business, is looking for reasons to turn things down. Because turning something down is the safest bet.”).  By the time of his tenth re-write of the script, he realised “rewriting on the basis of rejection was wearing the script down, just destroying it.  It wasn’t my Valley of Lights story any more.”  After two years, when asked for another re-write, he’d finally had enough and “I honestly can’t repeat what I gave as my answer.”
When the rights went to a British company called Zenith in 1990, they put together a new version of the script which Gallagher liked a lot “because it was my story again” - everything he’d had to include in re-writes to try and get a sale had been taken out.  The interview is undated but as Zenith ceased trading in 2006, I have to assume we’ll never get to see the film of this excellent novel.
Stephen Gallagher, born on 13th October 1954, is a novelist, screenwriter and director specialising in contemporary suspense (according to his website).  I had the great fortune to meet him briefly, after he spoke on a panel about screenwriting at Peterborough FantasyCon and he came across as a genuinely lovely man.

The Thirteenth Annual Westies - review of the year 2021

Well, after another odd year, here we are again, gearing up for Christmas and so it's time to indulge in the annual blog custom and remember the good books of 2021.
Once again, it's been a great reading year for me (in fact, I've read more books this year than I have since I began my spreadsheet in 2002) with a nice mixture of brand new novels, a few books that have languished on my TBR pile for too long, some good second-hand finds (which jumped straight to the top of the pile) along with some welcome re-reads.
As always, the top 20 places were hard fought and, I think, show a nice variety in genre and tone - if I've blogged about a book before, I've linked to it on the list.
Without further ado, I present the Thirteenth Annual Westies Award - “My Best Fiction Reads Of The Year” - and the top 20 looks like this:





1:   The Year Of The Ladybird, by Graham Joyce2:   Season Of Mist, by Paul Finch3:   Valley Of Lights, by Stephen Gallagher4:   The Saturday Night Ghost Club, by Craig Davidson5:   Under The Mistletoe (Christmas Now & Then), by Sue Moorcroft6:   Summer At The French Park Café, by Sue Moorcroft *7:   Clown In A Cornfield, by Adam Cesare8:   Of Men And Monsters, by Tom Deady9:   Don't Turn Around, by Jessica Barry10: Blow Out, by Neal Williams11: Reckless, by R J McBrien12: Skin For Skin, by Terry Grimwood13: The Flight, by Julie Clark14: Driftnet, by Lin Anderson15: The Other Passenger, by Louise Candlish16: Murder Most Unladylike, by Robin Stevens17: The A-Team, by Charles Heath18: Later, by Stephen King19: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, by Campbell Black20: The Cottingley Cuckoo, by AJ Elwood
* This will be published in the summer of 2022, I read it to critique

The Top 10 in non-fiction are:
1=: Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man, by William Shatner1=: Days & Ages, by Mark Beaumont3:  The Storyteller, by Dave Grohl4:  The Bassoon King, by Rainn Wilson5:  Paperbacks From Hell, by Grady Hendrix6:  Lonely Boy, by Steve Jones7:  In The Pleasure Groove, by John Taylor8:  A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away, by Paul Hirsch9:  Imperfect Hero: Harrison Ford, by Garry Jenkins10: Star Wars Year By Year, by Lucy Dowling

Stats wise, I’ve read 91 books - 42 fiction, 21 non-fiction, 16 comics/nostalgia/kids and 12 Three Investigator mysteries.

Of the 79 books, the breakdown is thus:

7 biography
20 horror
14 film-related
6 drama (includes romance)
16 crime/mystery
5 sci-fi
2 nostalgia
9 humour

All of my reviews are posted up at Goodreads here

In case you’re interested, the previous awards are linked to from here:2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Christmas Annuals (part 5)

"Christmas is coming!"
Me, Christmas 1975 - Action Man helicopter, Batman, Six Million Dollar Man, Planet Of The Apes annual and a gun that shot darts with rubber tips!  Seriously, how much more excited could a 6-year-old kid look?Welcome to the fifth post (you can find the others on these links, for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020) showcasing one of the Christmas highlights from when I was a kid (beyond the catalogues I wrote about in 2016), seeing which annual I got that particular year.  If you don't remember them, annuals were (and still are) large size hardback books, designed for children and based on existing properties, generally comics and popular TV shows, as well as the occasional film and sport and pop round-ups.

The ones based on comics featured the same cast as the weekly editions, while the TV and film ones had comic strips, the occasional short story, fact files and interviews and - brilliantly - in the case of  The Fall Guy , behind the scenes information on stunts and how they were filmed.

Generally published towards the end of the year, annuals are cover-dated as the following year to ensure shops don't take them off the shelves immediately after the new year (though, by then, unsold copies are often heavily reduced).  Still as popular now, the only difference (apart from the fact kids today don't have the choice of comics we did) seems to be that they're skinnier (and that's not just me being all nostalgically misty about it - my ones from the late 70s and early 80s are substantially chunkier than the ones I bought for Dude when he was younger - he's 16 now and annuals don't feature on his wish list).
Here, then, is another selection of old favourites, ones I received and ones I remember my sister Tracy having.  I hope some of them inspire a warm, nostalgic trip down memory lane for you...

1976It's often said you were either a "Blue Peter kid" or a "Magpie kid" but I used to alternate between the two.  Which did you prefer?
1977I started watching this because of Captain Scarlet and didn't remember a great deal about it, to be honest, until I caught up with it on ForcesTV.  It hasn't aged well, it must be said, though the model work is superb.
1978 1978 Rupert The Bear makes his statutory appearance...
1978 1979 1979I was a big fan of The Professionals and still am, the shows holding up remarkably well (as do the novelisations, which I wrote about here).
1979The Six Million Dollar Man led me to the Bionic Woman, which I watched and enjoyed.  I don't think I've ever seen Max The Bionic Dog though (I wonder if he got his own annual...).
1979 1980Probably the line-up I remember the most.
1980 1980The series had long finished by the time this was published and I didn't realise it existed until I started researching these blog posts.  How could I have missed this, from my childhood hero (who I wrote about here)?
1981 1981 1981Spun off from the TV show (which I remember finding extremely funny), I wonder how much of the humour went sailing over my head?


Happy Christmas!


scans from my collection, aside from the girls titles (thanks to the Internet for those)

You can read more of my nostalgia posts here

Visions Of Ruin, a horror novella

After it was revealed in the latest NewCon Press newsletter, I'm proud to announce that they will be publishing my horror novella, Visions Of Ruin, early in 2022.Me, on a Surrey bike, just outside Holimarine Corton, summer 1986Having spent the last four years writing three mainstream thriller novels (which are now going to be published by The Book Folks, as I wrote about here), I've only dipped a

The Mystery Of The Shrinking House, by William Arden

2014 marked the fiftieth anniversary of The Three Investigators being published and, to celebrate, I re-read and compiled my all-time Top 10 (safe in the knowledge that it would be subject to change in years to come, of course).  I posted my list here, having previously read all 30 of the original series from 2008 to 2010 (a reading and reviewing odyssey that I blogged here).Following this, I

Under The Mistletoe, by Sue Moorcroft

Regular blog readers will know I've been friends with Sue Moorcroft for a while, having met at the Kettering Writers Group in 1999 (the group leader was of a more literary bent, so we genre writers were consigned to the back of the room, where we had great fun).  Since then she's gone from strength to strength, hitting number one in the Kindle Bestseller charts (with The Christmas Promise),