B.P. Gregory's Blog: These Characters Aren't Terrified Enough, page 2
January 24, 2019
Why Do I Write HORROR? with Kendall Reviews
Why Do I Write HORROR? with Kendall Reviews
It must be a slow news day. Some of you may have recently noted the dusty old claims circulating once again that those who write and/or enjoy horror are somehow ... abnormal. Dangerous? Creepy, definitely.
On Twitter it sparked a surge in the hashtag #IAmAHorrorFan as people from all walks of life jumped to horror's defense.
As part of a deep dive into the love of horror and how it enriches people's lives Kendall Reviews has started asking authors that all-important question: WHY they write horror?
Horror Survivors: BP Gregory, author of 'Flora & Jim' - Why Do You Write Horror? (includes fiction sneak peek)
23 January 2019 Gavin Kendall Reviews Feature
HORROR SURVIVORS
It was a fascination with psychology that led me step by step down the garden path to horror. Readers connect so readily with fear, and authors love dissecting it, because it’s such a universal human emotion.
There are folk out there who’ve never known a grain of love, happiness or peace. Yet with the exception of a rare few sporting crumbling patches of darkness where their amygdala ought to be, they are all intimately familiar with shivering in fear.
To be human is to be afraid.
To be afraid is also wonderfully humbling. That job you worked for so hard ceases its relevance. Your achievements, everything you’ve built to tell yourself you’re a good person and you matter, all blown away like dandelion fluff on a cold wind.
This tends to be why throwing mixed status characters together in horror is so gratifying: because what’s then played out has a justice seldom true in life. They all get torn down to the same level ...
Enjoy the full interview including a fancy little preview of Flora & Jim, and also why a whole bunch of other fascinating authors write horror at Kendall Reviews
It must be a slow news day. Some of you may have recently noted the dusty old claims circulating once again that those who write and/or enjoy horror are somehow ... abnormal. Dangerous? Creepy, definitely.
On Twitter it sparked a surge in the hashtag #IAmAHorrorFan as people from all walks of life jumped to horror's defense.
As part of a deep dive into the love of horror and how it enriches people's lives Kendall Reviews has started asking authors that all-important question: WHY they write horror?
Horror Survivors: BP Gregory, author of 'Flora & Jim' - Why Do You Write Horror? (includes fiction sneak peek)
23 January 2019 Gavin Kendall Reviews Feature
HORROR SURVIVORS
It was a fascination with psychology that led me step by step down the garden path to horror. Readers connect so readily with fear, and authors love dissecting it, because it’s such a universal human emotion.
There are folk out there who’ve never known a grain of love, happiness or peace. Yet with the exception of a rare few sporting crumbling patches of darkness where their amygdala ought to be, they are all intimately familiar with shivering in fear.
To be human is to be afraid.
To be afraid is also wonderfully humbling. That job you worked for so hard ceases its relevance. Your achievements, everything you’ve built to tell yourself you’re a good person and you matter, all blown away like dandelion fluff on a cold wind.
This tends to be why throwing mixed status characters together in horror is so gratifying: because what’s then played out has a justice seldom true in life. They all get torn down to the same level ...
Enjoy the full interview including a fancy little preview of Flora & Jim, and also why a whole bunch of other fascinating authors write horror at Kendall Reviews
December 25, 2018
Smashwords ebook sale - deep deep discounts!
Kicking back to relax? Or hiding in the toilet at work? For that perfect break reading Smashwords are having their 25 Dec-Jan 1 ebook sale!
Deep discounts to my scifi and horror novels, and heaps more great authors with code at checkout:
Smashwords Sale
Deep discounts to my scifi and horror novels, and heaps more great authors with code at checkout:
Smashwords Sale
December 16, 2018
I'm calling it! My Best Reads of 2018!
Vanishings, Apocalypses (Apocali?), Plagues, Secret Agents, Tumbling Time: These Are a Few of My Favourite Things...
We made it! This year is in the home stretch.
You bet your bottom dollar, or wherever you like to keep your change, that I'm going to keep reading but my two delectable holiday tomes: Madhouse 3 Burn, the latest in G Wells Taylor's clicking, hissing, skin-eating Variant Effect series; and Tom GH Adams' Wandering in the Witchwood; look likely to stretch into Jan.
