Halloween Horror from Screaming Dreams

Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams has produced a Halloween edition of his ezine, Estronomicon.

Contributors and their stories are as follows:

A Gathering of Ghouls by Charlotte Bond
The Apple Tree by Johnny Mains
The Man Who Killed Halloween by Mark Howard Jones
Biting Back by John Forth
The Maniacal Grin by Bob Lock
Church Hill by Simon Marshall-Jones
The Fun House by Terry Cooper
Young at Heart by Neil Davies
Looking Glass by Marion Pitman
All These Friends and Lovers by Stuart Young
Mr Pastry by Trevor Denyer
Gravefingers by Jennifer Williams
From Chattterton Hill by Carl Barker
Grandpa's Chair by Paul Kane
Among Flames, Darkness by Frank Duffy
A Footstep Away by Andrew Donegan
The Psalm by Simon Bestwick
Roam's Halloween Lesson by Ian Hunter

The pdf can be downloaded HERE for free and probably Steve will have a page-flipping version available pretty soon too, enjoy!

Review of The Savage Knight

Regular readers of my blog will know that now and then I’ll review a book that I’ve read and put in my tuppence-worth (that’s two bits for American readers!) for anyone interested. I tend to review only the books that I’ve enjoyed reading and can recommend. I don’t review books that just didn’t ‘do it for me’ so I’m pleased to say that Paul Lewis’ The Savage Knight (Malory's Knights of Albion) is one of those tales that did ‘do it for me.’

It is said that King Arthur chose a round table around which his knights could congregate because there would be no head of table and therefore his knights, mostly all barons, would not argue over who sat where as no one would be sitting in a higher or lower position to his neighbour. This would have meant nothing to Lewis’ hero however, as Sir Dodinal (the Savage), was no baron but a lowly young peasant who had been taken into the round table’s fraternity when he was discovered exacting bloody revenge on the Saxons that had raided his village and slaughtered his family.

Lewis puts flashbacks to good use to explain Dodinal’s violent and bloody past, his uncontrollable rage, the strange attunement he has with nature and how he has earned his sobriquet ‘The Savage Knight’. These are just some of the reasons why he is the troubled man he is even after many years fighting at Arthur’s side. Now he has decided to leave Camelot and return to his place of birth, Wales, for Dodinal is looking for something but even he does not really know what that is, whether it be a final quest, a need to return to his roots or a honourable death. That something calls him to a little village on the Welsh Marches where he saves a strange young boy from a pack of hungry wolves and sets in motion a series of events that will test even the most bloodthirsty of the Knights of the Round Table.

Published by Abbadon Books The Savage Knight is 284 pages of daring do, chivalry and dark adventure.

Paul Lewis has written hundreds of comedy sketches for UK network TV, including Spitting Image, as well as radio sitcoms and plays. Paul co-edited the Cold Cuts horror anthology and is co-author of the novels The Ragchild and The Quarry, several novellas and numerous short stories including a Doctor Who contribution for BBC Books. Paul works as a journalist and lives with his wife and son in a village near Swansea, Wales.

Excellent review of The Empathy Effect

I'm really pleased with this review of The Empathy Effect over at Creatingchildhoodmemories.com by Alena who I think is American (which is a bonus for me as TEE is a story peculiar to and based in Swansea, Wales, so for a non-UK reader to get the feel for the story and the in-jokes is great.) If you want to see the review then follow this link but be aware there are some little spoilers in it but they don't give away too much of the plot.

LINK

They Feed On Flesh - Zombie Stories on Kindle

A couple of years ago I entered Nanowrimo the National Novel Writing Month just to see if I could discipline myself to write something under pressure and within a time limit. I surprised myself by actually completing a novel within the allotted time. I called it They Feed On Flesh and it is a series of zombie stories which start with an explanation of how the zombie plague started and the best way to survive it. Then the stories go on to individual accounts of various survivors and how they cope (or not) and finally end up in the far future when the plague begins to spread through the solar system and even through time itself. The original series has been expanded slightly and one of the stories was published in Holiday of the Dead which contains stories by big guns such as John Russo and Tony Burgess. As I've been converting some of my stuff to Kindle format I thought I'd do the same with this novella and so, today, it's gone 'live' <-- play on words :)
It's on Amazon UK and Amazon. Com but on Amazon Com you can 'click to look inside' and read a chapter or two directly on their site, or you can download a sample from either place to your Kindle/phone/PC for free to see whether or not it's worth the couple of quid to download.



Here are the links:

Amazon UK
Amazon Com

Ok, everyone say 'Uuuuunnnngg...' and drag your leg/stumble/crawl/totter your way over and give it a free look!