GHOSTWRITTEN BY RONALD MALFI, AN EXCLUSIVE COVER REVEAL AND EXTRACT FROM A MASTER OF HORROR
23/3/2022
 If you haven't heard already Titan are publishing Ronald Malfi's new novella this year called GHOSTWRITTEN on 4 October 2022!!!! Four brand-new horror novellas from “a modern-day Algernon Blackwood” all about books, stories, manuscripts – the written word has never had sharper teeth… In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride. In This Book Belongs to Olo, a lonely child has dangerous control over an usual pop-up book. A choose-your-own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story. Full of creepy, page-turning suspense, these collected novellas are perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Stephen King and Joe Hill.  ghostwritten extract “Davis? Hello? It’s Gloria Grossman. Anybody home?” Davis McElroy was in his late forties—Gloria’s age—but exuded the youthful good looks of a man at least ten years his junior. Those looks had earned him more than one cameo in a few of the movies he or his friends wrote—once, even a speaking role—and he may have enjoyed a decent run as a second-tier actor had he not been such an introvert. But the man who stepped out from behind the house and into the harsh daylight looked nothing like Davis McElroy. That rugged frat-boy air had vanished, leaving in its place a dark shiftiness, furtive as a wounded animal. He’d lost considerable weight; the open flannel shirt and Race for the Cure T-shirt hung from his wasted frame. His hair had exploded in a dark, unruly mop, bleeding down his face in the form of a spotty, salt-and-pepper beard. His eyes looked haunted. Davis McElroy froze upon seeing her. He was holding some sort of tool or weapon in his hand, the sight of which did not help ease Gloria’s sudden apprehension. It’s drugs, all right, she had time to think. Son of a bitch. “Gloria,” he uttered, and even his voice sounded alien to her. Aggrieved, somehow. He took an unsteady step in her direction, shuffling along like someone unaccustomed to it. His eyes looked like they had strings attached at the back and someone was pulling them deeper into his skull. “Gloria, what the hell are you doing out here?” “That’s the question I came to ask you, Davis. Where the hell have you been?” “Where—?” It came out as a croak. He seemed confused. As he managed another step in her direction-- “What have you got in your hand, Davis?” He blinked, then glanced first down at his empty hand, then at the other one. He raised the item but she still couldn’t make out what it was. Some sort of metal pole or pipe? “This?” he said. “It’s nothing. It’s a wood chisel.” As if suddenly disgusted by it, he tossed the chisel on the ground. “Davis, what the hell have you been doing out here? People have been trying to reach you. I’ve been trying to reach you. I drove up from the city to make sure you weren’t dead.” He said nothing, just seemed to tremble there in front of her like something insubstantial enough to be carried off by a strong gust of wind. He glanced at something toward the rear of the house—something beyond Gloria’s line of sight—then met her stare again. Those bleak and anxious eyes appeared to quiver in their sockets. “What is it, Davis? Cocaine? Pills? Or have you just been at the bottle?” A vertical crease appeared between his eyebrows. He shook his woolly head. “No, no—it’s nothing like that.” “You realize you missed your deadline, don’t you?” “My deadline?” “The screenplay, Davis. Please tell me you’ve got something to show me.” “Jesus,” he said, the word wheezing out of him. “Yeah, I know. I mean, I know I missed the deadline. It’s just, time got away from me.” “You stopped answering your phone. Even John Fish was trying to call you.” She’d mentioned this to shake him up, maybe drive home just how deep in the shit they were. It had the desired effect, given the expression that overcame his face, but when he opened his mouth, Gloria realized she had miscalculated. “John Fiiiish.” The name all but seethed out from between McElroy’s teeth. He glanced again at whatever kept attracting his attention behind the house—a tic that was making her increasingly uncomfortable—then scratched nervously at his stubbled neck. “What have you got back there?” she asked him. Like a landed trout gasping for air, Davis McElroy’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. It made a sickening mawp mawp sound. “Davis?” she pushed. “You shouldn’t have come here.” He took another step in her direction—a stagger, really. “It’s not safe. It’s...dangerous.” She felt herself take an instinctive step back from him. “What’s dangerous?” she asked. There was a beat of silence. When he spoke, he did so just barely above a whisper, and Gloria couldn’t be certain she heard him correctly. Sounded like he’d said, “The book.” “I don’t even go in the house anymore, except for when I have to put up a new wall,” he said, then nodded to a small brick structure no bigger than an outhouse farther down the property. “Been sleeping in there. Where it’s safer.” He took another step in her direction and she took another step back. “Been eating out here, too,” he continued, and nodded toward the overturned bucket and the decimated watermelon. “Davis, I think I should call someone and get you help. Would that be okay?” “Help,” he said, the word sounding like it had come unstuck from the roof of his mouth. “Help would be nice.” To Gloria’s horror, he collapsed to a seated position in the grass and began to weep. Every instinct told her to bolt back to the car and get the hell out of there. She could call the goddamn cops from the highway, have them come and collect the son of a bitch. But she didn’t do that. She was on the hook now, her curiosity about what Davis kept glancing at behind the house besting any impulse of survival. Besides, she couldn’t leave here without the screenplay. She stepped around him, one cork-heeled sandal brushing the watermelon rind and setting it rocking. It was a pleasant day on its way toward a cool and clear evening. The air had been scented with lilac just moments ago, but as she turned the corner of the house and crossed into the back yard, she caught a whiff of sawdust and overheated electrical equipment. There was a flagstone patio back here that led to a set of double doors at the rear of the house. These doors both stood wide open now, and there was some sort of construction project erected on the patio in front of them: a pair of sawhorses hoisting one of those sheets of plywood, a scattering of two-by-fours lying on a bedding of sawdust, a circular saw that must have accounted for the mechanical whine she had heard from the front porch. She looked down, saw her shoe had gotten tangled around a loop of orange electrical cord, and shook it loose. There was something inside the house, just beyond those wide open double doors. Ghostwritten |
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THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR PROMOTION
BIO:
Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Afrolatine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in bioethics. They have had short stories published in Desert Rose and FIYAH magazine. After writing Burn Down, Rise Up, they take turns between sewing new cosplay or napping with their cat.
WEBSITE LINKS:
Vincent Tirado’s debut YA novel Burn Down, Rise Up will be available June 3. You can pre-order your copy at:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burn-Down-Rise-Vincent-Tirado/dp/1728246008/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LUUUH16820WB&keywords=burn+down+rise+up&qid=1647375766&sprefix=burn+down+rise+up%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1
Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Burn-Down-Rise-Up-Vincent-Tirado/9781728246000?ref=grid-view&qid=1647375744631&sr=1-2
Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Afrolatine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in bioethics. They have had short stories published in Desert Rose and FIYAH magazine. After writing Burn Down, Rise Up, they take turns between sewing new cosplay or napping with their cat.
WEBSITE LINKS:
Vincent Tirado’s debut YA novel Burn Down, Rise Up will be available June 3. You can pre-order your copy at:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burn-Down-Rise-Vincent-Tirado/dp/1728246008/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LUUUH16820WB&keywords=burn+down+rise+up&qid=1647375766&sprefix=burn+down+rise+up%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1
Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Burn-Down-Rise-Up-Vincent-Tirado/9781728246000?ref=grid-view&qid=1647375744631&sr=1-2
CHILDHOOD FEARS: WHAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO PEOPLE LIKE ME ARTICLE BY VINCENT TIRADO
“[Insert horror thing] doesn’t happen to Black people.”
This was my mantra growing up. Every time I watched a too-scary movie and had trouble falling asleep, every time I recollected an urban legend that sent chills up my spine, every horror novel I read that influenced my nightmares, I would force myself to fixate on the single common denominator in all these things: that at the center of the terrifying story was a white person experiencing it. Maybe there would be one Black friend who got roped into the story, but the main character was always white. And as long as I wasn’t the only Black person in a friend group, I could guarantee my survival against things that went bump in the night.
However, it was also absolutely not true.
