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

 

Busy Blood.

Busy Blood is a collection of stories by D.F. Lewis and Stuart Hughes and is published by The Exaggerated Press. I love reading Des Lewis' real-time reviews but have to say that a lot of the time I have absolutely no idea what he means (a failure in my understanding rather than in his ability to communicate I hasten to add) so it was with a degree of trepidation that I started reading this book, with a mind to reviewing it, my concerns being that the writing would be so far over my head that I would have nothing insightful to say about it. (That said, it could be the case that I never have anything insightful to say about anything I review...)
Still, life is nothing without a challenge and, having now finished the book, I can say that to some degree my fears were confirmed, there were many occasions when reading one of the stories, or even after having completed it, that my reaction was "what the **** was that all about?" but this is in no way a criticism of the book. Many of Des' reviews communicate the emotions and feelings he experiences when reading rather than straightforward critiques of the stories themselves. Which, after all, is the most important thing. The function of art - in whatever form - is surely to create some kind of emotional response. My emotional response to Busy Blood, and the stories therein, definitely was one of confusion - which was in turn unsettling, which, when you think about it, is exactly what you would want from well written horror.
And this is definitely well written horror. I've banged on about Des Lewis a lot so far in this review but this book is a collaborative effort, the other author Stuart Hughes has written stories I've enjoyed in other publications (most recently in Hersham Horror's Alt-Zombie) and it's a compliment to both him and Des that you can't tell where the joins are. I'm not sure if the two authors wrote individual stories or collaborated within the stories themselves but either way I found it impossible to tell who wrote what, the tone and style of the writing is maintained throughout.
And it's the tone that's the key here. For whatever reason, this is an unsettling (there - I've used the word again so it must be true) collection of stories, disturbing even. It would be easy and superficial to describe them as "descent into madness" tales but they all share a theme of reality shifting and changing around the protagonists, (and not in a good way), of having the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. Many of the stories touch on surrealism - not my favourite style of writing usually - but manage to avoid the pitfalls that many Surrealists fall into of simply writing self-indulgent in-jokes (or bollocks as I like to call them) that are meaningless to anyone but themselves.
Busy Blood is a tricky read, but it's definitely worth the effort. Good writing should engage the brain and that's exactly what this collection does. You may well have to work out your own theories on what the stories are about, it may well be that many of them aren't actually "about" anything anyway. This is a good thing.
Can genre fiction be literary? Yes it can, and Busy Blood is the proof.