I have a piece in the latest Hellebore about medieval martyrs, pub lore, and Victorian yearning. I am giving the people what they want. Pre-order now.

Astonishingly, Blackwells will ship The Others of Edenwell to readers outside the UK for FREE. This is wild. So if you’ve had a hankering for a WW1 ghost story set in a hydropathic hospital in the Norfolk brecks where the crows know your name, now’s your chance.

I’m in the latest issue of Hellebore, talking about Victorian chimneysweeps taking to the streets on May Day. This was an emotional one for me – it turns out that the last boy to die up a chimney in England is buried in an unmarked grave right outside my old uni halls of residence. I’d unwittingly looked out over him every morning. Poor little George Brewster. I hope this article goes a little way towards giving him back his dignity.

I’ll be teaching at Anglia Ruskin University again this spring. Just a couple of classes on weird short fiction. If you’d like to see my teaching videos, they’re all on my Patreon, which you can join for a mere £1 a month. Patreon keeps me afloat these days, so every sub is a bright spark.

Speaking of weird fiction, I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day the right way: talking about the romance of graveyards at Writing The Occult. Tickets for this online event are available here.

What else? I’ll be in the next edition of Hellebore, talking about some fun nineteenth century court cases when folklore got rowdy. The Hellebore fiction anthology, Tales From Occult Britain, got a shout out in the Washington Post of all places. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda mentioned the book in his Christmas roundup. It’s extremely gratifying when a small press gets international attention. More of this sort of thing, please!

And on the subject of end-of-year lists, I’m very pleased to see that four of my stories made it to Ellen Datlow’s annual recommendations. Last year was pretty dry for me, creatively, so I’m hoping to take this buoyancy and let it carry me to better things.

See you on Valentine’s Day!

I’ve been itching to announce this. Tales of Occult Britain, the first fiction anthology from Hellebore, will be out in time for Yule. My story, ‘Night Exercises’, is in stunning company here. Get your pre-orders in.

British Fantasy Society people! My collection Cheer The Sick is eligible for an award this year. As is Elemental Forces, which I’m very proud to have a story in. Use the Google form to nominate them. You have until the 9th of May to vote.