Carlos has been writing scary stories since he was a teen, later going on to train at the National Conservatory of Arts in Lisbon and at the Faber Academy in London. He currently lives in Hertfordshire, UK and works in Corporate HR, a job which has its particular kind of horror.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I was born in 1977 in Lisbon, Portugal. Started reading in English at a very young age as the long, hot summers would have been very boring otherwise, and I couldn’t find many books in Portuguese that I liked. I loved nighttime TV and my parents let me stay up late, so I watched whatever was on, mostly cheesy horror and sci-fi. My dream had always been to make low-budget movies, but I was born in a terrible country for it. After a million screenplays and cancelled projects, I decided to start writing novels as a way to be completely in control of my creative output. I also play the electric guitar and have performed dozens of gigs across London and Lisbon.

Not a fan of labels, but being a vegan (12 years and counting) and a lefty (lifelong) are both very important parts of my identity.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

From The Night Guard it would have to be Noor. I’m exactly the type of victim she’d have no trouble in dispatching.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
I’m an avid reader of experimental fiction and literary fiction. I had read every William Burroughs book by my mid-20’s, and there are few things more satisfying than digging into a thick Thomas Pynchon. And then there are all the books from the non-Anglo world which I’m lucky to be able to read in their original language (currently Portuguese, Spanish, and French).


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction, always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?

Horror has an incredible tradition from cautionary tales spread around the campfire to cutting edge video games. No matter what narrative medium we come up with, there will be horror stories in it. Unfortunately, horror’s popularity also means that there are a lot of stories out there that include all the aesthetic elements of horror, but nothing of what makes it a vital part of our culture. This has given horror a bad reputation, but we shouldn’t let that discourage us from exploring this genre and pushing its boundaries.

As far as my own writing is concerned, labelling my work as horror means that I owe my reader scary moments and tension. Everything else is up to me to decide. It’s hard to imagine a theme which could not be explored in horror. Seen from this perspective it’s a very liberating genre to work in, where we can use existing tropes to surprise our readers and perhaps do more than just tell a scary story.

If I’m allowed to give fellow writers a piece of advice, I’d say read far and wide. If you only read horror, then you likely will only recycle what horror has already produced. Nothing wrong with that, but why not open up new terrifying vistas?

A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?

We’ve got a global pandemic that looks like it will rear its ugly head again soon. We’re at 100 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock which is the scariest it’s been since its creation. There will be water wars soon, and the number of climate refugees will rise to tens of millions before this decade is over. All the while, Mother Earth dangles a Damocles sword over our heads and it’s only a matter of time before we pay the price for our mismanagement of the planet. Young people are increasingly depressed and disillusioned about the future, refusing to engage with it and not making plans.

In a world like this, the horror writer competes with the news bulletin for attention! I can only imagine that there will be a bigger and bigger appetite for horror stories.

Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?

Either as catharsis for real life tragedies, i.e. living painful emotions through fiction, or as escapism, i.e. “I’ve got it bad, but not as bad as this character in this book”.
And people like feeling scared without actually being under threat.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

Better and more serious criticism of it by people who are neither writers nor typical horror consumers. These kinds of third party perspectives are often instrumental in advancing a fiction genre.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of?

I’ll take a rain check on this one as my to-read pile is full of classics I never got to read and I struggle to keep up to speed on new authors.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative, that have stayed with you?

An early reader asked me why I hated my protagonist since I put him through so much trouble. Well, that’s the point of a thriller isn’t it? The protagonist suffers so the reader turns the page.

What aspects of writing do you find the most difficult?

Apologies for the technical language, but it would be first person POV’s for characters which are very different from me. It’s a struggle to imagine the thoughts of people similar to me, let alone those who might be on the opposite end of the behavioural spectrum.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

Anything that could be construed as propaganda for things I don’t believe in such as demonisation of poor and homeless people, any kind of racism or bigotry, cheerleading for war, etc.


Writing is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Mostly I’ve grown in confidence which lets me try new things. The more I write, the more curiosity I have about how other writers have overcome the problems I might be facing which leads me to study them and get excited about expanding my range.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?

“You have to read if you want to write,” to paraphrase Irish author Keith Ridgway who taught me at Faber. The best writing instruction is in existing fiction already, no need for how-to guides.

If I’m allowed a second piece of advice, then it’d be that you don’t need anyone to give you their approval as a writer. No agent, no publisher, no reader. If you write, you’re a writer. You might not be a very good one, but you’re a writer. That’s something to build on.

Which of your characters is your favourite?

The one I’ve been writing in my current short stories (published on Medium). I started by basing him on MC Ride from the band Death Grips, using his lyrics as a character portrait. But when I put him in actual stories, he developed organically as a character and now I feel like I know him very well. He also lets me write in this style which I’m enjoying more and more. Very hard-boiled and hip-hop-ish, and a million miles from my usual unadorned, clearer style.

Which of your books best represents you?

I’ve only published one so far, so I have to say The Night Guard.

Do you have a favourite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

From The Night Guard:
“It started as a lack; a piece missing from his own body. Not a big piece, just a little bit that was supposed to be there but wasn’t. From humble beginnings, it propagated like a rapacious cancer. The hunger went from cell to cell taking over, until his whole body was more hunger than any other feeling. If he was asked his name, then the answer would be Hunger.”


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

The Night Guard is a horror thriller set in Europe about an illegal immigrant trying to flee a supernatural horror. This is the official blurb:

“In a forgotten Eastern European country, Andrei celebrates his 30th birthday by himself in a tacky nightclub. He has achieved nothing in life and he's finding it harder and harder to pretend that it doesn't bother him. His brother, his parents' pride, offers him an unwanted gift—a job as a night guard.

Across town, Andrei's future boss Niko is also celebrating his 30th birthday, but in an exclusive nightclub. His fabulous entourage have turned up to party with him, but they can't relieve Niko's terminal boredom. That is until he lays eyes on Noor, an exotic beauty that is much more than she seems.

As Noor takes Niko down a dark path, Andrei is dragged along first as a pawn, later as a victim. For the first time, Andrei's decisions could mean life or death for himself, his family, and his friends, as a shape-shifting, supernatural predator hunts him across Europe to London.”

My next book which is very close to being ready is called If a Tree Should Die. It’s a shorter novel with paranormal elements, but not what I’d call a horror.

“A young woman is found dead in the forest, yet, when the authorities come back to collect her body, she's gone, having walked away on her own two feet.

Rowan believes she's the woman he loves, but when he comes to the forest to find her, he meets others who think the same, and none of them are wrong.”

In early 2023 I’ll start on the second book of the Human Dregs series (The Night Guard being the first). It will be a more collective story than the single protagonist The Night Guard, set among call centre workers in the UK.


If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

The sanctity of the nuclear family. There are far too many stories where the protagonist is trying to restore their nuclear family at all costs. These bore me no end, and are often very reactionary. Please only write this trope if it’s a red herring!

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

I thought The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling was fantastic. Couldn’t put it down. Would have been 5 stars except for the ending.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood was disappointing to say the least. It's not that there is nothing interesting to say about being terminally online; it's that the author only has banalities to say about it. A book that is all narrator can't afford one that is void of ideas and is a mere sponge for the consensus her echo chamber produces.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

I wish I was asked why I wrote The Night Guard in the first place. The answer would be that I was inspired to write this book from my experience immigrating to London with no job, no money, nowhere to stay, and no idea on how to get any of those. I wasn’t in quite a bind as the protagonist of this book, but I did have to take on some unsavoury and scary jobs to survive. I also met a wonderfully diverse array of people—both allies and villains—who have ended up in the book in one shape or another.

You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?

