Horror is big business, especially in the world of literature. Last year, horror fiction sales rose by 33% in the UK, totaling 4.2 million in profit. in the UK, totaling 4.2 million in profit.

If you love a good scary story, you may have all sorts of horror books lying around. Some might be rarer than you think!
Keeping your beloved books in great condition ensures that generations to come can enjoy them. It also increases their overall value if you ever want to sell them.
Nothing is scarier than a ruined book, so keep reading for a guide on how you can protect your favorite horror books.

Store Your Horror Books Safely

Where you store your books is, without a doubt, the most important aspect of care. You can have a pristine, mint condition first-edition "Dracula" that you've never opened, but if you're storing it incorrectly, you're run the risk of ruining it all the same.

Where to Store

The best thing you can do for your beloved books is to keep them out of the sunlight.
Have you ever seen a book with yellowed pages? It's because the paper manufacturers use contains a chemical that oxidizes when exposed to sunlight.
Not only can improper storage ruin your pages, but sunlight also affects the cover. Storing books in well-lit, sunny areas can dull even the brightest of book covers.
Keep your books in a dark or dim area away from sunlight.

Temperature Control

This tends to be the trickiest part of caring for older books.
While you won't be able to keep your tomes of terror away from heat and humidity altogether, do your best to keep them away from vents, heaters, and pipes. Heat weakens the paper, while condensation creates the perfect environment for mold and mildew.

Other Considerations

Can't afford top of the line storage for your books? No worries. At the very least, you should keep up with regular maintenance.
You can dust them with a microfiber cloth, for instance. As long as you're gentle, you shouldn't impact their overall condition.
Likewise, watch out for pests like insects and vermin. Insects like to nest in dark, warm areas, while vermin may use your books as a snack.

Invest in Plastic Covers

To go above and beyond in the care of your books, consider investing in UV-resistant book covers. Since sunlight is a death sentence for books, a UV cover can keep your cover looking as good as it did the day you brought it home.
If the book is already damaged, you can print replacement book covers online.

Avoid a Shock: Keep Your Horror Books Safe

We don't know about you, but we'd take a stay in a haunted house over the loss of our favorite horror books any day.
While caring for books isn't always easy, it is rewarding. Knowing that you're preserving a bit of horror history is well worth a little extra work!
Want to learn more about horror memorabilia? Then be sure to visit our blog for even more awesome horror-related content.


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My memories of childhood  are faint, and often green. I recall summers spent in my grandparents woods with my cousin, and various outings with my mom and grandmother that have remained as the defining moments of earlier years. There was much to be afraid of in the waking hours, as a chronically ill child. I never knew how close I was to death, given the severity of my illnesses, and the unpredictability of their presence. But it would not be illness or its consequences that I feared more than anything else. It would be the consequences of illness, the fear of which would manifest in a peculiar way as I slept.

Nights were the place of contemplation for me, both in the moments before sleep and in the density of dreams. I can remember being in bed and thinking hard, trying to remember where I had been before this life, but reaching nothing but a blank wall. I never achieved any momentus epiphanies while awake. In dreams, however, there would be denser stories that spoke to the nature of the horror I was experiencing in life.

I cannot recall when I first became aware of werewolves, since my memory forces me to believe that I knew of them before any kind of media exposure. Without some kind of supernatural or weird beliefs to suggest such a thing, I can only count my memory as faulty and prone to elevate the strange.

The dreams that recurred the most were those of the robed werewolf on the front porch of my childhood home. Some dark energy would compel me to rush down the stairs, pass through the dining room and living room, and out out creaky front door to the porch. This particular beast would speak, though rarely. I would say “this is a dream!” It would say, “this is not a dream.” I would be unable to leave its presence, locked into some dark magical force-field of evil, though I often woke up at that point, before anything violent would happen.

I had a dream in my youngest years, only once, of a beast running through the woods, in black and white. I was not the beast, but I was witnessing the speedy travel through its eyes. It would cut back and forth between that perspective, and me walking down the staircase at night. The culmination of the dream was walking into my kitchen and seeing the werewolf’s face peering in at me through the window.

