Christopher Fowler - Old Devil Moon

Christopher Fowler - Old Devil Moon (Serpent’s Tail, 2007)

Cover designed by Harriman Steel

Foreword: The Sinister Life

The Threads
The Lady Downstairs
The Luxury Of Harm
Cupped Hands
The Night Museum
Starless
Take It All Out, Put It All Back
The Twilight Express
Exclusion Zone
Identity Crisis
Red Torch
Turbo-Satan
The Uninvited
The Spider Kiss
Heredity
Let’s Have Some Fun
Forcibly Bewitched
All Packed
Old Friends
Unnatural Selection
Invulnerable
That’s Undertainment!

Afterword: Q & A with Christopher Fowler

Blurb:

A geologist trapped in a town without water is lured into a desperate escape plan. A boy plans a murder in an eerie funfair. A cop witnesses an inexplicable plague of madness. A teenager learns a deadly trick with his mobile phone. A woman unlocks a childhood secret with the aid of old comic books. A secret museum opens only at night… Old Devil Moon is Christopher Fowler’s tenth collection of uniquely disturbing short stories, and contains the blackest humour and the darkest fears, set in worlds we walk through each day but rarely see.

Includes:

The Threads: Holidaying in North Africa, obnoxious English tourists Alan and Verity Markham learn the hard way that you don’t steal an expensive tapestry from the local shopkeepers and then insult their Religion into the bargain. No sooner has he slipped the item under his coat than Markham endures the most appalling toothache. He’s a long way from Harley Street so there’s nothing else for it: he’ll have to put his trust in one of the street dentists who sit cross-legged in a row before their medieval surgical instruments and mounds of removed teeth …. Arguably, this is even more squirm inducing than the classic On Edge. Splendid choice of opener.

The Luxury Of Harm: The narrator persuades Simon, his old school friend and partner in mayhem, to attend a Horror Convention at Silburton, Somerset. This year’s theme is “Murderers On Page And Screen” and our man makes sure the conversation turns toward who in the room would make the most likely serial killer.

There’s a lovely pop culture moment in this one, too.

“And through the mist I gradually discerned a splendor figure, his head lolling slightly to one side, one arm lower than the other, like the skeleton in Aurora’s ‘Forgotten Prisoner’ model kit, or the one that features on my copy of The Seventh Pan Book Of Horror Stories.”

That reference to the Pan’s is apt: this would have suited one of the Van Thal’s just so.

Let’s Have Some Fun: Computer software designer Steve has seen his business plummet into terminal decline and now he’s slumming it as a temp at Penning-Karshall, the most boring firm in Christendom. Learning of his passion for online gambling, Gabriel, the despised office geek puts him on to Hot Targets a virtual paintball game which requires the player to tag a pair of top-heavy, bikini clad Essex Girls as they run giggling through a forest in real time. It takes him a while to crack it, but soon Steve is winning big. So big, in fact, that he’s invited to the Dockland’s launch of Hot Targets‘ ambitious new service …

Turbo-Satan: “Tower Hamlets, toilet of the world, arse-end of the universe … no money, no dope, no fags, no booze, nothing to do, nowhere to go, no-one who cared if he went missing for all eternity … I have absolutely nothing to look forward to … I hate my life …”

My first thoughts on reading this was “some bastard’s been reading my diary!”, but then I remembered I don’t keep one and besides, this is well written. It’s Fowler’s updating of the Deal with the Devil motif for the digital age with phony art student Mats discovering a hot-line to Satan on his mobile. At first, he makes a few sensible requests - “make the bus driver give me £10″, etc. - but blows it when he starts trying to be clever.

