The Darkest Battlefield.

I’m very happy to announce that a new collection of WW1 based horror novellas, The Darkest Battlefield, is now available to pre-order. It’s the inaugural publication from Dean M Drinkel’s new publishing venture Demain and is a sequel of sorts to Darker Battlefields which was published a couple of years ago.

The kindle edition features my own novella, The Lost, alongside stories from Richard Farren Barber, Paul Edwards and Terry Grimwood. A paperback is in the pipeline which will feature the added bonus of a novella from Dean himself.

The idea for The Darkest Battlefield was proposed by Dean shortly after publication of Darker Battlefields and once the decision had been made that he would be publishing the book, all that remained was for an editor to come forward. Ignoring the eminently sensible advice to never volunteer for anything, I offered my services and as a result, found myself in the wonderful position of reading three superb novellas – stories whose company I am honoured to share here.

My own novella is set against the backdrop of the Third Battle of Ypres – or the Battle of Passchendaele as it’s come to be more commonly known – a conflict which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and which was fought in some of the worst conditions imaginable with persistent rain turning the battlefield into a quagmire in which thousands drowned. The option to not participate because it was raining was not one available to them. A senior officer, visiting the battlefield towards the end of the fighting burst into tears and asked his driver “did we send our men into that?” Passchendaele was also the place where the German army first used mustard gas, and this plays a hugely significant role in my story.

I’ve long been obsessed by the Great War, something which I believe dates back to when I was ten or eleven and picked up some books in my great-uncle’s house about the conflict. What I read in there horrified me and when I asked my uncle about his experiences he refused to go into any detail and even as young as I was I could sense his discomfort. I’ve subsequently learned that my paternal great-grandfather was a hussar at the Somme (though I’m not sure if he participated in one of the last cavalry charges ever) who was killed by a sniper and that my maternal grandfather was bayoneted in the shoulder and held as a prisoner of war.

I’ve used the conflict as the backdrop for many of my stories and it’s a subject I’ll no doubt return to in the future. I’m very proud to be a part of this project, the stories presented here taking a variety of approaches to the theme. Also included is a foreword from Adrian Chamberlin and original poetry from John Gilbert.

You can pre-order The Darkest Battlefield here.

All Hell

By Richard Farren Barber

The horrors of the Great War are felt all over the world, not least by those left behind, the mothers of the soldiers fighting in the trenches. They wait every day for the arrival of the delivery boy bringing the letters that tell of the death of another son, hoping that this is not their turn. They will do anything to ensure the safety of their boys.

When a mysterious stranger arrives in New Radford, she brings with her the promise of hope, a way of ensuring the safety of the young men of the Nottinghamshire town. Mary Fothergill is drawn to the woman, desperate to keep her sons William and Henry alive - but will the woman’s demands be too high a price to pay?

Where The Wounded Trees Wait

By Paul Edwards

At the battlefield memorial at Mametz, Caryl searches for the place where her grandfather Huw lost his life. Gifted with a psychic ability passed down from her grandmother, she begins a journey into the past, uncovering truths which throw light not just on her family’s history but her own life.

Amidst the revelations of Huw’s final days, connections form as past and present grow ever closer and Caryl’s own destiny is revealed.

Maria

By Terry Grimwood

The sacrifice of war has new meaning for Major Ernst Dreyer.

The son of an abusive father, he has escaped his past and is now a Major in the German army, his company held in reserve as the British mount their attack.

His request that the men be moved up to the front line arises from more than a sense of honour or patriotism – much more is at stake than the future of his homeland. A deal has been made, one which must not be broken.

The Lost

By Anthony Watson

Amid the rain and mud of Passchendaele, an army chaplain and medical officer form a friendship and uncover the cursed history of the battlefield which is their temporary home.

An evil long since dormant is reawakening and the pair find themselves in a race against time to combat the supernatural horrors of the past, even as the third battle of Ypres rages around them.

Darker Battlefields.

 

It’s with an immense feeling of pride that I can announce that DARKER BATTLEFIELDS an anthology of war/horror novellas will soon be available from The Exaggerated Press. Pride because my own story, Winter Storm is one of the six contained within.

I still can’t quite believe that this is all happening but it is – and my heartfelt thanks go to Frank Duffy for drawing me into the fold in the first place. I massively appreciated the offer at the time and even more so now that the book will soon be a reality.

Thanks also to my good friends who read the early drafts of the novella – Ross Warren and Ben Jones – whose feedback was invaluable, and which made the story so much better than my first attempt. Ben is a walking encyclopaedia of all things war related and many of our conversations tended to veer off course and become flurries of ideas, many of which will hopefully see the light of day in future publications.

As befitting a collection of war stories, a camaraderie sprung up between the authors during the process of pulling the book together with shared feedback and support flying across the virtual ether so thanks again to Mark West, Paul Edwards, Richard Farren Barber, Dean M Drinkel and Adrian Chamberlin for their encouragement and enthusiasm. I have to say I still feel a bit like the new kid in class here but am honoured to be sharing a TOC with writers whose work I’ve long admired. I'm pretty certain Terry Grimwood's initial reaction to my inclusion would have been "Who?" but I'm again deeply appreciative that he was willing to take a gamble. A special nod goes to Adrian, who took on editing duties – not just for managing to coordinate the whole process but for finding even more ways to improve the fifth draft of Winter Storm. I salute you my brothers in arms!

