My novel The Angels of L19 is a work of weird fiction set in an evangelical church in Liverpool in 1984 – a world I grew up in. Historically, the English novel has often presented religious belief and religious experience in negative ways: either as insincere, a pretext for self-righteousness; or as a form of delusion or madness. As one of my protagonists, Tracey, puts it to herself while watching Footloose:


"In films and books, no one ever believes something simply because it’s true. There’s always a secret, personal reason. Righteousness is hypocrisy; conviction is prejudice. God is a mask to hide behind. And the story strips the mask away."


Tracey sees things differently: ‘We don’t hide from ourselves in God. He’s the secret that explains who we are.’


I wanted to write about characters for whom Tracey’s observation is true: people whose faith pushes them to become better people, not worse. But I also wanted to write about how the supernatural might manifest in their world.


In his book The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher describes the weird as an eruption or egress from elsewhere – from outside – into our world of something whose very existence disrupts our notion of reality. For Lovecraft, one of the founding fathers of weird fiction, this transcendental, alien outside was never supernatural, even if ignorant people sometimes mistook it for such. But even if we reject Lovecraft’s materialism, there is a larger problem in representing the Christian supernatural in these terms: because the invisible presence of supernatural beings is an accepted cornerstone of Christian belief. Even if few believers claim to have actually encountered an angel or demon, their existence is taken for granted. They are not elsewhere: they are all around us. We just can’t see them. As such, they are familiar, and their depiction in art and fiction is conventional – indeed, it often verges on kitsch (feathery wings, bulging muscles, luminescent pale skin and blonde hair, etc.). But this need not be so. The descriptions in the biblical books of Ezekiel and Revelation of multi-winged and –headed creatures covered in eyes are anything but kitsch: they are quite genuinely weird (even if some of this effect might be attributable to their origin in an alien cultural context). They are terrible in the same way that God is terrible. However, even these canonical descriptions are now familiar enough to lose some of their unsettling power if simply repeated verbatim.


What I tried to do in The Angels of L19 was to imagine entities whose manifestations were quite different to the descriptions in the Bible – to avoid triggering any sense of overfamiliairity – but that try to replicate some of their unsettling power. So this is how Robert, my visionary character, perceives the being he calls ‘the presence’ on its first appearance in the story:


Its body is ivory; at other times, wax. Always hairless, smooth. No articulations or openings, apart from a bubbled vertical slit in the centre of its head, like the line of glue on the wallpaper.


An egg. Sealed, but waiting to split.


Or here it is on its second appearance (it changes and evolves each time it appears):


Its ivory skin is translucent, but the white flesh has thickened underneath. Curds and whey. Fermenting.


Its head has an opening now. A dry circle. An inverted cone cut into this wet dissolution, positioned somewhere between where the nose and mouth would be – if it had a nose or a mouth. … The cone advances towards Robert, out of the head. It’s bigger than the head, even though it’s coming out of the head. And now Robert is inside the cone, which means he’s also inside the head. It surrounds him, like a caul.


The cone is black, and as it narrows towards the apex there’s a red disc. So the cone’s truncated. It doesn’t end in a point but in another, much smaller circle. The circle flashes: red, then black; red, black. No, that’s not right. More like it’s sliding in and out. Red, black. A diaphragm opening and closing.


He falls into the cone.


Eventually, Robert advances a theory about the presence: it’s an angel. But what is an angel? ‘A messenger, and also a technology for recording and transmitting the message. An archive.’ My attempts to dramatise the interventions of the presence are based on this idea – but what its message is and where it comes from are only revealed gradually (though certainly it originates ‘outside’). And Robert’s final revelation of its meaning is horrifying as well as transcendent. Indeed, this is one of my themes: horror as a kind of transcendence. An abject angel. For is not the Cross abject and horrifying too


There is also a second supernatural character in The Angels of L19, whose interventions are demonic and destructive, but she does not have fur, horns or a forked tail. Instead, she appears as a naked, starved pre-pubescent girl (but also, sometimes, as Robert, or even as Tracey).