Red Torch: He finally plucks up the courage to approach the stunning, skimpily dressed blonde usherette at the Greenwich Granada during a James Bond double-bill and, to his astonishment, she immediately leads him straight into the office for a quickie. Only when the utterly joyless fuck is over does he realise that, outside the darkened theatre, she ain’t quite the looker he’s been fantasising over these past weeks and her “youthful” charms are more far-fetched than anything in You Only Live Twice

That’s Undertainment!: Mr Fowler has previous in the imaginary films department (Soho Black, Plague Of Terror, etc.) but he outdoes himself with this vitriolic state-of-the-industry address, although you may argue that there’s nothing very “imaginary” about these blockbusters at all, or at least, there won’t be very shortly. Jade Goody makes her big screen debut alongside Ray Winstone in Guy Ritchie’s latest mockerney gangland caper Who Are You Calling A Tosser? (a sequel to the surprise flop Did You Call My Pint A Poof?): Hugh Grant brings his bumbling ‘romantic’ presence to Antiques Roadshow - The 3-D Movie, and - they really should show this in Primary School - a child dobs in her heretic schoolteacher mom to Republican Senator Jude Law in the cautionary My Mom’s A Darwinist.

John Llewellyn Probert - Coffin Nails

John Llewellyn Probert - Coffin Nails (Ash Tree Press, June 2008)

Jacket art by Keith Minnion

Introduction

The Moving Image
Nefarious Assortment
Of Music and Mayhem
The Brook
The Ossuary
Final Act
Between the Pipes
The Sacrifices We Make
The Measure of a Man
Keeping It In the Family
Taking Over
Don’t Look Back
Maleficarum
NewLands
Guided Tour
A Matter of Urgency
The Topiary Patch
An Absence of Malice

Afterword and Story Notes

Blurb

THE FILM-MAKERS who unleash a curse from an ancient abbey . . . The teenager who murders the sister he never had . . . The care-home whose attic harbours a monstrous secret . . . A schoolbook of poetry that means death for its readers . . . The witch’s familiar unleashed by church organ music . . .

Welcome to the sinister, scary, and sometimes outrageous world of John Llewellyn Probert. A place filled with troubled schoolchildren, overbearing theatre producers, brilliant surgeons, and nervous billionaires. Where a walk in the country can lead to a mansion filled with beautiful women, or a trap from which you can never escape. Where a picture on the wall of a primary school classroom can come to life with appalling consequences, and a rugby match can be the scene for a burned witch’s revenge. Meet the parents who think they know what is best for their son—until he returns from the grave to show them otherwise. Learn about the girl who found solace in a burial chamber near Prague; and discover the real reason why West-End musicals succeed or fail.

Ash-Tree Press is proud to present award-winning author John Llewellyn Probert’s Coffin Nails—eighteen tales designed to make you gasp with horror and shudder with delight: a volume so gripping that, as you read it, you may well fail to notice the twisted, taloned creature that escaped when you opened the book creeping up behind you to do its dreadful work. Once you’ve satisfied yourself that there is nothing there, please feel free to read the rest of the book. But remember—we never said that it was visible.

PRICE: Cdn$49.00 / US$49.00 / £28.00

Limited to 400 copies: order yours from Ash Tree Press

Watch the Promo video

Contact the author: John L. Probert

19th Zardoz Pulp Fair, London, 19.Oct. 2008

I’m delighted to report that this year’s Zardoz pulp fair will be held at the usual venue, the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel, London, Victoria, on Sunday 19th Oct 2008, 10-4, 30+ booktables (tables £50 each, 2 for £90), entry £3.

There has been a small but Vault presence lowering the whole tone of these events since we started in 2005 (you will know them by their unfeasibly huge shoplifter coats and trail of empty beer cans, etc.) but still we seem to be made most welcome and this has become a big date on the evil social calender!

Thanks to the excellent Maurice Flanagan at Zardoz Books for the tip off!

Neil Davies - The Midnight Hour

Neil Davies - The Midnight Hour: 14 Tales Of Dark Imagination (Screaming Dreams, 2007)

Cover Art & Design: Steve Upham

Introduction

The Midnight Hour
Argument
Ribbons Of Blood
The Shadow
When The Fires Die
Photographs
The Perfect Marriage
Road Rage
Virgin Flesh
Death By Popcorn
Frozen Food
Away With The Fairies
Bonding
The Extreme Makeover Of Helen Watson

If, like me, you’ve a fondness for the (then) contemporary shockers Mary Danby ran in her Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories series, you’re likely have a good time with the laudably unpretentious terror tales of Neil Davies. The introduction is plenty fun, too!