Oh, goodness; if you knew how often I've imagined this scenario, you'd likely have me committed. A friend of mine, the composer and performance artist, Ray Curran, often says of horror media that the very best he's ever experienced is that which invites you to imagine: what would I do in this scenario or situation? And I can't disagree; that immersion is the source of what makes horror work on a visceral level: what if it were me? How would I respond? Most often, I have to say, my response would be to find a quiet corner, curl up into a ball and hope I'm never found by whatever the hell's out there.

In terms of the franchise I would prefer, the scenario I would prefer, I'd have to say, it would be the eponymlous town of the survival horror video game franchise, Silent Hill. The horror of Silent Hill is of a peculiar species that owes more to the likes of Shirley Jackson and Henry James than, say, Wes Craven or George Romero (not to diminish either of those; merely to draw the distinction): In Silent Hill, threats to the physical self and immediate, physical manifestations of horror take a distant second place to psychological resonance and symbolic insinuations. The town, akin to classic horror settings such as Hill House, Blye Manor and The Overlook Hotel, is a sustained psychic phenomena, a metaphysical palimpsest upon reality, which alters its condition to reflect the sublimated concerns and neuroses of those who walk there. Whilst one might very well encounter monsters, they are ones own; creatures crafted from metaphor and born from the deepest reaches of the victim's subconsciousness. In Silent Hill, horror isn't merely the inevitability of death or suffering; it is the realisation of our unspoken selves, our most forbidden traumas, desires, despairs. And thus, whilst it might very well break and consume us (as it does so many), it can also serve as a medium of healing, even transcendence.

For my part, I can't hep but wonder what my peculiar Silent Hill would look like, what monsters and atrocities would infest it. And, beyond that, hat it would make of me when it's finished (Silent Hill has a peculiar tendency of transforming those who walk there, sometimes in the abstract, sometimes physically, most often both).

In fact, any of those franchises which refine horror down to an examination of our personal traumas and forbidden desires is very much my jam. Clive Barker's Hellraiser is another obvious candidate (at least, given the mythology of the first two films): whilst those lost to Leviathan's Labyrinth must endure torments beyond the imagining of most sane human beings, a rare few emerge from it transformed, become the iconic “demons to some, angels to others” known as Cenobites. As in Silent Hill, the process of becoming a Cenobite involves the breaking down of the individual on a psychological level, their identities and states of mind gradually eroded by the raking and ripping open of their subconsciousness. Beneath the black light of Leviathan, god of the Cenobites, everything we sublimate and suppress is paraded before us, experienced over and over, alongside physical mutilation and torments that no flesh and blood entity can endure. Through that process, our preconceptions not only of pain and pleasure, but of self are undone, twisted and reconfigured into new shapes, until the perverse ideal of a Cenobite is born from the wreckage of humanity.


As with Silent Hill, I cannot help but wonder what form my Cenobite would take, what unspoken and sublimated traumas and desires Leviathan would use as the means and substance of my remaking.


You find yourself as the “Final One”  which monster / villain would you most like to go up against ands why do you think you would survive?

In the case of Silent Hill, the entities we ultimately face are the most monstrous realisations of our inner selves. For James Mason in Silent Hill 2, it's the iconic, immortal stalker known as Pyramid Head, that manifests all of James's complicated reactions to his wife's sickness (defeated desire, diseased love, the loss of a life once dreamed of etc). So, I have to wonder what Barkerian monstrosity the town and its metaphysics would comprise from the depths of my psyche, the polluted stuff of my imagination? Typically, the iconic antagonists are nightmarish and impossible to “defeat” in conventional terms (the aforementioned Pyramid Head cannot be fought or killed as any other video game monster; only run from and defended against, until the game's closing chapters, when James finally comes to realise and accept his own demons, which prompts Pyramid Head to commit elaborate suicide, and provide the means of accessing the game's conclusion). In that regard, surviving would involve an extremely traumatic confrontation with one's inner self, an acceptance of everything one loathes and fears in one's own mind. Most do not survive that encounter; they lose their minds and sometimes their souls to the town. Doing so involves a kind of rebirth through trauma; not conquering or defeating one's demons, but accepting them as part of oneself. As such, facing what Silent Hill gives birth to is arguably one of the most dangerous and treacherous engagements horror can provide: it risks so much beyond mere death. Here, the loss of oneself is a very real possibility, risking becoming just another lost and tormented ghost in the town's diseased metaphysics.


I'm not sure I'd have the psychological strength to pull through.

And which creature would you least like to go up against?

When it comes to horror franchises, the entities I'd least like to face are the mundane ones; the slasher movie stalkers that have nothing more in mind than providing a grizzly and overly elaborate death. It's entirely lacking in the wider possibilities that comes with other forms and subjects of horror, even at their most hideous and dangerous (for example, even the most vicious, inhumane tale of demonic possession suggests a wider state of metaphysics, a continuation that makes death paltry. Such is not true in those stories of mundane murder that simply involve being in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Alternatively, something like the unseen, malevolent force in The Blair Witch Project would be hideous to experience, as there's no potential or possibility of reasoning or escape. No matter what you do, that force is going to put you through hell, break you down and then finally end you in one way or another. There is a hideous inevitability to those scenarios, a pervasive sense that, no matter what you do or say or offer, you will never escape. The elemental evil of those places will play its sadistic games, torment and terrify, until it grows weary of the game and closes in for...whatever fate it has in store. That's a terrifying prospect; the entity or force that cannot be escaped, undone or reasoned with. That can't even be apprehended to any meaningful degree.

But I'd even prefer that to your average slasher-movie stalker; at least that is more interesting.

You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

Given my proclivities, I'm almost certainly the Velma of the group; the one who finds everything fascinating and doesn't have the good sense to be scared, even when everything is going to Hell. Give me the forbidden ritual, I'm performing it, give me the occult puzzle box at the centre of hundreds of mysterious disappearances, I'm solving it. I want to know, god damn it!

As for the rest, if I might select from the casts and menageries of horror media, then our “Fred” would most certainly be the Mads Mikkelsen incarnation of Hannibal. I mean, why wouldn't it be? We'd have a man on our side more preternaturally capable and terrifying than most ghosts, demons and supernatural entities. Beyond that, he'd likely get the “mystery” instantly, meaning we could all retire early and go for a nice meal (errr...).

Our Daphne would have to be Chris Hemsworth's Kevin from the 2016 Ghostbusters; someone extra-pretty and pretty clueless, but there to provide a side of beef to Hannibal's sleeker, more refined stylings. Doesn't have to do much, really. Just stand around looking pretty, likely getting captured by whatever ghost/demon/ne'redowell is about. Shaggy? Not quite the same archetype, but I'd have to go for Dewey from the Scream franchise. Again, not exactly capable, but we've already got all of that in Hannibal. Dewey seems to be an antagonist-magnet, and also seems to be functionally immortal, given the amount of times he gets sliced up in those films and survives. Handy as a distraction while Hannibal does his work.

As for Scooby himself? Well, fuck it; let's have a Predator in Scooby's place. Try screwing with that, Old Man Willoughby the suspicious-acting Groundskeeper.

And, if we must include a Scrappy-doo, I think a Critter from the eponymous b-movie franchise fulfils the criteria pretty well.


Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are you pains and pleasures?

Oh dear, I didn't realise it was going to get personal. How NSFW are we allowed to get? The thing with Pinhead and the Cenobites is, it doesn't matter what I want or don't want; they're going to give me an experience that transcends any measure or definition of it. So, for me, it's a case of: bring it on. Whatever they have a mind to show, reveal or inflict. I've no doubt, given what's revealed in the first two films, it will be a terrible, unbelievably traumatic experience, but I also have no doubt it will be revelatory, possibly transformative.

I suppose, if I might paraphrase a certain line from The Wishmaster, it would be a case of: “Show me wonders.” And I have no doubt they'd be quite happy to indulge.

