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Monday saw the official welcome to See Horror and with it news on Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night, Apollo 18 and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. We also set up social network profiles for See Horror to complement the existing Read Horror fan pages. Yet Read Horror were certainly not resting on their laurels that day, as we kick started the week with none other thanCharlaine Harris - the author responsible for the True Blood television series, amongst many other things – in Meet The Writer.

Tuesday began with news pieces on Steven Savile and Jonathan Maberry, whilst we ran news stories on The Holding andAtrocious over at See Horror. A more action packed Wednesday saw the latest instalment of Simon Marshall-Jones’ ever-popular Re(a)d-Letter Day column, Ross Warren reviewing Stephen King’s latest tome Mile 81 and a nod towards Joe McKinney’s Flesh Eaters. Meanwhile, horror film fanatics enjoyed a glimpse at the new Straw Dogs film and a review of KM31. As the week began to roll to a close our coverage did not as Alan Kelly delivered the first of his new Interview series – on Thursday - with My Sucky Teen Romance director Emily Hagins. Meanwhile, Dan Howarth offered his thoughts on Michael McBride’s Predatory Instinct. We slowed things down on Friday with a couple of news pieces on the film and novel version of Jim DeVault’s The Fun Room.

MICHAEL WILSON

Monday saw the official welcome to See Horror and with it news on Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night, Apollo 18 and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. We also set up social network profiles for See Horror to complement the existing Read Horror fan pages. Yet Read Horror were certainly not resting on their laurels that day, as we kick started the week with none other than Charlaine Harris – the author responsible for the True Blood television series, amongst many other things – in Meet The Writer.

Tuesday began with news pieces on Steven Savile and Jonathan Maberry, whilst we ran news stories on The Holding and Atrocious over at See Horror. A more action packed Wednesday saw the latest instalment of Simon Marshall-Jones’ ever-popular Re(a)d-Letter Day column, Ross Warren reviewing Stephen King’s latest tome Mile 81 and a nod towards Joe McKinney’s Flesh Eaters. Meanwhile, horror film fanatics enjoyed a glimpse at the new Straw Dogs film and a review of KM31. As the week began to roll to a close our coverage did not as Alan Kelly delivered the first of his new Interview series – on Thursday - with My Sucky Teen Romance director Emily Hagins. Meanwhile, Dan Howarth offered his thoughts on Michael McBride’s Predatory Instinct. We slowed things down on Friday with a couple of news pieces on the film and novel version of Jim DeVault’s The Fun Room.

MICHAEL WILSON

Keep watching this space, as the well-worn cliché goes…. =D

Alternatively send Michael Wilson a message over Facebook.

What first attracted you to horror writing?

I’d always been a fan of horror films ever since I was a kid (my mum took me to see the Hammer remake of Phantom of the Opera when I was about eight and I had my first nightmare that night) and I collected the horror magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland (younger readers are now wondering exactly how fucking old I am and are also checking Wikipedia to find out what the hell Famous Monsters of Filmland was) and read the Pan books of Horror Stories before graduating to ‘proper’ horror, books like The Exorcist when I was a teenager. I also started going to the pictures every week during my teens and saw countless films there and on TV but I think horror was my biggest love so I suppose it was just natural progression that I would go on to write it for myself.

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Read the review

Head on over to Read Horror to have a gander at my second Re(a)d-Letter Day column for them, wherein I talk at some length about the literary and cinematic ‘evolution’ of that ever-popular creature of darkness, the vampire. From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga by way of vintage Aurora model kits, it’s all there…. here’s the link.

I was also interviewed by Jim Mcleod for his Ginger Nuts of Horror website recently. I get to talk about all kinds of things, not just about my publishing ambitions (although they do get a mention!) – find out what I did before becoming a publisher and what my favourite hobby is (and why I do it, as well as why I got back into it after an absence of decades). I am not entirely sure what it all says about me, so I leave that up for you to decide. The interview can be accessed here.

Enjoy! =D

What first attracted you to horror writing?

It’s something that has fascinated me for as far back as I can remember. At primary school they had an encyclopaedia with a section on mythical monsters. The accompanying illustration featured Beowulf in Hrothgar’s hall and forcing a way through the bolted doors the taloned hand of Grendal. It’s the first English horror story. I’d read Stoker’s Dracula by the time I was ten.

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In the meantime, here’s an interview I did for Michael Wilson for Read Horror. I enjoyed answering the questions, even though I did find the one asking why people should read my work to be a particular challenge. Obviously, I need to get better at the whole self-promotion thing. You know, being able to publicly acknowledge that my writing is actually good and that people might actually enjoy reading it. I’m pretty crap at that. Of course, “enjoy” is such a relative term . . .

Right, back to the words.

What first attracted you to horror writing?