Includes:

Bonding: “I hate your voice because it’s softer and quieter than mine. I hate your hair because it’s a different colour from mine. I hate your clothes because they’re cheaper than mine. I hate your tits because they’re bigger than mine … I just hate you.” What was the boss thinking of when he gave uber-pregnant dog Linda and nice Jill £150 each to blow on a meal as part of a bonding exercise? Linda talks her easy going colleague into splashing out on a happy meal and blowing the rest on clothes as she has a “friend” who’s just about to set up shop in the arcade and will sell designer gear to them at cost price. Jill complies - anything that will make Linda readier to accept her - little realising the older girl has a fiendish plan to do away with her, but slowly ….

Virgin Flesh“It’s hard to find mature virgin flesh these days … too much permissiveness”. A tribute to R. Chetwynd-Hayes and his beloved vampires and ghouls. Janet Stevens is pursued through the woods by the ghastly residents of Oak Church cemetery, overjoyed that they’ve chanced upon an eighteen year old who’s never been shagged! Despite the author’s note that it was heavily influenced by The Monster Club, the story it put me in mind of was E. C. Tubb’s Fresh Guy).

Death By Popcorn California. Another young woman in peril. This time it’s cleaner Crystal Roberts, 17, trapped in an otherwise empty cinema by an unseen sadist. Four girls have been raped and mutilated in the Ravensville area these past few weeks but is this sicko the culprit? And how comes her fellow captive, that nice Richard she’s fancied from afar, is so eager to obey the mysterious voice as it instructs him: “You, Richard, will play the part of the brutal interrogator. Think Spanish Inquisition. Think Nazi. think Witchfinder General”? A convenient, supremely unlikely twist ending adds a tasty Amicus feel to this, probably my favourite of those I’ve read so far.

The Perfect Marriage: The narrator records his every failed attempt to kill his despised wife. She finds his diary …

Road Rage: Jennifer, 22, lands what should be the scoop of her fledgling career in journalism when professional contract killer Harry agrees to be interviewed about his 107 kills (108 if you include the death of Ricky the Rodent, which Harry doesn’t). As he drives her through the Lake District to the road beneath which he buried his victims, the hit-man explains that he’s been forced into early retirement due to the wishes of their restless ghosts …

Varney versus Springheel Jack

“varney the vampire. springheel jack. (hopefully) daily instalments from now on. art to come. no plot!! it just starts and goes like the penny dreadfuls of yore.”

Ripping Rottenness!

The bouncing bodice ripper surprises yet another helpless victim. Illustration: Chrissie Demant.

New to WordPress from Andy Boot - Varney versus Springheel Jack, a trad penny dreadful in the style of Malcolm J. Rymer, Thomas Prest and fellow Salisbury Square fiends. It’s already 20 chapters to the good so you’ve a bit of catching up to do!

Jeremy Novick & Mick Middles - Wham Bam Thank You Glam

Not a recent publication by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve taken a shine to Aurum, this book is so Vault and there can never be enough glampunk in the world - let’s give ‘em a plug!

Jeremy Novick & Mick Middles - Wham Bam Thank You Glam: A Celebration of The ’70’s (Aurum, 1998).

blurb

Come On, Come On, Come
On, Come On, Come On,
Come On, Come On…
I SAID!

From A-line flares to Zebedee. from David Cassidy to the Austin Princess Vanden Plas. Wham Bam Thank You Glam is the first, the last, the everything you’ll ever need to remember those halcyon days of the 70s when men wore cheesecloth and women teetered on six-inch platforms.
This is more than just a celebration of Glam music (although there’s lots of that in here). this is a celebration of the whole glorious shebang - the clothes! the telly! the cars! the football! the sweeties: All recalled in fantastic dayglo shades of poptastic colour by some the real heroes of Glam.

All that Glitters is not gold - it could be Bacofoil - but it is exciting. The years between 1969 and 1976 (Punk year zero) were a riot of colour, humour, funny clothes, flash cars, weird sweeties and bizarre telly. People really did wear sea-green forty-inch flares and silver six-inch platforms while swigging a lime Crests and sitting in a bright yellow Ford Capri Mk I - and they weren’t all members of Mud or Paper Lace. The Glam years were strangely naive, yet widely debauched, the music was a brash over-played version of rock’n'roll with big drums and daft lyrics, the fashion tried to make bricklayers built like out­houses look like Quentin Crisp. Yes, it was a lot of fun, as our guides to the Glam years will testify within these pages.