Currently reading, through to 2019:
So I'm feeling ready to call my Best Reads of 2018. Quick note: these are stories that I read and loved during 2018, not specifically things that were published in 2018.
Best Reads of 2018!
Scariest Read: Nothing on Earth, by Conor O'Callaghan
"Hours the sound went on, or seemed to, a rhythmic thudding that was slight but still insistent enough to tremble the glass on George and Georgina in their frame. Then it just stopped. She stayed there until the enamel light that precedes sunrise had made everything vaguely visible, expecting whoever it was to emerge at any second and walk across the close. It was going to be another roasting day."
Squatting in a show home in an abandoned housing estate, a small family's life becomes imperceptibly unmoored. This surprise entry to the list is not strictly horror. However, the languid unstoppable dissolution of social connections and eventual fraying of reality got right under my skin in the best of ways. A story to make you question the permanence of your place in the world.
Weepiest Read: Beside the Sea, by Veronique Olmi, translated by Adriana Hunter
"We'll take her back a seashell, I replied, and I thought perhaps we should do that, choose a seashell and give it to the teacher, my son's first love, yep, give her his first seashell. Now that made Kevin smile, and I was proud of myself, I know how to handle my kids, I thought, I just need to be left to get on with it."
A single mother struggles to provide an unaccustomed pleasure: a trip to the seaside. Reading this you are provided a front row seat to the disorientation of severe mental illness, and how unpleasant persisting in the world can be. A shattering read, but an important one.
Most Fun Read: This was a tie between Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor; and Mycophoria by Tom GH Adams
"The stain ran in a sloppy streak across the counter and up a pencil holder. Jackie rose up on tiptoes and peered into the cup, which at first appeared empty, but the longer she stared into the small darkness, the more she could make out a pattern - or texture - at the bottom. She could not be certain, but there seemed to be a small lump of wet hair in the bottom of the pencil holder."
From the podcast of the same name, Welcome to Night Vale invites you into a mysterious, insular town where odd things happen so often, how could you even define "odd"? It was dark, but also charming and whimsical. It involved gentle play, which I adore, without shying from more gritty, meaty themes. Reading this felt oddly cuddly, like the writer cared about me and every ordinary person struggling through life.
"The realization struck Olivia that she'd just pronounced the woman dead. How did she know? The same way she'd known her Dad was gone that late November. Not the lack of breath from the nostrils or the fact that his chest didn't rise or fall anymore. It was to do with the absence of something. Like the essence of the person had departed. She'd seen this in the way the woman's hand was splayed open, the phone laid in the center of her palm."
Mycophoria's killer fungus romp was the kind of fast paced, gory thrill I used to get sneaking Dean Koontz or James Herbert as a preteen. It promised a lot and delivered with oozing magnificence, fielding characters who were engaging and believable, and putting them right in the firing line.
Shock and Awe: Agents of Dreamland, by Caitlin R Kiernan
"The Signalman picks up one of the photographs, the one with his shadow in frame, the one where some trick of the light makes a corpse appear to be smiling. Every time he looks at these, every time he touches them, he feels unclean. He went through decon with the rest of the response team, but he only has to revisit these souvenirs of a horror show to be reminded how some stains sink straight through to the soul and are never coming out."
Kiernan gets two rounds of applause here as I devoured Agents of Dreamland and related novella Black Helicopters one after the other, loving her complex spy-riddled world of predestiny, plague and impending doom. You have to be on your toes, stretch your mind around inferences and accept the world is not as you perceive.
Best Vision of the Future: The Electric State, by Simon Stalenhag
"Lighthouse keepers were once warned they shouldn't listen to the sea for too long; likewise, you could hear voices in the static and lose your mind."
Told in breathtaking imagery as well as words, a girl and her robot traverse the crumbling commercial end of civilization. They are heading for ground zero of a new type of consciousness. I think there is a lot of hope in this apocalypse as well as devastation, with the girl determined to see the future birthed by an everyday, ordinary sort of love.
