Contents
Preorder Campaign – What’s Coming
What I’m Writing
What I’m Reading
What I’m Listening To
What I’m Watching
What’s Coming
Step into a world where flesh betrays, bone revolts, and the boundaries of the human body dissolve in terrifying ways. This anthology drags you through skin-crawling tales of mutation, transformation, and grotesque obsession. Within these pages, writers dissect what it means to inhabit a body—revealing the fragility, the horror, and the dark beauty that lies beneath the surface.
Occupying Bodies is a new anthology from Black Hare Press, and my story “Along the Xylophone Road” is in it!
Even as the infection took me, I spent my last moments in front of the blinking screen in my room, reading your address over and over until it became an earworm, embedded inside me like a snatch of percussive song.
If there was to be nothing left of me, I hoped there would be something left of you.
And now you are still too far, so I drag myself along the xylophone road, following the metal rails into the distance. I don’t know my name, or what other people used to call me, but I know where you live.
I know where you live, and I am coming.
What I’m Writing
Ko-Fi members are getting World War I and Inter-War letters this summer, introducing Eglantine Pritchard (aged 19) and Gwendolyn Mostyn-Jenkins (aged 19) as nurses on the Western Front. At least, Egg is a nurse, and Gwen is up to no good.
Dear Kitty,
Something deeply unsettling has happened, and I feel I must write you and explain as best I can, as I cannot alarm anyone here with what sound like wild fancies.
June and July letters are from Sister S. as she does her best to nurse the wounded, while strange things plague her hospital. Meet Egg and Gwen from an outsider POV, and get to know these powerful young women in the early days before they come to Pagham-on-Sea.
WIPs are progressing at different stages. I am revising my contemporary mystery-romance thanks to phase 1 beta comments. I’m drafting the next Pagham-on-Sea novel, and a couple of stories set in the Yelen & Yelena universe.
Best Friends Bury Bodies : 38.7K words into the rewrite of my beta draft, which was complete at 80.4K words. I’m streamlining and working in a better balance with recovery/addiction, and second chance romance/murder mystery. Let’s see if I’m happy with it when this draft is done. Ko-Fi members automatically get print / eArcs on request.
Feed : 40K words into this latest draft, and I’ve rubbed up against the midpoint problem. These books tend to run to 95-98K words, so the midpoint is approaching, and I’m not convinced by it. We’ll see how it works out for now but I’m anticipating several rewrites once I’m done with this draft. Ko-Fi members get extracts as I’m going along. Ko-Fi members automatically get print / eArcs on request.
As Below, So Above : 9.1K into this draft and still not convinced by the framed narrative, so I think I’ll try writing the main story and then the framed story and dovetail them later. I’m happier with the worldbuilding and the magic aspect than I was previously. Ko-Fi members automatically get print / eArcs on request.
Cold as Snow, White as Bone : no landing page for this yet. Experimental writing stage. I’ll dip back into this one when I’m ready.
What I’m Reading
FICTION:
Mark N. Drake – The Gathering of Shadows. Really honestly enjoyed this. Set in the Irish Sea on Darkisle, somewhere near the Isle of Man, a twisty period piece of private eyes and occult shenanigans with dark magic and evil books. Very eldritch, very fun, very British. Hooked into the whole series.
Alex Mura – Silence in the Basement. I had this ages ago as an ARC (sorry 😔 ) but a fairly decent horror-thriller, definitely kept me entertained and it has cannibalism and tries to do some different stuff with it.
Nenia Campbell – Raise the Blood. Halfway through this, it’s a modern USA-set Gothic horrormance, and I’m intrigued to find out what’s going on with the weird rich family.
NON-FICTION:
Olive Dent – A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front: Memoirs from a WWI camp hospital.
Edith Appleton, Ruth Cowan (ed) – A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton.
What I’m Listening To
Wyrd and Other Derelictions by Adam L.G. Nevill, audiobook. I really like the premise of this, and the execution. I think my favourite is the desolate tanker, but I really liked a lot of the images in the other stories as well. If you enjoyed Ligotti’s The Red Tower, you’ll probably enjoy this, and if you enjoy this, you’ll enjoy Earworm by Mason Hawthorne. Recently finished this audiobook; I read the eBook version some years ago.
The Magnus Archives – eps 1-200, a re-listen. Just completed it. Love this one.
The Magnus Protocol – S01, a first listen. Really enjoyable, looking forward to the rest of it. S01 ends on a cliffhanger so desperate to know what happens, but I want them to finish the current season before I continue.
The Silt Verses – a first listen. I’m now on Chapter 04 of 45. Very much enjoying it. Horror-Fantasy.
What I’m Watching
HIGHLIGHTS
Snowpiercer (2013) dir. Bong Joon Ho – enjoyed this one, hadn’t seen it before! Like a bit of Tilda Swinton.
Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) dir. Matt Palmer – bit of light fun, not really into YA type horror but this was enjoyable. I’ve liked all the Fear Street films.
Mastemah (2022) dir. Didier D. Daarwin – this was fine, I’m not hugely into French horror but I liked the way this unfolded.
The Outcasts (1982) dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons – eerie Irish folk horror-fantasy that’s really more of a drama with dark folk and fantastical elements. It’s deeply sad and unsettling.
불가사리 / Pulgasari (1985) dir. Shin Sang-ok, Chong Gon Jo – North Korean monster movie, which I found on YouTube. Deeply political allegory, I totally see why this got banned.
Bodrog (2018) dir. Salajan Mihai-Eugen – Very close to my limit of a specific gastrohorror element but I kept going. It hit a lot of deeply unsettling notes for me and made me feel sick in places. Some of it is a bit disjointed and could have been better executed? But I thought this was pretty good overall. Watched on YouTube.
Heretic (2024) dirs. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods – 100% would rewatch this. It has the usual run-of-the-mill shoddy atheistic theological underpinnings, which was a bit disappointing as I was hoping for more meat and teeth in that regard (you can have an atheist character without regurgitating all the usual armchair/internet atheist talking points, I promise, and I’m not even an atheist), but the psychological element of the horror made up for that. It went full batshit Criminal Minds on steroids in the final act. I definitely appreciate full batshit though. Hugh Grant is living his best baddie life.
La dama rossa uccide sette volte / The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) dir. Emilio P. Miraglia – not the best giallo for me, and I don’t think this one is a rewatch. It was entertaining, Gothic AF, went hard on loads of elements, definitely entertaining.
The Woods (2024) dir. Sarah Lyons – I can appreciate some low budget indie films, and this one was a pretty good production. It had its issues, but it was ok to watch, and lasts just over an hour.
I’m going to do this challenge from 01 Aug-31 Oct and see how many more new-to-me horror films I can watch in that time.
I want to see new-to-me horror from around the world and see what I can find. I’ve already started building a watchlist across my various streaming platforms so I’ve got stuff to get me started wherever I choose to watch something. I have a Padlet for the countries I’ve seen horror films from now. Click here to view the map, and click the pointers to see the films I’ve added so far (not all the ones I’ve seen are on there but I’ve got at least one per country I’ve seen a horror from now).
As usual I’ll have a Letterboxd list for this.
Last year, I kicked off with A Song From The Dark (2023) dir. Ogodinife Okpue, which is a Nigerian-British film. I enjoyed that one a lot, so hoping that I pick another good one to kick off 2025.
Letterboxd List: 2024 Challenge is here.
Letterboxd List: 2023 Challenge is here.
Letterboxd List: 2022 Challenge is here.
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