After months of waiting for the mail to travel all the way from Texas to Brisbane, Australia, my contributor copy of Dark Moon Digest 32/33 has arrived. There is no other way to describe this glorious little publication. It is just beautiful. Thanks to Patrick Lacey's Bone Saw, I was all too aware of the general production …
Editing, Critiquing and Advice from the Pros
For every author who makes a habit of having their work published, there are dozens of others yet to experience that joy. Those aspiring authors are often locked in their studies tapping their hearts out on the keys. A huge percentage of them are doing the research to improve their craft. They’re reading advice blogs, …
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Book Review: Tribesmen by Adam Cesare
2012's Tribesmen, one of Adam Cesare’s earlier pieces, has recently been granted an awesome new cover by expert designer Matt Revert. As a result, there’s renewed interest in the book, which harks back to and homages classic Italian cannibal movies of the past like Cannibal Holocaust. Tightly plotted, it features a fun and colourful cast …
Book Review: Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Gabino Iglesias’s latest novel, Coyote Songs, has been circulating in the Twittersphere as not only an excellent read, but also a damn important one. Barely a day goes by where you don’t see another excellent review pop up online, and there’s a good reason for that. As the spiritual successor to his superb Zero Saints, Coyote …
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Review: The Troop by Nick Cutter
Stranded on an island, a group of school boys must survive extreme circumstances without adult supervision in the inaugural James Herbert Award-winning novel, The Troop. With this eternally fertile premise at his control, Nick Cutter crafts a brutal and harrowing story of murder, survival and mutant tapeworms. The result is an excellent book that is …
Reflections on 2018
I’m writing this blog post just a few-hundred metres from the great Cathedral of Cologne while on holiday in Germany. One of the great things about my day-job as a teacher is the regular holidays I’m entitled to every year. Every Christmas, my beautiful partner and I get to travel, and we usually go to …
Review: Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias
In the short time I’ve been lurking on Twitter and hoovering up as much advice about writing as I can, it’s become very clear that Gabino Iglesias is one of the good guys. The dude is always dropping pearls of wisdom and reflections on his own experiences with an unfalteringly positive outlook and a compassionate …
Review: Ararat by Christopher Golden
With an ancient demon invisibly possessing its victims and sowing the seeds of animosity between characters and an isolated and snowbound setting, comparisons to Carpenter’s classic, The Thing, abound in Christopher Golden’s Ararat. Are they justified? Is that even a bad thing? Read on to find out... The first thing any review of this book …
Why we need a faithful new adaptation of Lord of the Flies
William Golding’s classic exploration of the darkness inherent in all of us, Lord of the Flies, is generally seen in one of two lights. It’s either that boring book packed as densely with prose descriptions of the rainforest as its figurative jungle is with liana vines and ferns, or it’s a timeless classic that drags humanity’s hidden evils …
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Bone Saw by Patrick Lacey
What happens when you throw a dodgy film director, a good-hearted kid with a love for old-school horror movies, a badass chick with Daddy issues, a haunted private eye and a homicidal pig-monster into an isolated town? Well, aside from the obvious insanity and gore, you get a rollicking good read, that’s what. Patrick Lacey’s …
