C.S. Hughes's Blog: Not Crying Over Spilled Ink - An Occasional Author Blog
August 12, 2025
I did say infrequent. The horror, the horror.
Broke Down House My latest is a revamped print edition of a horror ebook anthology I released and withdrew many years ago. The new edition of Broke Down House has some additional, recent stories, and the dark turned poetry excised.
Fairly remarkably it achieved the no. 1 horror anthology spot on Amazon over two days when I ran a free promotion. Some mixed reviews and ratings are starting to come in, which I kind of expected – it is a polarising collection, some of the stories really push conventional limits.
Here’s the brief, glib synopsis;
This is horror with no clean escape.
Broke Down House gathers eleven ink strange stories stitched with poetic dread and ruined beauty. Its characters stumble through collapsing homes, haunted towns, and inner derangements. Here, the ghosts are real — sometimes in flesh, sometimes in memory.
Eleven tales, sometimes comic, sometimes sharp, sometimes jagged.
In Propellor in the face of loss we spend a Christmas wondering whether we play with our ghosts or our ghosts play with us.
In Cave Canem a young constable learns to his regret the consequences of prejudice, assumption and illusion.
In Phantom we wonder with a desperate young woman if the blood spiders from your nose are a physical symptom of revulsion as a psychic infection.
In Carpe Diem two old soldiers, now gravediggers prepare the way, wondering exactly who pulls their strings.
In Natalie, La Luna and I, in surrender to our strange inner voice, we put our face on and remember that summer we rode the ghost train.
In Darkest Matters escaping after an experiment goes horribly right a young physics professor finds the secrets of the universe inside him carry a gravity and a weight that neither man nor nature can tolerate.
In Broke Down House we stutter through a repeated, expanding moment in which the thing on the lawn, at the window, on the stairs is alive, and you, dear reader, are the ghost.
In Sad Susan for a group of teens in a graveyard at sunset local myth assumes an all too confronting shape, while, with a little more than the usual regrets, our narrator has his first kiss.
In Empire Of Broken Eyes in Sydney in the 1930s a dodgy photographer’s assistant wonders exactly what is beyond, in the fog at the end of that half finished bridge.
In The Farm Story, when the bank forecloses on a Queensland farm, grandfather goes crazy and the cows all die. That’s it. That’s all that happens.
Finally, in Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 666, with an incognito rock star and a safety engineer we listen closely to metal fatigue, learn about local Puebloan mythology, do some twitching, and contemplate the heights, and the depths of some historic railway bridges.
A literary horror collection that slumps into disorientation, trauma, and decay, Broke Down House will unsettle fans of weird fiction, body horror, and fractured domestic gothic.
—————-
To celebrate the success of Broke Down House I’ve produced a hardcover edition, which has another never before seen story and two classic poems. I’ll also be adding a hand printed linocut frontis in a special edition as a giveeaway. The hardcover will be released on October 1st, and will hopefully make some grim Halloween reading.
Fairly remarkably it achieved the no. 1 horror anthology spot on Amazon over two days when I ran a free promotion. Some mixed reviews and ratings are starting to come in, which I kind of expected – it is a polarising collection, some of the stories really push conventional limits.
Here’s the brief, glib synopsis;
This is horror with no clean escape.
Broke Down House gathers eleven ink strange stories stitched with poetic dread and ruined beauty. Its characters stumble through collapsing homes, haunted towns, and inner derangements. Here, the ghosts are real — sometimes in flesh, sometimes in memory.
Eleven tales, sometimes comic, sometimes sharp, sometimes jagged.
In Propellor in the face of loss we spend a Christmas wondering whether we play with our ghosts or our ghosts play with us.
In Cave Canem a young constable learns to his regret the consequences of prejudice, assumption and illusion.
In Phantom we wonder with a desperate young woman if the blood spiders from your nose are a physical symptom of revulsion as a psychic infection.
In Carpe Diem two old soldiers, now gravediggers prepare the way, wondering exactly who pulls their strings.
In Natalie, La Luna and I, in surrender to our strange inner voice, we put our face on and remember that summer we rode the ghost train.
In Darkest Matters escaping after an experiment goes horribly right a young physics professor finds the secrets of the universe inside him carry a gravity and a weight that neither man nor nature can tolerate.
In Broke Down House we stutter through a repeated, expanding moment in which the thing on the lawn, at the window, on the stairs is alive, and you, dear reader, are the ghost.
In Sad Susan for a group of teens in a graveyard at sunset local myth assumes an all too confronting shape, while, with a little more than the usual regrets, our narrator has his first kiss.
In Empire Of Broken Eyes in Sydney in the 1930s a dodgy photographer’s assistant wonders exactly what is beyond, in the fog at the end of that half finished bridge.
In The Farm Story, when the bank forecloses on a Queensland farm, grandfather goes crazy and the cows all die. That’s it. That’s all that happens.
Finally, in Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 666, with an incognito rock star and a safety engineer we listen closely to metal fatigue, learn about local Puebloan mythology, do some twitching, and contemplate the heights, and the depths of some historic railway bridges.
A literary horror collection that slumps into disorientation, trauma, and decay, Broke Down House will unsettle fans of weird fiction, body horror, and fractured domestic gothic.
—————-
To celebrate the success of Broke Down House I’ve produced a hardcover edition, which has another never before seen story and two classic poems. I’ll also be adding a hand printed linocut frontis in a special edition as a giveeaway. The hardcover will be released on October 1st, and will hopefully make some grim Halloween reading.
September 10, 2019
Announcements
Dear Readers
I suppose I should pay more attention to these things, but with so many words pouring out of so many screens, wouldn’t that be arrogant, or at least vainglorious?
I’ve made some tentative steps toward a return to part time study, to finish that degree I never got around to finishing, and was going to announce that I’d be moderating my poem a day habit, but the poems keep making their demands. As I’ve said elsewhere - poetry is an affliction.
Meanwhile, my next book will be coming out in October, a humorous tale of a dog, a postman and a chicken, with cute illustrations throughout. It will be called, “Sweet Christmas!”, and should make a fine gift, after you’ve read it of course.
I suppose I should pay more attention to these things, but with so many words pouring out of so many screens, wouldn’t that be arrogant, or at least vainglorious?
I’ve made some tentative steps toward a return to part time study, to finish that degree I never got around to finishing, and was going to announce that I’d be moderating my poem a day habit, but the poems keep making their demands. As I’ve said elsewhere - poetry is an affliction.
Meanwhile, my next book will be coming out in October, a humorous tale of a dog, a postman and a chicken, with cute illustrations throughout. It will be called, “Sweet Christmas!”, and should make a fine gift, after you’ve read it of course.
