Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
New, large-format art book of the stunning work of Daniele Serra, available now from PS Publishing
Fans of horror fiction, and especially those rare collectors editions, will be no strangers to the work of Daniele Serra. Having worked with some of horror’s brightest lights, and producing some of the most vivid and memorable cover art in horror today, PS Publishing have got together with Daniele to produce this large-format art book, with 200 pages of his exceptional work. Featuring an introduction by none other than Clive Barker, the book is available in a jacketed hardcover edition, limited to 500 copies, available for £40 and just twenty-six copies with a slipcase signed by Serra and Barker. To get hold of your copy, click here.
Early Haunts, a graphic novel containing four seminal folktales and ghost stories, up on Kickstarter now
Created by T. W. Burgess, whose debut comic, Malevolents – Click Click, was renowned as one of 2015’s scariest comics, Early Haunts is a graphic novel, presenting four ghost stories and folk tales from around the world, each of which have had a huge influence on the horror genre. With source material from ancient Greece, Germany, Italy and Japan, each story is rendered in its own unique style. The Kickstarter has already hit its initial funding target, but there are lots of exciting perks still available. Check it you and choose yours, here.
Roth-Steyr, the new novella from writer Simon Bestwick and Black Shuck Books, available for pre-order now
Released this Halloween, Roth-Steyr, is the new novella by British writer Simon Bestwick (Breakwater, The Feast of All Souls). Roth-Steyr is a novella – longer than a short story, but not a full-length novel – about a woman called Valerie Varden, who works in the mortuary of an inner-city hospital and lives with her girlfriend. She looks like an ordinary enough woman, but she isn’t. A hundred years ago, as the First World War ended and the Empire she’d grown up in fell apart, Valerie became immortal. She has a dark and violent past she’s still trying to atone for, but now it’s catching up with her: her ex-colleagues have started to turn up dead, murdered with an antique pistol called a Roth-Steyr. To survive, Valerie will have to return to the violence of her past, but to do so may cost her everything she has. To pre-order your copy in paperback or eBook format, click here.
Arrow Video Frightfest 2020 announces this year’s killer line up
Following the cancellation of the traditional 5-day August event, Arrow Video FrightFest is back at the Cineworld Leicester Square from October 22 – 25, 2020, with a packed programme of thirty-four new features, presented over three screens. Embracing ten countries and spanning four continents, the nation’s favourite fear-a-thon includes seven World, two International / European and twenty-four UK Premieres. As previously announced, the opening night attraction is the UK premiere of Train To Busan Presents: Peninsula, one of the most hotly anticipated action fantasy happenings of the year, and closing the festival is the World Premiere of Held, described as “Parasite and Get Out meets The Stepford Wives”, from The Gallows franchise directors Chris Lofting and Travis Cluff. To see the full line-up, as well as ticketing information, click here.
New from author V. Castro and Creature Publishing, Goddess of Filth, available for pre-order now
Released 30 March, 2021, Goddess of Filth is the new release from writer V. Castro and Creature Publishing. One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it’s a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful. To find out what it is, you can pre-order your copy right now, here.
John F. D. Taff expands his The Fearing universe with Blood and Brimstone, the new novella, on Kickstarter now
The Fearing takes place in modern times, in a world very much like ours. With one notable exception. One of our greatest psychoanalysts and philosophers, Carl Gustav Jung, postulated that there is a vast collective unconsciousness that humanity taps into. It’s the place where all of the deepest pieces of ourselves live, despite our cultures or religions—archetypes or universal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Shadow, the Hermit and the Tree of Life. It’s also the seat of our deepest emotions—love, hate, serenity…and fear. Imagine that within this vast collective unconscious there is a receptacle, a bowl that holds all of the fears that humanity has accumulated over the centuries. Every single thing a human has ever been afraid of. All collected, drip by drip through millennia. Imagine that this bowl has filled, that it must empty so it can reset itself. Now imagine that all fears, everything from the most commonly shared fears to the most deeply personal are released onto the earth, all at the same time. The chaos, the apocalypse caused by this is The Fearing. The Fearing: Blood & Brimstone takes place firmly in the timeline of the original, serialised novel. It tells the story of Timothy Jacoby and Tam Washington, two of the primary antagonists, who show up in Books Three and Four. It expands and deepens their stories, and hopefully the novel as a whole. Very close to funded in just the first ten days, there are still plenty of awesome perks to be had. Go guarantee your copy, here.
From Cemetery Gates Media, the debut anthology, Places We Fear to Tread, featuring Gwendolyn Kiste, Chad Lutzke, Sonora Taylor and This is Horror founder Michael David Wilson
Twenty-six authors, twenty-six locations, 347 pages, 100k+ words; original horror stories from many of the genre’s darkest minds. Nightmares imagined into real places; from Nigeria to Japan, North America to Australia. Locations the authors have inhabited and imbued with the sinister—hiking trails, haunted lakes, relics of faded industry, and even a Hawaiian volcano! Is there a selkie who resides in the Wartrace Lake Dam, Tennessee? Can you summon a godlike entity on the coast of Oregon? There are many Crybaby Bridges, but which one belongs to author Gwendolyn Kiste? Available in paperback and eBook now, you can pick up your copy right here.
KEV HARRISON