- in the immortal words of that cool white bear:
‘It’s frothy, man!’

“Glam Music can be broken up into three distinct groups. The Chinnichap merchants, the Teenyboppers and the Geezers who just happened to be there …” - oversimplifying matters, perhaps - what about Bowie, Roxy, Marc, Mael bro’s, Iggy, Lou, Dolls and all the other space invaders from planet art? - but not a million miles wide of the truth.

This book is like the Bible or something. For example, there’s a top interview with the much-missed Brian Connolly of the Sweet in which he answers all the big ones. Which bands did the glam rockers’ really look up to? How did Sweet get on with their rivals? Who were the biggest copycats? What did Bri think of the Damned covering Teenage Rampage and punk in general? Ex-Man City bruiser Mike Summerbee is a revelation with his look at Football, Beer And Lots Of Girls: George Best And The Roots Of Glam. Dee Dee Wilde recalls her years in the lingerie catalogue come to life that was Pans People - “For a young girl it was the best job in the world”. The Glam Telly featured includes Jason King, The Sweeney, On The Buses (!!!!!!!?) and Man About The House while a ‘What’s on at the movies’ feature wisely concentrates on good old fashioned Brit smut like Come Play With Me, the Confessions … and the racier Carry On’s. In the A-Z of Glam who should we find under ‘R’ but Richard Allen (the cover of whose Glam is also given some prominence in the literary dept though, understandably, not as much as Pop Swap).

It’s not perfect. For example, I’ve not found any mention of Dana Gillespie as yet, and she was just about the glammest person going in 1974 as the gratuitous use of above pic ably demonstrates, although on the plus side, Kenny’s risible Do The Bump doesn’t trouble the all-time Glam Top 20 chart so you’re laughing really.

For more glampunk, see the Vault of Evil forum’s ghastly rock & roll section.

Alwyn W Turner - Crisis? What Crisis?

Alwyn W Turner - Crisis? What Crisis? (Aurum, 2008)

From our friend Alwyn W Turner of Trash Fiction and Cult Rock Posters (Aurum, 2006) fame:

Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (Aurum, 2008).

Meticulously researched, this confident, engaging and well-argued history of the 1970s features dozens of original interviews with contemporary politicians, rock stars, actors, designers, as well as drawing on the books, films, sitcoms and media of the time. This is not an insider’s account of the crises that wracked Britain in that decade. Rather it is the consumer’s version, a world seen through the eyes of the mass media, in which Tony Benn, Mary Whitehouse and environmentalists jostle for space with David Bowie, Hilda Ogden and skinheads.

Alwyn writes: “If you’ve got the stomach for possibly the worst single ever made, there’s a trailer for the book here:

Crisis? What Crisis? video“

Oh, that is exquisitely ghastly! Treat yourself!

Stephen Jones - Mammoth Book of Monsters

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Monsters (Robinson, 2007)

Edward Miller

David J. Schow - Visitation
Ramsey Campbell - Down There
Scott Edleman - The Man He Had Been Before
Dennis Etchison - Calling All Monsters
R. Chetwynd Hayes - The Shadmock
Christopher Fowler - The Spider Kiss
Nancy Holder - Cafe Endless:Spring Rain
Thomas Ligotti - The Medusa
Gemma Files - In the Poor Girl Taken by Surprise
Sydney J. Bounds - Downmarket
Robert E. Howard - The Horror from the Mound
Jay Lake - Fat Man
Brian Lumley - The Thin People
Tanith Lee - The Hill
Joe R. Lansdale - Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program
Karl Edward Wagner - .220 Swift
Robert Silverberg - Our Lady of the Sauropods
Basil Copper - The Flabby Men
Robert Holdstock - The Silvering
Michael Marshall Smith - Someone Else’s Problem
Clive Barker - Rawhead Rex
Kim Newman - The Chill Clutch of the Unseen

