Ginger Nuts of Horror has teamed up with author William Brennan Knight to win one of five signed copies of his latest novel The Suicide Society.  To enter the sweepstakes for the book simply do the following, you will gain one entry for each completed task.

1. Share this post using the share button at the side of the article
2. Leave a comment below telling is the one thing that drives you insane ( please keep this lighthearted no political posts)
3. Like and Retweet our pinned tweet 

https://twitter.com/GNHorror/status/1152828529358319616

4. Leave a comment on our tweet telling us the one thing that drives you insane (please keep this lighthearted no political posts) ​

One man is cursed with the gift of suicidal vision

The other is a psychotic mutant bent on world domination

Their clash will be epic as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance

The Suicide Society is a dystopian supernatural thriller with strong elements of occult horror that offers a frightening glimpse into the near future. Civilization is on the brink of collapse as someone with inexplicable charisma fans the flames of hate, anger and division. Follow the exploits of Zach Randall as he copes with visions of suicide while battling the gifted, depraved madman who preys on the vulnerable and works to bring about global Armageddon.

Here's what Amazon readers are saying about The Suicide Society:     
        
*** The despair tinged with elements of hope came through, and I loved the ending. This was an exciting, fast-paced thriller that captivated my attention.

*** It was a fun read with an original idea, so I'm curious as to what Knight will be bringing us next.

*** I much prefer a story that will challenge me in some way and, if it has dark undertones, that usually adds to the intensity. This is what I got in spades with author William Brennan Knight's "The Suicide Society"

*** If you are a Stephen King fan, expect yourself to find comparisons to The Stand yet it goes in different directions especially at the end. Good read with a twist... and I'll be looking for more by Mr. Knight in the future.
​
*** The Suicide Society weaves calm menace with thrilling action in a way guaranteed to keep you turning pages.

Ginger Nuts of Horror welcomes  David Jenkins back  to the site today to close  the blog tour for his latest book Gardens, Galaxies And Goosebumps with his article on Dracula as a character in other books.   Be sure to check out the other stops on the blog tour, details of which can be found at the end of the article, and make sure you check out David's article on his favourite short story collections.  

And why not check out the excellent article from Nick Setchfield on Resurrecting Vampires 

And as a special bonus to the readers of the site, if you leave a comment below telling us what is  your favourite incarnation of Dracula we will enter you into a prize draw to win a copy of Gardens Galaxies and Goosebumps ​

We’ve recently had our writer’s group AGM and at the end of it we always have a recommend the book discussion for the remainder of the meeting. This time one of the books I recommended was Dracula Tape which is Dracula’s attempt to vindicate himself. So I thought it would be interesting to share some of my favourite books about Dracula that aren’t Stoker’s classic.

First up is Dracula Tape (the first in the series and only one to be based on Stokers’ story) by Fred Saberhagen. Simply put this story is Dracula’s side of the story and Saberhagen cleverly points out the inconsistencies and alternate readings in the original story for instance Van Helsing used blood transfusion before people knew about blood types so this is possibly what killed Lucy. The use of first person narrative, the updating of the language of the original and the use of some quotes from Stoker’s book make this a different and pleasant read. 

 Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker (Bram’s great grandnephew) and Ian Holt is based on some of the notes that didn’t make the original book.  This story starts twenty five years after the original and follows Mina and Jonathon Harkers’ son Quincy as he tries to learn the truth about his family and in doing so confronts Dracula and Bathory. There are several positives in this book like how it shows the extent of which Dracula affected each of the original characters even after his death, the portrayal of Bathory is also menacing for the most part. However I feel Dracula as an antihero is contradictory based on my and most people’s impression of the original story which is a major problem when this is billed as a sequel. Added to this the book is poorly written which means that overall this is one of the least enjoyable adaptations I have read.

Anno Dracula (first in a series) by Kim Newman is the story of what would have happened if Dracula succeeded in infiltrating England. This book is action packed complete with spies, politics, some of the original characters and several twists.  Dracula is portrayed as an evil character who has brought vampires to the forefront of British society but as well as showing the problems this brings such as race riots, it is set in a well researched historical setting.  With several side plots and several pop culture references this is by far my favourite book adaption of Dracula.

I would also like to mention Marvel’s comic book adaption of Dracula as in the original 1970s Tomb of Dracula series this had several unique plot. The best of which included Dracula becoming head of a satanic church after they mistake him for the Devil and Dracula losing his powers. The portrayal of Dracula as a behind the times (this series was set in 1970s and he had been dead for decades) mostly evil character was interesting and the art from Gene Colon made this series amazing.
​
Overall, it doesn’t matter if the adaption is heavily based on the original or whether the story just uses Dracula’s history and powers. There’s a good chance I’ll read and the author will have found some way to make their own stamp on this versatile character.

 
Let me take you back to spring 1988. I’m thirteen years old, Heart by the Pet Shop Boys is number one and I have just moved into a new house. My parents of course take the big bedroom while my two brothers share the next largest one, having to fight over who gets the top bunk. I am left with what estate agents hesitate to refer to as The Box Room. Yes it’s small, but I don’t care. It’s my private space to hang out and be me in. There’s enough room for a bed, a desk and chair and somewhere to put my VHS movies, records, computer game cassettes (that’s right kids, video games came on TAPES in the 80s) and clothes. And then there’s the view.
 
The house is right on the edge of town and from my window I can see the playing fields, the football stadium (that’s soccer for any Americans reading) and beyond that, the woods which conceal the glorious mish-mash of Norman, Tudor and Victorian architecture known as Rockingham Castle. I went there once on a school trip and they told us that Charles Dickens claims to have seen a ghost walking around the garden, inspiring him to create Chesney Wold, the bleak house of, well, Bleak House.
 
