Digital bites: ebooks by Bryan Smith and Richard Wright

One problem I have found with the ebook revolution is keeping up with the number of books that come out.
I mean this in two ways:
Firstly, I still mainly read (and keep tabs on) books of the paper 'n' card kind - my sampling of ebooks being akin to occasionally dipping a finger into an ever-increasing torrent- so worthy horror ebooks frequently fly under my radar.
Secondly, when I do dip into that torrent I tend to buy up way too many (all those sub-three dollar books!), and never find the time to read but a small sample.

Nevertheless, while tree-killing books often take priority, I still have an interest in what's new out there in the digital stream, and should probably profile a choice selection more regularly. So here we go, a couple of recent ebooks that have caught my eye. (Also, "digital bites". Bites/bytes, geddit? *Ahem*)



Cuckoo by Richard Wright

From the blurb:
Gregory Summers returns home to discover that his wife no longer knows him, and is married to another man using his name. Pursued by a creature that cannot exist, his comfortable truths shattered, Greg finds his whole knowledge of the world questionable. If he does not even know himself, what else can he possibly trust himself to know? Only that the true fight to survive, is all in the mind... 


Previously published in 1999 and 2002, this new version is a "revised edition of the novel, ready for a new audience, in paperback and multiple ebook formats".
I have to admit that I'm a bit of a fan of the general subject matter: doppelgänger, replacements, sense of identity and self...
I have fond memories of Bernard Taylor's The Godsend (which really should have been called something very like 'Cuckoo') and Bob Shaw's The Two Timers (parallel universe shenanigans where a man tries to replace "himself"), and am even one of the few people who liked The Broken (relatively recent horror movie featuring doppelgängers/replacements from a mirror world); to name but a few examples.

Aside from this, the book has been well reviewed (SF Site, Ginger Nuts of Horror, Hellnotes, etc).

Buy it here (Amazon) or here (Smashwords).



Kayla & the Devil by Bryan Smith

Bryan Smith is fairly new to self-publishing, but he's well known in horror circles, mainly due to once being a regular feature in the popular Leisure Horror line. However, his most recent self-publishing endeavour is his first ever urban fantasy release, titled Kayla & the Devil.
Admittedly, I'm not huge on urban fantasy, but being by Bryan Smith I imagine this isn't the sparkly-vampire-and-handsome-werewolf-love-triangle kind. According to his blog it is more "...along the lines of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though it isn't about vampires)." If his horror novels are anything to go by, I imagine this will be a helter-skelter, fun novel.

Buy it here (Amazon) or here (Smashwords).

Note: You can also check out his "authorized version" of House of Bloodhere (99c!!) and Darkened, his previous self-release, here or here.

Happy Birthday, Clive Barker

Apparently it was Clive's 59th birthday on the 5th, so a big ol' "Happy Birthday" to him.

After reading his wonderful, vital Books of Blood, his books became "must-gets" for me. I followed him through his metamorphosis into a fantasist (hardly a stretch if you consider the range in The Books of Blood), and developed an appreciation for the movies he directed; critical successes or not. There was, and still is, nothing quite like him.

A much younger Clive, with his most famous creation

Admittedly, the last couple of books of his I read, while not necessarily execrable, were definitely below average on my Barker scale. Still, long may he write - especially as I still hold out for that third, elusive Book of the Art.

The 2nd Book of the Art, 17 years  ago and counting...

Until then, we have the Abarat series, replete with that distinctive, wonderfully weird Barker art. (Make sure you buy the hardback or large format paperback!)

The 3rd Abarat book, recently released.

And the BFS 2011 Award Winners are... (UPDATED)

I notice over at Ginger Nuts' blog that the British Fantasy Award winners for 2011 have been chosen (thanks Jim!). As seems to be more and more the case, they're dominated by horror. You can see the full list here, so I'll only comment on the ones I care about most.

Best Novel: Demon Dance by Sam Stone

I have to say, this one is a bit of surprise. First of all, it bet strong contenders by some very worthy authors: Adam Nevill’s Apartment 16, Gary McMahon’s Pretty Little Dead Things and Graham Joyce’s The Silent Land. And I hear Tom Fletcher’sThe Leaping is the bee's knees as well.
Not only that, but it's the third in an ongoing Vampire series (called "Vampire Gene", good grief). Hmmm. On the face of it, not the sort of thing I'd go anywhere near, but maybe I should reserve judgement until I've tried it.

Best Collection:  Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

 

A deserved win - King is back to full powers with this collection of novellas. It's good enough that I forgive them for including a bonus story in the cheaper mass market paperback version. After making what they could off the bigger fans who bought the more expensive versions, of course. (Okay, maybe I still have issues)

If you bought this one, you bought the wrong one, muggins

Best Anthology: Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories by Johnny Mains (ed.)

I've heard good things about this one. I'm a big fan of The Pan Book of Horror Stories, as the stack of volumes in my bookcase is a testament to. Many hours were spent in my formative years either reading it or hunting for old volumes in second hand bookshops. I really wish Back from the Dead had been more available to broke foreigners like myself... (is there an ebook?)

Other awards include Black Static getting best magazine (which I totally agree with), and Simon Clark getting Best Novella. Which reminds me I haven't read Simon Clark, an old favourite, in simply ages. Must fix that.

UPDATE:

What would the BFS be without a bit of controversy, eh? Accusations of sexism, arguments about overdone campaigning resulting in "less worthy" authors winning...

Now there is a bit of shamozzle about an apparent conflict of interest. More specifically, publishing endeavours the chairman has a stake in got a significant number of the awards, and the winner of "best novel" is the partner of the chairman. Oh dear. Even if it is all innocent, didn't they think someone would make comment?

