It's finally come to fruition. This project forms the final part of The Black Room Manuscripts series of charity anthologies, originally conceived of by Daniel Marc Chant of the Sinister Horror Company. Thanks to JR Park who invited me to work on the concluding installment of an excellent series. This final volume features twenty-four tales of terror curated by JR Park and myself, and featuring the fine short fiction of Ramsey Campbell, VH Leslie, Gary McMahon, JL George, Margret Helgadottir, KA Laity, Mark West, Duncan P. Bradshaw, James Everington, Marie O'Regan, John McNee, Benedict J. Jones, CL Raven, Simon Avery, Hannah Kate, Penny Jones, Mark Cassell, Erik Hofstatter, Stephen Bacon and
'My childhood fear is simply, of home. It’s an odd one, I’ll grant you.Home is meant to be the place we go to in order to feel safe. To feel ‘at home’ somewhere is a synonym for feeling secure, rested, at ease. But not for me...' I wrote a blog post for the 'Childhood Fears' column on Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror site. In it I explore some of the reasons why I'm so obsessed with ideas of Gothic domesticity, Freud's notion of the unheimlich home and the peculiarly Irish idea of the home as a dark and secretive space. 'For me this fear of home, this fear set in home, has never really gone away. The most unsettling things I can imagine aren’t improbable and far away. They’re not set in sp
With this volume on its way to the printers, I just wanted to post a quick thank you to Lynda E. Rucker, editor of Uncertainties: Volume III, for inviting me to submit for this. My short story, 'The Woman In The Moon' appears here alongside stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Adam L. G. Nevill, Lisa Tuttle, Rosanne Rabinowitz and Robert Shearman. In this story, the shadows of the past return, interwoven with stories from childhood... There's an interview with Lynda about the collection here. You can order the collection directly from Swan River Press and in doing so support a remarkable Irish press.
At the kind invitation of Andrew Garvey, I have two short stories in this collection - 'The Black Dog' and 'Come Away,' as well as two accompanying essays. This was a labour of love, as The Spooky Isles have a focus on the dark folklore of Ireland and Britain, and my next collection, New Music For Old Rituals, will be a celebration of Irish folk horror. So far, the revival of folk horror has really concentrated on the English eerie, so I wanted to explore the rich trove of Irish legends, superstitions and customs, and to explore how these stories continue inform contemporary culture. The Gothic, after all, is obsessed with the recurrence of the past in the present - as am I. The Spooky Isle
