Dark Nights and Darker Tales

Welcome to my November newsletter. If this is your first time receiving this, you probably signed up via Bookfunnel and received my novelette, Warding as a welcome gift. I hope you’ll stick around!

The autumn nights have positively drawn in in my corner of Portugal. November has been marked by torrential rain and several days of flooding, which was scary at times, but now we’ve settled into the period I love with golden sunshine in the day and freezing cold mornings and nights. Perfect for cosying up on the sofa with a book or a spooky series or film.

November was also marked by my birthday, on the thirteenth. After last year’s sojourn to London to celebrate 45 with so many people, this year was a much more staid affair. A few friends for a curry lunch in Lisbon centre and that was enough for me.

If you want to commemorate my ageing process, of course, the best ways are to pick up one of my books, read one, listen to one, review one, or even just recommend one to a friend. Word of mouth really is the best way to keep growing the brand for indie authors. It all really does all help.

By the way, for those of you who do love your books in audio format, Apple Books currently have a deal on my novel, Shadow of the Hidden. From now until the 29th November, you can pick it up for 2.99, wherever you are. Less than half of the 6.99 it usually sells for! All that for four and a half hours of narrator Pete Eaton’s dulcet tones, guiding you through the Middle East and North Africa in search of a way to break the djinn curse before it’s too late. All for the price of a (very cheap) coffee. Get your bargain audiobook here, or by clicking the image below.

I’m not done with the promos yet, though. My collection, Paths Best Left Untrodden is going to be part of the Smashwords end of the year sale. This means it’ll be retailing for 99c for the eBook - half the usual price. The sale starts on December 9th and runs through to the January 1st, so set yourself a reminder, or follow me on social media for a reminder to pick it up then.

I also appeared on a podcast/YouTube show last night, called Unexplained Realms. It’s a cool show which, as well as involving interviews with horror creators like myself, also has episodes telling dark tales from around the world. These are all researched in detail and provide factual scares to the show’s many followers, be they fans of cryptids, UFOs, ghosts, witches or various other spooky phenomena. You can check out the show on Spotify here, or watch on YouTube below.

That’s a lot about me for this month, so I want to also shine a bit of a spotlight on my good friend Dan Howarth, whose new book dropped this past week. I recommended the book in these pages a few months back, but today I’d like to share a blurb I gave Dan for the book.

There’s a lot of thematic similarity to my own novel, Pyres, here, in terms of the backdrop to the story, even if the characters, plot and style are radically different. I was talking with fellow writer and one of the head honchos of Hawk and Cleaver, Luke Kondor about this other day, as he, too, has a project which will soon be coming to bookshelves and which touches on these same concerns in an equally different way. There’s a zeitgeist brewing, and I feel like we’re plugged into it right now.

I digress, so all that’s left to say is that Lionhearts is a difficult, uncomfortable book to read at times, but an important one. One which shows just how easily the disenfranchised can be riled up by the wrong people and made to become something truly monstrous. Grab a copy and let me know what you think.

Recommendations

Reading - This World of Vile Wonder edited by Coy Hall

I tend to have one or more anthologies and collections on the go at any one time. For when you finish a book, or when you’ve only got a short window to read. One I picked up a while ago was This World of Vile Wonder, from The Scythian Wolf. As I write, I’m only four stories in but, much as with the previous anthology from this press, Death’s Other Kingdom, which was set in World War I, what has really grabbed me about this book is the meticulous attention to detail. This is historical horror done the right way, and the horrors of the scientific revolution feel all the more vivid for it. The anthology is in the middle of a promotion in eBook, selling for just $0.99/£0.77 for a few more days, so grab your copy of the book for less here.

Listening - A Dark Poem Pt I: The Shores of Melancholia by Green Carnation

You may or may not know that I spent my teens and the first part of my twenties in two death metals bands, screaming my way around stages in the UK. My first band, Desolation, were often compared to Green Carnation. Progressive, technical and melodic, while remaining uncompromisingly heavy, I can clearly see now where those comparisons came from. This new album - part of a bold trilogy of records to come over the next couple years - captures all of that attitude and, if anything, is even more mature, well composed and ambitious. Check it out to see if it’s for you on your chosen streaming service, here.

Watching - Frankenstein - Netflix

Imagine someone told you that Guillermo Del Toro was going to make a new adaptation of Frankenstein. Imagine what the look and feel and even the approach to the story might be. That’s pretty much what this new Netflix adaptation has delivered. And that’s not a bad thing. Del Toro has made some truly compelling films over the last few decades and with the theme of the monster-as-hero being so prevalent in his work, it felt natural that he would eventually gravitate toward Mary Shelley’s classic. It’s beautifully shot and acted and, while perhaps missing some of the gravitas of the monstrous nature of Frankenstein’s creature from the original story, it is nonetheless a great way to spend a few hours. Check out the trailer here.

Bargains and Freebies

Author John Gaspard wants to ensure that you have all the spooky, ghostly tales you need for a traditional, Victorian Christmas. For a huge variety of festive phantoms, including the Violent Advents anthology which includes a story from me and delivers all profits to heart charities on both sides of the Atlantic, check out the full list here.

With the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons approaching, I thought we could all do with some horror reads which are $1.99 or under or free on Kindle Unlimited. I managed to convince writers like Jack Rollins, Miranda Kate and Briana Morgan to join in. You can find the full list here.

And finally, here’s a FREE horror book list from Joe Talon. Twenty-seven horror books, and nothing to pay. You can get my novelette, Warding, and almost thirty other books, free, here.

Just a final word from me to say thank you to everyone who’s picked up Pyres so far. Keep those reviews coming. Tell your friends. I really believe it’s my best work yet, so I’d love to see it get into even more hands.

That’s it for another month. I’ll be back around Christmas time. I know this is a difficult time of year for many folk, so if you are struggling, do talk to someone, don’t just suffer alone. Feel free to reach out to me, on Bluesky, Xitter, or Instagram. Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and I’ll see you in December.

Kev