I’ve spent the day emptying boxes. All my furniture is where I want it and my stuff is unpacked. I have my computer set up on my desk, my posters are up on the wall and my tapes are in beautiful alphabetical order. It should be my teenage Shangri-La, but something’s off-kilter. At first I can’t put my finger on it. And then, as I turn to that green and pleasant view once more and see a creepy, low lying fog coming in over the field, that I realise, to my horror, exactly what it is that’s amiss. There are no curtains.
 
“Dad. Dad! I can’t stay in that room. Can I go and sleep at Nan’s house tonight until you buy some curtains?” I ask frantically, panicking as the sun is now setting and bedtime is rapidly approaching. After much debating the matter and being told not to be ridiculous, one of my folks, I forget which, asks the only really pertinent question: “Why?” And it’s then that I lay the guilt trip on them. “Because YOU let me watch Salem’s Lot!”
 
If you’re a horror fan (which, if you’re reading this, I imagine you are) you should know exactly what I am talking about. The infamous Window Scenes are surely responsible for one of the genre’s, maybe even all of pop culture’s most enduringly scary images - the pale, snaggle-toothed child floating up to the window through swirling mists, begging to be let in, slavering with animalistic hunger as haunting strings wail in the background. As frightening moments go, it’s up there with the shark fin approaching a lone midnight swimmer, the shower curtain at the Bates Motel being pulled back or little Danny Torrance being confronted by the Grady twins while cycling aimlessly around the labyrinthine corridors of the Overlook Hotel.
 
But so what? Jaws stopped many people from swimming, after The Towering Inferno people refused to go up tall buildings, and then there’s the damaging reputation Stephen King inflicted upon the noble profession of Clowning. There’s no shame in admitting when something frightens you. You can’t be brave if first, you‘re not afraid. And our inherited survival instinct is to run away from what we’re afraid of. It’s an evolutionary throwback to the days when sabretooth tigers, not traffic delays and learner drivers, made our daily commute a challenge. In keeping with this, I’m not ashamed to say that there was no way I was sleeping in that room, waiting for the sound of scratching fingernails on the glass. Not a chance in hell.
 
Over forty years since its release Jaws has become something of a byword for rubbery, unconvincing monsters and film shoots plagued by technical difficulties. It’s one of those films where almost everyone you know has seen it multiple times, and its vast exposure has made the film such an icon of pop culture that just those opening two notes on the cello is enough to alert even folk who have never seen it that something big and bitey is coming. And for those reasons, some would say that it has lost its power to shock.
 
While many people did develop an irrational fear of the water, others who watched the antics of Bruce the Shark as he showed the people of Amity Island who was boss, came away from that film feeling quite different. Yes, they were still scared, but also invigorated and inspired. John Krakinski, director of last year’s hit alien invasion scarefest A Quiet Place, cites Jaws as a major influence on his film. He employed Spielberg’s less is more approach when it came to revealing his own monsters. Jaws scared Krakinski so much that he wanted to use those same techniques that had frightened, yet excited him to convey those feelings to his own audience. His movie was a huge success with audiences and critics, with many saying that over time it will find its home alongside the pantheon of horror greats.
 
Spielberg’s origins were not so different. He admired The Master Of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, and employed a lot of the Psycho director’s techniques in his own films. The most conspicuous example of this is his use of the Reverse Dolly Zoom in Jaws (when Chief Brody first sees the shark). This camera trick was perfected by Hitchcock to stunning effect in Vertigo, which was released when Spielberg was only twelve years old. Even after Jaws was released he would hang around Hitchcock’s sets in the hope of catching a chance meeting with the auteur. Sadly the two never managed to find the time to meet, although Hitchcock did acknowledge and return the compliment by agreeing to be the voice of the Universal Studios Jaws ride.
 
Twin Peaks creator David Lynch also acknowledges Hitchcock as the motivation for much of his work, Rear Window in particular, which, once again he is likely to have first seen on release as a youngster. Lynch’s style can also be seen to echo the work of his other heroes from his youth such as Ingmar Bergman and Herk Harvey. Harvey’s only feature film, the haunting indie drama Carnival of Souls, is held in high regard by many of Lynch’s contemporaries such as George A. Romero, John Carpenter and Nicholas Roeg.
 
In his 2000 nonfiction book On Writing, Stephen King talks with great affection about the B-Movie horror flicks he enjoyed as a child. While most folk flocked to his local Empire cinema to see “nice” films like The Parent Trap or Gidget, the young King would hitchhike his way to the cinema at the far end of town (can you imagine a thirteen year old being allowed to do that today?), where he would go to the much seedier Ritz, nestled amongst pawnshops and liquor stores, to watch such cinematic delights as Attack Of The Giant Leeches, The Conqueror Worm (or, to give it its correct British title, The Witchfinder General) or I Married A Monster From Outer Space. Early exposure to these films, along with a subscription to the legendary 1950s magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland helped the young King decide that horror was the area in which he wanted to work. It was, in his own words, “The stuff that turned my dials up to ten”.[1]
 
That horror fans become horror creators is not in itself all that unusual. It happens across many genres. The astronaut Terry Virts once listed Star Trek among the reasons he wanted to become a spaceman when he grew up[2] while the seeds of becoming a physicist were sown in the mind of Professor Brian Cox when he saw David Bowie’s alien scientist trying to save his home planet in The Man Who Fell To Earth[3].
 