My earliest memories in the Bronx were of living in a six-story apartment building on Southern Boulevard. My brothers, my mom and I lived on the sixth floor and unfortunately for us, there wasn’t a single elevator. The hallways were badly lit, the walls always smelled like cigarette smoke and our neighbors were loud. But nothing scared me quite as much as the closet that my brothers and I shared. The closet’s sliding door was broken so closing it meant I would have to partially lift it to move. Because of this, it always remained open–and at night, so was my imagination. The closet became a void, one where monsters emerged and as long as I stayed perfectly still or at least pretended to be asleep, they wouldn’t eat me.
For some reason, I imagined the monsters holding a clipboard, watching me, studying me. I didn’t know what they wrote or why, just that if I gave any indication of being awake, I would be dragged into the void, never to be seen again. The fear of being watched by something unknown–of living so closely to the unknown was overwhelming.
And then we moved to a third story apartment building on Beck Street. Again, we lived on the last floor and again, there were no elevators. The building was much smaller, including the hallways but it didn’t smell, and it was much better lit. The closets were not the types that had a sliding door, but that didn’t matter because my fear had latched onto something else.
The hallway. Or rather, the end of the hallway, right before the sharp turn into the living room. My imagination made it so that there was always something terrifying just on the other side, waiting to get me. Every time I walked past it, my heart jumped a little, like I just narrowly avoided the long spindly arms of a ghost. Of course, there was never anything there. But I could never shake the feeling that there was always something more in these small spaces.
As a horror writer now, I like to play around with the fear of the unknown in my stories. I like to shape the unknown, hiding it just enough to cause that same dread and unease that a closet and hallway used to instill in me as a child. It’s not enough to simply think “there is a murderer somewhere in my house waiting to get me”, because a murderer is still human and has many of the same fleshy weaknesses that I have. Sure, it is unnerving to not know where the murderer will emerge from but if physics remains intact, if what I know about the world isn’t shaken, then there’s no cosmic cause for concern.
I like the kind of horror that is a bit like a magic trick–partially hidden, unexplained. I like the idea of nameless demons (or demons who simply shouldn’t be named), liminal spaces crawling with eldritch creatures. If a horror movie is centered around an app that literally curses people, I am interested in the origins of the app and how it can do what it does. These kinds of scary stories open a door to endless possibilities.
Of course, the previous examples could be boiled down to a child’s overactive imagination, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe anything lurks beyond the veil of reality. According to my mother, I was always a little more open to it.
A few days ago, my mother told me about the first apartment I ever lived in, just a few weeks after I was born. Apparently, it was cheap, and the landlord was very quick in getting her settled in. But then I would be inconsolable at night, and something would always be amiss in the apartment. For one thing, she would always hear a strange wooden creaking sound, as if someone was walking around in the apartment. And then after 11pm, she would hear something like a rocking chair.
In that apartment, we lived on the sixth floor too and we didn’t have a rocking chair, so my mom went to the superintendent to get answers. The landlord confessed that there was a previous tenant that had died, sitting in a rocking chair. And at night, every single tenant, including my mother, would hear that unsettling squeaking.
So, my mother decided to bring my grandmother over. My grandmother was a devout Christian who prayed over the apartment with her other Christian friends. They marked every corner of the apartment with anointed oil and spoke loudly, rebuking whatever demon had taken residence in our home.
After that, there were no more issues, no sounds of a rocking chair.
This was my mantra growing up. Every time I watched a too-scary movie and had trouble falling asleep, every time I recollected an urban legend that sent chills up my spine, every horror novel I read that influenced my nightmares, I would force myself to fixate on the single common denominator in all these things: that at the center of the terrifying story was a white person experiencing it. Maybe there would be one Black friend who got roped into the story, but the main character was always white. And as long as I wasn’t the only Black person in a friend group, I could guarantee my survival against things that went bump in the night.
However, it was also absolutely not true.
My earliest memories in the Bronx were of living in a six-story apartment building on Southern Boulevard. My brothers, my mom and I lived on the sixth floor and unfortunately for us, there wasn’t a single elevator. The hallways were badly lit, the walls always smelled like cigarette smoke and our neighbors were loud. But nothing scared me quite as much as the closet that my brothers and I shared. The closet’s sliding door was broken so closing it meant I would have to partially lift it to move. Because of this, it always remained open–and at night, so was my imagination. The closet became a void, one where monsters emerged and as long as I stayed perfectly still or at least pretended to be asleep, they wouldn’t eat me.
For some reason, I imagined the monsters holding a clipboard, watching me, studying me. I didn’t know what they wrote or why, just that if I gave any indication of being awake, I would be dragged into the void, never to be seen again. The fear of being watched by something unknown–of living so closely to the unknown was overwhelming.
And then we moved to a third story apartment building on Beck Street. Again, we lived on the last floor and again, there were no elevators. The building was much smaller, including the hallways but it didn’t smell, and it was much better lit. The closets were not the types that had a sliding door, but that didn’t matter because my fear had latched onto something else.
The hallway. Or rather, the end of the hallway, right before the sharp turn into the living room. My imagination made it so that there was always something terrifying just on the other side, waiting to get me. Every time I walked past it, my heart jumped a little, like I just narrowly avoided the long spindly arms of a ghost. Of course, there was never anything there. But I could never shake the feeling that there was always something more in these small spaces.
As a horror writer now, I like to play around with the fear of the unknown in my stories. I like to shape the unknown, hiding it just enough to cause that same dread and unease that a closet and hallway used to instill in me as a child. It’s not enough to simply think “there is a murderer somewhere in my house waiting to get me”, because a murderer is still human and has many of the same fleshy weaknesses that I have. Sure, it is unnerving to not know where the murderer will emerge from but if physics remains intact, if what I know about the world isn’t shaken, then there’s no cosmic cause for concern.
I like the kind of horror that is a bit like a magic trick–partially hidden, unexplained. I like the idea of nameless demons (or demons who simply shouldn’t be named), liminal spaces crawling with eldritch creatures. If a horror movie is centered around an app that literally curses people, I am interested in the origins of the app and how it can do what it does. These kinds of scary stories open a door to endless possibilities.
Of course, the previous examples could be boiled down to a child’s overactive imagination, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe anything lurks beyond the veil of reality. According to my mother, I was always a little more open to it.
A few days ago, my mother told me about the first apartment I ever lived in, just a few weeks after I was born. Apparently, it was cheap, and the landlord was very quick in getting her settled in. But then I would be inconsolable at night, and something would always be amiss in the apartment. For one thing, she would always hear a strange wooden creaking sound, as if someone was walking around in the apartment. And then after 11pm, she would hear something like a rocking chair.
In that apartment, we lived on the sixth floor too and we didn’t have a rocking chair, so my mom went to the superintendent to get answers. The landlord confessed that there was a previous tenant that had died, sitting in a rocking chair. And at night, every single tenant, including my mother, would hear that unsettling squeaking.
So, my mother decided to bring my grandmother over. My grandmother was a devout Christian who prayed over the apartment with her other Christian friends. They marked every corner of the apartment with anointed oil and spoke loudly, rebuking whatever demon had taken residence in our home.
After that, there were no more issues, no sounds of a rocking chair.
Burn Down, Rise Up
by Vincent Tirado
Mysterious disappearances. An urban legend rumored to be responsible. And one group of friends determined to save their city at any cost. Stranger Things meets Jordan Peele in this utterly original debut from an incredible new voice.
For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize's cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention-especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances.
Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York's past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart-or die trying.
For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize's cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention-especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances.
Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York's past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart-or die trying.
CHECK OUT TODAY'S OTHER ARTICLES ON GINGER NUTS OF HORROR
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THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR PROMOTION WEBSITES
Nyx Horror Collective opens submissions for its second annual film festival, 13 Minutes of Horror 2022, streaming on horror giant Shudder in late summer. The theme for this year’s festival is Sci-fi Horror. 13 Minutes of Horror is a one-minute film challenge for women horror filmmakers, inclusive of BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women, disabled women, and non-binary creators.
