Matt Hickman’s Sinister Scribblings

Matt Hickman has burst onto the UK horror scene in the past few years, gaining quite the reputation for both his collaborations with other authors (notably Stuart Keene and Andrew Lennon) and his solo efforts Amnesia and Jeremy. His latest release is the short story collection Sinister Scribblings, which also features bonus stories by the aforementioned Keane and Lennon, as well as Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason (aka The Slaughter Sisters), Daryl Duncan, Mark Nye, Dale Robertson, and myself. My contribution, Jumping at Shadows, is a previously-unpublished tale about the perils of the LDR. The long-distance relationship. I’m sure anyone who has ever tried it will agree they are never easy, even without the intervention of a supernatural entity.

Blurb:

From the vivid imagination of Matt Hickman comes a collection of thirteen short horror stories that are guaranteed to leave you feeling unsettled and disturbed. Featuring a foreword from Kyle M. Scott, Sinister Scribblings brings together a unique blend of stories, some of which have been previously published, others that are original pieces and only available within this collection.

In this collection we meet a whole host of broken, deranged characters in a sequence of horrific circumstances, including a mother who is determined to seek vengeance upon the school thugs that are bullying her only daughter; a woman who’s lifestyle has spiralled out of control after finding her boyfriend in a more than compromising position; a man who once spent his life in the public eye, has fallen from the heights of stardom and is slowly rebuilding himself; a teenage boy, a daydreamer who enjoys chocolate eggs for breakfast, who finds himself unravelling a unique Easter gift; a cave dwelling creature who has a taste for young flesh; a mischievous young boy who finds himself upon the naughty list at Christmas; a man, who after recently losing his job, makes a compelling agreement with a strange figure in a bar; two twin sisters who battle it out in brutal style after a major misunderstanding; a group of friends on their friends stag night, who get more than they bargained for upon entering an abandoned hospital for a prank; a man who awakens in a terrifying situation, in a strange location following a party with his friends; a woman abandoned in her friend’s cabin at a picturesque lake during a thunder storm; a man who crashes his car whilst driving home and spotting the figure of woman in amongst the trees beside the road; a serial killer enduring complications whilst receiving the lethal injection.

Sit back, relax and immerse yourself in these Sinister Scribblings.

Subject #270374 in DOA III

After six years and more than fifty authors, the Unholy Trinity is complete. This third instalment in the DOA series offers thirty stories from the originators of splatterpunk as well as the newest voices in extreme horror.

You’ll laugh…you’ll cry…you’ll vomit
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Last year, I wrote one of the most twisted short stories I’ve ever attempted. It’s too twisted to even go into much detail here. Suffice to say it involves clinical drug trials, revenge and dismemberment, among other things. I called it Subject #270374.

Coincidentally, just as I finished it I saw a submission call from Blood Bound Books who were putting together another volume of their legendary DOA anthologies of extreme horror. Because they had published another of my stories in a previous volume, and because I honestly thought I had crossed too many lines for the story to interest any other publishers, I sent them Subject #270374 and sat back to wait for the rejection slip.

It didn’t come. Instead, a few weeks later, I received an email. They liked Subject #270374, but it wasn’t gory enough for them. They didn’t want me to tone it down, they wanted me to tone it UP. So that’s exactly what I did, even though I was sick in my mouth a couple of times.

After some discussion, and a few rounds of edits, Subject #270374 was finally accepted for DOA III where it sits with a veritable who’s who of extreme horror writers including Jack Ketchum, Bentley Little, Wrath James White, Shane McKenzie, Richard Christian Matheson, Edward Lee, Jeff Strand, Betty Rocksteady, and a whole host of others. I am very proud, and humbled, to be in such renowned and illustrious company.

So if you like your fiction bloody and bizarre, and have a strong stomach, come and check out DOA III.

We’ll be waiting.

Vicar on the Underground

I was commuting home from work one evening on the Northern Line somewhere between Goodge Street and East Finchley, when a vicar got on the tube. Seeing a vicar on the Northern Line wasn’t that unusual in itself, God knows I’ve seen a lot more weird shit than that, but something about the way the man carried himself was unusual. Even in the midst of rush hour chaos, he was the image of calmness and serenity.

Just as he got on the train, a couple of tourists got off and two seats opened up. Seats on the underground at that time of the day are as rare as rocking horse shit, and the vicar swooped right in without even breaking stride. But even though the carriage was rammed and people were falling over each other as they fought for space, the seat next to the vicar remained empty, almost as if people sensed not to get too close. I watched him from afar for a while, as you do on, without ever approaching him. But later, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Vicar on the Underground and a few days later this story leaked out.

