At the start of Lockdown One, I realised I had to do something. I wasn’t furloughed from my proper job type job – for which I felt lucky – so I was working at home. But most of the writing I’d done beforehand had been on my commute, and I no longer had that. After the first month, I could feel my writing muscles becoming sluggish. And so I decided, even with all the anxiety of the world outside, I had to write something. I had to take myself away from it. So I created myself some time. While my three year old daughter watched TV for half an hour before bed, I would sit an write chapters of a new book. A ghost story. Every single day without fail until I had finished it.

This book became my novel, Terror of Breakspear Hall.

I didn’t start writing it at the beginning of the story though. Instead I started midway through, with a chapter which seemed to burst out from me. One crammed full of incident. A chapter based on a similar chapter in Ingrid Pitt’s autobiography, Life’s A Scream.

Mostly it’s a breezily written, inspirational story. Ingrid survived a harrowing childhood in a concentration camp to become the embodiment of Hammer-glamour in the early 1970s. The first section is harrowing, whilst also maintaining a childhood innocence; while the second is a collection of well-worn stories she must have used to pay her way on the convention circuit. Ingrid tells us throughout how much she enjoys writing so I presume she actually wrote it herself. Although it does have the whiff of being narrated giddily to a ghost writer.

However, the best chapter in the book – and the one which caught my attention enough to inspire me – is one that’s just rushed over,

It’s a fourteen-page chapter where young Ingrid marries the G.I. who saved her from drowning in a frozen river, moves with him to an army base in Colorado and has a daughter. Her husband (who remains unnamed) starts feeling neglected by the mother/daughter bond and volunteers for Vietnam. Not wanting to be a pining wife at home, Ingrid ends the marriage and joins a terrible travelling theatre company which travels the mid-west and where she never gets paid because the houses are too small. Realising that such a hand to mouth existence will not last, she does a moonlight flit from her guest house and tries to drive to New York towards a plane back to Europe. However, she gets a puncture and comes to a halt in front of a wrecking yard run by Native Americans. She ends up living there with them for six weeks of meditative tranquility, before the urge to get her daughter back to Europe reasserts itself. Somehow, through saving her pennies, she gets the car to the airport, but once there has no money for plane fare. A group of cab drivers comes to her rescue and helps her spruce the car up so that it looks shiny and newish, and Ingrid can sell it to a freshly arrived family of German tourists for $250. Looking up on the board she sees that the next flight to Europe is to Barcelona and slams the money down on the counter to get her and her daughter tickets, and they’re gone within the hour.

As I say, that’s one chapter. One fourteen-page chapter. But clearly there’s enough material there for a novel, a musical and a Coen Brothers movie. It’s incredible and frustrating to read just how swiftly the whole thing is dealt with.

And that was my inspiration. I wanted to write one chapter where an enormous amount happened. Where there were new characters, different cities and a rapid journey for the protagonist. It was the first chapter I wrote for the book (although not the first chapter in the book) and everything else grew out from there. So, for Terror of Breakspear Hall, I have to thank Ingrid Pitt.

In her autobiography. Ingrid – true pro that she was –  gave the public what she thought they wanted – tragic childhood, film star anecdotes, a tale of inner strength and survival – but that one chapter makes me wish she hadn’t gone with the well-polished anecdotes and instead focused on the less well known parts of her life, which sound bloody fascinating.

Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Steven Weber, Carrie Anne Fleming, Brenda James, Harris Allen
Original Air Date: 18 November 2005
Synopsis: When a police officer saves the life of a young woman who is deformed from the neck up, his life is turned upside down when she begins to kill and devour all those who get to close.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Masters of Horror is likely to cite this episode as one of the standouts of the shows two-year run. Directed by Italian giallo auteur Dario Argento, Jenifer boasts some truly unforgettable scenes and imagery which have stuck with me vividly since I first watched it in 2005 and of all the 26 episodes that form my rewatch, this was perhaps the one I was most excited to revisit.

Things start off deceptively low-key when we meet police officer Frank (Steven Weber, who also wrote the episode) eating lunch in his car with his partner, and generally having a relaxing afternoon on the job. When nature calls at the most opportune moment and he stumbles upon a scene with a man wielding a meat cleaver about to attack a young woman, he shoots and kills the assailant, saving the girl. When he gets up close to console her, we get a teasing glimpse of her face, with pitch black eyes and malformed jaw, and wonder just what poor Frank has gotten himself into.