And at least one person has. Read Stephen Jones' damning report, titled "Putting the 'Con' into FantasyCon", right here. Sam Stone has since indicated that she will be handing back her award.

Horror News... more webification - Jacobs and Newman

Two more authors have decided to improve the interwebs:

• John Hornor Jacobs has got a new website. It looks pretty swank. The old blog is still here as I type this (no idea if it will be preserved for posterity) but the New and Improved version can be found here.

Where do I gets me an awesome logo like this?

• James Newman has started a blog/website here. I like the title: SKINNY-DIPPING THE RIVER STYX. And the subtitle: random musings from a Southern hippie writer dude with a taste for the dark side of life.

Horror News... Freeman, Garton, and Kurtz website-o-rama

A few new web-based endeavours have captured my attention this week:

• Brian Freeman, author and Cemetery Dance... err... do-all-sorts-of-things dude, has announced that he has started a new blog "to discuss writing, editing, reading, and the publishing business". If you like discussions on any of that, especially pertaining to Cemetery Dance Publications, then you'll want to keep an eye on it here.
• Ray Garton already has a blog, amusingly titled "Preposterous Twaddlecock", where he discusses everything from religious matters to the stories behind his various books. But now apparently he has a bona fide website, "with a message board where [he]’ll be hanging out, information about and links to [his] books online as well as links to interviews, a full bibliography, and starting in the last week of September [...] contests and book giveaways." Giveaways you say? Sounds like a website to keep track of. Visit it here.
• Lastly (and slightly late), Ed Kurtz author of the fun, Henenlotter-like Bleed, announced a few weeks ago that he was starting another blog, this time featuring a free serial novel: Sawbones. From the synopsis: 
  
  In the summer of 1865, a man who calls himself Dr. Septimus Whitehall arrives in war-ravaged Southern Alabama with murder on his mind. Whitehall has come to make himself into a killer, armed only with a list of names and a savage rage. First, he practices his craft. Then he begins his mission in earnest: killing each and every person on his list in revenge for an ambiguous crime against a loved one.
  
  I guess that's serial in more than one way... Keep an eye on the semi-regular installments here (links to all the chapters so far can be found here).

Happy (Belated) Birthday Steve!

Apparently Stephen King had his birthday a couple of days ago. Born on September 21st, 1947... that makes him, what, 64? Wow, how time flies.

If you count the publication of "The Glass Floor" in 1967, he's been enthralling readers for 44 of those years. Here's hoping for 44 more. (C'mon, with his fortune and likely medical advances it's surely within the bounds of possibility!)

Stephen King after reading his latest royalty cheque

On a related note, according to the Hot Library Technician, Mr King has the distinction of having 22 books in a "research guide entitled Banned Books by Robert P. Doyle". These include Carrie which could apparently "harm students, particularly younger girls."

Oh, that naughty Mr King.

Dark Matter – A Ghost Story by Michelle Paver

Dark Matter (OrionBooks, 2010) is, as the subtitle advertises, a ghost story set in the Arctic wastes of the far north. Running at 243 pages (plus 15 pages of extra material), it marks Paver's first foray into spook fiction after a successful run in the young adult market with her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.

From the back cover:

What is it? What does it want?

Why is it angry with me?

January 1937.

Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he’s offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it.

Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken.

But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go.

Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return – when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible.

And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone.

Something walks there in the dark.

****

The setting of Gruhuken is well realised: ice and snow-covered; windy; cold. Cold enough that despite keeping the fire stoked, some parts of the expedition's hut's interior become rimmed with ice. When winter arrives it becomes both cold and dark. Suffering it alone would seem like suicide; at the very least, likely to drive someone to madness.

As expected this is what eventuates for Jack. As he is abandoned by his companions, mainly though medical necessity, he elects to stay on and suffer through the long night. His daily rounds include checking a weather station, and as the freezing cold weather worsens, he continues this routine – it's either that or go mad in his isolation. His struggle to maintain at least some sort of daily structure, against worsening cold and encroaching darkness, is a provider of mounting tension. Adding to this tension is a sense of something other; something evil lurking in the cold that gets bolder as time passes. Will his companions return before the evil – or even just the elements, or loneliness – take their toll?

As a period piece the story works quite well. Much is made of the class distinctions of the time, and of Jack's ingrained resentment of his well-to-do companions' easy path in life. Though a tad heavy handed at times, this goes some way to providing a reason for Jack's determination to not let the expedition fail, rather than just bailing out and leaving Gruhuken to whatever lurks there. I'll show them; I don't need to be born with a silver spoon in my mouth to succeed.

The novel is written in an epistolary format - aside from the prologue, each chapter is presented as from Jack's diary. This works well in that it forces the narrative into a measured structure and pace, so that the cold creepiness of the setting can slowly work its way in. It is unfortunate then that Paver changes to first person present tense for the climax. I can see why an author might consider this, after all, as a mode it conveys action more convincingly – but I found that it just jarred me out of the story.

Despite some disappointment with the climax and ending, I still think this is an accomplished ghost story. I would recommend it to anyone who likes the form, especially if you enjoy modern takes by the likes of, say, Jonathan Aycliffe. Hell, I'd even recommend it to anyone who likes Arctic expedition stories (the 15 pages of extra material about the “real” expedition this is based on is a great read*).

Given that Aycliffe seems to have disappeared from the publishing world (other than producing Daniel Easterman thrillers, that is), it would be nice to see Paver produce more of this type of thing. Pretty please.

(*Note: I don't remember having this section in the hardback edition I read, but the paperback I subsequently bought advertises “exclusive material inside”. Just be aware of the differences in editions!)