Hey all - just popping in to let you know that my new book - ‘The Absence’ - has been released ahead of schedule! I hope this is good news for anyone who enjoyed ‘Through A Glass, Darkly’! The book is now available via Amazon, Waterstones, Borders, Play and other online retailers, as well as being stocked in bookshops throughout the country. I’m going to be in London next week and will be running around signing copies - I’ll post a list of bookshops with signed copies as soon as I get back. By the way, this early release won’t affect the Horror Reanimated Tour or the launch events at The Big Green Bookshop at Wood Green at 6.30 pm on 6th May and Borders Oxford Street on 7th May.
I can only apologise to those reviewers who were told to hold off on their reviews until April. I’m guessing this means you can go ahead and post ‘em up! We’ve already received some great comments from the likes of:
Sarah Pinborough (author of ‘The Taken’): ‘Bill Hussey is the new Clive Barker’.
Bookgeeks: ‘Bill Hussey deserves to sit alongside Ramsey Campbell as one of the UK’s finest spinners of ghost stories.’
Geoff Nelder: ‘Bill Hussey is the new MR James.’
‘The Absence’ has already been spotted in Brighton Waterstones by Graeme Hills - the dedicatee of the book - and several people have received their Amazon copies. Happy days!
On top of the exciting news of the Horror Reanimated Tour and the Borders launch on Oxford Street for both The Absence and Garbage Man (more news on this coming soon), I’m pleased to announce that a few early reviews for The Absence have started to roll in.
The first comes from writer and filmmaker Garry Charles, who last year said some very nice things about Through A Glass, Darkly. I’m pleased to say that the trend continues with his very complimentary review of The Absence. Check it out at Garry’s site.
Geoff Nelder is a writer and critic whose generosity knows no bounds. Not only has he given The Absence a very positive review but was kind enough to forward a number of very useful notes which helped out during the editorial process. In a very considered review, Geoff has been kind enough to call me ‘the new MR James’! Any horror writer would be proud of such an accolade but, as a life-long devotee of that grandfather of the ghost story, I find it particularly humbling. With this book I have tried my best to capture the atmosphere of the Fens as accurately as I can. It is the landscape in which I grew up and where I spent many happy years with my grandfathers. Therefore it is particularly gratifying that Geoff marks the sense of place out as a strong feature.
Suddenly, there are tons of exciting things to tell you about!
MEAT the movie - progress
I had a call today from screenwriter John Costello telling me the first draft of the movie script for MEAT is complete. He’ll be meeting producer Sean Kelly later this month to discuss amendments for a second draft. Then it’s time to raise finance at the film festivals.
The ball is rolling.
MEAT review
People are still reading MEAT and getting in touch to say how much the book affected them. Reviews continue coming in too. Here’s the latest appraisal of the novel from Sharon Ring at Dark Fiction Review.
Garbage Man in print
To meet demand for review copies, Bloody Books went to print three months early on both The Absence and Garbage Man – proof copies had already run out by early January. Both novels are on their way to critics and reviewers in places as far flung as Turkey, Australia and Russia – as well as going to the usual suspects in the UK, Canada and United States. Let’s hope they like them!
UK readers will have to wait until 23rd April and 7th May respectively to get their mitts on our latest work.
Garbage Man review
A second, early review of Garbage Man has been posted by Geoff Nelder. I think he liked it…
A night of butchery
On 24th March I’ll be appearing at The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell as part of the London Word Festival - talking about MEAT and reading some of the most gruesome scenes. Bring a sick-bag!
Horror Reanimated tour
To promote The Absence and Garbage Man, Bill and I are going on a nationwide tour, visiting some of the UK’s most haunted sites and giving readings and signing in nearby bookshops.
The tour kicks off at The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green on 6th May. On the 7th May we’ll be at Borders on Oxford Street from 6.45pm – 8ish followed by drinks at The White Horse on Newburgh Street. Everyone’s welcome and we’ll be giving away free stuff as well as signing everything that moves.