Another recurring dream was always set in my grandparent’s woods. The cliffrock, which serves in waking-life as the den of quite innocent foxes, was in my haunted dreamland, the den of werewolves. In the night, I would be aware of their presence in the yard, and run with all my might to my grandparent’s front door, trying to escape them. I would always get into the house just in time, but they would be on the porch, trying to open the door. I woke up before they did, at least in childhood. In a recent iteration of this dream, as they have chosen to reappear in my life for reasons I cannot fathom, a werewolf got into the house and tore off my grandmother’s scalp. I wonder if this is some manifestation of my horror that she is succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

I have made attempts at analyzing my deep fear of werewolves, which was stoked so heavily by these nightmares. It can be argued that the creatures themselves embody a dark metamorphosis. A possession of the body by indefinable, abhorrent conditions. It does not take much to connect this to the dark transformation of a diseased body. But why werewolves? Wolves themselves have always been precious to me. My grandfather brought me a stuffed wolf from Alaska that still sits atop my bookshelf. My parents bought me small statues and blankets, even enrolled me in one of those “adopt a wolf” charity things back in the 90s. The connection between family and wolves was pivotal. They were, to me, a representation of love and being cherished. If this unconditional love were to be threatened, inverted, possessed, it would became monstrosity… it became my ultimate fear. Of the splintering of that which kept me safe amid the horrors of chronic illness. Family. And this thread manifested in my dreams as werewolves.
   
There were other common elements in the dreams. There were always staircases, though I have yet to discover what they may have meant. There were barriers between myself and the werewolves, often in the form of doors and windows. I would cross some threshold in every story, whether it be from one room into the next, or outside, or inside. There is a suggestion of menace lurking outside the home, of “evil” having its eye on me. There are suggestions of decay and infiltration, corruption of the body, monstrous birth, threat and anxiety surrounding the family. I am of the belief that there does not have to be one meaning (or any at all, really), though evidence points to connections between life and horror, in this case.
   
My writing is thick with the materials of having lived a strange life, marked by the power and consistency of disease. I have never written a story about a werewolf, and I have no plans to do so. I have written tales of monstrosity, some of which are included in my collection Of One Pure Will.  In The Wytch-Byrd of the Nabryd-keind, there are monstrous birds of unknown origin. In In the Way of Eslan Mendeghast, there are suggestions of possession by some unearthly thing. In The Visitor, a being from another world embodies the figure of a man. In Ash in the Pocket, flying monstrosities known as Uldreds loom down from the dark heavens. In In the Room of Red Night, a beastly subterranean being takes part in a ritual of torment. Through these characters and elements, I have been able to explore the dark regions of fiction, though it is my preference to not delve too far into my own mind for such things. I do not wish to stir the recesses of the mind in such a way, because even though the bodily age of thirty approaches,

​I cannot conceive of a way that I could contend with these dark manifestations of the night.                                                                                                                                                   
                          
Farah Rose Smith
Childhood Fears: Werewolves

George Lea is an unfixed oddity that has a tendency to float around the UK Midlands (his precise location and plain of operation is somewhat difficult to determine beyond that, though certain institutions are working on various ways of defining his movements).

An isolated soul by nature, he tends to spend more time with books than with people, consumes stories in the manner a starving man might the scattered debris of an incongruously exploded pie factory, whilst also attempting to churn out his own species of mythological absurdity (it's cheaper than a therapist, less trouble than an exorcist and seems to have the effect of anchoring him in fixed form and state, at least for the moment).

Proclaims to spend most of his time "...feeling like some extra-dimensional alien on safari," which he very well might be (apprehension and autopsy will likely yield conclusive details).

Following the publication of his first short story collection, Strange Playgrounds, is currently working in collusion with the entity known as "Nick Hardy" on the project Born in Blood. ​

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 
 
This is actually kind of tricky, as I started out VERY early with horror, thanks to my Mother's immense personal library, which I was generally allowed to pick and choose from as I wanted.
 
Even the work I consumed as a boy that wasn't specifically labelled or categorised as “horror” always contained some abstruse, surreal or disturbing elements (it's always been what's attracted me).
 
So, beyond the fairy stories, mythological traditions and various fantasies that obsessed me as a boy (many of those original stories certainly dark and disturbing enough to qualify as horror), the first horror stories I remember reading are:
 
Stephen King's The Mist, whilst on holiday with my parents and brother as a VERY young boy (possibly no older than seven or eight) and John Saul's Darkness, again, lent to me by my Mother on one of our family holidays when I inevitably exhausted the books I took to read.
 
As a result, despite their disturbing qualities, I have very pleasant associations with both of these stories: they remind me of a time when I was treated as an adult, when the grown ups in my life respected me enough and considered me sophisticated enough to handle such material.
 
The Mist in particular has left a massively significant impession; I recall having very excited, agitated conversations with my Mother about the monsters, the mystery of it, wanting to know what it all meant and where it all came from.
 
And, I those questions, I imagine the first motes of my own horror stories began to germinate.
 
THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING 
 
This one's eve more difficult, as I was watching horror films on VHS long, long before I ever picked up a piece of written work.
 
