Podcast & Show Appearances, Articles and More

Welcome to my May newsletter. I hope your late spring/early summer is treating you well. This month I’ve been finishing my current work in progress - the one about the spirit painter, if you’re a regular reader - and I think I’m now about 5 chapters from a completed first draft. As I anticipated a while back, it looks like it’s going to be a short novel rather than a novella, so we’ll see what the publisher has to say about that!

As mentioned last month, my first novella of the four I am contracted to write for Lycan Valley Press has been edited and is now with them for their editor’s pass. I’ll give you a synopsis and a bit of a profile on the characters next month, but I can now announce the title: The Siren of Armorique

It’s an interesting one for me as, while it certainly has horrific segments and scenes of horror, I think it probably sits within a dark fantasy space, albeit in the real world. As I say, more will be revealed next month. I hope it will be released this year.

This month has involved a lot of promotional stuff for Shadow of the Hidden, especially podcasts and YouTube shows. The first of these was with This is Horror, and that conversation should be dropping in the coming days. After that, I spoke to Jason White on his excellent YouTube show. It was one of those conversations where the host had clearly done his homework, so we got into some questions and topics that you might not have heard me talk about before. You can check it out here:

There will be a lot more conversations and interviews to come in the next month or two. I’ll post links here, but remember you can always catch them (along with audio stories and other such things) at my media page on my website.

I’m also extremely happy to say I’ve been invited to be a vendor at the Indie Horror Chapter’s Chapter One event in Birmingham, UK, on August 24th. I’ll be selling books with my table mate, Stephen Barnard, writer of a whole raft of horror and suspense books. I’m also hoping to be invited to participate in some of the readings and/or panels which will be happening throughout the day. The event is free, so if you’re in the midlands area, pop along, say hello, get a book signed or just have a beer with me and some of the other writers on the list below:

And finally, I’ve also been invited by The British Fantasy Society to take part in a panel discussion at one of their upcoming online writing events. Called ‘The Influence of Experience’, the panel will be moderated by the multi-award winning writer, editor and mentor Lee Murray, while my fellow panel members will be writer E. Saxey and editor Calah Singleton. I’m looking forward to sharing how my experiences have impacted my writing and learning about how the work of my fellow panel members has been shaped by theirs.

The panel discussion forms part of a wider day of talks, readings, discussions and workshops called ‘Writing Your Way.’ Tickets are on sale now, and are free for BFS Members and just £5 for non-members.

Before I sign off for recommendations and the Bargains and Freebies section, I did write an article for This is Horror this month, along with my friend and table mate Mike Clark, about our Authorcon 3 experience. I’m happy to say this is going to be a monthly column over at This is Horror, and next month, I have a great piece on Book Launches with three incredible authors, and more ideas in the pipeline beyond that. Check out the article Mike and I wrote here.

Recommendations

Reading - Undead Folk by Katherine Silva

Katherine Silva is an author I own a number of books by and had, scandalously, yet to read until now. But, having picked up the frankly gorgeous hardcover edition of Undead Folk at Authorcon, I decided to dive right in. It’s described as grief horror and, when the grief hits, my goodness, it is something you feel from your bones, right down to the very depths of your soul. But there’s more to this book than that. In what is a very short tome, we get intriguing world building around the post-apocalyptic scenario it takes place in. There’s violence, a sense of struggle, humour and so much more. For the time being at least, the eBook is still going for a bargain price of $0.99/£0.99 at the moment, so do pick this one up and check it out.

Watching - Them: The Scare - Amazon Prime Video

Readers who’ve been with me for two years or more will know that I loved the first season of Amazon Prime’s Them. Genuinely one of the most horrifying and uncomfortable TV shows ever, I wondered how they would follow it up when it was renewed for a second season. Rather than pour more misery on the Emory family, they decided to take a different time period, cast and aesthetic for the second season, subtitled ‘The Scare.’ A mystery with a young black LAPD detective trying to figure out a bizarre, brutal case with several seemingly unlinked murders, against a backdrop of both racism and misogyny, it’s every bit as uncomfortable as the first season. Great writing. Great performances. Great show. Check out the trailer here.

Listening - Solemn by In Vain

In 2014, I went to see the legendary, eclectic metal band Solefald in Krakow, Poland. The main support was a blackened death metal band called In Vain and they blew my face off. It was really something. Between then and now, they put out one album, Currents, which was solid, if unspectacular. The new record, Solemn, is a real return to form, though. The songs have all the complexity of the Ænigma album which made people sit up and take notice in 2013, but this one has calmer segments and some great, varied instrumentation involving trumpets, saxophone, etc. Check it out on your streaming platform of choice here.

Bargains and Freebies

Horror, Thrillers and Mystery, from author Stephanie Tyo features more than seventy books by a huge variety of authors, including me, Dean Rasmussen, Miranda Kate, A. H. Wang and many others. Check out the full list and grab a bargain here.  

The huge list of titles in this promo from Purple Queen Publishing has something for everyone. With bargain books by me, Jack Rollins, Marie LeStrange and a bunch of others, check out the full list and bag some brand new eBooks here.

And finally, for FREE books from the likes of me, Jay Bower, Robin Knabel, Brian Asman, and others, look no further. Click here to check out the full list.

Well, that’s it for this another month. In the next week or so, I’m taking a short road trip to Spain and a city called Ronda. I’ll be sharing photos along the way on my Instagram, so tune in their if you’d like to see some of that. Also on my Instagram this week, I’ll be doing a paperback giveaway of Shadow of the Hidden, so if you’d like to get your hands on a physical copy of that, stay tuned.

Likewise, if you love the music I recommended this month, find the second season of Them too frightening and you can’t sleep at night, or simply want to reach out and tell me what you’ve been reading, do leave a comment, or message me [email protected] - I always love hearing from you.

So, until mid-June, take care, be kind, and keep reading the dark stuff.

Kev