Led by Melody Cooper, Mo Moshaty, Kelly Krause, and Lisa Kröger, NYX and the 13 Minutes of Horror film challenge seek to give horror filmmakers of marginalized identities and backgrounds greater exposure and more opportunities through strategic partnerships with established industry professionals.
In addition to Shudder returning as a partner this year, NYX brings back Blood Oath (Starry Eyes, Scare Package, Satanic Panic), who offer film development support, and welcomes sales-and-distribution executive Sophia Aronne (Terminal, The Blackcoat’s Daughter), who provides insight into what makes a film sellable and profitable.
Award-winning horror author (The Living Blood), screenwriter (The Twilight Zone), and film producer (Horror Noire) Tananarive Due returns as part of the judge’s panel. She is joined this year by writer/producer Liz Phang (Yellowjackets, The Haunting of Hill House, Locke & Key, The Strain), award-winning writer/director Kim Garland (SyFy's Chucky, Netflix Original Series The Imperfects), and Head of Acquisition at Mutiny Pictures (Drive All Night, I Need You Dead) Jonathan Barkan, whose film Mental Health and Horror: A Documentary explores the positive impact horror films can have on audiences’ mental health.
On the heels of a successful year, NYX seeks to continue its mission of camaraderie, support, and exposure for women horror creators. In June, NYX will join Stowe Story Labs for its ten-year anniversary to offer a fellowship to woman-identifying horror writers, age 40 and over. The fellowship will cover the fee to attend a Stowe Narrative Lab, along with additional benefits such as a consultation with an entertainment attorney, Storyboard Quick software, and the latest version of Final Draft.
NYX Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival will air on Shudder from August 13 – November 1, 2022.
Led by Melody Cooper, Mo Moshaty, Kelly Krause, and Lisa Kröger, NYX and the 13 Minutes of Horror film challenge seek to give horror filmmakers of marginalized identities and backgrounds greater exposure and more opportunities through strategic partnerships with established industry professionals.
In addition to Shudder returning as a partner this year, NYX brings back Blood Oath (Starry Eyes, Scare Package, Satanic Panic), who offer film development support, and welcomes sales-and-distribution executive Sophia Aronne (Terminal, The Blackcoat’s Daughter), who provides insight into what makes a film sellable and profitable.
Award-winning horror author (The Living Blood), screenwriter (The Twilight Zone), and film producer (Horror Noire) Tananarive Due returns as part of the judge’s panel. She is joined this year by writer/producer Liz Phang (Yellowjackets, The Haunting of Hill House, Locke & Key, The Strain), award-winning writer/director Kim Garland (SyFy's Chucky, Netflix Original Series The Imperfects), and Head of Acquisition at Mutiny Pictures (Drive All Night, I Need You Dead) Jonathan Barkan, whose film Mental Health and Horror: A Documentary explores the positive impact horror films can have on audiences’ mental health.
On the heels of a successful year, NYX seeks to continue its mission of camaraderie, support, and exposure for women horror creators. In June, NYX will join Stowe Story Labs for its ten-year anniversary to offer a fellowship to woman-identifying horror writers, age 40 and over. The fellowship will cover the fee to attend a Stowe Narrative Lab, along with additional benefits such as a consultation with an entertainment attorney, Storyboard Quick software, and the latest version of Final Draft.
NYX Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival will air on Shudder from August 13 – November 1, 2022.
THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR PROMOTION WEBSITES
TOP TEN RESIDENT EVIL MONSTERS PART 2: THE LICKERS
The original Resident Evil -and its subsequent, superior Director's Cut- not only established horror as a primary genre of video games during the 32-bit era (helped along by sister franchises such as Silent Hill, Shadow Man and The Legacy of Kain), it also coined the term “survival horror” as a particular sub-genre; a form of horror that induces tension by placing the player in a state of privation and constant threat: In the original game, every turned corner, every open doorway, could mean a face-to-face run-in with various species of gribbly, bio-engineered death. This factor made every moment one of breath-baiting tension, the game designed to leave the player near-frantic with anticipation when the inevitable scares finally occurred.
Resident Evil 2 came hot on the original's heels; having struck -gory, arterial- gold with the original game, Capcom were quick to capitalise, creating a sequel that is the original's superior not only in technicals -superior graphics, arguably the best soundtrack and environmental design in the series- but also in terms of the horror influences it draws on.
Whilst Resi 1 is largely influenced by horror and science fiction B-movies, Resi 2 casts its net far wider, incoporating elements as diverse as Hellraiser, The Thing, the body horror of David Cronenberg and even more abstruse inspirations such as the artwork of H.R. Giger. As such, not only is the setting more expansive and atmospheric, the narrative more elaborate and compelling, the monsters are infinitely more inventive and diverse.
Whereas Resi 1 concerned itself -primarily- with various forms of T-Virus infected zombie (notable exceptions including the Hunters, Neptunes and various mutated and/or bio-engineered animals infesting the mansion grounds -more on those later), Resi 2 features a bestiary so diverse as to be difficult to easily catalogue. Furthermore, the various warped and mutated horrors make themselves known earlier than in the original, often through set-pieces that are expertly choreographed, making superb use of the limited, fixed camera angles, sparse but brilliant atmospheric sound design and some subtle visual hints to induce dread and tension.
Amongst the first of these beasties -and certainly one of the most consistenty terrifying- are The Lickers:
Resident Evil 2 came hot on the original's heels; having struck -gory, arterial- gold with the original game, Capcom were quick to capitalise, creating a sequel that is the original's superior not only in technicals -superior graphics, arguably the best soundtrack and environmental design in the series- but also in terms of the horror influences it draws on.
Whilst Resi 1 is largely influenced by horror and science fiction B-movies, Resi 2 casts its net far wider, incoporating elements as diverse as Hellraiser, The Thing, the body horror of David Cronenberg and even more abstruse inspirations such as the artwork of H.R. Giger. As such, not only is the setting more expansive and atmospheric, the narrative more elaborate and compelling, the monsters are infinitely more inventive and diverse.
Whereas Resi 1 concerned itself -primarily- with various forms of T-Virus infected zombie (notable exceptions including the Hunters, Neptunes and various mutated and/or bio-engineered animals infesting the mansion grounds -more on those later), Resi 2 features a bestiary so diverse as to be difficult to easily catalogue. Furthermore, the various warped and mutated horrors make themselves known earlier than in the original, often through set-pieces that are expertly choreographed, making superb use of the limited, fixed camera angles, sparse but brilliant atmospheric sound design and some subtle visual hints to induce dread and tension.
Amongst the first of these beasties -and certainly one of the most consistenty terrifying- are The Lickers:
Before one even encounters these uniquely unpleasant, flayed-to-the muscle, exposed-brain monsters, signs of the carnage they have wrought are everywhere: as well as the various corpses mutilated and half-consumed by the numerous zombies hanging around Raccoon City, there are other scenes of human carnage, more violent and extreme than those wrought by the comparatively plodding and uninventive undead.
Exploring the manor-like police department, player characters Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield (sister to the original game's Chris Redfield) encounter rooms and corridors where people haven't merely been dragged to the ground and consumed, but elaborately eviscerated, partially flayed, strung up and dismembered. Whilst the characters themselves make no overt notes of this, it's clear to that something more is stalking the police department corridors.
After a time exploring, the player will find themselves casually wandering down a small, claustrophobic corridor with a window at the far end. There are no sound cues, no orchestra stings; as they approach the window, something indiscernible -but noticeably red- stalks across the outside of the window in the manner of a spider. Blink, and you'll miss it, the moment gone almost too quickly to follow. Cue those of us who were teenagers at time gasping, stopping dead, gripping our controllers in abject terror. Some of the more vocal amongst us -which certainly included me- might have cried out something along the lines of: “What the fuck was that?”
The moment has since gone down in video game history as one of the most terrifying not only in the franchise, but horror games in general. Something about the quiet, unexpected nature of it; the casual framing, makes it all the more effective. The moment is not set up or cued in any way; there is nothing to indicate it's even going to happen, and, when it has, it leaves the player in a state of heightened confusion as well as fear.