Once again, my Mother is and remains a horror fanatic: I always, always remember some species of horror being on the TV in our house. Some of my earliest memories are fleeting glimpses of The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, Alien, Poltergeist et al. Those images are so early in my development, so powerfully impressed into the stuff of my consciousness, I can't discern which was first or where they began.
 
I do recall developing an absolute adoration of horror cinema as a result from the earliest possivle age (my brother and I used to fight over which film we should watch on rainy days: whilst he'd be set on Child's Play or Halloween, I'd be advocating for Hellraiser or Alien).
 
The result was a fairly profound grounding in cinematic horror from an early age and associations with it that go far and beyond the sentimental; they are part of who I am, as sacred to my mythology of self as childhood cartoons might be to others.
 
Amongst those that made the most lasting impact are the original Hellraiser, which I still find uniquely powerful and oddly beautiful, despite its occasional ropeiness, and Alien, which I still watch once a year, every year and regard as one of the most sublimely elegant, beautifully crafted works of horror every created.
 
 
THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 
 
An almost impossible question for me to answer, as there are so many species and varieties of horror that fulfil so many different criteria.
 
When it comes to eliciting raw and pure sensations of dreadful inevitability, then the works of M.R. James are almost untouchable (Whistle and I'll Come to You being a particular favourite). However, that's barely the tip of the ice-berg:
 
In terms of exploring the metaphoysical potential of horror, you'd have to go a long way to find anything, anything that even approaches the beauty of Clive Barker's various works (The Books of Blood, Weaveworld, The Damnation Game, The Books of the Art etc), which have the peculiar quality of taking horrific imagery and subjects and making them beautiful, even exploring their potential for self-transformation, revelation and transcendence.
 
When it comes to the work that, historically, landed with the force of several atom bombs, that fundamentally changed the topography and DNA of horror, then Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is untouchable. Untouchable. Its genetic legacy within horror and genre fiction in general is impossible to overstate, as is the enduring universality of its themes, philosophies etc.
 
On a personal note, Billy Martin/ Poppy Z. Brite's seminal work of serial-killer erotica, Exquisite Corpse, scintillates and arouses in a way few other works can, marrying erotica to hideous sadism and violence in a manner that is uniquely disturbing. This was also the first work that demonstrated to me LGBTQ themes can be legitimately explored through horrific material and subjects.
 
 
THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 
 
I don't even know where to begin on this one. On a personal level? So many have had an impact on me in so many and various ways, from childhood favourites like Poltergeist, Hellraiser and Alien to those I discovered in my teenage years and twenties such as Suspiria, The Blair Witch Project, Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man etc.
 
I find it all but impossible to pin down as so much of horror fulfils so many different needs and qualities for me.
 
If I'm going for the pared down, pure sense of dread, then I find the best of “found footage” or documentary horrors do it almost better than anything else (The Blair Witch Project and Norori are perennial favourites).
 
However, when it comes to beautiful design, insanely dense atmosphere and subtle storytelling, then the likes of Alien do it for me every time.
 
What about the works of Lynch or Cronenberg? The metaphysical and culturally reflective horror that they represent? What about Neil Jordan's Angela Carter adaptation, The Company of Wolves, which marries mythological and folk-lore horror to Carter's feminist principles? What about sheer, bravura special-effects guts and carnage, the almost pantomimic horror to be found in Sam Raimi's work or the likes of Poltergeist?
 
I find myself flailing out into the void on this one, finding so many subjects of so many and varied anatomies, I can't possibly settle on just one.
 
THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME 
 
I know you're probably getting sick of this answer by now, but, how long have you got? There are so, so many who have influenced the way I think, the shape of my imagination and even my personality, but also far more who have had influences far beyond the personal.
 
As previously mentioned, Clive Barker and Billy Martin/Poppy Z. Brite are probably the writers that have had the greatest personal influence on me, but they rub shoulders with a thousand more, from Gaiman to Pratchett, from Tolkien to Lewis, from Garner to Peake, from Poe to Lovecraft.
 
When it comes to determining the influence of any single writer on fiction as a whole, on culture as it stands, then I have to refer back to Shelley once again. It's functionally impossible to read any work, certainly within genre fiction but also far, far beyond those bounds, published in the centuries since its introduction, that hasn't been influenced by it in a genetic level.
 
The same is true of the likes of Lovecraft, whose ideas and imagery are so culturally pervasive, even people who have never read a single word of his know what the term “Lovecraftian” refers to.
 
I suppose the best way to answer the question is with another question: where do you want to draw the lines?
 
THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME 
 
For me, the book cover that excites me the most, that has such powerful assocations and significance, is that of a hardback edition of Clive Barker's Weaveworld, published in the late 1980s, which displays the various patterns sewn into the eponymous carpet around its border and symbollically lays out the entire story and mythology, though the reader will only learn that the more they read.

 
THE BEST FILM POSTER OF ALL TIME 
 
Oh, this one's easy: the poster for the original Alien. Subtle, elegant, disturbing; symbolically referring to the hideous themes of the film without revealing too much about it's details, it's a uniquely sophisticated image for the era, and one that carries over to the general promotion of the film: if you go and find the trailer for the original film, it is entirely unique for the era, in that it bombards the audience with clipped, almost subliminal images and hideous, distressing sounds but reveals almost nothing about the plot, the characters, the film itself.
 
This is the kind of promotion I respond to, as it treats the audience with some measure of sophistication, relying on their ability to interpret and become excited by symbolism rather than ladling details of the film into their laps.
 
THE BEST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN 
 
I'm a very, very bad judge of my own work, and even worse at attempting to promote it. I find it difficult to discuss without feeling as though I'm being pretentious or presumptuous; a species of imposter syndrome that I seriously need to get over.
 
I suppose the work I'm most proud of would be the very first; my short story collection Strange Playgrounds, originally published by Dark Moon Books way back in 2013. Up to that point, I had no idea that my work was even publishable, that it might garner anything like an audience. I'm well aware that what I write is extremely abstract and not to everyone's tastes: there are very particular readers whom it will resonate with and others it will alienate entirely. This is quite deliberate: I don't like compromised art in any form, and art that attempts to cater to the widest possible audience is always compromised to some degree.
 
What I wanted with Strange Playgrounds is more or less what I feel I succeeded in: establishing a kind of manifesto for my work, for what I want it to achieve, which is: dissolving boundaries, assumptions and parameters. I am sincerely disinterested in producing work that is redolent of what has gone before. I don't see the point. I want my work to blow people's minds wide open, to open them up to new contexts and ideas and assumptions they may not have considered before.
 
I feel that Strange Playgrounds accomplishes this fairly successfully.
 
 
 
THE WORST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN 
 
I'm fairly proud of all the stuff I've put out there into the wider world; I'm not prolific by any degree; I tend to second guess and hum and hah over my work until someone reads it and points out they like it or that it's worthy of being out there then I just hurl it out and pray.
 
As I mentioned in the previous answer, I enjoy work that deliberately alienates, that caters to very specific demographics, and, in that regard, I suppose the work that most exemplifies that is the recently published Born in Blood: Volume One, from Perpetual Motion Machine Publications. It's not that I feel the work is any less worthy than the others (it simply wouldn't be out there otherwise), but it's definitely the one that I designed to provoke very strong reactions in the reader (one way or another).
 
In that, it seems to have succeeded rather well: the people who it resonates with it does so profoundly, those it doesn't absolutely loathe it, which is a paradigm of extremes I am VERY happy to operate in.
 
 
THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME 
 
There are some phenomenally obscure projects out there these days thanks to the proliferation of the internet and the voices it has allowed to express themselves.
 
For my money, some of the most underrated works of horror are those that are produced with and for next to nothing, that have no interest or intention of making money for themselves, but end up garnering cult status owing to their sheer quality and cleverness.
 
In that, internet projects such as Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve, EveryManHybrid, No Through Road, Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared, Ghost Cat and numerous others are certainly worthy of being hoisted from obscurity and given far more kudos.
 
Curios such as Stephen Volk's 1992 Halloween prank, Ghostwatch, The Stone Tapes etc also deserve a lot more attention than they generally do; far from being merely works of nostalgia or sentiment, they are phenomenally sophisticated and effective in their own rights, and deserve far more in the way of attention.
 
When it comes to mainstream works, I've always had a penchant for Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which removes the series from the, by this point, already tried and tested “masked serial killer stalks young people” format and creates a vaguely comic yet entirely disturbing story of corporate corruption, witchcraft, occultism and marries it to some genuinely disturbing imagery.
 
Then there are any number of foreign films that have simply never translated successfully into western markets. One of my all time favourites in that regard is the fairly obscure Japanese “documentary horror,” Noroi, a black-as-pitch mystery involving cults, possession, ancient Japanese demons and numerous other subjects that come together to make a work of sublime and hideous misanthropy.
 
 THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME 
 
There are so many candidates for this, from the works of the various small and independent press writers that are currently demonstrating the true breadth and variety of horror to more mainstream names that have simply failed to spark popular acclaim.
 
