VARDØGER
by Stephen Volk
(novella, Gray Friar Press, 2009)
Welcome to Shewstone House Hotel. One of those quiet places.
An oasis of calm to escape the stresses and anxieties of modern living.
Where a non-paying guest waits for his next victim...
"Vardøger" is Gray Matter Novella #5 in the series (after "Rain" by Conrad Williams, "Hard Roads" by Steve Vernon, "The Appetite" by Nicholas Royle, and "Groaning Shadows" by Paul Finch).
100 signed limited hardbacks/ 300 unsigned trade paperbacks
"Cracking stuff... haunting images... a really excellent story." Tim Lebbon
"Quite superb. I did it in one sitting because I couldn't put it down." Paul Finch
"I loved it. Fine, compulsive stuff" John L. Probert
"Very sharp, not a little upsetting" Simon Kurt Unsworth
"This debut novella from veteran screenwriter Stephen (Ghostwatch) Volk wastes no time: the storytelling is swift and its terrors are positively Serling-esque... With abundant frights Vardøger is sure to leave even the lost stalwart reader unsettled." Rue Morgue Magazine
Read the review on "Tales From the Black Abyss" web site
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LAZARUS
(unpublished)
Read an extract published as "From The Lips of Lazarus" in Exotic Gothic 3 edited by Danel Olson (Ash Tree Press, 2009). From the introduction:
"Stephen Volk's character Lazarus (...) is a hell-fire and poetic reworking of famous obsessive figures of the Gothic tradition. Volk's protagonist borrows some DNA strands from Milton's Satan, Shelley's Creature, Monk Lewis's Ambrosio, Byron's dark heroes, and Poe's maniacal murderers who hear tintinnabulations. Yet this Lazarus is original, and the novel from which this excerpt comes is horribly Gothic in its violence, and ultimately Greek in its tragic mistakes, making real this ancient discovery to us all: 'What you have done, all you have done, has been in the name of nothing at all.'" (Danel Olson)
DARK CORNERS
Stephen Volk's first short story collection (Gray Friar Press, 2006)
A rich blend of dark fiction:
A strapped-for-cash undertaker who is given an unspeakable task to perform...
Two sisters who leave a saucer of milk out for something that isn't human - and may not be real.
A Hollywood agent who has a problem with rats: for once, the four-legged kind.
A group of ragamuffin children who find a body during the London Blitz: and decide to keep it.
A city businessman's memory of his father, and the day his life changed forever...
"BAFTA-winning writer Stephen Volk outraged the critics with his first screenplay, Ken Russell's Gothic, and shocked an unsuspecting nation with his notorious BBC TV Halloween hoax Ghostwatch. His new, gripping supernatural drama series Afterlife was called "Terrific television" (The Guardian) and "Unmissable" (Mail on Sunday).
This first collection of his short fiction, like his best work for the screen, combines scenes of intense physical and psychological horror, with moments aching sadness and poignancy. Not without occasional stabs of black humour. Whether exploring traditional ghost stories reminiscent of the past, disturbing crimes of the present, or the wild imaginings of a far flung future, Volk delights in the dark corners of haunted houses and haunted people alike."
"Four of the sixteen stories appear for the first time... and they are all good." Ellen Datlow, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
"An excellent collection" Video Vault
"The dark corners of Stephen Volk's short stories contain all that is heart-rending, grotesque and rage-inducing in the human condition. But he illuminates these enigmatic and unsettling pieces with a polished, subversive and delirious wit. This is a cracking collection." Andy Hedgecock (Associate Editor, Interzone)
CONTENTS:
Introduction by Tim Lebbon
31/10
The Best in the Business
The Latin Master
Three Fingers, One Thumb
The Anamorph of Hans Baldung Grien
Blitzenstein
The Chapel of unrest
The Fall Children
A Pair of Pince-Nez
Indicator
Sleepless Nights
Curious Green Colours Sleep Furiously
Time Capsule
The Good Unknown
No Harm Done
Little H
Afterword by Stephen Volk
Find out more about Gray Friar Press
Find out more about Tim Lebbon
GOTHIC
A novelization by Stephen Volk from his own screenplay
(Grafton Books, 1987)
(Virgin Vision Ltd)
"To create a ghost story, what is that? But to create a ghost..."
June 16th 1816 at the Villa Diodati. The famous night of inspired imaginations that created monsters.
Or was something real created that night?
Something born out of electricity and laudanum, formed from their most horrible secrets, congealed in jealousy, lust, guilt and visceral terror? Some all-powerful creature that vowed revenge on its creators.
Byron. Shelley. Mary. Polidori. Claire.
Perhaps by morning they would escape the nightmare. If they were all alive by morning.
If they were sane.