So we meet Jenifer (played by Carrie Anne Fleming). Her performance throughout the episode is a brave one, as Jenifer is played as part animal, part human throughout and it’s a demanding role that’s pivotal to how effectively the concept as a whole works on screen. Fleming pulls it off big time and Jenifer comes across as either sympathetic, or horrifying, depending on what the script demands. Kudos also goes to Weber, who is great in this episode and fully commits himself to the madness.

Frank finds himself becoming infatuated with Jenifer (for reasons which are hinted at but, wisely, never overtly explained) and brings her back to his house to stay until she gets back on her feet, much to the chagrin of his wife Ruby (Brenda James) and delight of his rebellious son (Harris Allen).

After Jenifer attacks his wife and eats his cat(!) she finds herself no longer welcome at the house, but Frank is not willing to give up on her and when given an ultimatum by Ruby; her or Jenifer, he chooses Jenifer.

At this stage the episode has succeeded in two big ways. It is incredibly tense, and it’s pretty damn scary. Jenifer is shown to be manipulative and we are already wondering what it is she wants from this relationship with Frank and what she’s willing to do to get it. The practical effects in this episode are absolutely stellar and Jenifer is equal parts disturbing and all too human, making the transitions between vulnerable and bloodthirsty both believable and unpredictable.

Tony Jones, the YA horror expert who curates the teen section of the site ‘Young Blood’ will be interviewing two rising stars of the genre Kathryn Foxfield (GOOD GIRLS DIE FIRST) and Cynthia Murphy (LAST ONE TO DIE) at the Cymera Festival for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. The panel is called "FRIENDS OR FOES" and sits on Sunday 6th June, 11am, going out live on Zoom.

Tony has been a secondary school librarian since 1994 and is regarded as an authority on YA horror, who has been writing for Ginger Nuts since 2015 and a horror fan since he learned to walk. Since 2015 Ginger Nuts has become a leading light on the YA horror genre, interviewing many of the top authors and reviewing countless novels. Some of his most popular features include his Christmas roundups, annual reviews on the HWA YA Stoker Award, and his multi-part articles on series in horror. Tony’s top fifty YA horror novels of the last decade, published last year, attracted considerable attention in the horror community.
Both novels were previously reviewed on Ginger Nuts:

Good Girls Die First:
https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/young-blood/-good-girls-die-first-by-kathryn-foxfield

Last One To Die:

https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/young-blood/last-one-to-die-by-cynthia-murphy-book-review

FRIENDS OR FOES will be a fascinating discussion taking in conversation points as wide-ranging as:

1. Why do so few YA horror novels get turned into films?
2. Will the Pandemic shape YA horror over the next few years?
3. Are Point Horror novels still relevant to the teens of 2021?
4. Woman and girl protagonists are totally dominating current YA horror. Is there any future for us boys?
5. Is there scope for modern YA and in particular horror on the National Curriculum? Is there life beyond classics like DR JECKYL AND HYDE or THE WOMAN IN BLACK?

Follow the link to book:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/book-tickets/murphy-foxfield?fbclid=IwAR38T5v-A0ZnhAAMOr1kJlAHPnvDk9N47M8cJ2i_a5mQgGiLXwFQbJ8gRVY

More about Cynthia Murphy:

Cynthia Murphy is a YA writer from the North-West of England, though her ‘real job’ is in education. She has a long-standing love affair with all things scary, reading Point Horrors at primary school before graduating to Stephen King in her misguided teens. Classic 90s and 00s horror movies are definitely her pub quiz strong point and her first love may well have been Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Studying for a degree in Art History and Archaeology meant that she developed a thirst for anything old, beautiful and very often dead. She tries to combine this with contemporary settings in her writing to make unique and chilling modern stories. Cynthia is married to her best friend and they share (are ruled by) a Romanian rescue dog called Loli, who loves to steal socks. Her YA thriller Last One To Die is published by Scholastic in the UK.

More about Kathryn Foxfield:

Kathryn Foxfield writes dark books about strange things. She blames her love of the creepy and weird on a childhood diet of Point Horror, Agatha Christie and Dr Who. She writes about characters who aren’t afraid to fight back, but wouldn’t last 5 minutes in one of her own stories. Kathryn is a reformed microbiologist, one-time popular science author, cat-servant and parent. She lives in rural Oxfordshire but her heart belongs to London.  Her YA thriller Good Girls Die First is published by Scholastic in the UK.
Find out more about Cymera 2021 here:
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events

With this series of articles, I have been focusing, at least partially, on my own personal experiences with these episodes, both in terms of my memories of initially watching them over fifteen years ago, and my thoughts revisiting them now. ‘Dance of the Dead’ is one of the rare episodes that didn’t really connect with me on my initial viewing. This may have been partially down to the weight of expectations, given the undeniably top tier horror talent involved. Directed by Tobe Hooper, who needs no introduction to horror fans, this episode starred Robert Englund and the script is even written by Richard Christian Matheson, and based on a classic short story written by his father in 1954. You feel that you can’t go far wrong with so many horror legends involved.