But the work that perpetually springs to mind for me is Clive Barker's Sacrament. Weighed against the likes of Imajica, The Books of Blood etc, this tends to be the one that most people haven't read or don't even know exists. This is probably due to its primary subject, which is exploring the experience of being a gay man through a highly unconventional lens of non-proscribed metaphysics and shamanism.
 
It's a very strange, very disturbing book, which, unlike many of Barker's more popular works, maintains a significant misanthropy. This isn't necessarily the most humanist work out there. If anything, it has a tendency to demonise and desair of humanity, though not in any exaggerated or illegitimate way.
 
For those of us that the book talks to directly (i.e. men who identify as LGBTQ), it's kind of manifesto or gospel, but not politically, which is what makes it unique.
 
 
THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME:
 
As previously mentioned, there are so many working in the relative obscurity or closed communities of independent or small press horror right now that are doing things with the genre that the mainstream can't even conceive of. My advice would be: go onto Amazon or whatever outlet you prefer, find an anthology of independent or small press horror stories and you will experience any number of names and works you've never come across before that explore ideas, themes and subjects far and beyond anything currently occurring in mainstream publications.
 
 
THER BOOK AND FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST 
 
In terms of books, the one that probably elicits the most visceral dread and despair is Raymond Briggs's When The Wind Blows, an illustrated work ostensibly aimed at children, but which explores the slow horror of nuclear disaster and the nature of apocalypse when it comes to every day life.
 
In terms of horror films, the one that most consistently elicits a pure and unadulterated sense of dreadful inevitability is The Blair Witch Project. I find this to be generally true of “found footage” or “documentary horror” works when they exhibit the very best of the format: they break down the parameters of disconnection by undoing to language of cinematic storytelling itself. This results in a level of engagement that is far and beyond what most more traditionally narrative works exhibit or can achieve.
 
There are plenty that I find more disturbing, more profound, more resonant, more symbollically intreresting (Suspiria, Don't Look Now, Perfume, Alien, The Wicker Man), but when it comes to the purity of dread, The Blair Witch Project does it every time.
 
As an adjunct, there are also the various internet projects that the film ostensibly spawned: the likes of Marble Hornets, EveryManHybrid, TriveTwelve etc), all of which not so much break the rules of cinematic horror as simply acknowledge and throw them out. Truly, truly terrifying pieces of work.
 
 
THE BOOK I AM WORKING ON NEXT
​ 
There are currently quite a few projects rolling down the pipeline, from a very small budget film based on some promotional material for Born in Blood to the second volume of that short story collection, which will be published later this year.
 
Right now, I'm working on the second draft of a novel tentatively titled Coming Home, a work that explores memory, nostalgia, how our past is a kind of haunted abyss that always aches to drag us back into old and familiar states of misery. I'm also putting the finishing touches on a short story collection entitled For Sanity's Sake, which, if I can't find a publisher for it, I'll probably publish independently.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HIGH HEAVEN AND LOW HELL

​Born in blood . . . the first breath and all that follow, tainted by original trauma, echoing throughout every thought, every heartbeat; blossoming into more profound pain, until breath and thought both cease . . .

What we grow accustomed to...what we can endure: 

The days bleed into one another, as we do; hurt defining every moment.

No more. Now, all instants are one; pulsing brilliant, ecstasy and agony, rendered down; experienced in a heartbeat.

Every shame. Every sorrow. Humanity, history. This is what we are; the God we gave birth to.

Better? Yes. Yes. Now, we all suffer the same; no more division; no privilege or powerlessness. We are the same; sexless, skinless, ex sanguine.

And we celebrate, content in our disgrace.

One of the biggest challenges facing the modern author is finding the time to actually write.  Work family, social media and all other manner of things all compete with your time to actually sit down and put pen to paper.  

There are a number of work arounds, you could smash all your electronic devices in a bid to stop you from wasting those precious hours surfing the net, but how would you write your next masterpiece.  Pen and paper, or even an old fashioned typewriter would still allow you to get those words down, but nobody accepts handwritten manuscripts any more, so that idea isn't going to work.  

You could lock up your wife and kids in your cellar, but even that is filled with problems, they could escape, and they would probably be royally annoyed at you for locking them up.   You are still going to have to feed them, and probably allow them toilet breaks.  Which would interrupt your creative flow.  

Or you could take a much more civilised and enjoyable approach, and take yourself away for a week or two to a nice relaxing hotel.  Oh but wait, we all know what can happen if you were to do that, All work and no play and all that, you know how that's going to end.  Perhaps, you should tweak this idea and take yourself away to a writers retreat, where you can surround yourself with other like minded souls, while being mentored by an expert in publishing and writing.  Sounds good doesn't it, but wait it gets even better... 