I’ve always been a voracious reader and the kinds of stories that have always attracted me have been the darker ones, the ones without a neat, happy ending, the ones that left me troubled for days, if not years, afterwards. So when I started writing these were the kinds of stories that came out. I never made a conscious decision to be a horror writer, and sometimes I do feel my work to be a difficult fit for the genre (My first novel took ages to find a home and the most common reason for rejection was given as, “It’s great but we just don’t know what to do with it.”). Without knowing precisely why, I find myself drawn to darkness.

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What first attracted you to horror writing?

The fact that it’s the genre you go to when you want to think the unthinkable. The genre where all our worst fears and neuroses bubble up to the surface. What if my child doesn’t come home one night? What if my home, my body or my mind is invaded and I’m powerless to stop it? What if consensus reality is just a cosy fiction that masks a deeper more irrational universe than we can ever understand?

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First, Michael Wilson over at Read Horror webzine gave Gary McMahon’s What They Hear in the Dark a short review, giving it a thumbs up. Michael will also be reviewing the other Gary’s Abolisher of Roses at some point in the near future – in the meantime, here’s what he said about Mr. McMahon’s chapbook.

Antipodean writer Angela Slatter, of Sourdough & Other Stories (Tartarus Press) and The Girl with no Hands (Ticonderoga) fame (both of which I have reviewed), asked me to participate in one of her fun little ‘Drive-by Interviews’, which she published today. You can see what I said by clicking here.

Don’t forget, too, that copies of Cate Gardner’s Nowhere Hall are now available on pre-order, but I urge you to get your order in quickly as there are only FIVE copies left (15th June 2011)…. =)

First up on this dreary Monday morning (has anyone bothered to tell the weather that it’s actually June?) is a short review of Gary Fry’s Abolisher of Roses courtesy of Chris Bissette – his take on the most recent chapbook can be found here.

Also, the beginning of this month saw my debut as a columnist for Read Horror webzine, the first instalment of which you can read here…. please feel free to leave a comment or two, and I sincerely hope that you can join me every month for my ruminations on genre, books, film, media and other things.

1. Be a part of a growing community whilst it’s in its infancy. Since day one, Read Horror has attracted over one hundred unique visitors per day. Given a lack of paid for publicity and a launch that consisted less of a build up and more of “WE’RE HERE!” this is a reasonable achievement, added to which it’s growing every day. Speaking of growing each day Read Horror set up a Facebook group over the Easter weekend, why not join in the fun?
2. New content every day. Whether it’s reviews, news, interviews, features, previews or an introduction to one of the must-read voices in horror literature, Read Horror brings you fresh content every [working] day. Sometimes we out do ourselves and provide you updates at the weekend or on bank holidays. Take today for example, here in the UK it’s a bank holiday, but a few banks closing didn’t stop us running a quick interview with zombie hack Eric S Brown.
3. Meet The Writer. The popularity of the Meet The Writer section can be attested to through the growing number of readers and writers getting in touch and requesting various writers are featured in this exciting section. Meet The Writer provides a quick, fun, introduction to new and veteran horror writers. So far we’ve heard from Adam Nevill, David Moody, Wayne Simmons, Stephen Volk, Gary McMahon and many more.
4. We really care about horror. This isn’t just a resource, but a way of life. Horror runs through our veins, crimson splashes marking our path. Horror writer and journalist, Michael Wilson set this up because he wanted to reverse the mainstream trend, where literature is kicked to the kerb and the media concentrate on horror cinema. We are reversing the trend, one step at a time.
5. Because the best of horror literature is the best in literature. That’s what Jonathan Oliver, Editor at Abaddon Publishing, said when interviewed in the forthcoming Scream Magazine and do you know what? He was right!

What first attracted you to horror writing?

I love the thrill of a pulse-pounding imaginary scare. I like the inherent danger and fast pace of horror, both as a reader and a writer, and I enjoy raising the stakes for my characters.

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“After the death of his wife, Bruce Holden moves to the quaint coastal fishing village of Mulberry with his son, Jack. He is hoping for a fresh start, but the locals greet their arrival with mixed reactions, from friendliness to open hostility. Bruce puts it down to them being outsiders, but when a tourist is killed while swimming, the real horror is unleashed. There’s something ravenous in the sea. Something that’s coming ashore in search of prey. Now Bruce and Jack find themselves embroiled in a nightmare where humankind is no longer at the top of the food chain.”

I caught up with Shaun Jeffrey so that ReadHorror fans can learn more about this exciting new release. Don’t forget to pre-order a copy of Shaun Jeffrey’s Fangtooth.

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In other news I’ve updated a couple of links over at the Terrorizer journalism section here on TrepidNation. There are now live links to the Halloween Frightfest All-Nighter and Warlord UK review featured in Terrorizer.

Finally, please check out recent interviews that I’ve ran with You Shriek, over at Dominion and Blackfield’s Aviv Geffen on Terrorizer’s Wretched Spawn.

Best wishes,

MICHAEL WILSON

What first attracted you to horror writing?

That would be Mr James Herbert, Mr Stephen King and Mr Guy N. Smith – all fabulous and different horror novelists in their own right, and a good dollop of my formative reading years. I love extremes of emotion, and these writers provided some pretty horrific storylines for me to digest as I was growing up. I still remember my hackles rising when the guy in Pet Sematary breaks into the graveyard and starts to dig up… well, you get my point. So, extremes of emotion – experiencing them, and then trying to provoke a similar effect in others.

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What first attracted you to horror writing?

I guess it was a combination of different things which set me off down this path. Someone somehow managed to slip a copy of The Day of the Triffids into my primary school library, and once I’d read that I became hooked on horror and all things post-apocalyptic. Maybe nine year olds shouldn’t have been reading stuff like that, but I’m glad I did. I quickly developed a fascination for horror, and I used to creep downstairs late at night to watch the old horror double bills which were shown on the BBC – usually the original Universal monster movies with the odd Hammer and Amicus film thrown in for good measure. I grew up in the 1980’s and that was important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the paranoia about ‘video nasties’ around that time had the opposite effect on me to what the government intended – the fact I couldn’t get to see films like Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist meant that I made it my life’s work to get hold of copies and it became an addiction. Second, I was around when the Cold War was at its height, and when you grow up thinking you could be blown to oblivion at any time with just four minutes’ warning, you can’t help but be focused on horror!

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What first attracted you to horror writing?

The first thing was probably the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland with its startling covers and terrible pun-laden prose by Forrest Ackermann, which I used to buy at my local newsagent in South Wales when I was about eleven. I can still remember the stills (and the puns) in that mag. I probably graduated to it from Marvel Classic comics based on famous horror novels like Frankenstein or Moby Dick. Then it was the attraction of those Karloff black and white stills long, long before seeing the actual Karloff film.  The allure of forbidden fruit. I think the attraction to Horror was to something larger than life, more imaginative and wild and exciting, not the “kitchen sink” of realism like you saw on TV at the time.  As I grew older I became more interested in the supernatural and the psychological aspects of the paranormal as I read more around the subject.  Nowadays, I must say, I’m not especially interested in purely horrifying or repulsing or grossing-out the reader or viewer, as such, but I love to create an atmosphere of the uncanny, the off-kilter, the disturbing. It’s a way, to me, of questioning reality and questioning the quick answers we are given about life all through our lives.

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Morbid curiosity I guess.  I found myself drawn to a genre which inspired powerful emotions.

As a teenager, I became interested in the darker aspects of entertainment.  I loved movies like Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday 13^th, I listened to a lot of metal, which typically invoked dark imagery and I obsessively read horror fiction.  The first novel I read all the way through was Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.  To be honest, I was never interested in reading prior to that, but after the first taste of what King had to offer, I consumed his novels one by one until I had exhausted the entire King bibliography.  After that I moved on to other notable authors of the genre; Graham Masterton, Dean Koontz, Shaun Hutson, Richard Laymon and Guy N Smith.

A little later I began to write my own short stories imitating the styles of my favourite authors.  Back then, it was a pretty stormy time in my life and I used my writing as a form of catharsis, pouring my emotions into my work.  I still do.

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I’ve just written a review for Blackfield’s Welcome to My DNA over at Terrorizer. Check it out for yourself: Welcome to My DNA Review.

Finally for those wondering about the picture, it’s the cover to Shaun Jeffrey’s latest offering Fangtooth. A good old fashioned monster story that I’ll be previewing over at Read Horror shortly.

Cheers,

MICHAEL WILSON

Last year I tried to readdress the balance when I started up a Literature section for Scream Magazine. A magazine that promises a very exciting future for horror journalism, echoing back to horror rags from a distant past. The Literature section is going extremely well at the moment. The fourth issue has just launched featuring a review of David Moody’s Hater and Shaun Jeffrey’s Deadfall. The issue following that features BC Furtney, Jonathan Oliver, Wayne Simmons and more. Whilst all of this is great the balance still needs to be readdressed. Hence Read Horror, a website that will compliment the literature section in Scream.

Whilst I’m mentioning Scream I’d also like to nod towards the likes of Black Static and Murky Depths. Both of these excellent magazines showcase a host of top quality, well thought out horror and fantasy fiction respectively.

Thank you to Shaun Watson for designing the logo for Read Horror and to the authors that have already put themselves forwards for Meet The Writer. Meet The Writer serves as a fun introductory insight into upcoming and well established horror authors. With that said please make your way over to Meet The Writer for the first three writers; Shaun Jeffrey, Gary McMahon and Kim Paffenroth.

Read Horror is for fans of horror literature – if there is anything you want covered here that is not covered get in touch. Similarly if you want me to feature you in Meet The Writer please message me. This goes for fans who want to contribute and anybody else who wants to come on board the Read Horror journey. Any query/comment/abuse e-mail Michael@TrepidNation.com

I hope you enjoy the website and stay to watch it grow into something rather special.

Finally for those wondering what the main image is it’s the cover to a fantastic collection of horror stories in and around the Underground. I suggest you buy this right away.

MICHAEL WILSON