The weirdness of these supernatural characters is inspired by Christian existentialism: its purpose is not to confirm the protagonists in their preconceptions, but to confront and challenge them. For Kierkegaard too, the God who speaks to Abraham and asks him to sacrifice his only son is ‘weird’. He is the ordering principle by which all reality exists, but He is also, by definition, not what you expect, and His manifestations disrupt your cozy complacencies about your relation to that reality and your place in the world.


All this might suggest that The Angels of L19 privileges Robert’s weird visionary experiences over Tracey’s quotidian faith. But I don’t think that’s true: the weird always appears against a backdrop of the familiar, but here the everyday is not simply blotted out by the weird’s overwhelming otherness. Unlike Lovecraft, I tried to imagine the redemptive potential of the weird, but also the redemptive possibilities of the everyday. At the end of the book, it is Tracey’s faith that saves Robert, not the other way round.

There's more than one way to be born again. Liverpool, 1984. The teenagers at Garston Chapel are the same as the rest of us: The Smiths, U2, crushes, football, mates. The grimy, low\-down politics of the Thatcher era casting deep shadows in this proud and broken city, but the kids have got other things on their minds... Jesus Christ Our Lord for one. Almost normal kids, then. But Robert isn't at all normal. Because Robert is visited by angels,  if that's what they are. He can't tell a soul about his secret. All anyone can see is his strange behaviour as he desperately seeks to understand what they mean, what they want from him. As Robert's two worlds merge, the real and the visionary intersect with increasing intensity and what is being asked of him becomes terrifyingly clear. The Angels of L19 is a moving and entirely original story of young lives at the confluence of faith and doubt, angels and demons, life and death. And where redemption is possible, even for those we think might be lost forever

Or purchase a copy direct from Weather Glass Books  

My transition from children’s books to adult was a furtive, creeping process.


My mother would sometimes drop me off at the local library and tell me to pick out a few books while she went off to do the weekly shop. It was on one of these unsupervised visits that I first slipped away from the comfortable sofas and the brightly-coloured carpet of the kids’ area into the acres of shelves that housed all the books for grownups.


I checked over my shoulder to see if the librarian was going to stop me. I tentatively—guiltily—ran my fingers over the spines of the plastic-wrapped books. I removed a book and flicked through the pages, too buzzed to actually take in the words.


Footsteps!


I quickly put the book back and returned to where I was supposed to be. But the pull was too great. I kept returning. Until, one week, I found the courage to sneak a book into my stack to take home with me.


My heart thumped in my chest. My top lip beaded with seat. Surely there some rule about a ten-year-old taking Shaun Hutson’s Slugs out of the library and reading it, wide-eyed, in snatched moments when no one was watching?


But, no. No one stopped me. This was the eighties, after all.


Before I continue, did you know that a slug has more teeth than a shark (about 27,000 in fact)? And one female slug can lay one-point-five million eggs a year? Slugs are pretty damn gross before Shaun Hutson got his hands on them and made them much, much worse.


Back to my story. The book was horrifying. Basic premise? Carnivorous slugs with a taste for human flesh. That’s it.


The first victim is devoured almost completely, leaving behind just sinew and bone, plus one lone eyeball bulging from its socket. Another unfortunate accidentally eats half a slug and parasitic worms burst out of his eyes while he’s dining at a restaurant. Later, a teenage couple get it on in one of their parents’ bed and are summarily gobbled up alive. Don’t have sex, kids.


In retrospect, Slugs wasn’t the greatest gateway book for a child. It’s not even a great book. There’s no clever writing here, or a believable plot, or characters you actually care about. But Hutson writes about gushing bodily fluids with such glee that I couldn’t stop reading.


I even returned to the library and took out the sequel, Breeding Ground. These books fuelled my ‘Creature Horror’ phase of reading. I was forever trying to replicate the level of shock and revulsion triggered by Slugs, but nothing was ever as good/bad, although James Herbert’s The Rats came close.


I went on to work my way through the small horror/fantasy/science fiction section of the library. But I gradually become more and more disillusioned with all these books that rarely spoke to me on a level any deeper than, ‘Oh my god, not his eyeballs!’


Today, I’m a YA writer with a leaning towards horror. My characters are predominantly teenage girls and when anyone asks me why, I tell them I’m writing for the teenage version of myself who never saw herself in the books she read.


