It’s the final week of the CloisterFox fundraiser. This is your last chance to help launch my new bi-annual zine of British speculative fiction.
CloisterFox will be hosting these six superb writers in the first issue in April 2022:
Robert Shearman (We All Hear Stories in the Dark)
Dan Carpenter (Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror)
Ally Wilkes (All The White Spaces)
Natasha Kindred (How The Email Found Me)
Ch?k?d?l? Emel?mad? (Dazzling)
David Hartley (Fauna, Incorcisms)
We have some tempting rewards for our backers, including paperbacks, huge ebook bundles, an enamel pin, and one remaining short story critique. We hope you’ll back the campaign and share the link. See you in April!
The CloisterFox Zine fundraiser is a whisper shy of 50% funded. What a campaign it’s been so far. I’m so grateful to you all for you support.
We have an exciting new perk for fans of speculative fiction. Dan Coxon has kindly offered up the entire back catalogue of his strange fiction anthology The Shadow Booth in ebook formats. For £20, you get all 4 Shadow Booths, my novella Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, and Issue 1 of CloisterFox.
That’s 56 unsettling short stories and a whole novella for £20! So if you haven’t pledged yet, (or you fancy pledging again!), there’s a wealth of dark treats awaiting you.
In an act of what may prove to be utter recklessness, I’m chasing a dream of mine and launching a short story zine.
I’m proud to introduce CloisterFox, a British speculative fiction zine. Every six months, I aim to release six captivating, genre-bending short stories in an A5 perfect bound volume, richly illustrated, ideal for throwing in your bag.
I want to publish stories that creep uninvited along quiet corridors. Stories missed by shoppers hurrying by. Secrets, miracles, universes behind locked tenement doors. Ghosts and gallows. The dress in the attic as seen through a haze of neon. Tell me things I don’t know. Tell me the dreams you can’t forget. Tell me strange things.
CloisterFox will be hosting these six superb writers in the first issue:
I have the time, the contacts, and the experience to make this work. I just need the money. As of today, I’m crowdfunding the project using Indiegogo. You can now pre-order an ebook or a paper zine, grab an enamel pin, or get your short stories professionally critiqued at a bargain price. There’s even the option to have a character named after you in my next novel, and I promise it won’t be anyone too evil.
Don’t fancy a reward? You can just throw us a tip and watch us turn in into a high-quality zine. And please consider sharing the project around. Zines survive on word of mouth! CloisterFox is on Instagram and Twitter, and we’re so grateful for your support and excited to see where this project will take us.
If you go down to the Forbidden Planet website, you might just find a signed Pseudotooth. The perfect weird Christmas gift for someone, somewhere, presumably.
How hard has it been not to talk about this? Really quite hard. Introducing The Hellebore Guide To Occult Britain, a true labour of love exploring castles, museums and manor houses, megaliths, moors, mountains and lakes. This lavishly illustrated travel guide covers the rich history of magic and the occult in Britain and its inextricable bond with the landscape.
Having grown up on the legendary Reader’s Digest book of Folklore, Myths and Legends – terrifying myself with those illustrations – to contribute to a project like this was a dream come true.
Today’s the day! Lore & Disorder: thirteen tales of mutated folklore by some of my favourite authors, plus some fae weirdness from me. Pay what you can, all in aid of FareShare UK.
I’ll be at MCM Comic Con on Friday the 22nd of October, talking ghost stories with Tiffani Angus, R.A. Williams, and Kim Newman! Come and say hi. We’ll be signing books at the Forbidden Planet stand afterwards.
Throughout October, I’ll be posting spooky shorts on Patreon for my $1 patrons. Patreon is the main way I make money from my writing, so if you’ve ever wanted to check out my patron-only archives, $1 a month is a wonderful way to support me. You’ll also get a signed bookmark.
Games of cards that usher in cloven-footed strangers. Runic inscriptions that conjure up demons. A communal warning uttered every Bonfire Night.
I’m thrilled as always to contribute to Hellebore, particularly in time for Halloween. My piece, Conjuring The Cunning Man, follows the strange afterlife of an Essex folk hero known to his neighbours as ‘The Old Bastard’.