But with horror, it’s different. While sci-fi deals with adventure, science and the betterment of the human race, and is regarded as a wholesome thing for children to consume, horror has a reputation (and let’s be honest, often deservedly so) for being, shall we say, not quite as child-friendly! Parents will happily listen to their offspring chatter excitedly about Luke Skywalker, E.T. or Marty McFly but if that same youth then expresses an interest in demonic possession or serial killers then they are looked upon as weird or morbid, and they need to Stop It Right Now - It’s Not Good For You!
 
So this then raises questions like “How warped do you have to be to be a creator of horror content?”
 
Last year I spent a weekend in Ireland at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival. It was attended by over a hundred people from the world of literary horror: novelists, comic book writers, illustrators, publishers, superfans and more - many of whom make a living from their grim and unusual imaginations. Surely this was going to be a seriously intense weekend packed with dark and lurid individuals. Except it wasn’t. I had the pleasure of spending three days in the presence of some of the most well balanced, friendly and kind folk I’ve ever met. Yet these are people who deal in vengeful spirits, bloodsucking ghouls and psychotic axemen on a daily basis.
 
So why, in a world where we’re often encouraged to avoid the macabre, does horror appeal to so many of us, and in some cases ignite our creativity?
 
To help me answer that I had the genuine pleasure to chat with three great guys who all had a similar relationship with horror in their youth as I did. A generation later and this love affair has manifested itself in three very different, yet no less fascinating ways.
 
Andrew Lyall
 
Andrew runs the YouTube channel Grumpy Andrew’s Horror House[4] for which he reviews the latest releases, reports on his trips to horror conventions and also waxes lyrical about old favourites. One of his regular features is “The Films That Scared Me” in which he looks back at pictures which have stayed with him, some for many, many years.
 
What was it that attracted you to scary material when you were little?
 
Well, that is truly a story of two halves!
 
I can clearly remember, aged 9, having an incredibly drawn out debate with my mother about why I should be able to buy Scream! comic with my pocket money. She was dead against it but pester power won out in the end.
 
Likewise, a year or so later I recall standing with her in our local W H Smith branch coveting the VHS release of A Nightmare On Elm Street 2. By that time I had my own money by way of a paper round but not the requisite years to buy a copy myself. My mum didn’t want to buy it for me because it would “give me nightmares”. In the middle of the shop I explained to her that I’d been watching horror movies and reading horror novels for years without a single nightmare; and more to the point I’d already seen Freddy’s Revenge - without a single night’s disturbed sleep - and simply wanted this video to sit snuggly alongside my copy of the original movie which I already owned without detriment to my sleep.
 
On the flipside to that my Dad used to tape late night horror movies off the telly for me and my brother to watch after karate whilst my Mum was working her Saturday job.
 
That was a really solid grounding in the history of horror cinema because Channel 4 at the time were playing the old Universal movies in order (if memory serves). So we got to watch the continuing adventures of Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man; I got my requisite chills and it was all very tame and child friendly to be honest.
 
Following that we graduated to Hammer films when BBC2 used to screen their late night horror double bills. A little more lurid and a lot more thrilling for this young horror fan.
 
The best Saturday, though, was when Dad crouched down in front of the television and slid a VHS cassette into the machine and, before pressing play, he turned around and said very seriously “Don’t tell your mother”. As soon as the ominous chanting started over the opening credits I screamed “It’s The Omen!”. Over the next three weekends we watched all three Omen movies, but the die had been cast many, many years before that. All I knew after that particular set of movies was that a taboo had been broken and the wide world of 18 certificate [the UK equivalent of NC-17] horror movies was mine if I could employ the right combination of guile, negotiation whining.
 
I used to read Scream! too, and I remember similar battles with my parents over buying it. I resorted to reading friends’ copies or sneaking it home between much more kiddie-friendly publications like The Beano and The Amazing Spider-Man. Did you ever have to resort to subterfuge to get your horror kicks?
 
I don’t really recall watching too many horror movies in secret. Understand, though, that in the mid 80s every corner shop had its own rack of VHS boxes to rent. It wasn’t exactly the wild west, but the shop owners were relaxed enough to let me and a group of my unsupervised friends rent a copy of Hellraiser. We watched that back at my house and a couple of my friends did have nightmares and I did get into hot water for that one.
 
That said, I’d already gotten into hot water at school for telling ghost stories I made up as I went along. Some of the kids got upset at night and their parents complained and I had to have a chat with my Headmaster who asked me if I could perhaps tell fairy stories instead. In hindsight he was clearly torn: he didn’t want to curb a burgeoning creativity entirely, but at the same time he didn’t want any more calls from unhappy parents.
 
Fairy stories weren’t in me, though. I wanted to tell my stories of faceless hitchhikers or old motels with pictures of emaciated toads on the wall (suffice to say in the morning, one disappeared guest later, the painted toads were all nice and fat!).
 
It’s funny you say that. A favourite teacher of mine, who arrived at our school in the same year Scream! launched, told us slightly older kids ghost stories in assembly. One I remember particularly well was about a girl whose reflection tried to swap places with her. Eventually I went on to write my own take on that tale as an adult, but at the time it scared me so much that I couldn’t look in a mirror for days after. Did anything you read or watched frighten you like that?
 
I’d say I was thrilled rather than scared. As I’ve gotten older there are a few films that have properly scared me, but when I was younger I honestly just revelled in the fact that this was my thing and I was allowed to experience and enjoy it.
 
By the time I was able to watch less age appropriate films I’d already read everything James Herbert had published and much, much more besides. There’s no age restriction on a book and I’d already thrilled to the widescreen violence, carnage and (yes) sex scenes that blossomed in my head from off the page that was much more explicit than anything the movies had to offer (until Hellraiser, I suppose).
 