What if this writers retreat isn't in the middle of nowhere, isn't blocked of from the rest of the world by massive snow storms, and isn't haunted by  angry and somewhat nasty spirits (disclaimer time I cannot guarantee that the hotel isn't haunted by either friendly or malevolent spirits, but it would be rather cool if it was), what if the hotel was in the middle of Italy's  Veneto region?  

Now that sounds like a perfect solution, if you ask me.  But does such a thing actually exists Mr Ginger Nuts?  Why yes it does.  The Albergo Leso hotel which is situated just outside of Verona has teamed up with  publisher and writing tutor Amanda Saint to offer a week long writers retreat focusing on Plot and Character and character development.   Taking place from Mon 7th – Sun 13th October 2019 this sounds like a fabulous opportunity to both hone your writing craft and take in a holiday to one of the most beautiful regions of Italy.  A region that inspired Shakespeare to set Romeo and Juliet there, it's where Dante wrote part 3 of his Divine Comedy, while living in exile from Florence. And the latin poet Catullus, who was around during the time of Julius Caesar and was an influence on Virgil, was from here.  That's a pretty rich literary history, who knows maybe just being there will inspire you. 

You will remember that earlier on I made reference to ghosts, well if that's your cup of tea then you are in luck, there are a host of local ghost and witch legends, which include one of a local witch - actually in local legend a kind of 'fairy', but most close to the UK image of a witch - who was very beautiful and used to lure men to have sex with her at the site of a local natural stone sculpture, whereupon she would kill and eat them. This was deemed so much of an issue - she wasn't the only one - the local legend also holds that marriages with these witch-fairies by mortal men was banned at the 16th century Catholic church's Council of Trent - the great Catholic council which formed the basis of the counter-reformation against the Protestant reformation kicked off by Luther.  

If there are any concerns about travelling there, then please don't worry travel is very easy. The nearest airport is Verona International - also known as Verona Villafranca and Verona Catullo. From there, one can get a shuttle to the main train station and a bus whose last stop is the tiny village of Valdiporro where your hotel will be the last stop.  

​Now if this hasn't got you interested in signing up to this, then maybe the schedule of events for the week will seal the deal. If you follow this link, full details of the writers retreat are laid out, but here are some of the highlights of the writers retreat, and some more information on Amanda Saint 
​

“A rare and blissful opportunity to focus on my writing and give my novel the time and attention it needed… Wonderful in every way.”
Chloe Esposito
Author of the Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know Trilogy. (Published by Penguin Books and optioned by Sony Pictures.)

“I have enjoyed many retreats with Amanda.”
Ruby Speechley
Award-winning writer

“I really enjoyed, and learned from, the retreat. Thank you for all the work you put in to make it work.”
David Thomas
New writer and aspiring author

Over the six night stay  there will be numerous workshops and the one to ones with Amanda where she will  show you how to  to bring your characters to life,  how  to give your novel real pace, depth and un-putdown-ability. All within the wonderful  small, family-owned hotel called Albergo Leso, famous locally for its traditional food. 

Your exclusive offer includes 

• Twelve hours of workshops. Plus a 45-minute one-to-one with author, publisher and creative writing tutor Amanda Saint.
• Discover how to create a simple yet flexible 10-point plot structure.
• Gain the tools you need to write more compelling and emotional stories. 
• Enjoy stunning views and delicious food in an unspoiled corner of Italy.
• Meet and bond with 9 like-minded writers and make new, supportive friends.

If you like the sound of this please click here to book your place, Until now, this offer was open only to Amanda’s followers and subscribers. Now we’ve opened it up to everyone. And there are only 3 places left,  so please act today to be sure of your place. 

And if you can't make this time don't worry as the hotel is available for block bookings at  any time of the year  and any length of time, subject to availability - please inquire first to make sure the dates you want are free. You can contact the hotel here 

Well, it had to happen eventually.
 
When this project started, I reached out to Mr Keene. For two reasons; the first, as a courtesy, to let him know this series was happening, and secondly, to sense check the publication list I had and make sure I had the publication chronology right. He was enormously helpful with the second point, adding in books I’d missed, rearranging the order to be correct, and even adding in then-projected titles for forthcoming work.
 
Additionally, he gave me a piece of advice, that, in retrospect, also feels a bit like permission. Sooner or later, you’ll encounter something you don’t care for, he said. When that happens, just be honest about it. It's all part of the process.
 
And, nine books in, here we are.
 
It’s not that Tequila’s Sunrise is bad, I don’t think. It’s just that I really didn’t connect with it. I’m going to deconstruct why, here, as best I can, but if you find yourself reading this and thinking dude, what’s your problem, that sounds awesome?  - well, there’s an excellent chance that, for you, it will be, and if that’s so, go ahead and dive in with my blessing. There’s little enough joy in the world as is, gentle reader, and I’d deprive you of not one drop that you can find.
 
