I think it’s true to say that many of us horror writers of a certain generation have treasured memories of Hammer Films, Amicus Productions and their ilk. In fact, their output of genre classics is so important that some of us have secretly longed for a way to relive and recapture the excitement we had when we first experienced them. 

​That was my exact impulse when I first talked to Mark Morris about a book proposal entitled The Blythewood Horror Film Omnibus — an unashamed homage to John Burke’s Hammer Horror Film Omnibus, a fat paperback that came out in the sixties, comprising four novellas based on upcoming horror films. The difference being that our “Blythewood” would be a studio that never existed.

​Our four films would be movies that we’d invent from scratch. Movies we wished we could have seen as feature films when we were growing up. And now we can – in book form – thanks to PS Publishing.

Stephen Volk

Amongst the eighteen entirely new stories  brought together to celebrate the thirtieth year of Tartarus Press in the latest Strange Tales volume is my own contribution, "The Flickering Light", in which the preternatural flits in a hesitation between past and present tensions, real or imagined.

Tartarus says: Representing the best contemporary writing in the fields of the literary strange, supernatural, fantasy and horror, the contents of this anthology range from the wry comic fantasy of Jonathan Preece’s "Great Dead American Authors Alive and Living in Cwmbran", to the atmospheric horror of Andrew Michael Hurley’s "Hunger". ​In "Grassman" by Rebecca Lloyd, two sisters come of age during a village ceremony, while in "Meiko" by J.M. Walsh, a mysterious guest upsets the equilibrium of a country house party. Mark Valentine’s "Other Things" documents the romance and strangeness of private lore, while the search for a missing girl leads to a sinister discovery in D.P. Watt’s "The Wardian Case". Dark family secrets are gradually uncovered in Angela Slatter’s "The Three Burdens of Nest Wynne".

Founded in 1990 by Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker, Tartarus has become a well-egarded feaure of the genre publishing landscape, known for championing both classic and contemporary writers. The stories in this volume sit proudly within that tradition, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.

See here for full table of contents and list of authors

Some samples of beautiful concept art by the supremely talented Richard Dearing for a putative graphic novel rendering of Whitstable. I'm overjoyed and overawed. It would be tremendous for it to come to fruition one day. 

These designs for the DVD covers for Afterlife in the USA (Region 1) don't really convey either the atmosphere or the story content of the ITV drama series. But hey, it's rather nice art in its own right. 

I have often said in interviews that my original pitch to the BBC for Ghostwatch was as a six-part drama series, in the style of the BBC's (then recent) Edge of Darkness or (their much older, legendary) Quatermass serials: the "live broadcast from a haunted house" concept, at that stage, was only envisioned for the final, climactic episode. I came across a draft of that initial proposal when recently clearing out my reams of archive. If you are a Ghostwatch fan, it might make for fascinating reading. Above is a taster of page one. The episodes have intriguing titles, I think: 1) Flies on the Wall; 2) Viewers and Seers; 3) The Flesh Tape - after which the multi-stranded narrative collapses into indecypherable scribbles. Still, I wonder if my fully structured breakdown of the six-hour plot is lurking somewhere under the debris of 30 years' paperwork...     

Nice to discover that Alison has not forgotten Robert after all these years.

RIP Afterlife.​

Earlier this year, Gavin Kendall of Kendall Reviews said: "These are the most testing times the human race have faced since World War II. This time the enemy is unseen, an enemy so powerful it’s forcing many of us to retreat back into our houses. It’s here that people will try to continue to live as normal a life as they can and it’s here that the wonderful art of storytelling may blossom." 

I was delighted at the opportunity to share three of my short stories via the Kendall Reviews website. If you missed the link I sent out via Twitter, here they are again. We are now in July and the lockdown is tentatively lifting. Keep reading, keep taking care, and be careful out there.​