I know what you mean. At around the age of 8 or 9 I begged my parents to let me watch the Frank Langella version of Dracula with them. I found the scene where Van Helsing enters the tomb and is confronted by his undead daughter utterly terrifying. But… I kept rewinding that scene to watch it again when my folks weren’t around. I realised that I actually enjoyed the sensation of fear. Why do you think it is that some kids like you and I returned to scary stuff that others even refused to watch once?
 
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t like horror stories or horror films. My submission to Tony Hart’s gallery [a British artist and TV presenter who encouraged children to send in their own pictures to his show, Take Hart] was a crayon drawing of Dracula in front of his castle, surrounded by bats. It didn’t make Mr Hart’s wall.
 
There was no formative experience I can remember. If someone told me it was genetic that would make sense to me. It was always the wolf in Red Riding Hood, fat from eating the grandmother and luring the girl to her fate, that fired my imagination at bedtime. Or the troll emerging from under the bridge to snatch one of the billy goats gruff. Not too much later than that children learn about Dracula and Frankenstein – through Sesame Street or The Munsters or on breakfast cereal boxes – who become absorbed into our understanding or the stories about “goodies” and “baddies”. I just always, from day one, found the “baddies” to be infinitely more interesting.
 
My own desire to write ghost stories as an adult can be traced back those early comic books, films and tales told by my teacher in the early 80s. How has watching horror at a young age shaped who you are today?
 
As I alluded to above, I honestly think being drawn to horror illuminates a fundamental part of my make up. I never had a choice. Cobwebbed castles; the howl of a wolf; the flutter of a bat or the rattle of chains and a ghostly moan were the things that opened up the doors in my mind and set my imagination fizzing more than anything else. Rather than horror becoming a childish thing to be put away in adult years, though, I find myself just as fascinated now by the history of horror. As much as I still love watching a new or classic horror film for the first time, I equally love trying to understand how these things fit into a wider tapestry.
 
It’s perhaps a Quixotic task but it has its rewards. Recently I watched a 1972 film called Tower of Evil and was delighted to discover a film that works as a perfect midpoint stepping stone between the atmosphere drenched Hammer films of the previous decade and the gore-drenched slasher films that were to come about a decade later. It was a tiny tile to add to the larger mosaic. Whilst I may never see or understand the whole picture, it’s one that I’m drawn to just as much now as when I was listening to my bedtime stories, thinking of the woodcutter slicing open the Big Bad Wolf, wondering what the contents of his stomach might look like!
 
Rev. Peter Laws
 
While researching this piece the topic of parents’ disapproval cropped up quite often. Yet it’s not only our elders who can have a strong opposition to a horror-centric avocation. The church often protests the release of horror films, especially those with a religious setting. Someone who is no stranger to this antithesis is Peter Laws. Not only is he a crime author and columnist for Fortean Times magazine but he is also a practicing Christian and ordained Baptist minister - something that you wouldn’t naturally associate with an avid consumer and creator of some very dark material.
 
How do you reconcile a love of horror with your vocation as a minister?
 
I’ve found that the two subjects compliment each other, especially since horror films first got me thinking about spirituality. Growing up I was really resistant to organised religion especially Christianity. Yet horror films seemed to consistently take the supernatural seriously. That forced me to ask deep, metaphysical questions about life, death, good and evil. Besides, the Bible uses plenty of dark imagery. It’s filled with radical hope and very progressive ideas, but it also has lots of death, despair and even a few allegorical monsters here and there.
 
So if the Bible is willing to use the darker shades in it’s palette of communication, then I figure I can too through my own scary novels and other writing. It seems to me that God sees a value in pondering such things, so who are we to argue with the Almighty! ha ha. Horror resonates with us because it has the power to shock us into wisdom.
 
I started attending church myself in my early teens and I remember them holding a protest against horror material around the early late 80s or 90s (The Last Temptation of Christ and Exorcist III were some the targets if I recall correctly). Us youths were warned away from that kind of thing, as well as heavy metal music (not that we always listened) as it could debase our innocent little minds. Do you ever worry that all the horror you watch and read might have some kind of corrupting influence on you?
 
Not really. I did at one point, but that was early in my Christianity (I started going to church in my early 20s). I had some people around me saying that horror films were evil, and were vehicles for demonic influence. There were times when I labelled my own desire for them as being potentially dysfunctional, until I slowed down a bit and actually thought about a very fundamental but easy to miss fact - killing people in fiction is a completely different thing to killing people in real life. I have no desire for the latter. In fact, I find the idea of the latter so disturbing, that I use horror as a way of helping me come to terms with my fears. So no, it doesn’t feel like it will corrupt me. Writing my book The Frighteners (which explores this subject in depth) really put me at ease with my own interests!
 
Both your parents and mine allowed us to watch some fairly frightening material back in the 80s and some of it can have a lasting effect. Therefore should we be mindful of the horror we allow our children to consume?
 
Yes, but it has to be in a sensible, non-hysterical way. So no, I don’t let my 6 year old watch The Human Centipede. However, I don’t approve of parents and teachers who go in the opposite direction. Trying to shut down any form of scary material for children is, I think, foolish. The world is a scary place, and we need to help children come to appreciate that not all people are friendly. That’s why I think letting little kids only read The Gruffalo or The Hungry Caterpillar (where there are no baddies) isn’t helpful. They should also have tales of monsters and baddies and untrustworthy adults. Traditional fairy tales are filled with such things.
 
Kids use scary material as a way of categorising what scares them but also (and this is crucial) of learning courage. So it’s no shock that kids will hear a scary story and may even have a nightmare about it. Yet if they ask to hear it again, I say, do what they ask. To deny them the chance to voluntarily step back into what frightens them takes away their ways of learning to be brave. I actually think this principle of learning bravery through scary things carries on into adulthood, ad helps explain why so many of us still love horror as adults. It helps us deal with the world, but it also reminds us of a time when we first felt fear as children, and therefore first felt fully alive. The nostalgia element of horror fandom can’t be overestimated - so many horror fans began their fright journey as kids, and are capturing something of the past again whenever they watch a scary movie.
 