So, the main tale, a short novella-length piece that takes in just under half of the total page count concerns Chalco, a young Tenchoas man from Oaxaca (we would later rename his people Aztecs, and the land he lived on Mexico). As the story begins, the Spanish have already made landfall, and Chalco’s father is off with the other adult men to fight the invaders. As a result of this, Chalco has taken on hunting duties for his family. During the hunt, he meets a God. From there, things do not go well.
 
I think one of my principal issues with the story was the pacing. I’m sure if you were to look back through the prior eight essays in this series, a constant theme has been just how good Keene is at pace; at delivering novel length tales that zip by, drawing you in and keeping the pages turning relentlessly. Much of that comes from just straight up, sentence level readable prose; by which I mean, prose that doesn’t get in the way of the reader and the story, words that put you there (and on that score, Tequia’s Sunrise delivers, to be clear).
 
But it’s also, I think, about the pace of events themselves within the story, and it’s there that Tequila’s Sunrise doesn’t deliver in that same way, for me. There are no doubt huge challenges involved in trying to produce historical fiction - I recall clearly what an unexpected headache I got from setting GodBomb! in 1995, just purely in terms of remembering what that meant about how the world worked, and that’s a story set entirely in one room - and if Keene didn’t put in the research hours for this project, I’m never playing poker with the man, because if this isn’t a good approximation of the Aztec way of life, he’s bluffed it at a masterful level. The story drips with authentic detail, from the names of the people and tribes, to the description of the daily routines, to even the food and drink sources; it’s all familiar, and Keene takes us through it as we follow Chalco through his morning routine.
 
The problem is that it’s slow - or at least, I found it to be so. Again, to be clear, there’s nothing misfiring on a sentence level, but the sheer richness of the background information felt to me to be having a negative impact on the pacing of the story itself; for the first time I can recall reading a Brian Keene story, I was feeling impatience for the narrative to kick in.
 
A related frustration - and this one is very personal and idiosyncratic, so I acknowledge that upfront - is that the story is set up as a fable, and yet goes into this almost cinematic or documentary level of detail, and for me that created a stylistic tension that didn’t resolve well. I always think of fables as primarily broad strokes, arcitype laden short stories, almost designed to be spoken aloud, harking back to the verbal tradition that predates the written word. But while structurally Tequila’s Sunrise is a fable, stylistically, it isn’t, and while I will always respect the decision to try something different, for me, this particular experiment didn’t quite pay off.
 
All of this was exacerbated for me by the strangeness of the narrative itself. I’ve just got done describing it as structurally a fable, and it is, but it’s also a story that’s by far the most rooted in Keene’s own multiverse mythos to date; offering what I think is our first eyewitness account of The Labyrinth; what appears to be a collection of interdimensional portals that connect across alternate worlds, and also times.
 
As you may have gathered from my previous essay, it’s an idea I really enjoy conceptually, and I’m sure one of the pleasures of this project will be tracing the contours of that concept as it develops over the next forty odd books (!) , but here, I found it exerted a gravitational pull that distorted the story; again, like the prose style, it felt like a bad fit for a fable about a young boy on the cusp of manhood, and a magical drink that could allow him to travel back in time and head off the invasion of his country at source. For me, once Chalco entered The Labyrinth, the story changed again in terms of genre, and in a way I felt to be jarring and incongruous.
 
As I said earlier, I will always applaud attempts to do something different, something dangerous or stylistically experimental. And if what I have described sounds like something you’d enjoy, probably you will - again, on a sentence level, it’s as good as anything else I have read of Keene’s work, and the research and descriptive work in the first quarter of the tale is meticulous. It just wasn’t for me.
 
Happily, I did find the second half of the book, comprising a collection of five shorter tales, to be excellent, and a really good sampler of the breadth of Keene’s horror chops at this point in his career. There’s a heartfelt response to 9/11 that for my money  is easily the equal to King’s own efforts on that score, an Alizimers-from-the-inside story that will squeeze your heart far harder than you’ll be comfortable with, and a tale of a grieving father with a twist as nasty as I can immediately recall from Keene’s catalog so far, which is a pretty high bar indeed.
 
One of the things I was looking for when I started this project was getting a sense of how a professional writer develops, as their career progresses. Keene has been upfront about his dislike for his early work, even his career-defining debut. While I don’t share that distaste, and as much as I found the title story here a misfire, the collection as a whole does show a level of emotional depth and a range that demonstrates both a significantly expanded palate from those first couple of novels,and, arguably more importantly, an admirable impulse to keep pushing into new spaces, to experiment with styles and voice and settings and subject matter.
 
