Horror

Guest Post: “On Writing – I do it My Way” by Sue Tingey

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TingeyS-AuthorPicI would imagine if you ask half a dozen writers about how they get their ideas and how they go about putting them down on paper you would get a half a dozen different answers. For me, it changes from project to project. On the whole though, there are certain definites to my writing regime and process.

I try to be disciplined about my writing as that’s the only way it works for me. I write every weekday morning without fail from 7 a.m. until 8.30 a.m., and sometimes later when I’ve got caught up in a scene and forgotten the time. Fortunately I have a very supportive boss – at least he hasn’t sacked me yet! In these one and a half hours I re-read and edit the work I wrote the previous day to get me back into the flow and then I aim for a count of between 700 and 1000 words. If I manage more, I’m happy. If I write less than 700 – well, let’s not go there. Meeting the daily word count keeps me focused and if I wasn’t so strict on myself I would probably flounder and not get anything finished. Continue reading →

An Interview with SUE TINGEY

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TingeyS-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Sue Tingey?

Hi Stefan, thank you for inviting me to be interviewed.

Who is Sue Tingey? That is actually rather a deep question and I’m probably the last person you should ask, but I’ll have a go at giving a sensible and possibly truthful reply:

I’m a book and animal lover. Married with no pets at the moment except for some Koi carp. I’m slightly obsessive about things that matter and couldn’t really give a damn about things that don’t (though this has taken years to perfect – I used to be a natural born worrier). I love horror films but only if viewed from behind a cushion or, if no cushion available, from between my fingers. I hate animal films because I spend the whole hour and a half sobbing. I put it down to being traumatised by Disney’s Old Yella when I was a child. As for Marley and Me – don’t even go there.

Your debut novel, Marked, will be published by Jo Fletcher Books. It looks rather fabulous: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

Thank you kind sir. Marked is the first book of the Soulseer Chronicles and is about Lucky de Salle, a young woman who, for as long as she can remember, has been able to converse with the dead. Even her best – and only – friend Kayla is a ghost. The book starts when Lucky reluctantly returns to her old school, from which she was expelled fifteen years earlier, to help with a haunting brought about by three boarders playing with a Ouija board. As it happens her instincts are correct: ghosts are the least of her worries – the schoolgirls have called up a daemon and he has a message for Kayla. From this point on Lucky finds that no one she meets is who they say they are and even her best friend has been keeping secrets. Soon she’s caught up in the political intrigues of a world she never knew existed, and her already weird life gets weirder by the moment. Continue reading →

Cover Reveal and Q&A: THE WATCHERS by Neil Spring (Quercus)

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watchers.inddOn September 24th, Quercus Books will publish Neil Spring’s THE WATCHERS. To the right you can see the rather excellent cover. Here’s the synopsis:

At the height of the Cold War, officials at the Ministry of Defence conducted a highly secret investigation into unusual events that occurred along a strip of rugged coastline within the Pembrokeshire National Park nicknamed ‘The Broad Haven Triangle’.

The events made national headlines: lights and objects hovering in the sky, ghostly figures peering into farmhouse windows, cowering animals, and poltergeists plaguing a terrified family of witnesses.

Thirty years later, official files pertaining to these occurrences were finally released for public scrutiny at the National Archives. The disclosure prompted a new witness to come forward to speak of what he knew. His testimony rocked the very foundations of the British Government.

This is his story.

As a bonus, JFB have provided a quick Q&A with Neil. Read on for more about the novel, Neil’s writing and more… Continue reading →

Review: DAY FOUR by Sarah Lotz (Hodder)

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LotzS-2-DayFourUKThe superb sequel to The Three

Four planes. Three survivors. One message. It seemed like the end of the world… but it wasn’t. This, however, just might be.

The trip of their dreams becomes the holiday of their nightmares…

Four days into a five day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.

That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

The Three was easily one of my favourite books of last year. Day Four is the highly-anticipated follow-up, and I’m happy to report that it does not disappoint. Lotz has easily become one of my favourite authors. Continue reading →

Wendig’s MIRIAM BLACK Gets New Covers

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I was rather fond of the original cover for Chuck Wendig‘s third Miriam Black novel, The Cormorant. The first two covers were pretty interesting, too, if a tad on the busier side (above) – all three were done by Joey Hi-Fi. Today, the author unveiled the new covers for the soon-to-be-published Simon & Schuster editions of the series (below), by Adam S. Doyle. They are also very nice (and may well appeal to a wider audience), but I think I still prefer that third Joey Hi-Fi cover…

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I never got around to reading these novels when they were originally published by Angry Robot Books. These re-issues do give me a good excuse to finally read them. I don’t know anything about the television series mentioned in the top right corner of each of the new covers, though.