When I was at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival a common occurring theme was that horror stories are often looked down on as a genre by various groups: critics, parents, the church, ‘proper writers’. Do you think there are lessons we could learn from horror that are maybe dismissed because of this.
 
I think there are lessons from all forms of art and culture, and I hate the idea of us dismissing it through snobbery. Heck, I see lessons and thoughtful pointers in everything! I just watched an episode of The Love Boat, and even that has intriguing lessons if we care to look. But yes, horror has many riches that speak to humans across continents and times. By the way, I’m not sure if horror is looked down on as a genre. I hear that said a lot, but in practice there seems to be a lot of appreciation for it’s potential. True, the Academy Awards rarely honour horror, but they don’t honour science fiction as much either, compared to drama anyway. But I think horror is a deeply loved and appreciated genre by millions of people, and I’m reminded of how respected it is every time I see another academic book or in depth special edition Blu Ray come out.
 
Stephen Brotherstone
 
With nostalgia being a recurring theme in my first two guests’ answers I couldn’t think of anyone better to talk to for my final interview than one of the authors of Scarred For Life. With his friend Dave Lawrence, Stephen Brotherstone writes exclusively about the things which sometimes deliberately and often totally unintentionally scared those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s. These musings are recorded in the Scarred For Life book and in their extremely entertaining Twitter feed.
 
Scarred For Life celebrates that feeling which can perhaps be best summed up by the clichéd image of a Doctor Who fan of hiding behind the sofa, one eye screwed up in terror but the other unable to tear itself away from the terrible but fascinating events unfolding on the screen. What made you want to document the things that trigger those emotions?
 
Scarred For Life was born from a conversation in work, the kind of conversation everybody has with their friends once they reach A Certain Age. We were getting quite nostalgic about the things we grew up with in the 70s and 80s: “Did you read that comic where...?” “Remember that kids’ show...?” “Who saw that public information film, the one with...?” The thing is, literally every single thing we talked about over the course of an hour or two was shocking, violent, terrifying and, by today’s standards, downright inappropriate for kids. The phrase “I was scarred for life!” was bandied around several times.
 
That conversation fired my imagination, and after a quick internet trawl, I realised that nobody had written a book about the dark side of 70s and 80s pop culture. Which was a bugger, because I really wanted to read one. One of my friends asked, “Well, why don’t you write it?” and, after initially laughing the idea off (I’d never written anything professionally in my life), set to work. When I realised the sheer enormity of the subject and the task ahead, Dave jumped aboard to write the majority of our huge television section. And, three and a half years and 740 pages later, here we are.
 
We set up the Twitter account in 2014 to promote the book, and to post clips and pictures to illustrate the things we were writing about. It soon struck a chord; one of the nicest things about it is interacting with people and sharing memories of things that frightened us (and several of the things that turned up in Volumes One and Two were suggested by our Twitter followers!).
 
Do you think the quite disturbing tone of some 70s and 80s children’s entertainment was deliberate?
 
Some of it very definitely was, yeah, but it’s a bit of both. Programmes like Shadows (ITV’s supernatural anthology for children), Children of the Stones, Dramarama, Spooky, the best-remembered scenes from Doctor Who, and comics such as Scream! and Misty – they were all obviously specifically designed to frighten children. But one of the things we’ve found is that some of the examples that scared myself and Dave (and our readers) the most were definitely a product of the era. Look at Noseybonk from the BBC kids’ show Jigsaw – this was a character who was clearly intended to be cute, silly and endearing, but that mask and an indefinable something about the way he was presented ensured that he became one of the most terrifying icons of British television. As if to confirm this, a recent X-Files episode [Familiar, season 11 episode 8] paid homage to him!
 
The 70s, especially, were strange times. There was something about the grainy 16mm film that was used in TV shows, the weird electronic/Radiophonic music that wafted around them, the eerie title sequences that introduced these shows and the fact that nobody really spared a thought as to how these things would impact upon young people’s minds, that combined to produce something akin to race memories for my generation. Take a look at Action, the precursor to 2000AD. There’s absolutely no way that a comic as hyper-violent and bloody as that would ever get past the initial planning stages today, but creator Pat Mills understood that it was exactly the kind of thing that kids wanted!
 
You talk a lot about the Public Information Films which used quite traumatic imagery to deliver important safety lessons. I once hosted and DJ’d an 80s night where I played a few of these PIFs between songs but I had to stop because they frightened some of the children. Why do you think the makers of these short films settled on such a disturbing tone to get their message across?
 
That’s an easy one – Public Information Films were specifically designed to be as horrific and as shocking as possible in order to lodge themselves firmly in kids’ minds, and stay there. Hopefully, or so the thinking went, if a child found themselves in one of the situations presented in a PIF, it would trigger a flashback to poor Jimmy getting electrocuted whilst trying to retrieve his Frisbee (Play Safe: Frisbee), a child drowning in a slurry pit (Apaches), any of the gory situations presented in Building Sites Bite or, if they were fannying about near water, they’d worry about receiving a visit from Donald Pleasance’s evil hooded monk, The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water. If there’s one thing that seems to have been confirmed during the making of Scarred For Life, it’s that
PIFs had a huge, huge impact upon children of the 70s and 80s. I can’t think of anything that generates a stronger reaction when we tweet about it, or when we receive feedback from our readers.
​
Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids myself so don’t watch much children’s TV these days but from what I have seen the overall tone seems a lot lighter. Do you think children’s entertainment has mellowed over the last few decades?
 