Top Three Shorts (I get to pick three because they're short)
The Book of Dreems, by Georgina Bruce
"The door opened into an overgrown garden. A sea of green, swaying and dripping in the rain. The water pummeled against her, soaking her through to the skin. Cold, shivery ... and something not quite right. There was something out there with her. Something that crawled and mewled piteously under the bushes."
I found this one in Best British Horror 2018, Ed. Johnny Mains, because Kendall Reviews was straight up live tweeting reading every single story and it was great. The way this story gradually built understanding from disorientation and chaos was magnificent, the final assertion a steel rod driven through the whole to bind it together.
Elephants that Aren't, by Betty Rocksteady
"Something sticky writhed across the screen. An elephant. No. Not quite an elephant. Emaciated, with legs too long and wriggling. It lurched across the screen, rubbery truck pulsing, quivering."
Lindsay's struggle to draw, and her encroaching memories of elephants are as horrific as they are compelling. I encountered this in Lost Films, Ed. Max Booth III and Lori Michelle, and in this edition the text is accompanied by gleeful unnerving drawings of little elephants that would make great tattoos.
Archibald Leech, the Many-Storied Man, by John C Foster
"He passed a brick high school building spitting fire from its windows, the roof ablaze like a thatch of wild red hair. The misshapen lumps in the yard were likely corpses, but Leech ignored them in favor of a wooden sign welcoming him to town with the words A FRIENDLY PLACE."
Also appearing in Lost Films, Archibald Leech is the paranormal secret agent to end all secret agents. Sent to investigate an abnormality affecting a small town, before it manages to crack his own mind like an egg. While this short is perfectly self contained I desperately want to read more about Leech's world.
And finally, drumroll please, my Best Read of 2018 was:
Best of 2018: The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch
"Already the future receded from her, like images half retrieved from dreams or like her memories were waves breaking against the shores of the real, washing away."
To solve a murder, Shannon probes an infinity of possible futures. All the while the Terminus, the mysterious and baffling end of humanity, is drawing nearer. This is a novel that will seriously bend your noodle but Sweterlitsch does it gently, with a deft hand. I read it early in the year and despite 2018 being a year of really incredible stories, The Gone World remained my firm favourite throughout. Be ready to radically revise your perception of observed reality and outcomes.
Hope you add as many of these great titles to your to-read list as you can handle, and that they set your brain on fire as intensely as they did mine.
Also wishing you a very happy and safe time over the holiday period, and all the best reads in 2019! If you enjoyed this and would like to know more, visit https://www.bpgregory.com/blog
We made it! This year is in the home stretch.
You bet your bottom dollar, or wherever you like to keep your change, that I'm going to keep reading but my two delectable holiday tomes: Madhouse 3 Burn, the latest in G Wells Taylor's clicking, hissing, skin-eating Variant Effect series; and Tom GH Adams' Wandering in the Witchwood; look likely to stretch into Jan.
Currently reading, through to 2019:
So I'm feeling ready to call my Best Reads of 2018. Quick note: these are stories that I read and loved during 2018, not specifically things that were published in 2018.
Best Reads of 2018!
Scariest Read: Nothing on Earth, by Conor O'Callaghan
"Hours the sound went on, or seemed to, a rhythmic thudding that was slight but still insistent enough to tremble the glass on George and Georgina in their frame. Then it just stopped. She stayed there until the enamel light that precedes sunrise had made everything vaguely visible, expecting whoever it was to emerge at any second and walk across the close. It was going to be another roasting day."
Squatting in a show home in an abandoned housing estate, a small family's life becomes imperceptibly unmoored. This surprise entry to the list is not strictly horror. However, the languid unstoppable dissolution of social connections and eventual fraying of reality got right under my skin in the best of ways. A story to make you question the permanence of your place in the world.
Weepiest Read: Beside the Sea, by Veronique Olmi, translated by Adriana Hunter
"We'll take her back a seashell, I replied, and I thought perhaps we should do that, choose a seashell and give it to the teacher, my son's first love, yep, give her his first seashell. Now that made Kevin smile, and I was proud of myself, I know how to handle my kids, I thought, I just need to be left to get on with it."
A single mother struggles to provide an unaccustomed pleasure: a trip to the seaside. Reading this you are provided a front row seat to the disorientation of severe mental illness, and how unpleasant persisting in the world can be. A shattering read, but an important one.