The episode opens at a children’s birthday party which is soon interrupted by what we later found out is a terrorist attack, when a biological weapon is unleashed, killing almost everyone in attendance. This big, bold opening statement really sets the tone for what’s to come and, some pretty shoddy (even by fifteen-year-old TV Movie standards) VFX aside, it is an effective and downbeat beginning and very much sets the tone for what’s to come.

Fast forward ten years and one of the survivors, Peggy (Jessica Lowndes) is living with her mother (Marilyn Norry) who owns and runs a rundown diner in a post-apocalyptic world decimated by a Third World War. We are also introduced to Jax (Jonathan Tucker) and his partner in crime, Boxx (Ryan McDonald), both criminals and drug addicts, as they assault and rob an elderly couple in broad daylight, stealing blood from one of them before fleeing. They don’t flee all that far and end up in Peggy’s diner, where the sweet but naïve young woman takes a (frankly inexplicable) shine to Jax and agrees to meet him later that night, much to her mother’s chagrin.

The episode really gets going once the group venture out later that night. The post World War III setting is suitably grim and ravaged, populated by thieves, criminals and (gasp!) teenagers! There are a lot of drugs taken and alcohol consumed as they make their way to the Doom Room, a packed nightclub with what we later find out has a particularly unique brand of entertainment in store.

Speaking of the drug taking, the direction of the episode so far has leaned heavily into the ‘jarring and disorientating’ style of camera work and there is a lot of what I can only refer to as ‘clumsy cam’ (like shaky cam, but more lacking in focus and coordination, as if it’s filmed handheld by someone who forgot to tie their shoelaces) and an odd trick of overlaying images with multiple, out of focus versions of itself. In terms of conveying disorientation (or drug taking) it works fine, but it’s so overused throughout, particularly when the group arrives at the Doom Room, it gets very distracting very quickly.

As soon as they arrive we find out why Jax and Boxx stole the blood earlier, as the clubs MC (Robert Englund) buys it from them for a mysterious purpose related to that night’s ‘entertainment’. The club, and Robert Englund, prove to be the highlight of the episode. Englund seems to be having a great time playing a decadent, larger than life showman and the club itself, packed with gratuitously half nude patrons, wire cages and heavy metal, is equal parts decadent and wretched, a ton of fun on screen but nowhere you’d dare go near in real life.

​Sadly, the plot gets a little convoluted from this point. The blood turns out to be part of some scientific sounding movie nonsense that causes the dead bodies of overdosed drug addicts to reanimate, enough so that when the body is brought out on stage, they are able to stand and, with the help of two topless women wielding cattle prods, ‘dance’. Putting aside the fact that this is an oddly dull spectacle as presented on-screen, Peggy soon recognises one of the deceased dancers as her sister, who she thought lost (and who barely got a mention until this point, lessening the impact of the big reveal somewhat). Things escalate, Peggy’s mother conveniently shows up in time for some moderately shocking family revelations. Without spoiling the ending, suffice to say that nobody lives happily ever after.

The one thing that did resonate with me when re-watching this episode is just how bleak it all is. The story opens with the mass killing of children at a birthday party (and even revisits the scene again in a flashback for good measure) and fast forward ten years in the future, every character besides Peggy and her mother are either drug addicts, dead, or dead drug addicts. The ending makes it clear that Peggy’s mother is not as innocent as she first appears and she certainly pays for her actions in a big way, but even Peggy, who is shown throughout as good-hearted, innocent and trusting, quickly becomes embroiled in the criminal life Jax has introduced her to and any suggestion that she may help Jax escape his lot in life (and is actively shown to be dissatisfied with) is brutally dismissed in the final scene. It’s all very downbeat and sombre, maybe even cynical and a bit mean-spirited, but I loved that nothing was sugar-coated and the characters ultimately get left in a hopeless world with no chance of change or redemption by the time the credits roll.   

Ultimately, I think the story is an interesting, albeit flawed one and I did very much enjoy how nihilistic and unrelentingly unpleasant the whole thing was, but the direction left me a little cold and Peggy just isn’t a strong enough character to carry the episode. I do think I appreciated ‘Dance of the Dead’ more upon my recent re-watch than I did on its initial airing, but my opinion that it’s not one of Masters of Horrors finest hours remains sadly unchanged.

Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode four of the first season, Dario Argento’s ‘Jenifer’. See you then!

​The Ginger Nuts of Horror Website welcomes author Genevieve Gornichec to the sie to celebrate the release of her new novel, The Witch’s Heart, published this month by Titan Books. 

​​Getting to visit the world of your absolute favorite fantasy novel would be a dream come true for a lot of us, no matter how scary or dangerous that world may be. I think that’s part of the appeal of Dungeons & Dragons, and medieval and renaissance faires—that idea of stepping away from the humdrum of our everyday lives and into another world, just for a time. 


Historical reenactment may not be fantasy in the genre sense, but takes that immersion to an entirely different level. For me, doing Viking Age living history has been an invaluable experience when it came to revising my debut historical fantasy novel, The Witch’s Heart. Because, realistically—how often can a fantasy author say that they’ve walked in their main character’s shoes?


When I wrote the first draft of The Witch’s Heart ten years ago, I was in my third year at university. I’d become obsessed with the Norse myths and Icelandic sagas, and the book was a reflection of this. At this stage, I was so focused on moving the story along and making it fit into the background of the myths that I didn’t think too much about the setting.


But several years after I wrote The Witch’s Heart, I went to my local renaissance faire in a “lady Viking” outfit I’d bought off the Internet and found out that there was a Viking Age living history group near me. This group and its members changed the course of my life as surely as the first time I’d set foot in my professor’s Old Norse classroom as an undergraduate. 


For reference, the Viking Age spans roughly from the years 700 CE to 1100 CE (most commonly, the raiding of Lindisfarne Monastery in 793 CE to the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 CE), so taking such a far step back in time was really intimidating at first. How was I supposed to even imagine how people lived back then?


Immersion is easier than you think when you’re surrounded by a group of people committed to exploring what life might have been like so many centuries ago, which is really what’s at the heart of living history itself. Simple things like cooking over a campfire, building tents, making crafts, using historically plausible drinking vessels and cookware, telling tales around the hearth in a reconstructed longhouse, and watching combat techniques over the years has provided me with a perspective I never would’ve gotten anywhere else. 


It made me think about my main characters: “How could Angrboda have transported her potions in the book? What types of things would Skadi have traded? What would their clothes have been made of?” These are things I had not even considered when I wrote the first draft of the book—although in my defense, I wrote it in three weeks for NaNoWriMo in 2011!


In later revisions and into the final print version, I got to pepper in little historical details, like nalbinding (which is a lot like knitting), mentions of women’s textile work, and more. Angrboda’s original outfit was even rewritten to exclude the traditional brooches that Viking Age women wore, since I found them too cumbersome to work in, and the witch is nothing if not practical. 


These types of experiences enabled me to make the setting that much richer in The Witch’s Heart, and there’s something really cathartic about escaping into another world, whether you’re reading a book or camping out at a Viking fort without electricity or cell phone service. If you pick up the book, I hope you enjoy it—and thank you very much to Ginger Nuts of Horror for hosting me today! 

When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this fierce, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse myth.

Angrboda's story begins where most witch tales end: with being burnt. A punishment from Odin for sharing her visions of the future with the wrong people, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the furthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, and her initial distrust of him and any of his kind grows reluctantly into a deep and abiding love.

Their union produces the most important things in her long life: a trio of peculiar children, each with a secret destiny, whom she is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life and possibly all of existence is in danger.
​
Angrboda must choose whether she'll accept the fate that she's foreseen for her beloved family or rise to remake it.

Imagine a world painted in crimson, amethyst, and onyx hues. The sky is a cauldron of smoky clouds and stabs of lightning. Our hero, the protagonist, beaten and wearied, stands with a brilliant blade held aloft in an endless battle against the insidious and darkly robed villain.

Now imagine that protagonist is you, or me, or someone else striving to express themselves, to write, to paint, to act, or whatever. And who is the antagonist? Who is the villain?

Personally, I call it the Voice of Discordia.

What is the Voice of Discordia? It’s different for everyone but, in essence, it is whatever tries to prevent you from achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.  Depression, anxiety, writer’s block, doubt. All of it can act as the Voice of Discordia.

For me, my Voice of Discordia comes from my lifelong anxiety and depression. Most days, the voice – my inner monologue that tries to tell me that chances of success are too small, that I’m not good enough, and nothing I do will matter – is manageable. I can deal with it and push through. Other days, it’s a cacophony, a weight that crushes me down.