Yes! A very definite yes! This softening up process was already happening during the 1980s, as we’re discovering during our research for Volume Two, and by the mid-1990s, the Scarred For Life era was all but over. I think that this is down to a couple of things: there was a huge amount of horror and sci-fi shows specifically made for kids in the 70s, but that begins to dry up by the middle of the 80s. They were still around, of course, but Volume Two’s Kids’ TV section is a lot more varied in its subject matter than that in Volume One; gritty dramas such as Noah’s Castle and Break in the Sun are covered, along with the likes of The Tripods, Chocky and the scarier episodes of Dramarama. Also, programme makers were finally beginning to realise the impact that their shows were having on their audiences, something which comes to a head with 1992’s Ghostwatch. After a teenage boy committed suicide after watching it, things could never be the same again…
 


So, going back to 1988, my bedroom and that window… I successfully argued my case. A quick phone call to my nan ensured a peaceful night’s sleep and a trip to the DIY store the next day put paid to any future tantrums. For a long time my parents never let me forget that night, reminding me of it every time I pleaded to watch things that got my heart racing. Usually stuff taped from TV which was edited for some of the more extreme content. Among many others, I remember seeing in this way were Halloween III, The Fog, A Nightmare on Elm Street, An American Werewolf in London, Quatermass & The Pit, Poltergeist and Frank Langella’s take on Dracula, although I still wasn't allowed to watch The Evil Dead!
 
I think it’s important to point out that I’m not making an argument for or against kids watching scary stuff here - that’s down to each individual parent and what they think their children can cope with. I’m just intrigued by the number of artists working in horror who started their journey in childhood. I include myself in that. Thirty years later I love to write spooky stories. I spend hour after hour sat at my laptop trying to think up passages which creep me out. One particular story scared me so much that my Fitbit recorded my pulse at over 100bpm! And people seem to like my stuff. Late last year I plucked up the courage to take one of my pieces to a festive Ghost Story For Christmas event and read it out loud to a room full of strangers. They liked it, much to my surprise and relief, and I’ve been invited back for other events, so they must have been telling the truth! I attribute much of this to the films I watched or the comics and books I read in those formative years.
 
Thirty years on and I still can’t sleep in a room without curtains as a direct result of watching a silly vampire flick with my parents but the way I see it, that’s a small price to pay for the wealth of art, literature, cinema and, most of all, friends that my investment in horror has brought me.

Peter Laws’ supernaturally tinged crime thrillers Purged, Unleashed and Severed (Allison & Busby, 2017-2019), featuring the priest-turned-detective Matt Hunter, as well as his nonfiction book The Frighteners (Icon Books, 2018), an in depth look at why people love to be scared, are available to buy now. A fourth Matt Hunter novel is due out next year.

@RevPeterLaws
 ​

Ginger Nuts of Horror is honoured to be the first stop on the blog tour for Nick Setchfields excellent The Spider Dance (read our review of The Spider Dance here), many thanks to Titan Books for allowing us to be part of this. 

Nick Setchfield is a writer, editor and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in SFX and Total Film, two of the UK's leading movie and TV titles. He's also been a film reviewer for the BBC and a scriptwriter for ITV's Spitting Image. Over a 20 year career he's interviewed untold actors, writers and directors, along with assorted Jedi, superheroes, starship captains, diabolical masterminds and the occasional quotable Dalek.

The War in the Dark is his first novel. Combining a lifelong love of spy thrillers, international adventure and occult weirdness, it begins the adventures of Christopher Winter, a British Intelligence agent battling demonic forces in the Cold War of the 1960s. 

The War in the Dark was longlisted for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. His latest book The Spider Dance is out now from Titan Books, you can grab a copy by clicking here 

Nick Setchfield was born in Cardiff, lives in Bath and lets his mind wander.

 
One of the true joys of writing the Christopher Winter adventures is playing with genre on a molecular level.
 
The War in the Dark took the DNA of a spy thriller and spliced it with the genetic codes of horror and magic. After unleashing that fiendish hybrid on the world I wanted to go a little further for the sequel, expanding the occult landscape of Cold War Europe. Winter has discovered that demons exist– what else might be waiting out there?
 
I’ve always had a weakness for vampires. I love the richness of their mythology, their sensuality, their intelligence. They’re romantic, erotic creations, poised between the grave and the sheets. And I love all that glorious Victorian theatricality, too, the velvet and the capes and the way they know how to make an entrance. They have style. And they tend to be conversationalists, which is another reason I’ve always preferred them over tedious old zombies (yes, you want brains, I get it, you shambling bore). Conversationalists are good for writers.
 
So I had the itch to play with the undead. But I knew that castles and candelabras wouldn’t fit into Winter’s world of tweed suits and microdots. The clash of styles would have been too extreme. I needed modern vampires – or at least vampires appropriate to 1965. Still terrifying, still stylish, but a threat that felt a little sharper, a little less velvety. Vampires whose DNA could be successfully fused with a spy thriller.
 
There are precedents. I’m hugely fond of the 1973 Hammer movie The Satanic Rites of Dracula – though it’s seen as the embarrassing mutant cousin of the studio’s more traditional chillers. Like its equally unloved predecessor, Dracula AD 1972, it uproots the Count from his historic mittel-European domain and places him in contemporary London, his taloned silhouette looming over Piccadilly Circus and Tower Bridge in the title sequence. At the film’s own press conference star Christopher Lee declared the script “fatuous” and “inane” and later decried it as “a parody – unintentionally so.”
 