Most Fun Read: This was a tie between Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor; and Mycophoria by Tom GH Adams
"The stain ran in a sloppy streak across the counter and up a pencil holder. Jackie rose up on tiptoes and peered into the cup, which at first appeared empty, but the longer she stared into the small darkness, the more she could make out a pattern - or texture - at the bottom. She could not be certain, but there seemed to be a small lump of wet hair in the bottom of the pencil holder."
From the podcast of the same name, Welcome to Night Vale invites you into a mysterious, insular town where odd things happen so often, how could you even define "odd"? It was dark, but also charming and whimsical. It involved gentle play, which I adore, without shying from more gritty, meaty themes. Reading this felt oddly cuddly, like the writer cared about me and every ordinary person struggling through life.
"The realization struck Olivia that she'd just pronounced the woman dead. How did she know? The same way she'd known her Dad was gone that late November. Not the lack of breath from the nostrils or the fact that his chest didn't rise or fall anymore. It was to do with the absence of something. Like the essence of the person had departed. She'd seen this in the way the woman's hand was splayed open, the phone laid in the center of her palm."
Mycophoria's killer fungus romp was the kind of fast paced, gory thrill I used to get sneaking Dean Koontz or James Herbert as a preteen. It promised a lot and delivered with oozing magnificence, fielding characters who were engaging and believable, and putting them right in the firing line.
Shock and Awe: Agents of Dreamland, by Caitlin R Kiernan
"The Signalman picks up one of the photographs, the one with his shadow in frame, the one where some trick of the light makes a corpse appear to be smiling. Every time he looks at these, every time he touches them, he feels unclean. He went through decon with the rest of the response team, but he only has to revisit these souvenirs of a horror show to be reminded how some stains sink straight through to the soul and are never coming out."
Kiernan gets two rounds of applause here as I devoured Agents of Dreamland and related novella Black Helicopters one after the other, loving her complex spy-riddled world of predestiny, plague and impending doom. You have to be on your toes, stretch your mind around inferences and accept the world is not as you perceive.
Best Vision of the Future: The Electric State, by Simon Stalenhag
"Lighthouse keepers were once warned they shouldn't listen to the sea for too long; likewise, you could hear voices in the static and lose your mind."
Told in breathtaking imagery as well as words, a girl and her robot traverse the crumbling commercial end of civilization. They are heading for ground zero of a new type of consciousness. I think there is a lot of hope in this apocalypse as well as devastation, with the girl determined to see the future birthed by an everyday, ordinary sort of love.
Top Three Shorts (I get to pick three because they're short)
The Book of Dreems, by Georgina Bruce
"The door opened into an overgrown garden. A sea of green, swaying and dripping in the rain. The water pummeled against her, soaking her through to the skin. Cold, shivery ... and something not quite right. There was something out there with her. Something that crawled and mewled piteously under the bushes."
I found this one in Best British Horror 2018, Ed. Johnny Mains, because Kendall Reviews was straight up live tweeting reading every single story and it was great. The way this story gradually built understanding from disorientation and chaos was magnificent, the final assertion a steel rod driven through the whole to bind it together.
Elephants that Aren't, by Betty Rocksteady
"Something sticky writhed across the screen. An elephant. No. Not quite an elephant. Emaciated, with legs too long and wriggling. It lurched across the screen, rubbery truck pulsing, quivering."
Lindsay's struggle to draw, and her encroaching memories of elephants are as horrific as they are compelling. I encountered this in Lost Films, Ed. Max Booth III and Lori Michelle, and in this edition the text is accompanied by gleeful unnerving drawings of little elephants that would make great tattoos.
Archibald Leech, the Many-Storied Man, by John C Foster
"He passed a brick high school building spitting fire from its windows, the roof ablaze like a thatch of wild red hair. The misshapen lumps in the yard were likely corpses, but Leech ignored them in favor of a wooden sign welcoming him to town with the words A FRIENDLY PLACE."
Also appearing in Lost Films, Archibald Leech is the paranormal secret agent to end all secret agents. Sent to investigate an abnormality affecting a small town, before it manages to crack his own mind like an egg. While this short is perfectly self contained I desperately want to read more about Leech's world.