The whole process was comparatively easy. I wrote the first draft of the story in a few days (at 2,700 words it’s at the shorter end of the spectrum), revised and edited it over the next couple of weeks, then started submitting it to markets. It was picked up by Oscillate Wildly Press almost immediately. Something else that’s as rare as rocking horse shit.

From the promotional material:

The monsters we have come to know and love take a backseat as we delve into the darkest, most hideous depths of a monster that has taken centre stage as of late–HUMANS.

The collected tales herein will take you on a wild ride into the monstrous aspects of humankind, revealing some of the scariest atrocities humans are capable of doing, the ‘demons’ lurking in their heads, the ugliness of the pure human soul. You’ll meet artists, handymen, grieving parents, desperate alcoholics, and the delightful Sally Burns.

This debut anthology features the work of a variety of talented writers, including a few of the award-winning and darkly imaginative authors writing today. When you are ready, settle down, lock the window, and remember…the only monsters to fear are ourselves.

– Claire Fitzpatrick, Editor, December, 2016.

You can check out the anthology HERE

X Sample

X Sample, my latest release through Deviant Dolls Publications, is available now. It contains a trio of deliciously dark tales ripe for sinking your teeth into and as the title suggests, is designed to give new readers a little taste of my work, as well as giving my existing readers something ‘to be going on with’ until my next book drops in April.

Table of Contents:

The Devil & Jim Rosenthal: A new parent gets much more than he bargained for.
Date Night: A man’s wife visits the bathroom in a fancy restaurant, and doesn’t come back out.
The Delectable Hearts: A jaded music journalist goes in search of The Next Big Thing. Unfortunately for him, he just might have found it.

Bonus Content:

Afterword

Extract from No Man’s Land: Horror in the Trenches

X Sample is available now at the special price of 0.99p/0.99c

US Link

UK Link

X Sample – Cover Reveal

I intend to start 2017 with a bang, so I’m releasing the next instalment of my series of anthologies next month via Deviant Dolls Publications.

Actually, it’s not a new instalment at all. More of a supplementary offering. X Sample contains stories from both X: A Collection of Horror  and X2: Another Collection of Horror along with one or two others and will be priced at 0.99. As the title suggests, it is designed to give people a little taste of my work without asking them to invest too much of their hard-earned.

TOC and full details to follow, but in the meantime, here’s a sneak preview of the cover art, once again produced by the legendary Greg Chapman. We’d love to know what you think.

X Sample is released on 6th January 2017, so write the date in your diary or scratch it on your bedpost. I know you want to. But if you can’t wait that long to guarantee your next nerve-shredding fix of slightly weird bizarro horror, it’s available for pre-order right now.

Thanks for your support!

As the Crow Flies included in QuickFic Anthology 2

I’m thrilled to announce that my very weird flash fiction story, As the Crow Flies, has finally found a home having been included in QuicFic Anthology 2: Shorter Short Speculative Fiction out now on DigitalFictionPub. This time out, I’m honoured to be sharing antho space with Lisa Finch, Liam Hogan, Greg Chamberlain, Tanya Bryan, Suzie Lockhart, Amy Sisson, Pedro Iniguez, D.J. Cockburn, and many others.

“He remembered the stories his grandfather told him when he was a kid. The stories about how the devil himself, the original fallen angel, stalked these mountainous peaks under cover of darkness, preying on weary travellers. Granddad never elaborated much on what he meant by ‘preying.’ He never had to.”

– From As the Crow Flies

I wrote As the Crow Flies in 2011 or 2012. At about 750 words, it’s one of my shortest short stories. I submitted it to a few magazines and websites, nobody wanted it, so I dumped it in a folder on my desktop and moved on with my life. Fast forward a couple of years and I’m re-organising (okay, organising) my writing folders and I come across this again. I re-read it and remembered I had based it on a creepy old Welsh folk tale I read about in a history book. So yep, this story might be true. Equally, it might NOT be, but who the fuck knows, right?

9Tales at the World’s End #3

My apocalyptic love story, ‘Til Death do us Part, is included in 9Tales at the World’s End #3, out today.

There’s more to how the world dies than just a simple bang, or a horde of hungry, hungry zombies. This anthology features 9 visions of the Earth’s final days from 9 authors.

The issue also includes:

ALL THE WORLD IS YELLOW by DJ Tyrer
THE LAST TO GO by Jeff C. Stevenson
THE FLIGHT by David J. Wing
RAPTURE by Luke Walker
BOTTOMS UP by Jack Campbell Jr.
THE ROAMERS by Grant Matthew Frazier
TRANSPOSITION by Craig Bullock
CODE OF THE DEAD by Sara Green

UK LINK:

US LINK: