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.

Coming in October, a new addition to Flame Tree Press’ ABC of Horror anthology series: Elemental Forces. I’m so thrilled to be in this collection alongside some of my horror heroes. Eight Days West of Plethora is a spaghetti western body horror in which a cynical bandit accompanies an old friend deep into the desert to the shrine of a mysterious lizard deity. Yippee.

Elemental Forces is the fifth volume in the non-themed horror series of original stories, showcasing the very best short fiction that the genre has to offer, and edited by Mark Morris. This new anthology contains 20 original horror stories, 16 of which have been commissioned from some of the top names in horror, and 4 selected from the 100s of stories sent to Flame Tree during a short open submissions window. A delicious feast of the familiar and the new, the established and the emerging.