And finally, drumroll please, my Best Read of 2018 was:
Best of 2018: The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch
"Already the future receded from her, like images half retrieved from dreams or like her memories were waves breaking against the shores of the real, washing away."
To solve a murder, Shannon probes an infinity of possible futures. All the while the Terminus, the mysterious and baffling end of humanity, is drawing nearer. This is a novel that will seriously bend your noodle but Sweterlitsch does it gently, with a deft hand. I read it early in the year and despite 2018 being a year of really incredible stories, The Gone World remained my firm favourite throughout. Be ready to radically revise your perception of observed reality and outcomes.
Hope you add as many of these great titles to your to-read list as you can handle, and that they set your brain on fire as intensely as they did mine.
Also wishing you a very happy and safe time over the holiday period, and all the best reads in 2019! If you enjoyed this and would like to know more, visit https://www.bpgregory.com/blog
October 17, 2018
New reads and Halloween scares
Flora & Jim now available!
Release date October 14 2018
Science fiction / horror novel
... I all but screamed at my baby girl, the most beautiful treasured thing in what passed for my life. Infuriated, I ripped the goggles off; their weight had been bowing my scarecrow neck. The world flipped too quick from narrow safe letterbox to a cold sea of light. A deluge ...
The world is frozen. The animals ascendant. And, locked in desperate pursuit of "the other father" across a grim icy apocalypse, Jim will do anything to keep his daughter alive.
Get your copy from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books ...
UPDATES!
The Grim Reader reviews Flora & Jim
"The world has transformed into a cold and grim frozen wasteland, one in which Jim mopes about scavenging food with his daughter, Flora, all the while desperately searching for the "other father".
Make no mistake, dear reader, BP Gregory paints a very grim picture indeed ... Read more at beavisthebookhead.com
Currently Writing
The Newru Trail. In a future where houses eat your memories, Kura has a crime to solve. A special sneak peek is now available at bpgregory.com
Currently Reading
Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
Perfect for these eerie hot/cold days, where you wake sweating only to see thunderstorms roll in to crush the city.
Currently Watching
The Haunting of Hill House. Only two episodes in, but the hair on my arms has literally stood up both times.
Currently Instagramming
That's right, I'm willing to go to where all the cool kids are but I'll still put an underscore in my handle so you all know how old I am.
Follow me at bp_gregory
Release date October 14 2018
Science fiction / horror novel
... I all but screamed at my baby girl, the most beautiful treasured thing in what passed for my life. Infuriated, I ripped the goggles off; their weight had been bowing my scarecrow neck. The world flipped too quick from narrow safe letterbox to a cold sea of light. A deluge ...
The world is frozen. The animals ascendant. And, locked in desperate pursuit of "the other father" across a grim icy apocalypse, Jim will do anything to keep his daughter alive.
Get your copy from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books ...
UPDATES!
The Grim Reader reviews Flora & Jim
"The world has transformed into a cold and grim frozen wasteland, one in which Jim mopes about scavenging food with his daughter, Flora, all the while desperately searching for the "other father".
Make no mistake, dear reader, BP Gregory paints a very grim picture indeed ... Read more at beavisthebookhead.com
Currently Writing
The Newru Trail. In a future where houses eat your memories, Kura has a crime to solve. A special sneak peek is now available at bpgregory.com
Currently Reading
Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
Perfect for these eerie hot/cold days, where you wake sweating only to see thunderstorms roll in to crush the city.
Currently Watching
The Haunting of Hill House. Only two episodes in, but the hair on my arms has literally stood up both times.
Currently Instagramming
That's right, I'm willing to go to where all the cool kids are but I'll still put an underscore in my handle so you all know how old I am.
Follow me at bp_gregory
July 29, 2018
Paranormal Shenanigans
"It's not overstating to call it a disturbing report Doug."1
Because I can't resist an ultimate, in July 2018 along with my Scooby Gang I booked the six hour ultimate overnight paranormal investigation at Aradale Asylum. It became obvious we were onto a good thing when the Eerie Tours phone menu was done in this FANTASTIC Vincent Price voice. These are my kind of people.
Excited, I decided to dig into a little reading. I've not covered the notorious state of early mental health care and asylums in general, as by being here you're probably already across all that. The horror films don't have it far wrong.