Although, remembering Slugs, maybe that was a good thing.

The bestselling author of Good Girls Die First is back with an entertaining, high-octane and read-in-a-single-sitting new thriller.Welcome to the reality game show that'll scare you to death! Have you got what it takes to last the night?

Five contestants must sit tight through the night in dark and dangerous Umber Gorge caves, haunted by a ghost called the Puckered Maiden. But is it the malevolent spirit they should fear... or each other?
As the production crew ramps up the frights, secrets start to be revealed... these teenagers have hidden motives for taking part in It's Behind You! and could some of them be... murder?
​

• It's Most Haunted meets I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here for fans of Holly Jackson and Karen McManus.

Over the last few months, debates have arisen (once again) about the use of Trigger Warnings for literature. I got involved then and I find myself once again wading into the conversation because, over on social media, a newspaper article has started being shared around on the very such topic and an acquaintance not only shared it but said how ridiculous it is that a book would need a trigger warning. 

I tried to engage in conversation with him, to explain why it is important for books to have trigger warnings but he didn’t want to know. He was close-minded and ended the conversation with “then they shouldn’t read horror”. Before that useful tip, he even said that if books need Trigger Warnings then so does pornography. After all, what if a homophobe clicked on some porn and was treated to a close-up video of a penis. At both comments, I rolled my eyes so damn hard that I actually saw my brain. And what a magnificent specimen it was too.

Before I explain Trigger Warnings (and why they’re needed) let’s take a look at his answers. First, pornography. With pornography there are multiple categories to choose from. You can type in what you want to see and you can find it easily. It’s very rare that an unwanted surprise will invade your chosen show. There is even the choice of softcore and hardcore to choose from so, again, you really can tailor what you expose yourself to (no pun intended). For the more “extreme” categories, there are even websites dedicated to such “likes” (for example, shit-eating) and you won’t find such content on the bigger, more mainstream sites.

 I explained this to my “friend” and he dismissed it. 

I turned to his other comment about how people shouldn’t read horror if they don’t like it. Keep in mind, by this point of the conversation I had explained the different types of horror you can (to him) get but we will get to that in a minute. Now, from his argument, if people dislike certain aspects of horror then they should not read horror. Well, okay. That means if you dislike gross-out comedy because it offends you, you should avoid all comedy, right? After all it is easy to pick up such content given it is kept next to the more generic content (such as slapstick, or even romantic comedies). So, with how he views trigger warnings, if you don’t like a certain sub-genre then you should just avoid that entire genre to save yourself from accidentally stumbling on something you don’t like. A stupid outlook if ever I heard one but, then, engaging with this individual on social media was very much like talking to a brick wall. They were right, everyone else was wrong. At this point I walked away because life is short and I felt myself ageing every time he opened his mouth. 

So, why do I believe Trigger Warnings are essential? Simple: The world is a cruel place and some people have lived lives which would break some of us. They have experienced a kind of pain and trauma that we could not possibly begin to imagine and the last thing they want is to accidentally stumble across such themes in the books they choose to read. You see, not all blurbs explain about (for example) graphic rape scenes, animal cruelty, child abuse, miscarriages and so on and so forth. In fact a lot of the time such topics can simply be a sub-plot which takes the reader by surprise. 

Even if you have no empathy for people who have suffered these things in real life, consider it from a business point of view: If they hate your book, they will leave a negative review, they will tell their friends to avoid it, you will lose a reader for life. If you show compassion and give them fair warning then - oh well - there’s nothing else you can do if they chose to read it and still review it negatively but, then, it’s them who look ridiculous. They’ll leave a bad review, someone will read it and the first thing they’ll wonder is, Why did they read the book given the warnings? 

Another tip for business? Treat someone’s triggers with respect. Only the other week there was a reader on Twitter looking for more extreme horror. My name was mentioned by a good friend and the reader commented they were worried about stumbling on material which triggered them. I saw the post, I reached out and I said that they can contact me at any time, about any of my books, if they want to know if it is safe to read. I don’t want to add to their trauma. I want them to read my work and enjoy it. My reply was re-tweeted a number of times. One comment came back with the tweet: Great first impression with the author who tried to help me as oppose mock my triggers. Because, yes, in some cases authors have been mocking people who have certain triggers. These authors are simply known as “assholes”.