The minimal framing of the window and the strange, arachnid motions of the creature outside are designed to leave the player in confusion as to what they've witnessed; from that small glimpse and at that angle, it's difficult to discern precisely what the creature is. The only certainty is that it is wet, bloody and distorted. The situation of the window looking out over Raccoon City from one of the department's upper stories also lends an especial air of dread: clearly, nothing natural should be able to crawl across the outer wall like that. Similarly, it is obviously not a common or garden zombie, who lack the athletic abilities and coordination to scale that high.
So, the player is left in a state of exquisite anticipation: they know from that small signifier that something is coming. They just don't know when, where or in what capacity.
In the original version of the game, the tension is then strung out even further, as it's some time after that initial glimpse before we run headlong into one of the Cronenbergian beasties. Instead, the game allows the player to saturate in their tension for a while, providing one or two more hints and suggestions in various journals, gorily-decorated rooms and bodies discovered with their heads sliced cleanly off (one of The Licker's many death animations).
It's not until they emerge in a particular corridor; a corridor that lacks music, whose silence is oppressive and ominous in itself, that the feaces start to fly. A steady, disturbing drip, drip, drip drawers the player down the corridor, at the end of which they find a hideously lacerated body slumped in the corner. Turning the bend, they discover a pool of blood on the tiles, which the player character will automatically bend to examine. Cue the iconic cut-scene in which a tortured hiss and moan drawers their attention up to the pipes on the ceiling, where something straight out of a Clive Barker-esque nightmare crawls upside down, leering through a lipless mouth of needle-teeth, a long, prehensile tongue emerging to lick at the air.
This is our first, uncompromised shot of The Licker, and boy, is it a hell of a reveal. For those of us used to Resi 1, this was the moment the sequel revealed itself as a different kettle of fish altogether: In the original game, the more elaborate monsters occurred much later in play or during their own especial sequences (all of us recall the iconic moment The Hunters stalk us along the garden path we've only just walked, emerging through the door behind us). Here, a creature more hideous and mutilated than almost anything in that game occurs relatively early; a thing far beyond any mutated animal or shambling undead. In design, The Lickers resemble a hybrid between lizard, spider and flayed man. Each of their extended limbs ends in vicious bone claws, their knotted musculature flayed of even the least skin, leaving them hideously naked and exposed to the elements. Their heads are swollen to the point that their brains have burst from their skulls and are visible, eclipsing any eyes they might've once boasted. The feature that lends them their names is an insanely long, barbed tongue with which they “lick” at their victims, opening wounds in the same manner as a whip.
This first specimen drops down directly in front of the player character, undulating in a disturbing manner against the tiled floor, hissing and moaning like something in pain, but also something hungry.
The initial shock at the encounter is replaced by extreme discomfort at its proximity, the player's natural reaction to back away down the corridor, firearm trained on the monster. It's here that we see another highly disturbing -and utterly mesmerising- element of the monster's design: its strange, scuttling, inhuman motions. For a time, the monster does nothing, undulating almost flat against the floor, before either scuttling on all fours towards the player or sitting up on its haunches, whipping at us with its barbed tongue. The incredibly fast, unnatural nature of their movements makes predicting and targeting them extremely difficult, any encounter with them immediately fraught, especially if the player doesn't know what they're doing.
If they catch up, the creature will lash out with either tongue or claws, causing rapid, significant damage in a short space of time, before treating us to one of its many lurid death animations.
If the player manages to survive, they will almost certainly be left breathless, panicked and uncertain of what's to come next. Quite brilliantly, the game then waits to throw another Licker their way, allowing tension to build and build and build once again. Most encounters with the monsters at this early stage occur in set pieces; at one point, having recovered a key item from a statue in a room with a notable glass ceiling, the player will be frightened out of their skins as a pair of Lickers crash through from above, landing in a litter of glass and their own gore, already heaving, hissing and ready to pounce. Later, the player will encounter them in seemingly innocuous or safe rooms where they scramble through air-vents or emerge through adjoining windows. Almost every encounter with the monsters is a unique horror set-piece, marrying the disturbia of their design and animation to some sincerely heart-stopping shocks.
As though that wasn't enough, as the player progresses, the creatures evolve and transform to keep up with the escalatingly bizarre menageries of monsters, bioweapons and mutants the player encounters: by the time they've made their way down into the secret Umbrella Corporation labs beneath Raccoon City, The Lickers have reached their next stage of evolution: their flayed musculature developed to a black, chitinous shell, their claws fused into enormous scythes of bone and their general demeanours become much more predatory and aggressive. These enhanced Lickers are only encountered once or twice in the entire game, but they are always terrifying propositions, made all the moreso by the sheer amount of damage they can inflicts with just a few swipes.
The design of The Licker has become so iconic when it comes to the Resident Evil franchise, it has been reused, adapted and rejigged again and again. Not only do the monsters feature in the original film adaptation -a terrible, weightless C.G. Creation that, ironically, is far less visceral and significant than the 32-bit video game it's derived from- but also recur in other Resi titles down the years. For those of us who were children and teenagers when Resi 2 originally hit the shelves, The Licker will always be one of those monsters that occupies an especial warren in our memories and imaginations.
In the time since the original game's release, we've had the suplerative remakes of Resi 1, 2 and 3, meaning that, alongside every other iconic monster in those games, the comparatively humble Lickers have been dusted off and given a fresh lick (a ha) of -blood-tinged- paint:
Not only have they been lovingly recreated in stunning graphics for the present day generation of consoles, they've been totally reimagined in terms of their placing, framing and natures. The remake foregoes the cut-scene set-pieces that were de rigeur for the era and instead opts for introducing The Lickers in a more organic manner:
Rather than sign-posting their appearance too heavily, the game allows its -copious and brilliant- environmental details to do the heavy lifting: as before, the player will eventually find themselves in the iconic, curving corridor, only here, the atmospere is even denser, with sputtering, inconstant lighting, burst pipes, dripping water and far more in the way of elaborately mutilated corpses: Approaching the slumped body in the far corner, players are treated to a grizzly close-up of the mutilations worked on its face and throat by The Licker's claws. Standing, turning around, they will find once again the puddle of blood made by a continuous drip from the pipes above. Only here, it's not The Licker itself creating the puddle, but a corpse messily impaled through the back of the head and mouth on a jagged pipe.
The Licker itself does not appear until much, much later; not until after the player has found multiple, frantic and incoherent accounts of “something” loose in the police station, something much worse than the zombies, that is noted as being “blind” and “skinless.” This is an important dynamic for the new Lickers; lacking eyes, the creatures emphasise an entirely other species of horror than in the original game: here, the player can choose to try and rush by them, thereby exciting the creatures into violence by the noise and vibrations they make, shoot them down, which also excites the creatures into hostility, or can instead attempt to conserve health and ammunition by quietly, slowly sneaking past them. This makes The Lickers a very different exercise from in the original game, and introduces a subtle note of stealth and quiet tension to proceedings.
This first specimen drops down directly in front of the player character, undulating in a disturbing manner against the tiled floor, hissing and moaning like something in pain, but also something hungry.
The initial shock at the encounter is replaced by extreme discomfort at its proximity, the player's natural reaction to back away down the corridor, firearm trained on the monster. It's here that we see another highly disturbing -and utterly mesmerising- element of the monster's design: its strange, scuttling, inhuman motions. For a time, the monster does nothing, undulating almost flat against the floor, before either scuttling on all fours towards the player or sitting up on its haunches, whipping at us with its barbed tongue. The incredibly fast, unnatural nature of their movements makes predicting and targeting them extremely difficult, any encounter with them immediately fraught, especially if the player doesn't know what they're doing.
If they catch up, the creature will lash out with either tongue or claws, causing rapid, significant damage in a short space of time, before treating us to one of its many lurid death animations.