Here’s the synopsis for Blackbirds:

Miriam Black knows when you will die.

She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides.

But when Miriam hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim.

No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

Simon & Schuster are re-issuing the first three novels, and have also commissioned three more. The release schedules are: first three eBooks on April 21st, Blackbirds (September 28th), Mockingbird (October 6th), The Cormorant (yet to be confirmed), Thunderbird (2016).

Quick Review: THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN by Holly Black (Little, Brown)

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BlackH-ColdestGirlInColdtownAn interesting, very good take on vampires

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

I’m going to keep this review very short – not because I think the novel doesn’t deserve a mention, but because my thoughts can be summed up quite succinctly (for a change). It’s a very good novel, I must say. Not perfect, but very strong and among the best and most interesting vampire novels released in recent years. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE DEVIL’S DETECTIVE by Simon K. Unsworth (Doubleday/Del Rey UK)

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UnsworthS-DevilsDetectiveUSA gloriously dark and twisted crime story… in hell

Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped “Do Not Investigate” and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner—extravagant even by Hell’s standards—everything changes. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so the Bureaucracy sends Fool to identify and track down the killer…

But how do you investigate murder in a place where death is common currency? Or when your main suspect pool is a legion of demons? With no memory of his past and only an irresistible need for justice, Fool will piece together clues and follow a trail that leads directly into the heart of a dark and chaotic conspiracy.

A revolution is brewing in Hell… and nothing is what it seems.

The Devil’s Detective is Simon Unsworth’s first novel. He’s been writing shorter horror fiction for quite some time, which I have not read. After reading this novel, though, I’ll be sure to check out more of his work. The Devil’s Detective is a masterful blend of horror and crime fiction, set in an evocative, unsettling take on Hell. Continue reading →

Interview with SARA B. ELFGREN and MATS STRANDBERG

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Let’s start with an introduction: Who are Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg?

Sara: I was born in 1980 in Stockholm, Sweden and I still live here. I surround myself with books. I tend to rant about stuff I love, and stuff that annoys me. What We Do in the Shadows made me laugh and I saw it twice in the cinema. I like people who are empathetic and sarcastic.

Mats: Well, I am 38. I grew up in a small town with some similarities to Engelsfors, minus the apocalypse. I now live in Stockholm. I watch way too much reality TV. I am horrible at remembering people’s names and it’s very embarrassing. I never finish books that I don’t like after 100 pages.

The third novel in your Engelsfors trilogy, The Key, will be published in the UK by Hammer in January 2015. How would you introduce the series to a potential reader, and what can fans of the first two novels expect here?

Mats: The trilogy is about six very different girls, who find out that they are witches, and have to work together to stop the apocalypse.

Sara: Meanwhile, they have do deal with the problems of their everyday lives: parents, partners, friends, bullies and homework. In The Key, the fans can expect answers to all the big, and many of the little, questions. The plot will thicken… Continue reading →

Cover: KILLING PRETTY by Richard Kadrey (Voyager)

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I’m a big fan of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, and I just stumbled across the cover for the seventh novel, Killing Pretty. Due to be published in July 2015 by Voyager Books in the UK and US, I was unable to find a synopsis… Nevertheless, here’s the cover, which continues the very cool, vintage-pulp movie poster feel:

Kadrey-7-KillingPrettyUS

Also on CR: Reviews of Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha From Hell, Devil in the Dollhouse, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Killing Pretty

Upcoming: DAY FOUR by Sarah Lotz (Hodder)

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Sarah Lotz’s The Three was easily one of my favourite novels of 2014 — it worked on every level for me: it was tense, brilliantly written, addictive. I was therefore quite surprised that I managed to miss any news of Lotz’s next novel (and sequel to The Three), Day Four, until I spotted this post on Draumr Kopa. Naturally, I had to share the info as soon as I spotted it.

Four days into a five day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.

That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

Day Four is due to be published by Hodder in the UK on May 21st, 2015. I can’t wait to read it!