Speaking in purely worldly terms? I suppose my pleasures would be pretty standard: good food, good stories, good conversation, good sex. That's more or less it. I'm sure the Cenobites would find me pretty boring in that regard.


Pains? Where to start? Banality is something I find agonising. The drear greyness of day to day existence inside a shell of rotting meat and bone. That frustrates me. The self-destructive insanity of our systems and traditions often makes it feel as though there are hot knitting needles driving in and out between the plates of my skull. Feeling futile and powerless in the face of forces and phenomena that were vast and ineluctable before I was even conceived, but which I'm now expected to endure and even fight back against? Yeah, that is an endless source of pain to me.

The Wishmaster gives you three wishes

1.  You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe one franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you chose?

It would have to be Hellraiser. Of all the horror franchises that have been driven into the dirt and the depths of utter disgrace by successive sequels, I feel there's still so much potential for storytelling and myth-making here, so much that's gone sadly untold. If anything, the franchise is prime subject matter for a streaming series of some description (but, like so many examples, requires the involvement of creators who understand what it's about at its most essential, rather than the drivel of escalating comic-book violence it has become). A close focus on the implied mythology as established in Hellraiser 2, ignoring everything that came after, would be favourite.


Oh, that's easy: The Conjuring franchise. I've never come across a series of films that baffles me more in terms of their popularity, especially amongst horror circles. By the numbers, rote “haunted house” and possession movies whose metaphysics is as simplistic and moribund as you can get, that also commit the unforgiveable sin of lionising those overt con-artist bastards, the Warrens.
​
Mads Mikkelsen's rendition of Hannibal? Fantastic. I don't particularly care if I end up on the menu, in that instance; it'll be probably be worth it (and at least I know he'll definitely make good use of me. I'd likely end up as something artistic and/or delicious). ​

You are big fan of the first person narrative, what draws you writing using this narrative perspective, and what are your thoughts on the latest “discourse” that first person narrative is a lazy way of writing?

I personally love first person. If it makes for lazy writing, then I’m the laziest. Moby Dick, lazy? Geek Love, lazy? Never. If anything, I feel like the writer is doing double-duty—both telling the story and presenting character, all at once. By filtering the narrative through the perspective of your narrator, you’re consciously hobbling your point of view, relegating your worldview through the eyes of one character. You’re in the trenches! It makes for a sense of immediacy, a feeling of urgency, that third person doesn’t have (for me). I feel unmoored by third person, lost in the vast expanse of the narrative cosmos… but first person roots me to the ground. It’s isolating and limiting, for sure, but that very limitation can be your story’s strength. Particularly when it comes to unreliable narrators.

I was being cheeky about Poe before, but he’s honestly been such a lodestar when it comes to my narrative style. When I first read The Cask of Amontillado, my world changed… I was done for. I’ve essentially been writing Poe fan fic for years now.

Your last three novels The Remaking (2019), Whisper Down the Lane (2021) and Ghost Eaters (2022) have all been outstanding and wildly distinct from each other. You were first published back in 2002, do you feel your writing has had a new lease of life?

God, yes. Thank the lord for Quirk Books. They broke me out from publishing prison. In all frankness, I’ve been fortunate enough to live an humble existence in-and-out of the publishing industry for two decades. There have been a lot of ups and downs through that. I’ve never been a bestseller, but I’ve been able to tell the stories I’ve wanted to tell. Ghost Eaters will be my tenth book. Tenth! How amazing is that? I’m a lucky, downright blessed son of a bitch, that I get to call this a career… but it wasn’t until Quirk that I’ve found a home. Their faith and support has been an absolute balm. It’s one thing to get a big advance at one of the Big Five—Four? Two? What’s the publishing monopoly up to now?—but it’s something entirely different to be at a house where everyone who works their believes in you and wants to help get your stories out into the world. I owe them so much thanks.

In your latest Ghost Eaters, there is a drug which allows users to see ghosts. Where did the inspiration for this come from?

A lot of different places… Two main sources, mainly: Years back, in Hollyweird, I was developing a feature film in the wake of It Follows that was about a group of teens who encounter a haunted drug. It was a trippy Freddy Krueger-style slasher and ended up not going anywhere, but I always loved the core concept of it. I couldn’t let go of the story but I didn’t know how to crack it. Get into the narrative and dig down deep. I had to find a way to make it personal. Make it matter to me.

I lost a friend to addiction in my early twenties. There’s no succinct way to discuss this, but I wasn’t there for him when he needed help and I’ve always regretted it. This book, ghoulish as it sounds, was a way for me to come to grips with my failure as a friend. It took on a life of its own and has now evolved beyond this particular bit of personal history, but that core conceit—losing a loved one, a friend, to drugs and the void it creates in the living—was the emotional genesis for Ghost Eaters.

And which ghost would you most like to see, and which ghost would you really not want to meet?

I would never ever ever ever take a haunted drug. Never. I’ve seen too many scary movies to know that’s a big no-no. Buuuut… since we’ve been riffing on Poe so much, maybe him? I could say thanks.

I thought Ghost Eaters was a terrific read and in a roundabout way the book asks the reader how far they would go in order to get the ultimate kick or high. Would you agree?

Absolutely… But are we reaching out for? The characters at the core of Ghost Eaters are all suffering from a certain ennui that leaves them desperate to feel anything. That vapid gulf of post-collegiate life, where you’re no longer a special snowflake and the professional workplace is sucking out your soul… What’s left to feel anymore? Death is the ultimate high. Let’s get haunted!

And what is your ultimate high?

Me, personally? Coffee. I’m boring, I know, but caffeine is about as high a bar as my body can take.

The central toxic and co-dependent relationship in Ghost Eaters between Erin and Silas was also very convincing and makes the subsequent horror very easy to believe. How did you develop the story? Did the supernatural element come first and you then built the characters around that idea or something else?

The focus as first was the grounded emotional relationship between the two of them. Then the supernatural elements were layered on. It’s almost like I tried to write the story without the ghosts at first, to show that we can be haunted without an actual supernatural haunting, so that when the real ghosts enter into the fold, it felt like a natural—not supernatural—progression of the story.

Ghost stories always seem to be a big hit with readers, why do you think this is, and what makes your version of the ghost story genre stand out from the crowd?

It's a bold declaration to make, and I’m bound to fall flat on my face here, but… I wanted to try to tell a new kind of a ghost story. How could you reconceptualize a haunted house tale? For me, it started with asking the simple question of “what’s it like to be haunted?” I kept going back to that basic premise and tried to keep it honest, keep it simple: How does it feel to be haunted?

But yes, you’re absolutely right… People go ga-ga for ghost stories. I sure do. This type of tale is intrinsically rooted in our own purview. We take these ghosts home with us, even after the story is done. You close the book, you turn the DVD off, and now your imagination is left to do the heavy lifting. The other side is right there, the veil always pressing against your neck. It’ll never go away because it’s just so unknowable. We don’t know what’s waiting for us until we kick the bucket… but we’re always wondering, always imagining, what might be there beyond this mortal coil. That makes for great grist, if you ask me.

We are all haunted by grief, do you think we can ever exorcise these ghosts fro our minds?

No. I know I can’t. I’m a man who defines himself by his regret, so I might be the worst person to answer this question… but I think that’s what makes us human and therefor more interesting. I am haunted by the personal tragedies in my life and I feel like to a certain degree they define me.

What attracted you to writing about the Satanic Panic phenomenon in Whisper Down the Lane? (even though it is never specifically named as such in the book).

Oh, man… I grew up during that era. The pentagrams were spray-painted on the walls! Looking back at it now, I find it so fascinating that our culture—here in the states—created a communal fear out of the unknown. We were taught to be afraid of something that didn’t exist, but so many of us believed it was real. Satan was real—or, if not the Devil himself, then his followers.