The Aradale high points are:
1864 Construction kicks off on the brand spanking new Ararat Lunatic Asylum (later renamed Aradale by public competition). This is one of a trinity of new Victorian asylums built to deal with the colony's "lunatic" problem.
It was built to accommodate 250 inmates. More buildings are added over time, but inmate numbers stack up VERY quickly.
1881 Yarra Bend Asylum closes. Aradale inmate numbers increase to 423.
1887 Aradale assumes control of the old bluestone Ararat jail, built in 1859. This becomes J-Ward, and remains Victoria's maximum security facility for the criminally insane until its closure in 1991.
1966 Aradale opens a training centre for those living with an intellectual disability, swelling inmate numbers to 810 by 1967. Later documents divvy the mentally ill and those living with a disability into "patients" and "residents," separate from convicted criminals who were incarcerated; but as lip service alone was paid to human rights I'm simplifying by calling them all inmates.
1977 Inmates drop to 641, but with a higher proportion of those living with a disability. Already serious problems are brewing ...
Go to bpgregory.com to read the entire adventure
July 15, 2018
So Very Awkward: Chuck Wendig's Awkward Author Photo Contest 2018
Popular Vote Category Now Open
So, author Chuck Wendig has for the past couple of years run a hilarious Awkward Author Photo contest on his blog Terrible Minds.
In Chuck's own words:
Chuck chooses his favourite and then the field is opened for popular votes, with the winner getting a prize! Who doesn't love a prize! Voting is open until Wednesday July 25th 2018.
Anyways, take a mo and vote for me! Or whichever photo you like the best: maybe that guy with the unicorn, it's super-cute.
Go to this blog post to vote
UPDATES!
Flora & Jim
Pleased to report the last round of Flora & Jim proofreading has just come in. And this time around my Dad has proofed ALL the words, not just the rude ones.
That puts Flora & Jim on track for it's October 2018 release. Start getting your reading glands ready for frozen post-apocalyptic shenanigans!
Currently Reading
Deep Roots
Interesting new take on Lovecraftian mythos. Light on horror, heavy on intrigue..
Coming Soon: Ghost Hunting!
Guess what I'm doing this weekend ...
SIX HOURS OF ULTIMATE PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION!
That's what it says right there on the bookings website, ULTIMATE paranormal investigation, so I see no way this can go wrong.
We're going to have night vision cameras, infrared goggles, laser grids, EMF detectors, laser thermometers, knives, sharp sticks ...
Ghosty blog-post full of screaming and muttered incantations to follow - keep an eye on bpgregory.com
So, author Chuck Wendig has for the past couple of years run a hilarious Awkward Author Photo contest on his blog Terrible Minds.
In Chuck's own words:
"You take a photo of yourself. Or someone takes a photo of you. And this photo is meant to imitate a really bad, really weird, really awkward author photo. Some real authors have terrible, terrible photos on their book jackets, and your job is to outdo those at every turn. Funny is good. Weird is wonderful. Clever is excellent."
Chuck chooses his favourite and then the field is opened for popular votes, with the winner getting a prize! Who doesn't love a prize! Voting is open until Wednesday July 25th 2018.
Anyways, take a mo and vote for me! Or whichever photo you like the best: maybe that guy with the unicorn, it's super-cute.
Go to this blog post to vote
UPDATES!
Flora & Jim
Pleased to report the last round of Flora & Jim proofreading has just come in. And this time around my Dad has proofed ALL the words, not just the rude ones.
That puts Flora & Jim on track for it's October 2018 release. Start getting your reading glands ready for frozen post-apocalyptic shenanigans!
Currently Reading
Deep Roots
Interesting new take on Lovecraftian mythos. Light on horror, heavy on intrigue..
Coming Soon: Ghost Hunting!
Guess what I'm doing this weekend ...
SIX HOURS OF ULTIMATE PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION!
That's what it says right there on the bookings website, ULTIMATE paranormal investigation, so I see no way this can go wrong.
We're going to have night vision cameras, infrared goggles, laser grids, EMF detectors, laser thermometers, knives, sharp sticks ...
Ghosty blog-post full of screaming and muttered incantations to follow - keep an eye on bpgregory.com
March 20, 2018
Kendall Reviews and I cover the glamour and glory of writing
Kendall Reviews forgot to lock the door again! I've slithered in and we've debated reading reviews, childhood favourites - and Gavin threw in a "round" good egg joke which I thoroughly appreciated ;-p
Author BP Gregory found time between oiling barbarians and writing her dream novel to chat with Kendall Reviews.
19th March 2018 Gavin Kendall Reviews Interviews
KR: Could you tell me a little about yourself please?
BG: I’m just here puttin’ my pants on one leg at a time like everyone else.
Actually, I recognize that while it hasn’t been easy, I’ve been incredibly privileged. A lot of valuable voices don’t get heard because of the obstacles keeping them from writing.
These days by living modestly I’m able to write to my heart’s content, meet the bills, AND work a day-job that contributes to society. And if people buy my books, I can go out and buy a tasty coffee which is always the best.
KR: What do you like to do when not writing?
BG: Well, at the mo my niece and I are running a sketching club via text message. I’m usually up for wine in nice bars, long walks, weird architecture, learning new things. Narrative based computer games and VR are another favourite.
At work I’m trying out a D&D group: so far we’ve flung a mermaid through the back of a tent, and I can confirm the mustard coloured goblins do NOT taste like mustard. This year I’m getting into deprivation tanking, and tonight I’m off to a film described as “the legendary underground horror-comedy-porno from the David Lynch of the queer set”.
So, you know. All the usual things.
KR: What is your favourite childhood book?
BG: My folks have this urban legend that I first read The Lord of the Rings to myself at age six. I’m not sure that can be true. Free bookshelf access certainly characterised my upbringing; but instead of getting into why The Valley of Horses isn’t the most responsible young introduction to “adult themes” I’m gonna go with a genuine childhood book: The Velveteen Rabbit.
Anyone who adored this book as a kid will probably have tears in their eyes already. The Velveteen Rabbit taught me resilience, that it’s ok to be a bit shabby, not so fancy, that you’re still important and worth loving ...
Read the full interview and follow Kendall Reviews for your next great book at kendallreviews.com
March 4, 2018
Read an Ebook (for free!) Week, March 4-10
And before you start in with Silly Rabbit, that's EVERY week! let's not forget that humans love easy wins.
To celebrate Read an Ebook Week, between 4-10 March 2018 pop on over to Smashwords and pick yourself up a bunch of free, free, free ebooks of the free variety by using the code at the checkout. Mine and a whole bunch of other awesomely participating authors.
What code, you say?
The code that appears next to the price on the book page where it says FREE code. Free code for free things.
If you've been gagging to try surgical scifi shenanigans with Something for Everything, or a bunch of short horror/scifi/urban fantasy all mashed together into a magnificent Orotund / Cacophony sandwich now is the time to jump in!
Something for Everything
A Surgeon must not be touched. The city can never stop.
Comforting truths to live by. But the other cities have fallen silent. Fear stalks the streets. And John the Surgeon craves touch more than anything ...
Orotund: Collected Short Stories Volume II
A paroled monster, a prostitute and a policeman all see a little girl lost, but this isn't the start of a joke. An isolated, frail old man trapped in his apartment; what possible threat could he pose to the sociopaths next door?
Take a stroll down humanity's eerie back alleys and enjoy BP Gregory's newest short science fiction, urban fantasy and horror stories neatly packaged together in Orotund: Collected Short Stories Volume Two.
Cacophony: Collected Short Stories Volume I
In the dim swampland of his mind Boris Bulgaris has always dreamed of working with fast food. The government executes people who fly as "terrorists", but Guntarc knows he can escape his life amidst the clouds. A well heeled lady almost misses an elevator, and she will desperately wish that she had.
For the first time eight of BP Gregory's unusual and sometimes horrifying short stories are available to enjoy together in Cacophony, annotated with bonus snippets of background lore from the author, and taken together the true taste of humanity will emerge.
To celebrate Read an Ebook Week, between 4-10 March 2018 pop on over to Smashwords and pick yourself up a bunch of free, free, free ebooks of the free variety by using the code at the checkout. Mine and a whole bunch of other awesomely participating authors.
