 By today’s standards, the special effects are comedic but I loved it – and the beast is still one of my favourites. The sound of him pounding through the woods predated the iconic Jaws theme by a couple of decades but the result was the same. You heard it. You knew something really bad was going to happen. You were scared. Fabulous!  Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Cat is the author of multiple supernatural, ghostly, haunted house and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. Her latest novel from Flame Tree Press is In Darkness, Shadows Breathe, and her previous work includes: The Garden of Bewitchment, The Haunting of Henderson Close, The Malan Witch, The Darkest Veil, The Malan Witch, the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy, The Devil’s Serenade, Dark Avenging Angel, The Pendle Curse, Saving Grace Devine and Linden Manor. She has also contributed to a number of horror anthologies. Cat lives by the sea in Southport, England with her longsuffering husband, and a black cat called Serafina, who remembers her species was once worshipped in Egypt and sees no reason why that practice shouldn’t continue. THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING Difficult to remember after all these years but it was probably The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley. I know he is out of favour these days, but this was the 1960s and, as LP. Hartley said ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently then.’ That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. I do remember being scared out of my wits though. Deliciously scared. THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING It was probably Night of the Demon which was based on the classic M.R. James short story, Casting the Runes. By today’s standards, the special effects are comedic but I loved it – and the beast is still one of my favourites. The sound of him pounding through the woods predated the iconic Jaws theme by a couple of decades but the result was the same. You heard it. You knew something really bad was going to happen. You were scared. Fabulous! THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME With so many amazing books to choose from, spanning centuries of amazing storytelling in our ever-evolving genre, this is an almost impossible question for a voracious reader like myself to answer. In a way, I suppose I’m taking a cop-out because I am selecting a whole collection of stories – but my defence is that they are all collected together in one volume. My selection is The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James. THE GREATEST HORROR MOVIE OF ALL TIME Almost as difficult as selecting the best book – and, as with that choice, it is my own personal opinion. I am choosing The Exorcist simply because it still scares the hell out of me and it was groundbreaking, THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME Oh dear, I am really in a quandary here. So many wonderful authors to choose from, both past and present. Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Poe, Richard Matheson– all extraordinary writers. In today’s era we are so blessed to have a wealth of amazing talent. I could name Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Joe Hill, Michelle Paver. Or P.D. Cacek, and J.H, Moncrieff, both of whom have an unerring knack of gripping me from the first page and refusing to let me go until I come to the end of their stories. But I can only pick one. Okay, I am going to pick M.R. James. My reason? He ticks all my boxes. I adore ghost stories and at least part of the reason for that is because I have been reading his stories over almost my entire life, hearing them read by actors such as Christopher Lee, watching them dramatised on TV, cinema and live theatre. In so many ways, M.R. James has provided a soundtrack for my life.  THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME This is a cover for an incredible collection of a lifetime’s work of essays and more from one of the greatest authors of horror ever. Yes, that is the man himself, Ramsey Campbell, transposed into a spider. Anyone who knows anything about this author and/or his work knows that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror – both written and cinematic. He is a true master of the genre., who has been spinning his amazing, frightening, superbly crafted tales for decades and shows no sign of slowing up. Once you are caught in his web, there is no escape. You will remain a Campbell aficionado for life. I became trapped in his web years ago. That’s why I chose this cover. THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME Most assuredly, for me, it has to be The Exorcist THE BEST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN In common with a lot of writers, it always the latest book! In my case, that’s In Darkness, Shadows Breathe. Let’s just say, there’s rather a lot of me in there… THE WORST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN An early attempt in a completely different genre that was shredded many years ago. And that’s all I’m saying – apart from a valuable lesson I learned: I don’t write convincing romance involving women whose only goal in life appears to be to snare some unwitting male. THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME There are plenty of contenders. Cube, The People Under the Stairs, Burnt Offerings, Tonight She Comes, and pretty much anything made by Jen and Sylvia, aka the Soska Sisters, whose reworking of Cronenberg’s classic Rabid is, in my opinion, a tour de force. I am going to go for Cherry Tree released in 2015, produced by the highly talented and vastly underrated team of Brendan McCarthy and John McDonnell who, as Fantastic Films, have produced other underrated classics such as: The Hallow, Nails, The Last Days on Mars, Let Us Prey, and Stitches THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME A catalogue of contenders here, especially, in my opinion, Hunter Shea’s Creature, J.H. Moncrieff’s Those Who Came Before and P.D. Cacek’s Second Lives. But there is still time for them to achieve the status they so richly deserve as these have been published in the last couple of years. One author who is lauded for one book and largely ignored for the rest is Shirley Jackson. While any horror reader (and many others besides) are familiar with The Haunting of Hill House. It seems, the same cannot be said for her other stories. For me, her best and most underrated is: We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I find both the plot and characters far better developed, and the whole story much scarier than her most famous work. THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME My choice for this one is, thankfully at the item of writing, still with us – so there’s time to rectify this glaring lack of recognition. My choice is Martin Millar, a Scottish fantasy writer with leanings toward the horrific, whose hilarious, irreverent, anarchic works include The Good Fairies of New York, Lonely Werewolf Girl, The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf, Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me and a host of others. If you have never read him, go and grab a copy of The Good Fairies of New York. A word of caution though – don’t be fooled by the title. Martin Millar’s books should rarely (if ever) be considered suitable for your maiden, elderly aunt. On the other hand… THE BOOK THAT SCARED ME THE MOST I can only answer for the near present. If I was going back to my earliest memories, it would be a Dennis Wheatley – probably The Ka of Gifford Hillary. A recent read – Chasm by Stephen Laws – has given me a few dystopian nightmares. I would recommend it. 565 pages of unrelenting horror. Exquisitely written. THE BOOK I AM WORKING ON NEXT Dark Observation. To give you a flavour of the storyline: It’s wartime London,1941. Typist Violet Harrington works in the subterranean, top secret Cabinet War Rooms, where Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the key decisions that will dictate Britain’s conduct of the war. She and her friend Tilly share a house with the strange and distant Sandrine Maupas di Santiago - a woman who doesn’t belong there; a woman who is hiding something. Where does she go at night – and what secrets lay behind that too-perfect exterior? When Vi and Tilly decide to dig a little deeper, they soon discover some secrets are best left alone. Tragedy strikes, and little by little the web is unraveled, but the truth is more extraordinary than Violet could ever have imagined. MY LATEST (PUBLISHED) BOOK In Darkness, Shadows Breathe You’re next… Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer. In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions - bending and twisting time itself - and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define. Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen? The answer lies deep in the darkness… https://www.flametreepublishing.com/in-darkness-shadows-breathe-isbn-9781787585539.html  "[...] if there is a crown of queen of gothic horror, [Catherine Cavendish] should be wearing it." — Modern Horrors You’re next… Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer. In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions - bending and twisting time itself - and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define. Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen? The answer lies deep in the darkness… FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.   Comments are closed.
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