I wanted to tell a story about a lie that takes on a life of its own, only to come back and haunt the person who originally told it. I was fascinated by the McMartin Pre-School trial and how all these children had been coerced into spinning these fantastical flights of fancy, and people believed it! I asked myself: What ever happened to those kids who’d been put on the witness stand? Where are they now? Are they hiding? How do they feel about what they did? What they said?

I grew up during the Satanic Panic era, and it apparently did hit the UK shores, but I can’t remember much about it.  Why do you think it resonated so much more in the US than in the UK?

Here's a grand-sweeping statement for you: Americans need a boogeyman. We are a culture that is desperate to codify its fears upon the ‘other’ rather than look inwardly and rectify our own flaws. Satan is a simpler pill to swallow than to address our own shortcomings. The devil made me do it!

Culturally and politically, certainly in the UK we seem to be going backwards in time, do you think there is chance for a Satanic Panic 2?

Oh, man, it never left! It’s still going on right now! It’s just mutated and sublimated itself, but it’s always there, simmering in these disparate pockets of the internet. Pizzagate! L’il Nas X! Hillary!

When you were writing Whisper Down the Lane you completely avoided eighties stereotypes and wrote a totally non-sensationalist account of a scary time. Did you deliberately go out of your way to avoid the cliches often associated with the period?

First off… thank you. That’s really a relief to hear. With Stranger Things running rampant, I was always worried it would feel like an 80s pastiche and not a story truly rooted in the 80s. Honestly, I just wrote about myself. I was a child of the 80s, born in the 70s, reared on Spielberg. I just wrote from the point of view of a child absorbing the world around him, navigating the fears of adults.

Like Whisper Down the Lane your great witch and curses novel The Remaking (2019) also has an element of true crime to it. Is this another interest of yours?

True crime really has become a catch-all, hasn’t it? It totally interests me… but it comes with a strong sense of guilt. True crime to me is someone else’s personal tragedy. As a reader, I‘m always aware of the fact that this actually happened. How do the friends and family of these victims feel about the fact that I’m reading this book? Exploitation of grief and tragedy inevitably plays into the experience of reading these true crime books, and it most certainly factors into writing them… so when it came to The Remaking, I wanted to address that head-on. The appropriation of another person’s personal tragedy is right there in that book. Who has the right to tell these stories? What right do I have to tell somebody else’s tragedy? What’s the line between true crime and urban legend?

Could you walk us through your educational background and literary path towards having your debut collection Rest Area published in 2002? Did you see yourself as a short story writer before a novelist? Or by this point had you written longer fiction which hadn’t been published?

Ooooh, man… that’s a whole interview in of itself. Look: I was totally Cinderella. I was 21 when I got my first book deal from Disney. It was my senior year in undergrad, two weeks before graduation. Two books. The first would be a collection of short stories and the next would have to be a novel. That just doesn’t happen and it was suddenly happening to me. I didn’t have the depth of experience to understand how truly miraculous it was, nor the emotional depth to savor it. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I look back at that pivotal moment in my life where I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I loved it. I miss being naïve, but you can never go back, can you?

Let me see if I can answer this better: All through college—and in high school—I had been writing and performing these bizarro mono-stories. All first person narratives, all mini-Poes. Creepy characters telling their creepy life stories. I would read them to crowds and they took on a life of their own. I was lucky enough to convince an agent, who convinced Mickey Mouse, to make a book out of them… and I was off to the races. I spent the first five years of my professional life writing nothing but these weird stories and for the longest time that’s all I wanted to do. Back then, I would’ve loved to just keep writing them… I never wanted to write a novel. Not at first. My first novel-writing experience was a lesson in how NOT to write a novel.

Between 2013-4 you wrote a trilogy of children’s books called Tribe. How did those come about and is it an area you might be interested in returning to in future?

Yes! Absolutely… Middle grade horror is having such a surge right now, I love it. I love reading it and I’d love to write more of it. My series was a something like a frightening Fight Club for middle schoolers. What if there was a tribe of runaway kids living inside your school that no one but yourself knew existed? What if they wanted you to join their ranks? What would happen if you said no?

I fell in love with horror writing in middle school… I vividly remember sneaking in Stephen King under my desk and reading his short story “Survivor Type” while I should’ve been paying attention in class. If I could write more for that age group, I would be absolutely over the moon…

Do you read much horror fiction and how widely to you go beyond the genre? Recommend us something amazing you read recently.

I try to read as much of the genre and beyond it, for sure. You’ve got to be a student of the world, you know? I’ve definitely been imbibing a lot of great books lately… Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson. White Horse by Erika T. Wurth. So many!

What sort of stuff did you read as a teenager and which authors have had the greatest influence on you, horror or otherwise? Do you have any ‘gateway’ novels which flicked the switch for you?

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn was a fundamental text for me. The poetry of Ai remains bedrock. Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian. Stephen King taught me about my family tree. The Tin Drum. Flannery O’Connor. Shirley Jackson. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. The Far Side by Gary Larson. So many.

Which author, alive or dead, would you most like to walk past sitting on a bus reading one of your collections?

Um, Mr. Poe? Pardon me, but is this seat taken? Mind if I sit next to you? Whatcha reading there?

As well as writing novels you have had a successful career in the comic book world, what differences are there when writing a novel compared to writing a comic?

Comics are a visual medium. My script for a comic is not the final product. I am an architect for story and will eventually have to surrender my blue prints over to the individual who will build the actual thing. It’s a collaborative process where I’m in direct conversation with the artist and they lift my doggerel to a higher level. Thank God.

If you got the opportunity to turn your books into a comic, who would be your dream team to work with regards to illustration, lettering  etc?

Oh, wow! What a toughie… Dave McKean was the first person to pop into my head. I still have my copy of Mr. Punch and love it. As far as letterers go, I had the good fortune of working with Aditya Bidikar and you absolutely cannot beat their work. He’s a master.

Could you tell us a bit about your next ‘work in progress’?

I’m going to have to keep a bit mum about it, but let’s just say I’m wallowing through rewrites now on what I hope will be my next book and I’m absolutely floundering. Someone needs to rescue me.

“Like a demonic angel on a skateboard, like a resurrected Artaud on methadrine, like a tattletale psychiatrist turned rodeo clown, Clay McLeod Chapman races back and forth along the serrated edges of everyday American madness, objectively recording each whimper of anguish, each whisper of skewed desire. This is strong stuff, intense stuff, sometimes disturbing stuff, but I think the many who admire Chuck Palahniuk will admire Chapman as well.”—Tom Robbins, author, Still Life with Woodpecker

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of the novels Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, short story collections nothing untoward, commencement and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins.

Ghost Eaters, a new supernatural horror novel, hits shelves September 20, 2022 from Quirk Books, and it will scare the pants off you.

Upcoming projects include Unknown, a psychological horror anthology television series co-created with director Craig William Macneill, produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy at Kilter Films and Amazon Studios.

Chapman’s story late bloomer was adapted into a short film, directed by Craig William Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the short won Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkins Award at the 12th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

Their second short, Henley, based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from Chapman’s novel miss corpus, was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It won Best Short at the 2011 Gen Art Film Festival and the 2011 Carmel Arts and Film Festival. The Boy (SXSW 2015), a feature-length adaptation of Henley, co-written with director Macneill, was produced by SpectreVision (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) in 2015.

In comics, Chapman is the writer of the Marvel series Scream: Curse of Carnage. He has written Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, Typhoid Fever, as well as for Edge of Spider-Verse and Venomverse, The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, American Vampire, Scream: King In Black, and ORIGINS among others.

He is the creator of Self Storage (451 Media) and Lazaretto (BOOM! Studios).

Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In the twenty years of its existence, it has performed internationally at the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, Winnipeg Fringe Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Dublin-based thisisnotashop art space, IGNITE Festival, Women Center Stage Festival and Impact Theatre Festival.