But I think he’s wrong. To me there’s a genuine thrill seeing this horror icon mixed up in a story of secret service agents and germ warfare. I love how the movie recontextualises the Count as a Bond-style mastermind, plotting the end of mankind from the highest floor of London’s ultramodern Centrepoint building. It proves to me that vampirism and espionage can be an electric blend, even if it’s sacrilege to many, including the man behind the fangs.
 
Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comic of the 1970s mines a similar seam, pitting the lord of the undead against a team of present-day vampire hunters. The stories are drenched in gothic atmosphere but they’re propulsive, too, with an energy clearly indebted to action-adventure cinema (Satanic Rites may have been a direct inspiration).
 
And yet Dracula remains Dracula, still kipping in coffins, still dressed for a blood-soaked night at the opera. I wanted to strip away all the cobwebbed trappings while keeping the essence of the myth, reimagined for the jet age of the 1960s.
 
So I thought about how vampires operate from a position of power and stealth, exploiting the folklore around their own existence to maintain dominion. It struck me that the great crime syndicates do much the same. The Mafia and the Camorra enjoy their infamy, weaponise it. And vampires would aspire to be apex predators in society, just like those secret fraternities. They’d be organised. Ruthless and vicious, yes, but in a smart, strategic way. Their victims wouldn’t be there simply to satisfy their blood lust – they’d find a way to monetise vampirism itself, use that unholy hunger to shore up their empire. It’s just business, you know? Somehow that’s even scarier.
 
And while these vampires are amused by their big screen counterparts – “The movies are useful propaganda for my kind,” says one – what if this version of the undead refused to play by the rules? What if crucifixes meant nothing to them? What if they could step on sacred ground and walk in sunlight – in fact, what if they controlled the sun-struck streets of Naples? The Italian coast - isn’t that the last place you’d expect to meet them?
 
You’ll actually encounter many kinds of vampires in The Spider Dance. Some are terrifyingly primitive, little more than ravenous piles of bones and rags (“Tomb-filth” to the highest vampires). Others are victims, of the creatures that created them or the world that fears them. Some have surprising origins, and even more surprising abilities. One you won’t see coming.
 
But the Shadowless - I Senz’ombr – are the deadliest, and that’s why they rule Naples. Naturally they’re also the hardest to kill. They don’t turn to dust in the sun, after all, and the cross is simply a trinket to them.
 
But my man Winter may just have the perfect weapon…
 
 
Find out more about Nick Setchfield on his website: nicksetchfield.com

Ginger Nuts of Horror is honoured to welcome David Jenkins to the site today to kick off the blog tour for his latest book Gardens, Galaxies And Goosebumps with his article on his favourite short story collections.  Be sure to check out the other stops on the blog tour, details of which can be found at the end of the article, and make sure you come back here on July 19h, where we will be closing the blog tour with his article on Dracula as a character in other books.  

And as a special bonus to the readers of the site, if you leave a comment below telling us what your favourite short story collection is we will enter you into a prize draw to win a copy of Gardens Galaxies and Goosebumps 

David Jenkins has always lived in Skelmersdale and is the current secretary of Skelmersdale Writers Group. He writes in a variety of genres including horror, fantasy and science fiction across multiple formats including comics, short stories and novels. His reviews and articles have been featured on various websites including Mass Movement, Attack on Planet B and Gingernuts of Horror. Gardens, Galaxies and Goosebumps is his first short story collection.

 
There are a lot of brilliant short stories out there but having a collection of them either by one author or a theme is difficult as there is a massive chance of sameness. After all, there are only so many plots (seven according to Christopher Booker) and few authors can write successfully in a variety of voices. Stephen King has published several great short story collections like ‘Four Past Midnight’ and ‘Different Seasons’ the latter includes Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. However, many of his short stories are novellas which is a bit longer than I like for a short story. So the collections in the list below all contain tales that can be read and finished while commuting. In no particular order, my favourite short story collections are.
 
1-    Weird Ales volume 1 edited by Theresa Derwin- Features a variety of tales about alcohol and apart from two stories featuring Cthlulu the rest are original. Before talking about my favourite I would just like to reiterate the uniqueness of the plots- A magazine hack searches for a classic punk singer in a strange bar filled with fairies, an alcoholic becomes obsessed with a poisonous but enlightening drink and a businessman wants to sell a new beer in his nightclubs despite the misgivings of the beer club. These were just some of the stories I felt were good but not great. As for my favourite. In ‘Belly Buster’ the first person narrative is realistic but humorous with Bob declaring ‘I’m what you call out of shape- well I suppose a barrel is a shape’. Bob tells the story of how he killed a cat with the beer he was testing after not following the serving suggestion.  The success of the author Hayley Orgill in this story is making you feel completely in Bob’s shoes as he realises his mistake, tries to get rid of the cat and then decides what to do with the last bottles of Belly Buster.

2-    Satan’s Shorts by Heide Goody and Iain Grant- Is a collection of short tales mostly about Clovenhoof (AKA Satan who lives in Birmingham under the disguise of a mortal man). Like the main Clovenhoof series these stories are funny, cringe-worthy and different to anything else I’ve seen.   From Satan enrolling in night classes to his attempts to cure his best friend Ben of Arachnophobia these stories are pure silly entertainment.

3-    Disenchanted by CL Raven- Is a collection of stories based on fairy tales but no guarantee of a happy ending. There are some great twists here from Prince Charming being a necrophiliac to Hansel & Gretel being sent into the woods as a sacrifice. These stories are more of a weird, modern take on the tales with both the original tale and the new parts complementing each other.  Sleeping Beauties with Prince Charming was my favourite as it was so different from the Disney version with its eroticism and dark humour.