Now we need to take pause for a moment so I can explain that not all horror books need trigger warnings. There are lots of sub-genres of horror but for the sake of this piece, I’m going to ignore them all and break “horror” down to mainstream horror and underground horror. Stephen King would be considered mainstream, as would Dean Koontz. Whilst I write in multi-genres with some books aimed more towards a mainstream audience, I got my big break in writing with extreme horror and splatter-punk. Both of these sub-genres I would put in the underground horror camp. The difference between the two of them? Simple:

In Stephen King’s book “Pet Sematary” the cat gets run over. The family is sad, they bury it. Obviously this is a rather simplistic view towards that particular part of the book and I’m certainly not making light of King’s work, or abilities as a wordsmith. But if you take that section of the book and re-write it as though writing an extreme horror story then we would know the colour of the guts, how far they stretched down the road and we’d no doubt hear the cat’s last “meow”, probably have its eyes rolling around and fixing on the owner just as they get to the mangled body. 

Biography
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Born in 1980, MATT SHAW is the award winning published author of over 200 stories. His work has been translated into Japanese, Korean, German and French - as well as being adapted into graphic novels.

In 2018, Matt Shaw directed and produced his first feature film, MONSTER (available on Amazon) and, in 2019, he went on to produce and direct his second feature, NEXT DOOR.

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LINKS:
www.patreon.com/TheMattShaw

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/NYJCF6q?fbclid=IwAR0Mhj85waWYR-wQ6wQMmcSJySNbnoI1YfAiZ46HdLp6z5zff3_9TENZNwo

facebook.com/mattshawpublications

13 Minutes of Horror is a 60-second film challenge for women horror filmmakers, inclusive of BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women, disabled women, and non-binary creators. The Festival's inaugural 2021 theme is Folklore. Together with creators and partners, 13 Minutes is looking to redefine the horror industry and women’s roles within it.

Watch our 2021 Official Selections on Shudder from August 13 - September 13, 2021.​

Nyx Horror Collective is a community of diverse women creators who develop, celebrate, and elevate original, women-led horror content for film, TV, and new media.

What began as a simple 60-second film challenge in January 2021 blossomed quickly into the little festival that could. Garnering top notch judges from the horror genre and securing Shudder as its official streaming platform, Nyx Horror is proving itself to be a creative force of nature.

One of the missions at Nyx Horror and with 13 Minutes is to give women horror filmmakers of all identities and backgrounds greater exposure and more opportunities through strategic partnerships with established industry professionals. With that in mind, the Festival has garnered support from production companies and film incubators that include Blood Oath (Starry Eyes, Satanic Panic) and Squid Farm Productions (Shudder Original Shook), as well as from development executives at Blumhouse [Get Out, The Invisible Man (2020)].

“I cannot wait for audiences to see the creativity and talent. These filmmakers packed so much story and scares into one minute,” said Lisa Kröger, Festival Co-Producer.

“Our drive to keep generating incredible opportunities for this festival really speaks to our tenacity and passion, as individuals and as a team, to dispel the myth of ‘no women, LGBTQIA+ or people of color working in the genre.’ We’re right here; you can’t say you don’t know any. Not anymore.” – Mo Moshaty, Festival Co-Producer
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“The messages that Nyx has received from women and non-binary filmmakers since launching 13 Minutes have been overwhelming in the most amazing way. This is why we do what we do—to share in the joy of so many talented creators is beyond rewarding.” – Kelly Krause, Festival Co-Producer

“We wanted to give these wonderful up-and-coming writers and directors the opportunity to have their work seen. The fact that Shudder is hosting us on their platform is a testament to their growing support of BIPOC and women-driven work and we’re eager for the world to see more of this kind of content.” - Melody Cooper, Festival Co-Producer


Nyx Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival will air for 32 days on Shudder from August 13 – September 13, 2021.     ​

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 

I was twelve and already a veteran of horror movies, but my first book was Edgar Allan Poe’s Collected Tales and Poems. It was suggested to me for a book report. I took the suggestion and ran with it. I was so taken by it that it changed my life. My first story was The Tell-Tale Heart. I was never the same. I wasn’t scared. I was engrossed. The writing was revelatory; it was exuberant language. Poe’s best stories manage to stay on point, rarely engrossing in exhibitionist prose designed to make him appear smarter than his loathed peers. The Tell-Tale Heart is an example of that. So is The Masque of the Red Death and Berenice, an underrated gem.


THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING 

My brother loved horror movies that were really gross and sick. I just happened to love watching them, too. The first movie that made an impression on me was a VCR rental called The Gates of Hell. When the female lead saw Satan and she ended up puking her guts out through her mouth in response, it was the first time I saw someone’s insides out. The special effects on the gore was great. It looked like sausage links dipped in barbecue sauce, like the real thing. I couldn’t sleep for days.


THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

I can already hear people laughing at me after reading this one. I love Stephen King, and Clive Barker’s Books of Blood has got to have some consideration for this distinction, but my fave book of all time is still Poppy Z. Brite’s Wormwood. It’s a collection of stories, and it sang to me like gin and juice when I was still a college kid. Poppy described it as splatterpunk, but it didn’t feel like it. Wormwood is goth, poetic without striving to be. The stories have range; they’re not central on one topic. More importantly, they spoke to my loneliness like no horror fiction book ever has. I identified with how lonely and desperate these characters sometimes were, and how brutal (and gory) life is and was to them.


THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 

Stanley Kubrick changed aspects of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining, I believe. If I remember correctly, the novel had a supernatural element instead of Kubrick’s use of a more psychological one, and King was subsequently displeased with the film. However, it was the first horror film that made its mark on me, and years later, I still remember just how difficult it was for me to sleep at age eleven after watching it. I can still watch The Shining and know I’ll love seeing it. It’s that timeless.


THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME


Stephen King writes darn good stories; those stories are also highly literary. You can’t go wrong with him. And he’s also quite prolific. Easy pick.


THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME


Too many good covers to choose from.


THE BEST FILM POSTER OF ALL TIME


Dawn of the Dead. Maybe Jaws


THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN


Il Migliore Del Mondo & Other Stories. There will be more.


THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN


I’m getting ready to rewrite/revise all of my self-published books and recompile into one collection. My career basically starts with Il Migliore Del Mondo & Other Stories. It’s a reboot.


THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME


The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One of the most awesome black and white films ever. Enduring.


THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME


I can’t say enough about Wormwood, but Poppy’s novel, Exquisite Corpse, was a ton of fun, too. I wish she’d unretire and consider writing about loud bands, New Orleans, alcohol, blood, sex, and violence again.


THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME


Melanie Tem and/or Poppy Z. Brite come to mind.


THE BOOK / FILM THAT SACRED ME THE MOST


The b-movie, Driller Killer, was extra gory and violent. Just read the title. It looks like real heads and real brains coming out of the heads.


THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT


It’s called, The Last Stop, and it occurs in a rural town in Northern Virginia close to the mountains. The world-building is very detailed. Although the town is fictional, you can see things unfold because of the vivid portrayal and description. A feared contract killer has come to complete his last contract, and he happens to kill everyone in his path. The Feds are trying to piece it together before more people die, but he just keeps getting away. When they finally learn that everyone in town was stipulated to die in his contract, they try to learn just how he plans to do it. The supernatural and occult elements bring horror genre elements into this psychological thriller.

Artists want one thing: catharsis. The characters in the following eight stories will go to great lengths to find boundless inspiration, and the more complicated those means get, the bloodier. It starts with a man called Il Migliore del Mondo, the best in the world at painting portraits for the deity Santa Muerte, whom he is cursed to serve. The story is followed by Painter of Dead Girls, about an artist so inspired by sadism, he puts together a plan to showcase his paintings at the heels of a series of brutal murders. The collection ends with Morbid Destitution of Covenant, a quirky title for a chess match novelette, featuring an ensemble cast of law enforcers and clinicians, all intent on proving that one man in custody is the killer in a series of brutal killings. The stories included in this collection will keep you on the edge of your seat and guessing until the thrilling climax.​