What code, you say?
The code that appears next to the price on the book page where it says FREE code. Free code for free things.
If you've been gagging to try surgical scifi shenanigans with Something for Everything, or a bunch of short horror/scifi/urban fantasy all mashed together into a magnificent Orotund / Cacophony sandwich now is the time to jump in!
Something for Everything
A Surgeon must not be touched. The city can never stop.
Comforting truths to live by. But the other cities have fallen silent. Fear stalks the streets. And John the Surgeon craves touch more than anything ...
Orotund: Collected Short Stories Volume II
A paroled monster, a prostitute and a policeman all see a little girl lost, but this isn't the start of a joke. An isolated, frail old man trapped in his apartment; what possible threat could he pose to the sociopaths next door?
Take a stroll down humanity's eerie back alleys and enjoy BP Gregory's newest short science fiction, urban fantasy and horror stories neatly packaged together in Orotund: Collected Short Stories Volume Two.
Cacophony: Collected Short Stories Volume I
In the dim swampland of his mind Boris Bulgaris has always dreamed of working with fast food. The government executes people who fly as "terrorists", but Guntarc knows he can escape his life amidst the clouds. A well heeled lady almost misses an elevator, and she will desperately wish that she had.
For the first time eight of BP Gregory's unusual and sometimes horrifying short stories are available to enjoy together in Cacophony, annotated with bonus snippets of background lore from the author, and taken together the true taste of humanity will emerge.
January 21, 2018
The Grim Reader Has Me in For Some Writer-ing Questions
The Grim Reader and I huddled around the magic eight ball to come up with the answers to questions on writing, reading, terror, and coffee in my face hole!
21 Jan 2018 The Grim Reader
Interview: BP Gregory talks puns, writing and edible bugs!
Today, the Grim Reader welcomes BP Gregory to beavisthebookhead.com. She talks writing, books, puns, influences and more. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your stay.
TGR: Where did your love of reading and writing come from?
BG: My folks read to me from day one, but instead of Spot Goes Quantity Surveying Dad would just whip out whatever he was into. My cradle rocked to a lot of Lord of the Rings, James Herbert, Dennis Wheately, etc.
Then when I got older it was all about the libraries. I pursued the mobile book van the way other kids’d chase a Mr Whippy. The library was a place for my parents to step outside their own bookcases and ask in hushed concern, “Is there an upper limit?” The answer, of course, being nope!
Like those rats who starve to death pressing buttons for orgasms, I’ll happily read ‘til the sun turns black.
TGR: What are some of the books/writers that had an impact on you and inspired you to write?
BG: It feels like I’ve always been writing but the dry, wry internal lives of my characters owe a lot to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles, and Hermann Hess’ Steppenwolf. My fascination with how characters inhabit and determine space stems from Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which a housemate introduced me to over vodka martinis ...
Read the full interview and follow The Grim Reader for your next great book at beavisthebookhead.com
January 4, 2018
GUEST POSTING WITH KENDALL REVIEWS!!! - My Top Ten Reads 2017
A big thankyou to Kendall Reviews for inviting me in for tea and biscuits and to lay a bit of guest-posting on the altar of his blog. We've got fleshworlds, nuclear bunkers, cephalopods, dick jokes, and of course a whole lot of horror.
10. The Thing on the Shore, Tom Fletcher
Horror, Novel
This is Book #2 of the Fell House series, but reads as a stand-alone just as nicely (which is how I came across it - went back and did the series after).
A cry of modern despair blends with deep cosmic horror. Corporate conspiracy seeks to bring about the birth of something new into this world, something with its own plans; while the only ones who suspect are already failing to cope with the pervasive sadness of their everyday ...
10. The Thing on the Shore, Tom Fletcher
Horror, Novel
This is Book #2 of the Fell House series, but reads as a stand-alone just as nicely (which is how I came across it - went back and did the series after).
A cry of modern despair blends with deep cosmic horror. Corporate conspiracy seeks to bring about the birth of something new into this world, something with its own plans; while the only ones who suspect are already failing to cope with the pervasive sadness of their everyday ...
... to enjoy the full list, mosey on over to Kendall Reviews and give him your love!