If the player manages to survive, they will almost certainly be left breathless, panicked and uncertain of what's to come next. Quite brilliantly, the game then waits to throw another Licker their way, allowing tension to build and build and build once again. Most encounters with the monsters at this early stage occur in set pieces; at one point, having recovered a key item from a statue in a room with a notable glass ceiling, the player will be frightened out of their skins as a pair of Lickers crash through from above, landing in a litter of glass and their own gore, already heaving, hissing and ready to pounce. Later, the player will encounter them in seemingly innocuous or safe rooms where they scramble through air-vents or emerge through adjoining windows. Almost every encounter with the monsters is a unique horror set-piece, marrying the disturbia of their design and animation to some sincerely heart-stopping shocks.
As though that wasn't enough, as the player progresses, the creatures evolve and transform to keep up with the escalatingly bizarre menageries of monsters, bioweapons and mutants the player encounters: by the time they've made their way down into the secret Umbrella Corporation labs beneath Raccoon City, The Lickers have reached their next stage of evolution: their flayed musculature developed to a black, chitinous shell, their claws fused into enormous scythes of bone and their general demeanours become much more predatory and aggressive. These enhanced Lickers are only encountered once or twice in the entire game, but they are always terrifying propositions, made all the moreso by the sheer amount of damage they can inflicts with just a few swipes.
The design of The Licker has become so iconic when it comes to the Resident Evil franchise, it has been reused, adapted and rejigged again and again. Not only do the monsters feature in the original film adaptation -a terrible, weightless C.G. Creation that, ironically, is far less visceral and significant than the 32-bit video game it's derived from- but also recur in other Resi titles down the years. For those of us who were children and teenagers when Resi 2 originally hit the shelves, The Licker will always be one of those monsters that occupies an especial warren in our memories and imaginations.
In the time since the original game's release, we've had the suplerative remakes of Resi 1, 2 and 3, meaning that, alongside every other iconic monster in those games, the comparatively humble Lickers have been dusted off and given a fresh lick (a ha) of -blood-tinged- paint:
Not only have they been lovingly recreated in stunning graphics for the present day generation of consoles, they've been totally reimagined in terms of their placing, framing and natures. The remake foregoes the cut-scene set-pieces that were de rigeur for the era and instead opts for introducing The Lickers in a more organic manner:
Rather than sign-posting their appearance too heavily, the game allows its -copious and brilliant- environmental details to do the heavy lifting: as before, the player will eventually find themselves in the iconic, curving corridor, only here, the atmospere is even denser, with sputtering, inconstant lighting, burst pipes, dripping water and far more in the way of elaborately mutilated corpses: Approaching the slumped body in the far corner, players are treated to a grizzly close-up of the mutilations worked on its face and throat by The Licker's claws. Standing, turning around, they will find once again the puddle of blood made by a continuous drip from the pipes above. Only here, it's not The Licker itself creating the puddle, but a corpse messily impaled through the back of the head and mouth on a jagged pipe.
The Licker itself does not appear until much, much later; not until after the player has found multiple, frantic and incoherent accounts of “something” loose in the police station, something much worse than the zombies, that is noted as being “blind” and “skinless.” This is an important dynamic for the new Lickers; lacking eyes, the creatures emphasise an entirely other species of horror than in the original game: here, the player can choose to try and rush by them, thereby exciting the creatures into violence by the noise and vibrations they make, shoot them down, which also excites the creatures into hostility, or can instead attempt to conserve health and ammunition by quietly, slowly sneaking past them. This makes The Lickers a very different exercise from in the original game, and introduces a subtle note of stealth and quiet tension to proceedings.
This time around, the monsters are first encountered in a darkened corridor where they are periodically lit by flashes of light through the windows and the player character's torch. Suspended from the ceiling, they are initially still and exceedingly distressing, the player waiting for them to explode into violence as they approach.
If they are excited, then they are far tougher than they were in the original game; quicker, more dynamic and acrobatic, they leap to and fro from adjacent walls, clamber across ceilings and leap significant distances. If they do manage to come into close contact, the player is almost certainly done, as they can eviscerate either Leon or Claire with a series of fluid swipes, leading to one of several intensely elaborate and grotesque death animations.
The character and natures of The Lickers is surprisingly removed from their original incarnations in the remake; designed to provide contrast with the various situations and set pieces involving zombies, stalkers such as Mr. X/The Tyrant (more on him later in this series) etc: here, they are not just another monster to throw at the player; they operate in their own hermetic eco-systems and require notable differences in tactics and approach in order to traverse. As with most encounters in the remake, there isn't one all-singing, all-dancing solution to navigating The Lickers: in some instances, it might be prudent to clear them from a transitional area through violence, so as to make the route safer, whereas in others, such would not only be a waste of ammunition but also counter-productive as the environment isn't ideal for a protracted fight with the creatures. Far more complex in terms of behaviour, the player must learn how they operate and respond to incidences such as sound and vibration, determining when it's best to ease around them slowly or to break into a full run and put as much distance between them as possible.
As before, The Lickers have a number of notable set-pieces, which are amongst some of the most effective jump-scares in the game:
In a nod to the “glass ceiling” room from the original, the player will, at one point, find themselves in an interrogation room, looking at the reflective side of a one-way mirror. As they negotiate the room, a Licker bursts through the mirror and proceeds to harass them until they either manage to kill it (difficult in those closed confines) or flee.
This difference in presentation and ethos is essential, given how familiar with the iconic creatures video game culture has become in the decades since the original's release. As well as evoking that original dread and tension, it was also incumbent on Capcom to sufficiently reinvent them in order to make their appearance in the remake more than an exercise in nostalgia. In this effort, they have succeeded superbly: The Lickers remain amongst the most terrifying, disturbing and notable creatures in the game, not to mention the entirety of the Resident Evil franchise.
If they are excited, then they are far tougher than they were in the original game; quicker, more dynamic and acrobatic, they leap to and fro from adjacent walls, clamber across ceilings and leap significant distances. If they do manage to come into close contact, the player is almost certainly done, as they can eviscerate either Leon or Claire with a series of fluid swipes, leading to one of several intensely elaborate and grotesque death animations.
The character and natures of The Lickers is surprisingly removed from their original incarnations in the remake; designed to provide contrast with the various situations and set pieces involving zombies, stalkers such as Mr. X/The Tyrant (more on him later in this series) etc: here, they are not just another monster to throw at the player; they operate in their own hermetic eco-systems and require notable differences in tactics and approach in order to traverse. As with most encounters in the remake, there isn't one all-singing, all-dancing solution to navigating The Lickers: in some instances, it might be prudent to clear them from a transitional area through violence, so as to make the route safer, whereas in others, such would not only be a waste of ammunition but also counter-productive as the environment isn't ideal for a protracted fight with the creatures. Far more complex in terms of behaviour, the player must learn how they operate and respond to incidences such as sound and vibration, determining when it's best to ease around them slowly or to break into a full run and put as much distance between them as possible.
As before, The Lickers have a number of notable set-pieces, which are amongst some of the most effective jump-scares in the game:
In a nod to the “glass ceiling” room from the original, the player will, at one point, find themselves in an interrogation room, looking at the reflective side of a one-way mirror. As they negotiate the room, a Licker bursts through the mirror and proceeds to harass them until they either manage to kill it (difficult in those closed confines) or flee.
This difference in presentation and ethos is essential, given how familiar with the iconic creatures video game culture has become in the decades since the original's release. As well as evoking that original dread and tension, it was also incumbent on Capcom to sufficiently reinvent them in order to make their appearance in the remake more than an exercise in nostalgia. In this effort, they have succeeded superbly: The Lickers remain amongst the most terrifying, disturbing and notable creatures in the game, not to mention the entirety of the Resident Evil franchise.
Read Part One of George's new series of articles on the monsters of Resident Evil here
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the heart and soul of horror promotion websites
Since we announced ChillerCon, the first big horror event in the UK supported by the Horror Writers Association, people have been asking why Scarborough? Apart from the fact one of our committee, Alex Davis, ran a hugely successful FantasyCon there a few years ago, and the town is only a hop, skip and a bite away from Dracula country in Whitby where they hold the Goth Festival every year, there’s a very rich history of all things scary and spooky about the place.
