Students studying one of my stories and the ghost of the ghost story festival

Welcome to my February newsletter and yes, you read that right, some students have been studying one of my stories. I’m as surprised as you are.

One of my friends and former colleagues teaches English programmes at the University of Bordeaux, in France. In one of the courses she teaches, advanced English for science students, she wanted to get away from the somewhat dry work on lab reports and give them science fiction literature. So, she gave them my story, ‘Suppression,’ which featured on The Other Stories podcast a few years back, and had them write their own endings for it, after reading the first three qurarters of it. I was allowed to judge my favourite ending from the three groups and join them on Zoom for a brief Q&A.

As expected, the students were the stars of the show, coming up with some amazingly imaginative endings, often going to darker (or funnier) places than I’d originally thought up. Massive thanks to Jen and to the students for sharing their amazing ideas.

If you want to check out Suppression for yourself in written form, my collection, Paths Best Left Untrodden is at a special price of $0.99 or £0.77 in Kindle format, just until the end of next week. Grab it while it’s cheap, if you don’t have it already.

Now I should be writing this newsletter on the way back from the UK Ghost Story festival. Located in Derby, England, for the last two years it’s been one of my absolute favourite horror-adjacent events, because of the location, the people that go, and the fantastic blend of workshops, panels and interviews. It just has a fantastic vibe. But alas, this year, it was not to be. I had my flights booked, hotels, trains, the whole works. Then, on the day of my flight, I got that dreaded notification, hours before departure, that my flight would be at least an hour and ten minutes late. Because I know how Lisbon airport works, I did some checking and immediately saw it was going to be more than an hour and a half late. I tried to rebook my train, as it was by then highly unlikely I would be able to get into London from Heathrow and across to St Pancras station in time. But, because in the UK, you have to book trains in advance or they end up costing significantly more than flights, making this change on the day to get the very last train from the capital up to Derby was going to cost me in the region of £100. And this after I’ve recently had a reduction in hours at work meaning I have to be a bit more careful with the cash.

I checked into getting a last minute hotel in London or at the airport and changing the train for the next morning, but it was all coming up with additional costs of more than £150, which was not far off my full budget for the weekend. So, I had to cancel the whole thing, head home from the airport and miss what may end up being my last large scale author event for a good while, due to forthcoming work changes. I’ve done a lot of swearing over the last day or two, and am very frustrated that travel seems increasingly to be such a negative experience these days, with long delays, and rip off charges the norm. But here we are. Nothing I can do about it. Onwards!

In slightly more upbeat news, I’ve begun to get feedback from beta readers on my next novel, Pyres. About the same length as Shadow of the Hidden (roughly 200 pages), people are telling me it’s the best thing of mine they’ve read, so that’s highly encouraging. I have an editor and a cover designer in place, and am hoping to be able to put the book out towards the end of the summer/early autumn. Watch this space, of course, as newsletter readers will be the first to hear about pre-order discounts, etc.

And continuing with the positives for just a moment, if I may, I received the audiobook for Shadow of the Hidden last week. I’ve been listening through and noting the small number of things which need editing. But, suffice to say Pete Eaton, the voice over actor and narrator I’ve hired to do the recording, has done a fantastic job bringing the story, and characters to life. Even the Turkish, Arabic and French words in the text haven’t phased him. I hope to bring this to you on all auidobook platforms, including in libraries, soon.

On a personal note, I took a very cheap low cost flight over to Stansted last week to meet up with some good friends of mine to see Tesseract at Cambridge’s Junction venue. I’ve waxed lyrical about their most recent album in these pages before. It was a fantastic show and the band were totally brilliant live.

Recommendations

Reading - House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

I’ve read most of Gabino’s books and this one absolutely stands up there with the best of them. I was thinking, while reading a particularly violent scene, that this might be his most brutal work yet, but there’s something else at play in this novel which hasn’t been as much in his others, and that’s the sense of fellowship and love between his main characters. Where in The Devil Takes You Home, the MCs were really just thrown together, here you get this sense of found family and it changes the feel of it, to know that the reason these young men are doing these unspeakable things is for some collective sense of right. As misguided as they may be definitely are. If you enjoy crime, horror or the combination of the two, picking up this novel is a no-brainer. Check it out here. 

Listening - March of the Unheard by The Halo Effect

When I was a kid growing up, I was obsessed with a sub-genre of metal called The Gothenburg Sound. It was full of great bands like At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. Some of those bands are still going, but In Flames got some sort of weird sponsorship deal with Adidas and their music turned, frankly, to sh*t. But some former members of the band got together a few years back and made a new band, The Halo Effect, trying to recreate some of that sound. This new album is the first to really nail it. Superb riffing, drumming, screaming, the whole thing. Check it out on your chosen streaming service, here.

Watching - Squid Game 2 - Netflix

I think what worked so well with the original series of Squid Game was the uniqueness of it. The mixture of children’s games (even if they were generally unfamiliar for a western audience) and the utter brutality of the violence was so brave and unsettling. I really wondered whether season two could maintain my interest without that novelty. I was pleased that they decided to do something different here, focussing instead on winning contestant of season one, Gi-Hun and police officer Jo-Hun’s obsession with bringing those who arrange the games down. There’s another twist in the way things play out, which I won’t mention here, so as not to spoil it. But I was pleasantly surprised and will definitely be watching when the third season (really season two part two) debuts in the summer. Check out the trailer here.

Bargains and Freebies

Dan Padavona has pulled together dozens of free books of horror, suspense and thrillers, including my own supernatural novelette, Warding. Check out the full list.  

For even more free books, look no further than Steve Hudgins’ latest promo, with 65 free reads here in total. You can view the full list here.

The header may look like this is all sci-fi, but there’s a lot of horror in here, too, as well as several mash-ups of the sci-fi and horror genres. Many of these books are available at a special price. Get your discounted reads here.

In this promo from Maya Riley, you’ll find 42 apocalyptic nightmares, including one book of mine and another featuring one of my stories. See the full list here.

So, another month has passed. Today, we had our first really warm day here in Portugal, which tells me the spring is on its way. I hope there are green shoots visible where you are (if you’re in the northern hemisphere, and if you like that sort of thing).

If I may leave you with a very un-horror recommendation, I watched Flow yesterday. It’s a multi-award-winning animated film from Latvia, with no dialogue, about a cat which survives a flood. It’s beautifully drawn and if, like me, you’re a cat owner (or a dog, bird, lemur or capibara owner) you will undoubtedly love it. I saw it in the cinema, but it’s also on HBO/Max. You can have a peek at it here.

Anyways everybody, take care of yourselves, thanks as always for reading, and I’ll see you next month!

Kev