Tequia’s Sunrise may, for me, have been a failure; but it’s also undoubtedly the case that it represents a striving that bodes very well for the future of this project - not least because the only way to never fail is to never try.
 
Keene is a relentless, restless tryer. And I remain really excited to see what he tries next.
 
Next up: Dead Sea.
 
KP
10/7/19
 

This September prepare for the next instalment of one of the legendary pulp-horror master’s greatest creations. Fresh from the success of the latest Crabs novel, The Charnel Caves, comes Sabat 6: The Return.
 
For those not already familiar with the character of the psychic investigator, he first appeared in Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures (1982), swiftly followed by Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants (1982), Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult (1982) and Sabat 4: The Druid Connection (1983).
A big favourite of the fans, the character made a much welcomed comeback last year with Sabat 5: Wistman’s Wood (2018), and following the shocking events in that last book, Sabat is back!
 
The cover was created by Mike McGee, using a brief derived from Guy and a number of his fans, the aim was to return the design of this series back to style of the covers during its 1980s heyday.

 
 
Guy has written about the history of the character’s genesis.
 
THE BIRTH OF SABAT
 
During the early 1980’s I became friendly with a “white witch” who lived locally. Roz was a lovely lady, there was not a vestige of evil within her but even so many of the locals were afraid of her and rumours circulated. Sadly, she was crippled and never left her house.
 
I used to visit her regularly and this earned a somewhat dubious reputation for myself at that time. On one occasion, on returning from spending an hour or two with her, I was involved in a crash on the narrow single-track road. Fortunately, I was in my Land Rover but the teenage driver, uninsured, had his small car written off and the injuries to both him and his passenger resulted in an ambulance being called. Rumours spread, it was the result of my association with that witch in the village below!
 
Roz and I had many long discussions and I learned from her much the about supernatural. It was here that the idea for Sabat was born, a psychic investigator who was haunted by the soul of his dead brother, a conflict which continued throughout the series.
 
I offered the first book “The Graveyard Vultures” to New English Library in 1982. They accepted it with great enthusiasm and commissioned a second book, “The Blood Merchants,” both of which were published simultaneously. No 3 “Cannibal Cult” and No 4 “The Druid Connection” followed. All were best sellers.
 
Sadly, though, in the early 1990’s virtually all publishers discontinued category books so the Sabat series were no longer available.
 
Now, after many years, Sabat is back, No 5 “Wistman’s Wood” which was released last year, and No 6 “The Return” to be launched at the GNS Fan Club Convention on September 1st.
 
During my long friendship with Roz she gave me a strange set of cards called “The Sexual Tarot.” These had been hand coloured and were sexually explicit. She was reluctant to provide any information about how and where she had obtained them. However, she had drawn a strange insignia on the box and on the back of every card and all she would say was that a true occultist would know what it meant. I featured it on some of the Sabat covers and am still waiting for somebody to contact me and explain its significance.
 
Sadly Roz died a few years ago. I miss her and those lengthy talks we had together. But for myself the Sabat series is a tribute to our friendship. Without her he would never have been born. Long may he live on.

​Guy N. Smith has been a best-selling author for over 40 years. He has published 120 novels and around 400 short stories and articles on various subjects.
“Night of the Crabs” was his breakthrough hit, becoming an instant best seller with the movie rights sold. Since then there have been no fewer than 7 sequels. “Killer Crabs” is currently being filmed.
 
Sabat 6: The Return blurb:
 
Mark Sabat, ex-priest, SAS-trained killer, exorcist, had been a man with a dreadful mission for most of his life. His evil brother, Quentin, had chosen the Left Hand Path and his soul had haunted Mark.
 
Finally, Quentin had been destroyed but now Mark faces another enemy, master criminal The Reaper who is also one of Satan’s disciples. The Reaper, following his escape from prison, is bent on revenge on G. N. Strong, the private detective who had been instrumental in his capture.
 
Sabat’s role is to protect Strong from a deadly foe who has supernatural powers.
 
His enemy is the eternal principle of evil made flesh.
 
 
Sabat 6: The Return will be available on Kindle, Paperback from Amazon and the Sinister Horror Company website from the 6th September 2019.
Signed copies of the book will be available directly from the Guy N Smith website.
 
Advanced copies of the book will be made available on Sunday 1st September at the Guy N Smith convention. For more details of the convention sign up to the free GNS fan club at his website www.GuyNSmith.com
 
Pre-order to be made available in due course.
 
For any enquiries or further information visit:
SinisterHorrorCompany.com