More details about the Horror Reanimated Tour will be released here as we finalise venues and times…
A new Joseph D’Lacey novella coming soon
Saving the best for last, perhaps…
On 10th August my survival horror tale The Kill Crew will be available from StoneGarden. This will be my first print publication in the United States and I’m very excited about it. I’ll be sending out .pdf galleys to reviewers over the next few days.
Think zombies, shotguns and post-apocalyptic mayhem - with a human touch, of course.
Well, here it is! The finished article arrived this morning! Many reviewers will now have received the final version of the book. Demand for review copies for both Garbage Man and The Absence was so high that we soon ran out of advance copies had to go straight to print! I’m really thrilled with the result, and have to thank Anthony Nott for his editorial advice regarding review quotes and blurb construction, and Ian Pickard for a wonderful jacket design.
As you can see, the brilliant Sarah Pinborough was good enough to read the book and give us a quote that, quite frankly, left me breathless. The new Clive Barker!
In other news, the Bloody Books team are putting together the final touches for something very special that will be happening in May. We’ll be able to reveal more details soon, but let’s just say that when I heard about it I did a little dance. Me dancing. Now that’s what I call horror!
You may have read our review of David Moody’s awesome Hater a couple of weeks back and you might have even entered the Bookgeeks competition to win a signed copy - you’ve got until the end of February to enter if you haven’t.
So we’ve just found this strange piece of footage, and are showing it in the interests of public safety. Looks like Moody’s novel’s rather prophetic. Remember, don’t look at your loved ones, twitch those curtains and stay inside…
It turns out that HR’s book reviewer, Mathew F. Riley, has been writing a few dark words of his own…
With 3 short stories forthcoming in genre magazines All Hallows, Necrography and Dark Horizons, the big news is that he’s just won the British Fantasy Society’s Short Story Competition, 2008, with the spooky little number, Seems Only Right.
The winning story will be published in New Horizons later in the year. More information over at the BFS.
Mathew co-runs the Bookgeeks review website, where you can find out a little bit more about him.
The time has come, ladies and gents: our new books - Garbage Man and The Absence - went to print today! After a manic final week of proofing and scrabbling around for some nice review quotes (hurrah for nice review quotes!) the books hit the presses sometime this afternoon. We’d both like to say a big thank you to Anthony Nott, Tamsin Griffiths, Kat Josselyn, Simon Petherick , Ian Pickard and all at Beautiful/Bloody Books for putting so much effort into our second titles. Only a few months to go before they hit the shelves…
A bookseller from the south coast of England has added his voice to the many spreading the gospel of MEAT.
James Pearson, a graphic artist and employee of Methvens Bookshop in Worthing, called the novel ‘a feast of unusual, high-concept horror’ and recommended it on a FANGORIA forum.
Meanwhile, in Burnley, Gary Kingdon, the owner of Badger Books wrote to The Bookseller magazine to say he loved it - this from a man who spent 17 years working in a meat factory!
I hope this kind of coverage - if there’s enough of - will encourage an American publisher to make Bloody Books an offer. That way, readers across the pond can buy the novel off the shelf of a bookstore instead of paying for amazon to ship it. I can dream.
Horrorscope is the official news source for the Australian Horror Writers Association. I’m chuffed to bits to discover the book has been so well received in Australia!
been released ahead of schedule! I hope this is good news for anyone who enjoyed ‘Through A Glass, Darkly’! The book is now available via Amazon, Waterstones, Borders, Play and other online retailers, as well as being stocked in bookshops throughout the country. I’m going to be in London next week and will be running around signing copies - I’ll post a list of bookshops with signed copies as soon as I get back. By the way, this early release won’t affect the Horror Reanimated Tour or the launch events at The Big Green Bookshop at Wood Green at 6.30 pm on 6th May and Borders Oxford Street on 7th May.
It turns out that HR’s book reviewer, Mathew F. Riley, has been writing a few dark words of his own…
A bookseller from the south coast of England has added his voice to the many spreading the gospel of 