4-    We Can Improve You edited by Brian Marshall and Alex Davis - Has an interesting cover and I enjoyed at least 10 out of the 13 stories even though they focused mostly on brain capacity and technology failing. Like any good Sci-fi collections and indeed fiction, in general, it made me think about the future. ‘Driver Not Found’ by Gav Thrope is my favourite tale in this book due to the focus on how technology controls everything and the constant reference to time which adds to the tension.
​
5-    Issac Asimov: The Complete Stories volume 1 and 2- The creator of the robot and the three laws of robotics doesn’t disappoint with thoughtful, tight prose that entertains, educate and inspire. Picking a favourite is impossible as each story grips you from the start either with its voice, its premise or how realistic it is, often all three.

Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he's not sleeping. He's happily married to a woman who helps his career and is supportive, which is all he ever wanted in life... 

He's written over 150 stories that are currently available, including horror, zombies, contemporary fiction, thrillers and more. His goal is to write a good story and not worry about genre labels. 

He not only runs two successful podcasts...

Arm Cast: Dead Sexy Horror Podcast - interviewing fellow authors as well as filmmakers, musicians, etc. 

The Mando Method Podcast with co-host Chuck Buda - talking about writing and publishing

But he owns the network they're on, too! Project Entertainment Network


He also loves to talk in third person... because he's really that cool.

You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com for not only his latest releases but interviews and guest posts with other authors he likes!

and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal: 

armandrosamilia@gmail.com


THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 

Phantoms by Dean Koontz. The paperback that got me into reading horror and eventually writing it, too. My mother had a huge collection of horror paperbacks in the eighties and once I discovered them I’d read as many as possible. I loved them all. Couldn’t get enough of serial killers, giant bugs, spiders, aliens, beasts under the bed and in the lake… loved all of it.


THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING 

Friday the 13th. I watched it with my mother and brother, and I was freaked out by it. In a good way! It really kicked off the love of horror movies when I was a teen. I’d rent anything I could get my hands on at the local video store (you kids will need to Google that) and spend Friday night with a horror movie and a pizza. The reasons I’m fat and write horror now, I guess.



THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

Jeez. Slap me with the tough questions now. I’ve read hundreds of great horror books over the years. I was initially trying to come up with some classic book. Dracula or Frankenstein. Something along those lines. But truthfully… it might be The Rising by Brian Keene. Why? Because not only is it a fantastic book, but it got me engrossed in the zombie writing part of my career, and that’s a big reason why I’m a full-time author now. It’s a great book and I love the ending, too!


THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 

Beaches with Bette Midler. That’s my ongoing joke. The real answer? 1982’s The Thing. It has everything a horror fan could want, and the acting is brilliant. The sense of dread and isolation is amazing. I could watch it over and over. It still holds up, too.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

For me this is an easy one. Dean Koontz. He was the first author I ever really started reading everything he released, and luckily for me my mother had a huge Koontz collection of paperbacks from the 70’s and 80’s so I got to read them all. Some might argue he’s not a horror author, but you can then make the same case for King. Right? Koontz got me into reading horror and thriller books and is the main reason I wanted to be a writer. So… thanks, Dean!

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

That’s a really tough one. I’ve read so many great books over the years with some fantastic covers. What sticks out right now, off the top of my head, are the Titan Books releases of the H.P. Lovecraft and Others anthologies edited by Stephen Jones. All three covers are striking and you know what you’re going to get. Ask me again tomorrow and it might be something different. So many choices!

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

The original Alien poster. In space no one can hear you scream. Simple. Effective. Brilliant. I saw it on cable with my brother and parents, not knowing what it was going to be about… but I knew it would be scary based on the movie poster and HBO using it as the promo leading up to its cable release.

THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Let’s be honest: everything I write is brilliant. Just ask me. I’ll tell ya. Truthfully, I’d have to say The Enemy Held Near, a haunted house/haunted family book I co-wrote with Jay Wilburn, is a great introduction to my work. If you had to start with something I wrote by myself, it might be Green River Blend. A horror trilogy about coffee.

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Besides  all of the unfinished junk I have, which will never see the light of day, or the original stories I wrote in the 80’s and 90’s (some of which were actually published in zines) I’d say Freehold: Southern Storm, an epic fantasy book from 2006. While the plot and idea are serviceable but very cliché, the writing is awful. I cringe when someone brings it up. It was self-published back when that was a bad thing to do. Only about 75 copies were ever sold, and those were mostly to family and friends. Just awful.

THE MOST UNDERRATED  FILM OF ALL TIME

For horror it would be Blood Sucking Freaks. Look it up. Amazingly bad acting, storyline and action, yet… it was a classic I watched several times as a teen. Not sure why, or if I’d ever watch it again, though…

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME


December by Phil Rickman. Really, any of his books. When I mention this author most people have no idea who I’m talking about, especially in the U.S. He’s a great writer and has some really nice moody parts in his novels.

THE MOST UNDERRATTED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

Chuck Buda. Not even just saying this because he’s my co-host on The Mando Method Podcast, either. His books are amazing. Raw and fierce is how I’d describe them. He writes with so much emotion and his The Debt Collector series is great. More people should be reading his work.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SACRED ME THE MOST

Phantoms by Dean Koontz as a kid. You see a theme here? It freaked me out. The story itself was new at the time, and there’s such a mood Koontz was able to capture with this story. My first real Koontz book I read and still the best. And no, I’ve never seen the movie and don’t want to see it.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT
I’m always working on a few projects at once. The ongoing Dirty Deeds crime thriller series (look for Dirty Deeds 7 this summer) as well as wrapping up the Chelsea Avenue horror trilogy, a few monster books for Severed Press, a few horror-themed anthologies and a lot more. Always busy. Always writing.
 
Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoyed the interview!
 
Armand Rosamilia