Friday 25 February 2011

Their Dark Masters is now available in the UK! Extreme vampire horror...

If the Twilight vamps left you wanting to puke and even True Blood is a little too sexy to fit in with your vampire image, then Their Dark Masters is the anthology for you.

These are vampire stories as they should be: dark, terrifying and monstrous.

Their Dark Masters features my short story, The Tunnel,  which was inspired when I actually took the Channel Tunnel from France back to the UK. It was so claustrophobic, I couldn't help but think of it as a great setting for a seriously dark horror story and even sat in the car, making notes. When I heard of this anthology, I just knew the two would be the perfect match.

Here's the blurb: When vampires have outlasted eternity, their dark masters will rise from their ancient slumber. What evil games will they play? Find out in these fourteen tales of dread by Lee Hughes, Brian K. Ladd, Lily Childs, Erik Boman, Paul Anderson, Erin Cole, Gregory Miller, Marissa Farrar, Henry Brasater, Tyree Campbell, Rebecca L. Brown, Barry J. Northern, and Mark Anthony Crittenden, and featuring the art of Marie-Claire Graham. Warning: horror content is extreme

It has been out for a little while in the States, but is also now available from Amazon.co.uk so all of you Brit based readers can buy it as well!

Monday 21 February 2011

On the move again…

Hey folks, sorry I’ve not been around much recently. As normal in my life, things are always changing and an opportunity has come up which enables us to move back to my home county of Devon.

This will be our fourth move in three years and hopefully it will be our last for a while. Luckily, we never sold our old family home when we moved to Spain and we can’t wait to get back into it. The house is on the outskirts of a little village and it means we will once again be surrounded by fields and proper country pubs we can walk to! There’s also a decent chunk of land with the property so we’ll be able to get the chickens we’ve missed while living in a city.

I’ll be sad to say goodbye to the friends we’ve made here and I feel bad moving the eldest again. However, it’s best to do it now, just before she starts school. She already has friends down there, so I don’t think it will be too much of a wrench. Besides, if all else fails, I find bribery with more pets always works!

Monday 7 February 2011

In the words of Stephen King…

To write is human, to edit is divine.

Since making the decision to put some of my work out alone, I’ve discovered something about myself. As much as I can spot problems in other people’s work, I am hopeless at doing the same thing for my own writing. It’s as if I’m just too close to the piece and I’m only seeing what I think should be there, instead of what it actually says.

Because of this I’ve decided to hire an editor to do my final edits for me. I was lucky enough to meet Janelle, from Dawson Editing Services, through a mutual friend. She kindly offered to edit some of my work and I was amazed at what she found. Honestly, I thought I’d edited the arse out of these pieces, and I’d even had other writers go over them, but Janelle still found so much that needed changing.

She described herself to me as a punctuation and grammar freak, and that is exactly what I needed. While my writing might be strong, I’ll agonise for hours over where to put a comma!

Anyway, Janelle is fantastic and I can’t wait to see her transform my stories into tight, professional novels. The editing process is so important, and I know readers will come back for more if the books are professionally edited. Besides, any time I’m not editing can be spent doing what I’m supposed to be doing—actually writing. As I’m working on a ‘flood the market to the point where people HAVE to start noticing me’ promotion plan, the more writing I can get done and actually get out to the readers, the better.

If you would like to contact Janelle to find out how good she is for yourself, you can email her at jdawsonedit@gmail.com. She is currently offering the first 500 words of your m/s for FREE, and the rest of her prices are extremely affordable.

The reviews for my novels have been coming in thick and fast, and have been fantastic. You can check out the reviews for Alone over at Barnes & Noble, and at Smashwords. Also, Alone is still free to download!

I honestly think reading great reviews by is one of the best things about being a writer (next to seeing actual sales of course!). While I love my friends and family giving me positive feedback about my work, I am always a little sceptical. I mean, they’re hardly going to tell me it sucks (actually, scratch that. My mother would—and has—told me when something blew). But there is still nothing better than discovering, through the wonder that is Google-alerts, someone is raving about your book.

For years I wondered if I was like one of those poor saps on X-Factor (UK equivalent of American Idol) where they are totally convinced they have talent, but actually they can’t hold a tune to save their lives. I’m slowing starting to believe this isn’t the case, and I have really high hopes for this year.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

February Femme Fatales!


It's here everyone! What you've been waiting for... Over at Lily Child's Feardom she is bringing us twenty eight days of dark fiction and poetry from fourteen of the best women writers.

I was honoured to be asked to contribute, and my short story, Faces, will appear on the 3rd of this month. The story is a ghost story inspired by true events, and I hope it will creep you out as much as it did me!

Here is Lily's line up:
  • Asuqi  
  • Marissa Farrar  
  • Lily Childs  
  • R.S. Bohn  
  • Lou Treleaven  
  • A.J. Humpage  
  • Laurita Miller  
  • Sue Harding  
  • Pixie J. King  
  • Erin Cole
  • Jodi MacArthur  
  • Dorothy Davies (Antonia Woodville)  
  • Ellie Garratt

 In the meantime, the very first Femme Fatale is Susan May James. So head on over for her beautiful, dark story, Shadows