The story of Winter Storm straddles both world wars, with a demonic encounter on a mountain in Turkey during World War One having repercussions in the snow filled ruins of Stalingrad in the Second World War. Whilst the Great War is my burning obsession, I’ve long been fascinated by the battle of Stalingrad, a siege which lasted over five months and which killed hundreds of thousands. The imagery from photos of the battle have long lurked in the depths of my subconscious so it was great to have an opportunity to use them in a story at last. I’m humbled that that imagery has been used by Ben Baldwin to produce the absolutely stunning artwork for the cover.

Having read the other stories, and seen the quality on display, I can only reiterate how proud I am to be part of this book.  All of the authors have provided their own unique take on the subject of war and the conflicts used range from biblical times, through the Napoleonic Wars via the world wars right up to recent events in Libya. I can’t wait to see it in the flesh.

The stories are:

ODETTE by Richard Farren Barber

THE SEARING by Paul Edwards

WINTER STORM by Anthony Watson

THIS ENVIOUS SEIGE by Adrian Chamberlin

THE EXERCISE by Mark West

DESCENSIS CHRISTI AD INFERNOS by Dean M Drinkel

 

Chromatics

Chromatics is a new anthology from Lycopolis Press and is edited by Dean M Drinkel. It contains eleven stories based on the theme of colour – an original concept for a collection of horror stories. It has to be said that the theme is tangential at best in some of the stories but that doesn’t distract from what I found to be a strong collection overall.

The book opens with Anthony Cowin’s The Sand Was Made of Mountains – an elegant piece of prose writing which features a creature called The Catcher in the Sand – drawing immediate comparison with a certain book by J D Salinger. One interpretation of that famous book is that it’s about war and that’s certainly the case with Anthony’s story, featuring a protagonist who is a refugee fleeing from Syria. Topical then, and – in lesser hands – potentially exploitative but that’s absolutely not the case here with the resulting story a subtle, elegiac rumination on the horrors that arise from conflict.

Paul M Feeney uses the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear processing plant as the backdrop for his story The Black God. I have to admit to more than a passing interest in the subject (and can heartily recommend Piers Paul Read’s account of the disaster Ablaze) and have a distinct memory of a TV documentary filmed in the abandoned city of Pripyat. Scenes of the deserted streets were eerie enough – a true post-apocalyptic vision – but really disturbing was the shot of a mysterious figure spotted by the camera crew high up in the window of an abandoned skyscraper. It’s an image that’s remained with me for over twenty years, and one which still gives me shivers and I have to say that I got the same feelings when reading Paul’s story. He creates a wonderful atmosphere here, building a sense of paranoia which goes beyond that of just strangers in a strange land which culminates in something truly dark.

Beige is not the colour of blandness but madness in the story by Martin Roberts. A first person narration from a suitably unreliable narrator leads along the path of delusion towards a tragic revelation. Raven Dane’s The White Room centres around strange goings-on around an abandoned, decaying mansion in a generation-spanning period piece. Those goings-on are explained but I felt the story was possibly too short to contain the ideas within, making it feel like an extract from a longer work.

I loved the concept behind Restoring Scarlet by Dave Jeffrey which gives us a mortician with some very special skills at restoration. It’s another first person narrative which is cleverly constructed so that the readers’ sympathies change over the course of the story, continuously wrong-footing them and leading them towards a chilling conclusion. I loved it.

Xanthos by Wayne Goodchild is probably a little too burdened-under by references to the mythology created by Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow to stand on its own two feet and would have worked better in an anthology dedicated to the author. That said, it’s the second time Dean has published this story of a playwright with a fear of the colour yellow so who am I to argue..?

Born From the Greens is the first published story by Zak A Ferguson. There’s plenty enough in this story of something monstrous growing in the garden but there’s a little (understandable) naivete to the writing, occasionally pathos becomes bathos and some of the more flowery passages could have done with a little pruning. With all my gardening metaphors used up now what I  can say is that there’s plenty imagination on show here and, with a little technical refinement great things could lie ahead for Zak.

The Spiritual Room by Christopher Beck gave me a few problems. Its subject matter – childhood abuse – is a really tricky one to pull off successfully (by which I mean not in an exploitative way). I really don’t think the author succeeded in this respect, pitching the tone of the story way off. Subtlety and discretion would be more effective – neither of which are on display here.

This is the Colour of Blood by Mark West gives us another outing for his recurring character Mike Decker. It’s an entertaining romp involving Russian gangsters and secret rituals but I don’t think it’s Mark’s best work. I’m still not entirely sure why Decker is involved in the case in the first place other than as a device to move the plot forward – my feeling is that Mark had the conclusion in his head first and then worked backwards to find a way of getting to it.

Anthropocene is by Charles Rudkin and provides an allegorical tale with post-apocalyptic imagery in which colour has disappeared from the earth. The sighting of a dragon in Antarctica may herald a return to some kind of normality. It’s an intriguing story, full of interesting images and allusive dialogue. It’s thoughtful and thought-provoking but suffers a little from being divided up into headed sections.

The collection heads off into the sunset (somewhat appropriately) with Dean M Drinkel’s Dans le Rouge du Couchant. Well now, this was unexpected. Unexpected in that this is a horror anthology and, although there’s darkness creeping around this story like mist on the surface of the Seine, it’s not truly a horror story. It is an excellent story though – a dark love story set in Paris which perfectly captures the paranoia and concerns that accompany any new relationship. (Oh, and the romance of course). There’s a growing sense of dread which develops as the story progresses and the conclusion, although not entirely unexpected, is hard-hitting. I’m not sure why Dean included it in this particular book – but I’m glad he did.

All in all then a strong collection of stories. A couple of stumbles along the way but containing at least four stories which are worth the admission price on their own.

You can buy Chromatics here.