Chapman wrote the book for Hostage Song (music & lyrics by Kyle Jarrow). He is the author of such plays as commencement, the cardiac shadow and volume of smoke. His story-monologues birdfeeder, undertow and the wet echo have been featured in The Best American Short Plays anthologies.

Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.

The Creeper is about to be unleashed; how are you feeling in the lead-up to its release?

The excitement is real now. And the nerves, of course. But I’m glad to say that the early reviews coming in have been a great encouragement. Any positive feedback works wonders for the old happiness pre-launch, especially as we’re dealing with the tricky second album here.

And Head of Zeus have also organized a blog tour for this book which I’m very privileged to have you opening on the 26th of September. I can’t wait to read what some of my favourite reviewers think of it and then share around all the creepiness.
The Creeper is a very different book from The Watchers in many ways, so there’s always the worry that readers will go into it expecting more of the same. But I want every novel to be something unique. And I think this book is just that. Whatever people are expecting, there are definitely more than a few surprises in there.


Like your previous novel, The Watchers, The Creeper is firmly based on both the Irish landscape and Irish mythology; what is the draw of writing using these themes?

Our landscape and mythology feel tailormade for the genre, and I think the main draw is the sheer amount of potential they give me to play around with.

Ireland, as a location, has so much character and history, and there’s a very sombre beauty to it in the autumn and winter that could basically work as a scene from any horror story. It doesn’t require much imagination to make it spooky, which certainly makes my job easier.

And our mythology is a subject that I’ve always had an interest in, and as a horror writer I’m lucky that it leans so gracefully into the genre. It’s actually quite concerning when you think about it – so much of Irish folklore is basically horror. Cold dark nights and even darker imaginations, or maybe the whole island is genuinely haunted and infested with mythical creatures. One can only hope.


I am trying hard to think of many modern horror authors that use the myths and legends of the Celtic lands as inspiration for their books; why do you think this is?

Is it possible that I’ve carved out a private little niche for myself in the market?

Maybe they’re unfamiliar with the material or are of the opinion that it doesn’t have a place in the contemporary horror scene. Some of the more popular stories (I’m looking at you, Banshee) are so well known that before the reader even opens the first page, they’ll have a fair idea of what to expect. And this would spell disaster for any horror novel as it diffuses the suspense and mystery. And what’s life worth without suspense and mystery?

That’s why there has to be an element of reinvention to keep these stories fresh. If the myths are treated more as an inspiration, then I think they’d become more mainstream. Authors could handpick the ideas that appeal to them and use these as a springboard to create something original that suits their own style. That’s what I do. And it’s fun. I’d highly recommend it.


How do you feel about non-Celtic authors using our myths and legends as inspiration?

I think it’d be wonderful if more authors explored its possibilities. It could offer some interesting perspectives that we haven’t seen before.

The stories are so readily available too. Gone are the days when they’d have to swing by a local library to source out the good stuff. But, in saying that, a few trending Google searches probably won’t cut it. There’d be quite a bit of research involved before they could put pen to paper if it’s to be kept authentic.


What is the biggest mistake that they make?

I suppose when it comes to borrowing a particular myth or legend, there’s the risk that the author might isolate the idea from its origin and landscape, and in doing so lose a lot of what makes it so unique.

It’s important to appreciate how these myths have survived and evolved over the centuries through the lives and history that shaped them. This is especially true of folktales and superstitions which can change between counties and splinter into many different iterations. They aren’t simply old stories that we only encounter when we root out the history books. Instead, they’re one of the most unique parts of our identity.

They’re also how I make my living. So they’re ridiculously important.


It is hard to talk about The Creeper directly as there are too many excellent twists and turns and some massive reveals, but let's give it a go.

It's a book of two halves in terms of style and tone. Was this always the plan when you sat down to write the novel?

Absolutely. I wanted to break convention when it came to my protagonist. Usually, the reader experiences the immediacy of the horror through their voice, but Ben is a diehard sceptic who disbelieves what’s happening, even when the events become more and more challenging to explain. I wanted the creeper to slowly chip away at him.

What starts off as an adventure and the possible beginnings of something great, steadily darkens as the novel progresses. There’s only so long that Ben can refute the creeper’s existence. And the story does get quite dark by its conclusion.

But, come on, this is what happens when you break a superstition’s rules. What did he expect?


The Creeper, wow, where do we start? What was the inspiration for this creature, and where did you develop the creature design? I'm picturing a childhood trauma with the Kinda Egg man.

The Creeper was originally a short tale I wrote a decade earlier that I’d always kept in the back of my mind. But I never thought that it would someday become a fully-fledged novel.

I was lying in bed one night, imagining how terrifying it’d be if someone was just standing at the window, smiling at me. Surely I’m not the only person who’s had this thought? Or at least, hopefully now others will have it too after reading this book.

I played with the idea by bringing in the classic superstitious tropes that Irish folklore does so well. By giving the horror simple rules, such as the three sightings, then it echoes all those scary stories that we dismiss as just a bit of fun.

Not that I can imagine anyone calling the creeper character fun. But then, maybe the poor thing has just been misunderstood.

I can’t really say too much about its design for fear of spoilers. But I can say that the sight of it will be forever burned into my mind. That’s a curse I brought upon myself.


I loved the undercurrent of religious themes within the novel, of a society trapped in time by their own religious beliefs. Did you ever consider expanding on this theme?

I would have loved to delve a little deeper into the village of Tír Mallacht. But it was more important to respect the mystery surrounding it for the sake of the narrative. I’m such an advocate for keeping the reader guessing. But it’s definitely something that I could explore in a short story as a complement to the novel.


Ben, like yourself, is a history major, were you ever tempted to live out any heroic Indiana Jones fantasies through his character?

History is far less exciting than Indiana Jones would have us believe. Unless you get a thrill out of taking tombstone etchings on Clare Island in the middle of winter. Or measuring the various dimensions of a ruined church with the wind whipping the briers into your face. University has many means of making you earn that scroll.

Ben’s circumstances at the beginning of the novel actually mirrored my own some years ago. I worked a lot of jobs I didn’t particularly enjoy just so I could write every night and at the weekends, hoping to someday be in a position to do this full-time.

I even did quite a bit of work on the oral tradition too – interviewing and collecting folklore. And like him, I’d have probably taken Doctor Sparling up on his offer too.


The novel cleverly and masterfully mixes Gothic Horror with full-on body horror. In particular, I loved the thread that involved Dr Sparling locking himself away in his mansion. Is it correct that it had a touch of the Masque of the Red Death?

I adored writing the Sparling chapters. The slow, steady melancholy that defines his days are the most Gothic aspects of the novel. And yes, there’s definitely a touch of the Red Death in there; cloistered away, hiding in fear.

I had so much fun writing in his voice, trying to elicit from the reader the right balance of pity and contempt. And I hold Poe in such high esteem. I learned a lot of my tricks from that man, and any comparison to his work is very much appreciated.


Superstitions live by word of mouth. I'll never forget the night I watched my mother dig a hole in the garden during a massive thunderstorm to bury a broken mirror so she could walk around it seven times to break the curse. Are there any superstitions that you still adhere to?

Our mothers have a lot to answer for.

Thank to mine I spend my days constantly saluting magpies. The old “one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy”. I don’t have any offspring so it’s obviously working.

And given how easy salt is to spill, I throw more over my left shoulder than I actually use.

I didn’t realise there was a way to lift the broken mirror curse. Thanks for that! If ever you see me pacing around a freshly dug pit you’ll know what happened.

Oh, and if anyone starts telling you about the creeper, cover your ears. That’s an important one.