Blurb:

Monsterrific stories by top names in horror writing

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Ghouls . . . these and many other Creatures of the Night are featured in this bumper collection of stories by such authors as Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Tanith Lee, Michael Marshall Smith, Kim Newman, Joe R. Lansdale, Lisa Tuttle, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper and many others. Here you’ll discover creatures both unnatural and man made, as the walking dead rise from their graves, immortal bloodsuckers seek human nourishment, deformed monstrosities pursue their victims across the countryside, and the ugliest of nightmares is revealed to have a soul. Drawn from the pages of legend and literature, these stories feature Things that slither, stagger, swoop, stomp and scamper. So bolt the doors, lock the windows and shiver in the shadows, because no-one is safe when the Monsters are loose .

D. F. Lewis - Cone Zero

From weirdmonger comes news of the forthcoming Cone Zero

On 14 April 2008, I finally contracted 14 stories and 14 different authors for the CONE ZERO book (Nemonymous 8) with about 90,000 words. The story titles do not carry a by-line and the authors’ names have been randomly listed on the back cover. The story titles will be correctly assigned to their authors within the next Nemonymous book - and on the internet after eight months have elapsed since Cone Zero’s publication.

CONE ZERO will cost £9 - inclusive of UK postage and of ‘Surface Mail’ only elsewhere. (Please enquire for other forms of payment or postage).

General Nemonymous page: wordonymous

Spoilers for all past authors’ names: Nemonymous

Past covers: weirdtongue

And advance orders for Cone Zero (ie before 4 Jul 2008) will be subject to special generous deals on the ’staggeringly important’ ZENCORE! and other previous editions of ‘Nemonymous’. These deals are subject to application, by writing to the bfitzworth(at)yahoo.co.uk.

Also available from the same source, Des’s collaboration with his late father:

D. F. Lewis & Gordon Lewis - Only Connect: Ten Honestly Strange & Mostly Ghostly Tales (Cartref, 1998)

Cover photograph: D. F. Lewis

The Eyes Have It
A Trick Of Dusk
Pipe Dreams
Only Connect
Heavenly Contract
Horn Of Plenty
Betting On Heaven
A Touch Of A Switch Away
The Boots He Bore
Needless To Say

Blurb:

A bellyful of sadness, a song of hope,
if stories have threads, real lives don’t.

Eyes have eyes, spooks have spines,
souls are switched, with made-up minds.

Worlds within worlds, heaven in flight -
only connect, only go bump in the night.

Caroline Callaghan interviews D. F. Lewis in the current, seventh issue of the free horror, SF & fantasy pdf zine Pantechnicon.

Charles Black - 3rd Black Book Of Horror

Charles Black (ed.) - 3rd Black Book Of Horror (Mortbury Press, June 2008)

Cover: Paul Mudie

Rog Pile - The Scavenger
Gary McMahon - Takashi’s Last Symphony
David A. Riley - A Sense Of Movement
Joel Lane - Last Night
Paul Newman - Widows Weeds
Christine Mortimer - Out Of Her Head
Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis - Family Ties
Sean Parker - Death-Con 1
Mike Chinn - Like A Bird
John Mains - The Spoon
Franklin Marsh - The Lake
Craig Herbertson - Synchronicity
Paul Finch - In The Thicket
John Llewellyn Probert - John And Jenny And The Lump: A Cautionary Tale
Frank Nicholas - In An Old Overcoat
Julia Lufford - The Looker
Gary Fry - What We Cannot Recall

Ha! I see we have your attention! Available now, the latest volume in Charles’ BFS award nominated Black Books. Several of the contributors will be familiar to you from Vault (although not necessarily under names their mothers would recognise them by). Charles is a huge anthology fan with a particular fondness for Herbert Van Thal’s Pan Book Of Horror series and the Black Books are an attempt at taking up where Bertie left off. All involved are playing a blinder, not least cover artist Paul Mudie. “Top your work for #2!” they demanded. Paul obliged. Hope to be getting my copy soon, so you’ll probably get a review in about three years if my recent form is anything to go by. Don’t wait!

See also Vault’s 3rd Black Book of Horror thread.