And the thing is, the Voice of Discordia never stops whispering. It’s like quicksand waiting to drown you, and it’s a lot easier to let yourself sink than to always fight against it. Dealing with anxiety and depression is just that: a daily fight against yourself, and it is exhausting. It really, really is. There will be days where I wonder how I am supposed to have any energy to write when it takes everything I have to get up in the morning, to do the chores that need doing, to go to work every day. What will I have left for writing?

I don’t always stay on top. I sink to the Voice of Discordia’s persuasive pull. Suddenly it’s been several days since I last wrote ,and every day it seems too hard to start again, what’s the point? How do I start again, how do I get in motion when I’ve been still for so long?

If my anxiety is a choking hold around my neck, then my depression is a weight that settles on top. So now what? I’m in the pits. How do I climb out?

I don’t have the answer for everyone struggling against their own Voice of Discordia, but I can share what has worked for me. When I was at one of my lowest points in my life, I wasn’t writing at all. I felt there was no point, and I had pretty much given up. Every task seemed daunting and impossible.

I was at rock bottom, and I had a choice to give up, or to try something, anything. So, I set a daily goal for myself of only 200 words. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? Yet, in those early days, even 200 words was a struggle. I would agonize over those 200 words for hours.

But it was an act of resistance against the Voice of Discordia. Every 200 words was a success, because it was better than doing nothing at all. And that was what I began to realize at that time. Success didn’t have to be this huge endeavour. It didn’t have to be fireworks and champagne. Sometimes it just meant I got out of bed, did everything I had to do, and still managed to (barely) get 200 words written.

Eventually, I was writing more than 200 words a day. Suddenly, it wasn’t torture anymore. Writing was becoming easier, and the Voice of Discordia became weaker. I had one of my stories published two years after, and that was only the beginning, I suppose. But not the end, because I don’t believe my fight against the Voice of Discordia will ever end.

Writing then became a tool I could use against the Voice of Discordia because I could funnel in all my anxiety, all my darkness, and all my despair into my stories. My characters suffered and fought with me against Discordia. Now, dozens of published stories later, I am more confident in myself despite Discordia.

I guess another method of coping with my internal battle was in the act of naming it. You see it in movies about demons all the time: if you know its true name, you gain control over it. For me, giving a name to the voice inside my head that was telling me I wasn’t good enough was a way to set it apart from me. Before, it was nameless. It was me. I fought against myself and how do you win that fight?

With a name, the Voice of Discordia became an enemy I could ignore because it wasn’t me, so it didn’t deserve my attention. When I find my thoughts twisting and I begin to spiral into that darkness, I remind myself to ignore Discordia and the seeds it tries to sow.

At the same time, how do I tell people to keep fighting when I know how much it hurts? When people ask me how am I so productive, how do I handle my job plus my writing, and art, and blogging? How do I tell them that every day feels like work sometimes and every day is just another day fighting in an endless war against Discordia?

I will tell you to keep fighting because sometimes the best path in life, the most rewarding path, will also be the hardest. I will tell you to keep fighting because every victory, no matter how small, matters. I will tell you to keep fighting because you matter.

I won’t lie to you. It will never be an easy journey against anxiety, against depression, against the Voice of Discordia. But you don’t have to let it define you. Your darkness, your struggles don’t have to drape you like a veil, obscuring you from your potential.

The darkness will always be a part of you, but you can force it to be defined by you instead. Cast it behind you like a shadow and use it in your art, in your fiction.

That’s what I do.

And some days I win, some days I lose, but I will never stop fighting.

x PLM

Spacefaring researchers disturb an ancient horror. An enchanted object curses a grieving widow. A haunted reel torments a film student. A murder trial hinges on a chilling testimony.

In Howls From Hell, sixteen emerging horror writers pave the way for the future of the genre. Fans of dark and macabre fiction will savor this exhibition of all-original tales born from one of the fastest-growing horror communities in the world: HOWL Society.

With a foreword by GRADY HENDRIX, this anthology unveils the horror writers of tomorrow with spine-tingling stories from:

P.L. McMillan, J.W. Donley, Shane Hawk, Christopher O'Halloran, Alex Wolfgang, Amanda Nevada DeMel, Lindsey Ragsdale, Solomon Forse, Justin Faull, M. David Clarkson, B.O.B. Jenkin, S.E. Denton, Thea Maeve, Joseph Andre Thomas, Joe Radkins, Quinn Fern