For starters, there are a number of haunted venues in the area, from the Black Lion pub –two former 17th century buildings merged together to form an inn – which is rumoured to be the town’s first mortuary, to Scarborough Castle which sits on a clifftop overlooking the entire city (it is said to be haunted by the headless phantom of Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight and ‘favourite’ of the ill-fated King Edward II). Indeed, one of the con venues, The Grand, is itself rumoured to be haunted. Built in 1867, to accommodate the most noble of guests, it was one of the largest hotels of its kind at the time. More recently, guests have reported witnessing items flying across their rooms, objects falling from walls, doors shaking and banging with no one on the other side, plus the sound of singing and laughter accompanied by old fashioned music. Various apparitions have been seen over the years (and Kindred Spirit Investigations do regular Ghost Hunts there), but the most common remains a mysterious lady wearing a long red dress…
The author of The Woman in Black, Susan Hill, has talked before at length about the influence of Scarborough on her work – she was born and raised in the town. In fact, the adaptation of that most famous of ghost stories started life there, at the Stephen Joseph theatre… and it’s not hard to see why. She’s described how Penny-in-the-slot machines used to show executions, and a Chamber of Horrors in a long-gone museum displayed waxwork murderers! Nowadays, of course, we have the wonderfully fun Terror Towers on the sea front, which is well worth a visit if you have time during the convention.
The town has also played host to film and TV crews over the years, making supernatural and horror productions. One of the most recent is the BBC’s mini-series Remember Me from 2014, starring Michael Palin as a pensioner who appears cursed when strange things keep happening to those around him. It all leads back to the atmospheric location of Scarborough, and if you take a walk down the sea front you’ll find one striking location in particular in the form of the Scarborough Spa – with its instantly recognisable chequered floor.
For starters, there are a number of haunted venues in the area, from the Black Lion pub –two former 17th century buildings merged together to form an inn – which is rumoured to be the town’s first mortuary, to Scarborough Castle which sits on a clifftop overlooking the entire city (it is said to be haunted by the headless phantom of Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight and ‘favourite’ of the ill-fated King Edward II). Indeed, one of the con venues, The Grand, is itself rumoured to be haunted. Built in 1867, to accommodate the most noble of guests, it was one of the largest hotels of its kind at the time. More recently, guests have reported witnessing items flying across their rooms, objects falling from walls, doors shaking and banging with no one on the other side, plus the sound of singing and laughter accompanied by old fashioned music. Various apparitions have been seen over the years (and Kindred Spirit Investigations do regular Ghost Hunts there), but the most common remains a mysterious lady wearing a long red dress…
The author of The Woman in Black, Susan Hill, has talked before at length about the influence of Scarborough on her work – she was born and raised in the town. In fact, the adaptation of that most famous of ghost stories started life there, at the Stephen Joseph theatre… and it’s not hard to see why. She’s described how Penny-in-the-slot machines used to show executions, and a Chamber of Horrors in a long-gone museum displayed waxwork murderers! Nowadays, of course, we have the wonderfully fun Terror Towers on the sea front, which is well worth a visit if you have time during the convention.
The town has also played host to film and TV crews over the years, making supernatural and horror productions. One of the most recent is the BBC’s mini-series Remember Me from 2014, starring Michael Palin as a pensioner who appears cursed when strange things keep happening to those around him. It all leads back to the atmospheric location of Scarborough, and if you take a walk down the sea front you’ll find one striking location in particular in the form of the Scarborough Spa – with its instantly recognisable chequered floor.
And of course 2020’s superb Saint Maud, contender for best horror film of the year, was filmed in Scarborough. Starring Morfydd Clark, who gave a mesmerising performance, this told the tale of one devoutly religious and reclusive young nurse’s descent into madness. A masterclass in paranoia and psychological terror, the shocking ending was filmed right there on the beach at Scarborough.
So, given all this, I suppose the better question to ask might be why wouldn’t we choose this place to gather together the horror community! It might have been a while coming, but finally this summer we can all come together in person, and boy do we have a convention lined up for you. Spread across The Grand and The Royal, there will be panels examining every aspect of horror, masterclasses from the people who know horror inside out, pitch sessions, book launches and publisher parties, readings, a dealers room, and not forgetting our Guest of Honour and Special Guest interviews – plus performances from guest Robert Lloyd Parry of Nunkie Theatre (you can read all of our Guests bios at the end of this piece). Come and join in the spooky fun!
ChillerCon is running in Scarborough between 26-29th May (https://chillercon-uk.com/)
So, given all this, I suppose the better question to ask might be why wouldn’t we choose this place to gather together the horror community! It might have been a while coming, but finally this summer we can all come together in person, and boy do we have a convention lined up for you. Spread across The Grand and The Royal, there will be panels examining every aspect of horror, masterclasses from the people who know horror inside out, pitch sessions, book launches and publisher parties, readings, a dealers room, and not forgetting our Guest of Honour and Special Guest interviews – plus performances from guest Robert Lloyd Parry of Nunkie Theatre (you can read all of our Guests bios at the end of this piece). Come and join in the spooky fun!
ChillerCon is running in Scarborough between 26-29th May (https://chillercon-uk.com/)
Our Guests of Honour are:
Mick Garris began writing fiction at the age of twelve. By the time he was in high school, he was writing music and film journalism for various local and national publications, and during college, edited and published his own pop culture magazine. Steven Spielberg hired Mick as story editor on the Amazing Stories TV series for NBC, where he wrote or co-wrote ten of the forty-four episodes. Since then, he has written or co-scripted a number of feature films and teleplays (*Batteries Not Included, The Fly II, Hocus Pocus, Critters 2 and Nightmares & Dreamscapes, amongst many others). As a director and producer, he has worked in a wide range of media, including feature films (Critters 2, Sleepwalkers, Riding the Bullet, Nightmare Cinema); made-for-TV movies (Quicksilver Highway, Virtual Obsession, Desperation); cable movies and series (Psycho IV: The Beginning, Tales from the Crypt, Pretty Little Liars and its spin-off Ravenswood, Witches of East End, Shadowhunters, Dead of Summer, Once Upon a Time); network mini-series (The Stand, The Shining, Bag of Bones); series pilots (The Others, Lost in Oz) and series (She-Wolf of London). He is also the creator and executive producer of Showtime’s Masters of Horror anthology series, as well as creator of the NBC series, Fear Itself. Mick is known for his highly-rated podcast, Post Mortem with Mick Garris, where he sits down with some of the most revered film-makers in the horror and fantasy genre for one-on-one discussions, including the likes of Stephen King, John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Walter Hill, Neil Gaiman, and many others. A Life in the Cinema, his first book, was a collection of short stories and a screenplay based on one of the included stories, published by Gauntlet Press. Mick’s first novel, Development Hell, was published by Cemetery Dance, who is also the publisher of his novellas, Snow Shadows, Tyler’s Third Act and Ugly. His new book, These Evil Things We Do: The Mick Garris Collection, features four novellas, and his second novel is titled Salome. He has also had many works of short fiction published in numerous books and magazines. A biography, Master of Horror by Abbie Bernstein, was published last year.
Kim Newman is a movie critic, author and broadcaster. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines. His books about film include Nightmare Movies, Millennium Movies, Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon and BFI Classics studies of Cat People, Doctor Who and Quatermass and the Pit. His fiction includes the Anno Dracula series, Life’s Lottery, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles, An English Ghost Story, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and Angels of Music. His comics include Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland and Anno Dracula Seven Days in Mayhem. As ‘Jack Yeovil’, he wrote the Vampire Genevieve and Dark Future novels for Games Workshop. His most recent novel is Anno Dracula 999 1Daikaiju. His books about film include Nightmare Movies, Millennium Movies, Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon and BFI Classics studies of Cat People, Doctor Who and Quatermass and the Pit. He has also written for television (Dr. Terror’s Vault of Horror; Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema), radio (Afternoon Theatre: Cry-Babies) and the theatre (The Hallowe’en Sessions), and directed a tiny film (Missing Girl). His official web-site is at www.johnnyalucard.com. He is on Twitter as @AnnoDracula.