A. M. Shine is an author of Literary Horror from the west of Ireland. It was there that at a young age he discovered a passion for classic horror stories, and where he received his Masters in history, before ultimately sharpening his quill to pursue a life devoted to all things literary and macabre. His writing is inspired by the trinity of horror, history, and superstition, and he has tormented, toyed with, and tortured more characters than he will ever confess to.

Owing to a fascination with the works of Edgar Allan Poe and his ilk, A. M. Shine’s earlier writings were Gothic in their style and imagination. When his focus turned to novels he refined his craft as an author of Irish horror – stories influenced by his country’s culture, landscape, and language, but which draw their dark atmosphere and eloquence from the Gothic canon of his past.

His debut novel, THE WATCHERS, is available now, with THE CREEPER due for release Sept 2022.
​
He is represented by John Baker of Bell Lomax Moreton Literary Agency.

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.


This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone?




https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

Alone with… Owl Goingback


Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?

My story was inspired by the recent pandemic and the insanity it spawned. We all suffered various forms of isolation during those days, trapped inside our homes, unable to go anywhere, watching the world fall apart on the nightly news. People were dying alone in hospitals, family members not allowed to be there to comfort them during those final moments. The pandemic caused frustration, anger, and even panic. We thought things would quickly return to normal once a vaccine was created, but other evils waited on the horizon.


"Full Blood" is about a young Navajo man alone in the Arizona desert. He too has had the rug pulled out from under him. The world he knew has changed drastically. There is no one he can reach out to for help, not even members of his own tribe. He is isolated, standing guard each night as he faces a danger he can barely comprehend. It is a story laced with fear, and uncertainly, sprinkled with just a touch of irony. A reflection on the history of indigenous people in North America, and perhaps on their future.


What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?

Isolation can really test a person's strength and weaknesses. When you're completely alone, and have no one to call for help, you have to rely on your own physical and mental abilities. In extreme situations, survival skills kick in that you didn't even know you had. Survive the situation, and you come away confident and better prepared to make it on your own merits.

Isolation has always been part of my life in one form or another. I grew up an only child in rural America, living in a mobile home surrounded by forest. I had no companions, and spent a lot of time on my own in the woods. But I adapted to the situation, and was happier being by myself than surrounded by other people.
As an adult, I faced isolation during a vision quest: three days and nights alone in the wilderness with no food and very little water, and only a pair of shorts and a thin blanket for protection from the elements. Definitely a test of my fortitude.


Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?

That's a tough question because the list of authors in Isolation is amazing. A lot of them are friends; and I've been enjoying their work for years. But I will probably read the stories by Joe R. Lansdale and Ramsey Campbell first. Those guys are masters of horror and always take things to the next level.   

What are you working on at the moment?

I've taken a break from writing novels to crank out short stories for various anthologies. I hadn't written short fiction for many years, so it has been a nice change of pace for me. I just finished a horror western story, and I'm about to start on an unknown superhero tale. After that, I will be trying my luck with a story featuring a dead detective. Writing short fiction allows me to flex my creative muscles, and work on some fun projects I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. But I will be getting back to writing longer fiction again in the not-so-distant future. I already have three new novels in the works.


Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?

I have an old west Dracula story that just came out in the anthology Classic Monsters Unleashed. It's a fun tale featuring everyone's favorite vampire facing off against Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull. I also have a couple of wendigo stories coming out soon. One will appear in the anthology American Cannibal, while the other will be out in comic form. Another story will be published in First People Shared Stories. Audio editions of my novels Coyote Rage and Tribal Screams will also soon be available.


What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?
​
I read mostly nonfiction, because I'm always on the lookout for material I can use in future stories. I'm currently reading several books about the Texas Rangers of the 1800s. Those guys were some serious bad asses, and their true stories are more exciting than anything Hollywood could invent for the silver screen. After I finish reading about "Big Foot" Wallace, Creed Taylor, and the other Rangers, I'm going to grab a cup of Tribal Screams coffee and treat myself to the stories in Isolation.

Full Blood might be the most strait-forward tale in this anthology in terms of narrative structure and plot devices, but that doesn't take away from the stories ability to be  powerful response to nit just this pandemic, but the atrocities of biological warfare that were carried out in the early days in the birth of the American nation.  

The opening to this story is elegantly written and cannot fail to be a cutting reminder of struggles and barbarity that Owl's people have and still face today.  

I loved Owl's use of lesser known monster, in this story and the stoic, portrayal of a warrior ho is a little too old for all of this shit.  Tightly written, utterly compelling, and with a narrative drive a solid as as they come Full Blood is an exquisitely  thrilling survival tale. 

Owl Goingback has been writing professionally for over thirty years, and is the author of numerous novels, children’s book, screenplays, magazine articles, short stories, and comics. He is a HWA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, A two-time Bram Stoker Award Winner, and a Nebula Award Nominee. His books include Crota, Darker Than Night, Evil Whispers, Breed, Shaman Moon, Coyote Rage, Eagle Feathers, The Gift, and Tribal Screams. In addition to writing under his own name, Owl has ghostwritten several books for Hollywood celebrities.

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.
Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.
Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.


This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone?




https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

Alone with… Michael Marshall Smith


Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?


It’s pretty personal. My father, who was in his mid-eighties, started to finally lose strength last year. I live in California, and have done for over a decade, he still lived in the UK. Luckily COVID restrictions were relaxing to the point where (albeit plagued by bureaucracy and lots of testing and weird and expensive travel arrangements) I was able to make a number of trips in the second half of the year to be with him and take care of his needs for a week or two weeks at a time. I was very grateful and glad to be able to do this, though I ended up making six transatlantic round-trips in seven months, spending half of that time jet-lagged in one direction or the other, and wound up somewhat exhausted.


He eventually died. It was his time. I wrote this story during that period of endless travel, about the situation. My father was endlessly supportive of my work and read every single thing I ever produced. This was the last story I wrote while he was alive. In some ways it feels odd to have written something public about those circumstances (which have, of course, been highly fictionalized — nothing in the story actually happened in real life) but it’s often been deeply personal events that have inspired me to write. My first ever short story was an attempt at catharsis over a bad breakup I’d just gone through.


Writing doesn’t have to be about life, but for me it comes more easily and more authentically when it is. And perhaps it’s appropriate that the first story of mine that he’ll never read is at least obliquely about him, and me.


What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?


Isolation is a moveable feast. It means different things to different people. I’ve always been happy in (or perhaps “resigned to”) my own company, and in fact rapidly reach a point where — with the exception of my wife and son, and a couple of key friends — I need a break from people. If I travel on work trips I have to schedule downtime from other humans, or I rapidly lose my mind. I suspect that one of the reasons I’m still a smoker is that it gives me an excuse to bail out of any social event for a few minutes every hour or so, and stand by myself outside.


So I almost never feel lonely, but “loneliness” is different to “isolation”, and fascinatingly so. You can feel isolated in the midst of a group, a family, a couple, or even a whole country. And so within the idea is a contradiction: though it’s usually conceived as being isolated from others, often it’s driven out of yourself, and how you feel about your position in the world. Like a lot of strong emotional burdens (including being in love) it's saying as much about you, as about the world.


Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?


Honestly, all of them. Joe Landsdale, Ramsey Campbell, Mike Carey — these are some of my favorite writers. But Angela Slatter, Tim Lebbon, Lisa Tuttle, Mark Morris, Paul Tremblay, Laird Barron… it’s an amazing list of great people, and there’s genuinely nobody who I’m not looking forward to reading.


What are you working on at the moment?


At the moment my focus is mainly in television. We have an adaptation of my novel The Straw Men out there with streamers at the moment, I’m preparing my novel The Anomaly for TV (early stages), developing a collaborative horror TV project, and developing a few other projects based on other people’s IP.


TV is also a major focus in that for the last four years I’ve been Creative Director of Neil Gaiman’s production company, The Blank Corporation, and so we have a ton of stuff either in production or development.


