Supernatural Tales

As I mentioned the other day, Adam Golaski's collection Worse Than Myself is available on Kindle at a nice price. This inspired me to look for other books that might be good value for the Kindle generation. So here are a few thoughts. 1. Algernon Blackwood. The Willo w s, if you've still to read this classic, is available to download for a few pence. At a quite reasonable £5.50 is the E.F. Bleiler edited Best Ghost Storie s, containing AB's greatest hits. There's also a very cheap edition of the John Silence stories. The latter are variable but fun - 'Secret Worship' is a particular favourite of mine. 2. Arthur Machen. A similar situation to Blackwood, with The Great God Pan and several other tales available for pennies. Check out this page . But it always makes sense to check out the reviews, as these sometimes reveal problems with editing etc. 3. Robert W. Chambers. Fans of True Detective might like to read the book that partly inspired the cult series...

I just got back from Newcastle's splendid  Lit and Phil , where I enjoyed the latest in a long and laudable series of ghost story readings. I say 'ghost story', but it might be more apt to describe what's on offer as weird tales, as ghosts don't always feature. This evening we had demons, strange occult forces, and a powerful image of the Resurrection. The original line-up consisted of art historian and vampire buff  Gail-Nina Anderson (also the indomitable organiser), poet and academic Sean O'Brien, and horror/fantasy author Chaz Brenchley. However, Mr Brenchley has since decamped to the New World and this evening Sean O'Brien was unable to make it. Fortunately the team was more than revitalised by the presence of Mark Valentine and - as a near-last-minute replacement - sf author Simon Morden . The latter acquitted himself very well despite microphone failure, offering an elegiac tale that took us behind tabloid headlines into a 'house of horror...

Ron Weighell's first collection of weird tales, The White Road , was published by Ghost Story Press in 1997. Not the most prolific of authors, Weighell's second collection has just been published by Sarob Press . The cover, by Santiago Caruso, is extremely impressive, as you can see. The overall theme is, I think, established by the art. Weighell's characters are almost always bibliophiles, scholars, antiquaries, archaeologists - those who delve into the murkier regions of history and find themselves fascinated or possessed by the occult. The first story, the previously unpublished 'D'Arca', sets the pattern: it's an all-you-can-read buffet of the arcane; a wondrous panoply of strange scholarship and ever stranger artefacts. A British scholar working in Italy is offered the chance to examine the library of a villa where an eccentric countess recently expired. Instead of a conventional haunting the protagonist discovers the journal of an 18th century ...

Just a heads up to all your Kindlefolk - at this moment Adam Golaski's excellent collection Worse That Myself is currently available at a discount on Amazon . My original review is here . Adam dedicated his book to me, which remains one of the high points of my editing life.

The very first issue of ST is now available from Smashwords as an ebook. It's very short, containing just five stories - I had it printed as a booklet of just over 50 pages. It's been out of print for about ten years, I think, so if you want to find out what the first Supernatural Tales were like, get over to Smashwords .

I stumbled across this feature-length BBC drama while looking for something else. Anything starring Peter Capaldi and Frances Barber is worth watching in my book, but this is something extra-special. 'Do Not Disturb' is a rather brilliant exploration of the ghost story genre, and the weird phenomenon of people (like me) who visit places linked to often quite obscure authors. Timberlake Wertenbaker clearly knows her stuff. Her fictitious author, 'Eleanor Mont', lived in Norfolk and what we hear of her stories owes something to M.R. James (and perhaps Eleanor Scott, who wrote Randall's Round ). A story about ghost stories is also a ghost story, and tackles the theme of hauntings in more than one subtle way. There's also a wonderful scene in which an academic from King's College, Cambridge, insists that he's decoded the author's life from her work. The balance between humour and serious drama is maintained throughout, while the climactic tragedy is ...

Bling at the Centre of the Earth When I was a lad my mother used to get me Jules Verne novels from the adult section of the library. (Why were they in the adult section? Did some of them feature the exposure of a shapely ankle? I really can't recall.) Anyway, that's how I became acquainted with Captain Nemo, Professor Lidenbrock, Robur 'the Conqueror'), and of course Phileas Fogg. As a result of this phase my knowledge of Verne's work is limited to the books that Sunderland's central library had in the early Seventies, so his more obscure work passed me by. This is a pity, as Cardinal Cox's latest pamphlet explores a world where, as he puts it, Verne was not a visionary author of proto-sci-fi, but a hack hastily cobbling together garbled accounts of real events. Regular readers will now I'm a fan of poetry in general, and Cardinal Cox's work in particular. His series of free pamphlets on diverse aspects of weird fiction are a delight. ...

Is it me, or is much of modern horror obsessed with property values and related topics? In the English-speaking world owning at least one property is considered right and normal, and being unable or unwilling to do so is weird, suspect, a mark of failure. (Yes, I'm generalising, but you know what I mean. Politicians bang this particular drum incessantly.) So perhaps it's not surprising that in the new Canadian anthology, Shadows and Tall Trees , we do find a lot of stories about places to live that are far from homely. Of course, when people do go outdoors they don't have much fun, either. You're damned if you do...