The Others of Edenwell has been shortlisted for the 2023 East Anglian Book Awards.

Judge Andrew McDonnell said: “I enjoyed the pace of this curious book. It is literary gothic fiction set in the uncanny landscape of the Norfolk Brecks. The Great War haunts the pages, and it is ultimately a book about the vulnerability of masculinity with something monstrous moving in the shadows of the pages. It’s a novel that has stayed in my imagination throughout the reading process. Freddie is a brilliantly conceived character, and his fate kept me turning the pages.”

Just over a week until The Others of Edenwell is out in the world! Can’t wait for readers to meet Freddie and Eustace and Drummerboy. I’ll be doing a signing at Bury St Edmunds Waterstones (Buttermarket) on Saturday the 8th, from 11am to 2pm. Come and say hi!

Seven years ago, I was sorting through a bag of donated men’s underwear (used) at my charity job when my phone pinged. An email from George at Unsung Stories: they loved Pseudotooth and they wanted to publish. After two years of fruitless querying, my weird book had finally found a home. I bought the cheapest bottle of supermarket champagne available and ordered a Chinese.

Today came the sad news that Unsung Stories is closing down. It didn’t come as a shock, but it’s a huge blow nonetheless. The loss of Unsung is going to leave a big hole in British speculative fiction. It’s the little guys who take the creative risks, putting their strength behind books the bigger publishers won’t touch. We’re all poorer when an indie goes under. Most of all, it sucks to see my friends having a hard time.

Without Unsung Stories, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Which isn’t to say I’m writing this on a veranda in Tuscany, but I’m pretty damn content. I’ve got a new novel out in July, a comic too, and I’m sitting on a nice little mountain of published short stories. I’ve met so many new friends through Unsung and had so many opportunities I would never otherwise have had. Without Unsung, I would never have found myself on the main stage at MCM Comic Con telling that one anecdote about my uncle in France and the spider sex cheese. (Don’t ask.) Unsung produced Pseudotooth so beautifully, fully understanding what I wanted to say with it and why. I’m incredibly grateful.

Pseudotooth is mine again – all rights have returned to me – and I need to decide on its future. I could self-publish or search for a publisher who deals with reprints. At the moment, I don’t know. I just don’t want it to vanish. As it stands, the last copies of the novel are for sale in the Unsung shop for £2.99, which is a lot of paperback for your buck. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

Treasure your small publishers, folks. Buy something weird today.

The Old Ways Issue celebrates landscapes, the way we navigate them, and the stories we tell about them. Pilgrimages and rituals of crossings, tales of malevolent lights luring travellers off the path, patterns in the landscape, invisible lines of force, the mystery of megaliths. In these pages we explore the sea, the marshland, rivers and fields, stone circles, the moors, and the enigma of outer space to unearth the stories that fascinate us and to acknowledge how they’ve shaped us.

HELLEBORE is a collection of writings and essays devoted to folk horror and the themes that inspire it: folklore, myth, history, archaeology, psychogeography, and the occult. 

Featuring words by Katy Soar and Niall Finneran, Kenneth Brophy, Francis Young, Verity Holloway, Madeleine Potter, Icy Sedgwick, and Darren Pih. Artwork by Clare Marie Bailey and Nathaniel Hébert.

Edited by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo.

My historical horror novel, The Others of Edenwell, is out on the 4th of July 2023. Look at the beautiful cover Titan Books have given it. Pre-order, but do not, under any circumstances, venture into Choke Wood…

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.

It’s here! Thank you to everyone who backed the Kickstarter. Unsung Stories raised a fine sum for Together For Mental Wellbeing. All royalties will continue to go to the charity, so if you missed the fundraising campaign, there’s still time to grab a paperback or an ebook.

Unsung Stories are back with another superb anthology of modern speculative fiction. Get behind the Kickstarter for paperbacks, ebooks, and exclusive extras including professional manuscript evaluations. Out Of The Darkness is published in partnership with Together for Mental Wellbeing, a cause close to my own heart, and all the more important in the wake of the pandemic. ‘Together’ was founded in 1979, and aims to help people with mental health issues lead independent, fulfilling lives as part of their communities.

I’ve donated a story to the collection. The Forlorn Hope follows Matilda Cross, a solider all too keen to be sent far from her home. Fighting a war against supernatural creatures is far easier than dwelling on her mother’s paranoia and eventual disappearance, and the mounting fear that her mother’s destiny will be her own. All the while Matilda is rallying her troops and keeping her rifle clean, she isn’t thinking about the letters piling up from Lady Amelia Fitzmichael, the old flame who watches her from afar ‘with a million eyes’.

Pledge £20 and get a paperback of both Out Of The Darkness and my novel Pseudotooth.

Join me and Chikodili Emelumadu on the 23rd of March for the online launch of Disturbing The Body. We’ll be talking disrupted bodies, subverting genre, and lots more.

Pre-order your copy here and make us all very happy.