I’m also trying to gear up to writing a new novel — the last was pre-COVID — though I’m taking my time to work out what kind of thing I really want to write. Writing a novel is a long, uphill climb. I want to make sure I’m tackling the right mountain.


Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?


I wrote a novella earlier in the year called Time Out, which will be coming out from Subterranean — I’m not sure when yet.


Apart from that... I don’t think I do, actually. My short story output has sadly slackened… I tend only to remember to write them when I’m asked to. TV stuff takes up a lot of my time and creative impulse, and before that, novel-writing also pulled focus. I do love short stories, though, and so am trying to get back into writing them more regularly. Not least because the story in Isolation is my 97th published tale, and I really feel I should make it to one hundred!


What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?


Main read right now is The Last Days Of Roger Federer, by Geoff Dyer. I’d been aware of him for ages but never read any of his stuff. This is a series of short, interlinked non-fiction essays, observations, vignettes… much of it informed by reaching a certain age (he’s a little older than me, but I can see it on the horizon) and it’s absorbing and thought-provoking and brilliantly phrased.


I’ve also just started dipping into a best-off selection of Eve Babitz, who is fabulous. Hadn’t read any before and saw a mention of her somewhere… and just last night, oddly, Dyer mentions her in his book. I love it when that happens.


The last fiction I read was Tyler Jones’s debut collection, Burn The Plans — which is absolutely exceptional.

The pandemic and subsequent lockdown has had a profound effect on all of us, from isolation of family members, to the isolation of yourself within your own bubble.  It led to many paranoid feelings, especially when it concerned elderly relatives, who were looking after them could they be trusted, and what really is going on behind the curtains. 

Michael Marshall Smith's creepy tale tackles this notion with tight, and claustrophobic narrative, that keeps the reader wondering exactly where the story is going until the very end.

Smith's use of the motif of the old,  infirm and vulnerable "victim" is used ingeniously here in a tale that wouldn't be out of place in that classic horror film From Beyond the Grave.  

Michael Marshall Smith Is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published nearly a hundred short stories, and five novels, and is the only author to have won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times. 2020 saw a Best Of Michael Marshall Smith collection from Subterranean Press. Writing as Michael Marshall he has written seven internationally-bestselling conspiracy thrillers, including The Straw Men (currently in television development); now additionally writing as MICHAEL RUTGER, in 2018 he published the adventure thriller The Anomaly. A sequel, The Possession, was published in 2019.
​
He also works in film and television development, as Creative Consultant to the Blank Corporation, Neil Gaiman’s production company in Los Angeles. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, son, and cats.


www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.

Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.
​
Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.


This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone?




https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

Alone with… Lynda E. Rucker

Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?

I spent the spring and summer of the first lockdown in England walking miles and miles on the same stretch of shore as Claire does in the story. I grew very attached to it in that time and increasingly intrigued with the sense of its age, how much history was there, how long humans had been there and what had been there before humans, and I started thinking about how I could put all of that into a story. The first paragraph and last sentence of the story both came to me in full and entirely spontaneously while I was walking there — I first wrote them on my phone.

What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?

I was fortunate enough not to experience the extreme isolation that many others did during the pandemic, but yes, absolutely — I have experienced intentional and unintentional isolation, both psychological and physical. I've travelled to and lived in some remote and far-flung places alone, but for this story, I really wanted to get at the sense of isolation you feel after trauma, when you are in so much pain that no one can get through to you and you feel entirely apart from the world — and how that would play out against the backdrop of an event as singular as the pandemic lockdown.

Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?

Oh my gosh! This is a trick question, isn't it? The only proper response is “all of them!” I'm really, really excited to be in this anthology alongside loads of authors who are, frankly, much better known and more successful than I am. I'm a big fan of Paul Tremblay's fiction. I'm in there with friends like A.G. Slatter and Alison Littlewood, whose work I like as much as I do them! Nina Allan has long been a writer (and person) I admire a great deal. I recommend her blog, where she writes incisively about literature, almost as strongly as I do her fiction. Two huge, huge influences on my own work, writers I've been reading for decades and alongside whom I'm always delighted to appear, are Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell. I’m also a longtime Joe Lansdale fan. And Chikodili Emelumadu was one of my fellow Shirley Jackson jurors a few years back who I was lucky enough to meet briefly but I've never read her work and I'm really looking forward to her story. But also — argh, this is truly impossible to answer: Mark Morris, Michael Marshall Smith, M.R. Carey, Tim Lebbon and everyone in the anthology are all wonderfully accomplished writers. There are only a few whose work I haven't read although I know them by reputation, and I'm looking forward to diving in.

What are you working on at the moment?

2022 is shaping up to be the year that I finally pushed through a multi-year writer's block/ambivalence about writing fiction and found inspiration again. I've just finished several stories promised to various editors, I'm working on one more and I'm also finally turning back to a novel idea I've had for a couple of years. I know this last bit is going to make everyone who knows me well go “yeah, right” as I am perpetually announcing that I'm working on a novel that then peters out, but this time, honest, I think I've found the book I want to finish.

Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?

I'm the international guest author in the next Great British Horror anthology coming out at the end of September, published by Black Shuck Books (this features a story by Isolation editor Dan Coxon). I also have a story, “The Spirit and the Dust,” forthcoming in the next issue of Supernatural Tales, which will be out before Halloween. There's other stuff in the pipeline, but I can't talk about any of it yet!

What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?

Right at the moment I'm reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, which is really good. I confess that until now, I knew next to nothing about Nigeria's Biafra War (or the Nigerian Civil War) other than that it happened, and Half of a Yellow Sun brings it all to stark life. I'm also reading Salman Rushdie's The Languages of Truth, his collection of essays that was published in 2021. It's a wonderful collection about reading and writing and the power of telling stories and imagination and it's just so, so inspiring; I recommend it to anyone who loves books. Some books I'm looking forward to are Chikodili Emelumadu's debut novel Dazzling, Elizabeth Hand's authorized sequel to The Haunting of Hill House and whatever Unsung Stories has in the pipeline.

Horror has the power to haunt, this might be an obvious and cliched thing to say, but when you read a story, that is a beautifully written as this one, and it still haunts your waking hours, thanks to the hauntingly sombre tone, them it needs to be said again. 

Chalk. Sea. Sand. Sky. Stone is a powerful and melancholy look at grief and loss and regret.  Rucker's evocative prose captures the bleakness of the coastline and the protagonists predicament perfectly.  And huge props to the author for name checking my favourite dinosaur. 

 Lynda E. Rucker has sold dozens of short stories to various magazines and anthologies including Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Black Static, Nightmare, F&SF, Postscripts, Supernatural Tales and Shadows and Tall Trees. She has had a short play produced as part of an anthology of horror plays on London's West End, has collaborated on a short horror comic, writes a regular column on horror for Black Static, and won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2015. Two collections of her short fiction have been published, The Moon Will Look Strange and You'll Know When You Get There, and she edited the anthology Uncertainties III for Swan River Press. 

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.

Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.
​
Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.


This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone?

​And Jim McLeod will be reviewing each of the five stories at the end of each interview. 


https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

​Alone with… Laird Barron

Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?

“So Easy to Kill” is a science fiction/horror story that takes major influence from Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance. Visually, it draws on the colors and textures of Richard Corben and Boris Vallejo.

A far, far future human empire sends an expedition to an alien world. Matters go catastrophically, and gruesomely, awry.

What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?

Isolation pairs well with horror. Often, the entire point of a horror story is to cut characters away from the herd, either physically by marooning them to some degree, or psychologically via social estrangement. In these types of story, the true menace can only emerge once these conditions are met. It’s a broader theme than my examples, and one that invites revisitation.