New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix has written about the confederate flag for Playboy magazine, reported on machine gun collector conventions, and scripted award shows for Chinese television. His novels include Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, which has been translated into 14 languages, My Best Friend's Exorcism, which recently became a feature film starring Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), We Sold Our Souls, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (currently being turned into a television series for Amazon), and The Final Girl Support Group. He's also the author of Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the Seventies and Eighties, which won the Stoker Award for “Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction”. He wrote Mohawk (2017), probably the only horror movie anyone will ever make about the War of 1812, and Satanic Panic (2019), about a pizza delivery woman battling rich Satanists. You can discover more ridiculous facts about him at www.gradyhendrix.com.
Gillian Redfearn is the Hugo Award-nominated Deputy Publisher of Gollancz, the world’s oldest Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint. Within five months of joining the Gollancz team as editorial assistant she had commissioned the bestselling First Law trilogy from Joe Abercrombie, swiftly followed by acquiring the UK rights to Patrick Rothfuss’ novels. When she became Editorial Director for the imprint in 2014 she was selected as a Bookseller Rising Star, and two years later Gollancz was shortlisted for best imprint in the Bookseller Awards. Throughout her career Redfearn has worked across the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres, with bestselling and award winning authors including Ben Aaronovitch, Joe Abercrombie, Aliette de Bodard, Joe Hill, Charlaine Harris, Joanne Harris, Sarah Pinborough, Brandon Sanderson, Alastair Reynolds and Chris Wooding, among many others. As Gillian finds herself unable to travel to Scarborough on the new convention dates, her Guest of Honour interview will be via video with Joe Hill and made available to Supporting Members of the convention after the event via a private area of the website. Other ways in which Gillian will be participating will be advised in due course.
Our Special Guests are:
Mike Carey was born in Liverpool, but moved to London in the eighties after completing an English degree at Oxford. He was an English teacher for fifteen years before resigning to become a freelance writer in 2000. Initially he worked mainly in the medium of comic books. After writing for several UK and American indie publishers, he got his big break when he was commissioned by DC Comics’ Vertigo division to write Lucifer. Spinning off from Neil Gaiman’s ground-breaking Sandman series, Lucifer told the story of the devil’s exploits after resigning from Hell to run a piano bar in Los Angeles: Mike wrote the book for the whole of its initial seven-year run, during which he was nominated for four Eisner awards and won the Ninth Art and UK National Comics awards. More recently he has written Barbarella, Highest House and The Dollhouse Family, which will be released in September of this year as a hardcover collection. Mike’s first foray into prose fiction came with the Felix Castor novels, supernatural crime thrillers whose exorcist protagonist consorts with demons, zombies and ghosts in an alternate London. These were followed by two collaborations with his wife Linda and their daughter Louise, The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness. Subsequently, under the transparent pseudonym of M.R.Carey, he wrote The Girl With All the Gifts and its prequel The Boy On the Bridge. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation of The Girl With All the Gifts, for which – at the age of 59! – he received a British Screenwriting award for best newcomer. The Book of Koli (2020) was the start of a new post-apocalyptic trilogy, followed up by The Trials of Koli (2020) and The Fall of Koli (2021).
Robert Lloyd-Parry has worked variously as an art historian, theatre reviewer, actor and guesthouse keeper in a Greek monastery. He co-founded Nunkie Theatre Company in 1996 to produce shows on the London Fringe—amongst them Alan Bennett’s An Englishman Abroad, Patrick Suskind’s The Double Bass, and David Mamet’s Squirrels. It was while working at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge that he rediscovered a fascination with the works of Montague Rhodes James, the master of the English ghost story. In 2005 he dusted off the Nunkie brand and performed A Pleasing Terror, the first of six one-man shows based on James’ tales. He has since toured these extensively around the UK, USA, and Ireland, and on Christmas Day 2013 he appeared as M.R. James in Ghost Writer, Mark Gatiss’ BBC-TV documentary about the life of the author. Robert Lloyd-Parry has also toured a one-man adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and, most recently, Gallery of Screams—a one-man show based on two weird tales by H.P. Lovecraft. He has written, presented and produced two documentary films looking in detail at two of M.R. James’ greatest tales, and released audio books: Curious Creatures—The Shorter Horror of M.R. James and Two Strange Tales Lucy Boston. For more on Nunkie, see here.
And our Mistress of Ceremonies is:
A. K. Benedict was educated at Cambridge, University of Sussex and Clown School. She was the lead singer and co-songwriter of cabaret-punk band, The Black Tulips, and now performs with The Slice Girls, a troupe of female crime writers who sing songs of murder and betrayal, in corsets. She has composed for film and TV, with music played on BBC1, Channel Four, Sky, Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 and XFM, in cinemas across the Middle East, and on a cross channel ferry. As an actor, she has appeared in film and radio drama as well as performing in touring productions of Shakespeare, Wilde, Coward and contemporary theatre. Described by the Sunday Express as ‘one of the new stars of crime fiction with a supernatural twist’, AK Benedict’s debut novel, The Beauty of Murder, was shortlisted for an eDunnit award and is in development for TV by Company Pictures. Her second novel from Orion, The Evidence of Ghosts, is a love song to London and shows her obsession with all things haunted. And The Christmas Murder Game came out from Zaffre last year. Her radio drama includes Doctor Who and Torchwood plays for Big Finish and a modern adaptation of Lost Hearts for Bafflegab/Audible. Her short stories and poetry have featured in journals and anthologies including New Fairy Tales, Best British Short Stories 2012, Magma, Orbis, Scaremongrel, New Fears, Phantoms, Great British Horror, Best British Horror 2018, Exit Wounds, Invisible Blood and Best British Horror 2019. Alexandra is RLF Fellow at University of Kent and Visiting Lecturer on the Crime Thriller MA at City, University of London. She is currently writing a thriller set in the arctic and a collection of ghost stories. She lives in Rochester with writer Guy Adams and their dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.
All Guest appearances are subject to availability at the time of the convention.
All Guest appearances are subject to availability at the time of the convention.
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the heart and soul of horror promotion
In this series, I will be reading every Brian Keene fiction book that has been published (and is still available in print), and then producing an essay on it. With the exception of Girl On The Glider, these essays will be based upon a first read of the books concerned. The article will assume you’ve read the book, and you should expect MASSIVE spoilers.
I hope you enjoy my voyage of discovery.
Exploring The Labyrinth 16: Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes From the End of the World
Set in the drowning world of Earthworm Gods, and serving as a spiritual twin to The Rising: Selected Scenes From The End Of The World, this volume collects thirty 1000 word short stories that, via a series of vignettes, gives a further insight into, and context for, Keene’s watery apocalypse.
As the end notes make clear, as with the prior collection set in the world of The Rising, most of the stories are based on real people (often the same people as in that collection) who paid to become part of Keene’s mythos. I’m again struck by the sheer chutzpah of this move, and by what it says about the author’s relationship with his audience. It’s clear that he’s spoken with each subject prior to writing the tale, and he sprinkles autobiographical details carefully into the stories to round out the ‘characters’.
Again, as with the prior volume, I am also struck by the economy of the storytelling; 1000 words is not a lot of space to tell a story, and yet none of the contained tales feel half told, nor does the volume suffer from repetition. Of course (spoilers, lol) most of the people we meet die, but that’s part of the game; we know that going in, and the pleasure is to be found in the why, and how.
Some of that variety is supplied by the subjects, of course; Keene has fans all over the globe, and he takes full advantage of this to paint the flood on a broader canvas than the more tightly focussed Earthworm Gods novel could manage, even with the mid-book perspective shift. That said, there’s still the feeling of an act of writing bravado in committing to thirty tales all with, essentially, the same ending for similar reasons, knowing you’ll be able to pull off something not merely readable but thoroughly enjoyable.
As noted above, part of the secret sauce comes from the characters. Keene’s always been good at efficient character portraits, and that talent goes into overdrive here, bringing this eclectic cast of strangers to life with a level of vivid realisation that I found deeply enviable. And, sure, in some cases, the characters and/or their settings/occupations will have naturally suggested grizzly fates (I’m thinking particularly of a certain telephone line repairman who found himself Up A Pole, and the family of On The Beach). Still, I found myself struck again and again, as I gulped down this irritatingly readable collection, by just how much room Keene was finding for variety within a pretty tough set of constraints.
The two tales I just mentioned give a good illustration of this point, actually; in Up A Pole, it’s clear from the opening line (really, the title) what the premise is, and, given the nature of the Worms, how it will play out. The pleasure/frisson comes from the contemplation of the hellish, nightmarish situation. Keene doesn’t exactly play it for laughs… but I suspect, like me, you’ll find a wolfish grin on your face as you read it. On The Beach, on the other hand, places a family on the seafront minutes before a tsunami hits, and the impact as I realised, just slightly before the characters, what the significance of the suddenly too-dry beach and stranded marine life meant was absolutely skin crawling. Not, to be clear, that Phil of Up A Pole was an unsympathetic character… but there’s a dark humour to his situation, whereas the Beach family moment invokes memories of real life disasters (though the 2018 tsunami hadn’t happened when the story was written, the familiarity of the coverage of that tragedy can’t help but haunt the reading of this story).
Elsewhere, we’re gifted with visits from fungus zombies, carnivorous fish, terrifying human/shark hybrids, a very famous ghost ship, and much, much more. As with The Rising collection, the apocalypse is also progressing in the background, meaning that dry land becomes more and more of a rare commodity as the stories progress. This helps bring a sense of narrative shape to the collection, as does the canny decision to have some of the stories intersect, in ways subtle and direct; it’s just enough glue to make the collection feel more than the sum of it’s already enjoyable parts.
In truth, I don’t have much more to say about this, but I don’t want you to mistake that for a lack of enjoyment; both this and The Rising collection I found thoroughly entertaining. My reader brain was fully engaged and entertained by the pacing, character work, and inventiveness, while my writer brain was frantically taking notes. Again, I want to make it clear how hard it is to consistently deliver such deep character work in such a low word count; it’s a pulp horror skill that I think is criminally underrated. In fairness, done badly, it can be part of the reason pulp genre fiction is held in low regard; an overreliance on… well, let’s be polite and call them tropes, shall we?
But done well (and Keene does it as well as anyone and better than most), it creates a kaleidoscope of memorable characters facing impossible situations against a backdrop of rising dread that also serves to join some dots in terms of the mythology of the novels. I am left, again, deeply impressed with both the scale of Keene’s imagination and his ability to mercilessly hone in on the small, the personal, the human.
Because, at the end of the day, the apocalypse is always personal.
Next up: Castaways.
KP
10/2/22
As the end notes make clear, as with the prior collection set in the world of The Rising, most of the stories are based on real people (often the same people as in that collection) who paid to become part of Keene’s mythos. I’m again struck by the sheer chutzpah of this move, and by what it says about the author’s relationship with his audience. It’s clear that he’s spoken with each subject prior to writing the tale, and he sprinkles autobiographical details carefully into the stories to round out the ‘characters’.
Again, as with the prior volume, I am also struck by the economy of the storytelling; 1000 words is not a lot of space to tell a story, and yet none of the contained tales feel half told, nor does the volume suffer from repetition. Of course (spoilers, lol) most of the people we meet die, but that’s part of the game; we know that going in, and the pleasure is to be found in the why, and how.
Some of that variety is supplied by the subjects, of course; Keene has fans all over the globe, and he takes full advantage of this to paint the flood on a broader canvas than the more tightly focussed Earthworm Gods novel could manage, even with the mid-book perspective shift. That said, there’s still the feeling of an act of writing bravado in committing to thirty tales all with, essentially, the same ending for similar reasons, knowing you’ll be able to pull off something not merely readable but thoroughly enjoyable.
As noted above, part of the secret sauce comes from the characters. Keene’s always been good at efficient character portraits, and that talent goes into overdrive here, bringing this eclectic cast of strangers to life with a level of vivid realisation that I found deeply enviable. And, sure, in some cases, the characters and/or their settings/occupations will have naturally suggested grizzly fates (I’m thinking particularly of a certain telephone line repairman who found himself Up A Pole, and the family of On The Beach). Still, I found myself struck again and again, as I gulped down this irritatingly readable collection, by just how much room Keene was finding for variety within a pretty tough set of constraints.
The two tales I just mentioned give a good illustration of this point, actually; in Up A Pole, it’s clear from the opening line (really, the title) what the premise is, and, given the nature of the Worms, how it will play out. The pleasure/frisson comes from the contemplation of the hellish, nightmarish situation. Keene doesn’t exactly play it for laughs… but I suspect, like me, you’ll find a wolfish grin on your face as you read it. On The Beach, on the other hand, places a family on the seafront minutes before a tsunami hits, and the impact as I realised, just slightly before the characters, what the significance of the suddenly too-dry beach and stranded marine life meant was absolutely skin crawling. Not, to be clear, that Phil of Up A Pole was an unsympathetic character… but there’s a dark humour to his situation, whereas the Beach family moment invokes memories of real life disasters (though the 2018 tsunami hadn’t happened when the story was written, the familiarity of the coverage of that tragedy can’t help but haunt the reading of this story).
Elsewhere, we’re gifted with visits from fungus zombies, carnivorous fish, terrifying human/shark hybrids, a very famous ghost ship, and much, much more. As with The Rising collection, the apocalypse is also progressing in the background, meaning that dry land becomes more and more of a rare commodity as the stories progress. This helps bring a sense of narrative shape to the collection, as does the canny decision to have some of the stories intersect, in ways subtle and direct; it’s just enough glue to make the collection feel more than the sum of it’s already enjoyable parts.
In truth, I don’t have much more to say about this, but I don’t want you to mistake that for a lack of enjoyment; both this and The Rising collection I found thoroughly entertaining. My reader brain was fully engaged and entertained by the pacing, character work, and inventiveness, while my writer brain was frantically taking notes. Again, I want to make it clear how hard it is to consistently deliver such deep character work in such a low word count; it’s a pulp horror skill that I think is criminally underrated. In fairness, done badly, it can be part of the reason pulp genre fiction is held in low regard; an overreliance on… well, let’s be polite and call them tropes, shall we?
But done well (and Keene does it as well as anyone and better than most), it creates a kaleidoscope of memorable characters facing impossible situations against a backdrop of rising dread that also serves to join some dots in terms of the mythology of the novels. I am left, again, deeply impressed with both the scale of Keene’s imagination and his ability to mercilessly hone in on the small, the personal, the human.
Because, at the end of the day, the apocalypse is always personal.
Next up: Castaways.
KP
10/2/22
EARTHWORM GODS: SELECTED SCENES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
BY BRIAN KEENE
So began Brian Keene's Earthworm Gods, a novel that straddled the lines between the horror and bizarro genres. Fans have long marveled over that post-apocalyptic landscape-a flooded earth filled with strange and terrifying monsters. Readers returned to that world in Earthworm Gods II: Deluge. Now, it's time for one last trip.
Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes From the End of the World is a collection of short stories set in the world of Earthworm Gods and Earthworm Gods II: Deluge. From the first drop of rain to humanity's last waterlogged stand, these tales chronicle the fall of man against a horrifying, unstoppable evil. And as the waters rise over the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere-brand new monsters surface-along with some familiar old favorites, to wreak havoc on an already devastated mankind.
Deadite Press is proud to present this all-new, first time in paperback edition, including an all-new introduction and new story notes by the author.
Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes From the End of the World is a collection of short stories set in the world of Earthworm Gods and Earthworm Gods II: Deluge. From the first drop of rain to humanity's last waterlogged stand, these tales chronicle the fall of man against a horrifying, unstoppable evil. And as the waters rise over the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere-brand new monsters surface-along with some familiar old favorites, to wreak havoc on an already devastated mankind.
Deadite Press is proud to present this all-new, first time in paperback edition, including an all-new introduction and new story notes by the author.
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