Regarding my personal experience: I was born in Alaska in the ’70s. Spent many years in remote cabins and mushing dog teams across the state. Alaska is a vast, primordial landscape. An extreme contrast of light and darkness. Even Anchorage, its largest city, with a quarter of a million souls back then, is almost like an irritant pearl embedded in the flesh of inhospitable wilderness.

I’ve written a number of stories that deal with isolation. Generally, these occur in the backwoods and backwaters. “So Easy to Kill” goes in a different direction — interstellar space. It also posits an antagonist that varies from my past cosmic horror tales.


Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?

This ToC is stacked. Can’t go wrong with Lansdale, Tremblay, or Lebbon. I count Ramsey Campbell and Lisa Tuttle as longtime influences. Editor Dan Coxon settled on a dynamite conceit for this anthology. One of the pleasures of reading it will be to see how a bunch of horror authors of wildly varying style and interest tackle this particular prompt.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve been ramping up to a handful of major projects over the past couple of years. “So Easy to Kill” is a piece of a baroque dark fantasy collection that inches ever nearer its ultimate form. That collection is divided into sections — fairytale adjacent; pulp sword and sorcery; and bizarre high fantasy/science fiction set in a mirror universe. Also working on a novel in that setting and a series of novellas centered on my reformed Mafia enforcer, Isaiah Coleridge. Busy days.

Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?

2022 has seen stories of mine in Ellen Datlow’s Screams from the Dark and Sean Hazlett’s Weird World War IV anthologies. Cosmic Horror Monthly printed a dark fantasy story set in my Antiquity cycle. Over the next six to nine months, I have work slated to appear in several anthologies to be named at a later date and the Mystery Tribune.

I recently turned in a fifth horror collection to my agent and am working on a novella series featuring the aforementioned Isaiah Coleridge, and a dark fantasy/horror novel. The novel is in the vein of Corben and Vance. Essentially a what-if Seven Samurai met Gene Wolfe and Karl Edward Wagner in Kane mode.


What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?

Been on a major Paul Bowles kick the past two years. Highly recommend his collection, The Delicate Prey. Bowles was Ligotti before the arrival of Ligotti and definitely more capable of horrific imagery than most avowed horror writers. A stack of Cornwell’s historical Sharpe novels landed on my desk (thanks, Jessica M!). Sharpe’s exploits slot into my current alignment of marrying adventure fiction with high rococo dark fantasy and horror.

As for contemporary authors, I’ve had the pleasure of reading excellent works by Madeleine Swann, Joe Koch, Teri Z. Rocklyn, Eric LaRocca, and Philip Fracassi among others. I strongly suggest that fans of Brian Evenson and Thomas Ligotti scoop up a copy of The Black Maybe, a collection by Attila Veres. Grim, unsettling stories.
​
Weird fiction, horror fiction, are in a good place. I keep waiting for the current tide to peak. Might be waiting a while longer.

Right I'm, going to be honest here, I've read this story twice and i still don't think i fully understand it, buuut that doesn't stop So Easy to Kill from being an utterly singularly mind-blowing and intense read. This tale that spans planets, and  time, at times feels like a brutal and intense stream of unconscious thought, that batters your brain into submission, however once it clicks into place it will feel like you have just been spiked with the biggest shot of caffeine ever.    For an anthology where isolation is binding factor, this time and universe spanning short story might seem an odd choice, for a theme of being alone, but stick with it because it nails the thematic landing with a perfect ten. 

​Laird Barron, an expat Alaskan, is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence and Other Stories; Swift to Chase; and Blood Standard. Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley of New York State and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.

Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.
​
Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.

This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone? And Jim Mcleod will be reviewing each of these five stories at the end of each of the interviews.  


https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

Alone with… Gwendolyn Kiste

Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?

My story, “The Peculiar Seclusion of Molly McMarshall,” is about a woman who is seen walking into her home one day but inexplicably never comes out again. Her inquisitive neighbors begin to wonder what happened to her, only to realize that no one can get inside her house. At the same time, they start to feel a strange need to withdraw into their own homes and not leave either. In particular after living through the pandemic and the shelter-at-home orders, it was interesting to me to explore the idea of being sequestered inside and the reasons why people exile themselves from the world. I kept thinking about how truly bizarre it would be for all of us to have gone into our homes in 2020 if you didn’t know the context of there being a pandemic and how we were trying to protect ourselves and others from getting ill. That context is everything; without it, our collective withdraw from the world would seem much stranger. So I decided to take that basic concept and extrapolate it into an entire story.

What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?

I feel like isolation is such a universal experience. We’ve all been isolated at some point, either physically (such as during the pandemic) or emotionally when we don’t feel close to anyone around us. That was definitely a huge draw for writing about this theme. There’s so much potential, and there’s so many different directions you can go with it. For my story, I decided to do a darkly humorous take on the idea, but the sky was really the limit in how you can interpret the theme. There’s so much existential horror in the idea of isolation.

Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?

There are so many amazing authors in this table of contents, and I’m so incredibly honored to be included. If I had to pick just a couple authors, I’d go with A.G. Slatter and Ken Liu. I’ve been a huge fan of their work for so long, especially their short stories, so it’s always such a wonderful and unique experience to read their fiction.

But truly, you can’t go wrong with any of the authors in the anthology. I’m in awe of the talent in this book, and once again, I’m just so happy to be part of it. So needless to say, I’m looking very forward to reading everyone’s stories

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just finished up a new novel over the summer, so that’s always a major mountain to climb. This book is all about a haunted neighborhood, and the three women who escaped it years ago before the whole street became a ghost. Now twenty years later, they’re forced to return and reckon with the past. It’s a gothic coming-of-age story, and it’s also probably the weirdest, most personal thing I’ve ever written. I’ve also always wanted to write a full-length haunted house story, so I figured why not write a whole haunted street while I was at it?

Otherwise, I’m working on short stories and nonfiction articles, all in the horror genre. There’s always something to be writing, which is a good thing, since I’m happier when I’m busy. It helps to keep the existential dread at bay!

Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?

My new novel, Reluctant Immortals, is out now from Saga Press. It’s about two of the forgotten women of gothic literature — Lucy Westenra from Dracula and Bertha Antoinetta Mason from Jane Eyre — who are living in 1960s California as undead immortals. They’re doing their best to hide out from their past, until suddenly the toxic men they’ve been desperate to escape — Dracula and Edward Rochester — make a very shocking return to their lives. The UK edition will be released in November from Titan Books, so my gothic heroines will be making their way around the world in the next couple months!

What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?

The anthology Chromophobia, edited by Sara Tantlinger, is my biggest must-read for the fall. I also just finished Addie Tsai’s brilliant Unwieldy Creatures, which is a biracial queer retelling of Frankenstein. I can’t recommend those two books enough. Definitely put them on your reading list for the forthcoming spooky season!

Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Invention of Ghosts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lit Hub, Vastarien, Tor's Nightfire, Black Static, The Dark, Daily Science Fiction, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com

The Peculiar Seclusion of Molly McMarshall is a haunting tale told via the interesting medium of series of articles from a blog site about the strange events that centre on Molly McMarshall.  Despite have absolutely no actual violence or graphic descriptions of threatening monsters etc, this story is one of the most chilling and frankly upsetting short stories I have ever read.  Kiste's inspired use of telling the story through a series of blog posts describing the events that happen after Molly McMarshall decides to enter her house one day an not come out, lends this story a frantic, and oppressive tone that keeps on building until the emotionally charged and eerie conclusion.  

Kiste's skill at being able to tap into the primal human fears of the unknown, and the uncontrollable is majestic, I was mesmerized throughout this powerful short story.  With shades of Radiohead's "Just" you never know why or what is causing the events in the story, which is a genius level move, as it lends a ominous tone to this brilliant story.  And you know what sometimes like Molly we all just want to be left alone.  

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.

Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.
​
Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack