Every year when Halloween comes around, I wish I’d written a Halloween story. Obviously, it’s too late by then, so last year I surpassed even my own pre-planning capabilities and wrote one in January. Kaboom. That also gave me a few months to sell the fucker.
The story I came up with is called Misshapes & Rejects, and in a nutshell it’s about pumpkins. Not pumpkins in nutshells, that would just be weird. I’ve always thought there was something creepy about the treatment pumpkins get around Halloween. All the cutting and carving and stuff. I also wanted to make a bit of a point about isolation and anti-social behaviour, and like a perfect storm all these elements came together. It happened quickly, too. Once I had the germ of the idea, the story followed quickly and was finished in a single sitting. That feat isn’t as impressive as it might sound, in its entirety Misshapes & Rejects is less than 1000 words.
When I finish a story, I routinely go through it three, four, even five or six times, endlessly tweaking, polishing and modifying until there is nothing left to tweak, polish or modify. However, Misshapes & Rejects didn’t need much heavy lifting. Sometimes, you just know you’ve nailed it. It was accepted by the first place I submitted it too, a Halloween-themed anthology due to be released on [name redacted, like in the movies].
Then things got messy.
The would-be publisher refused to pay any contributors then eventually pulled the book from sale, but not before they pocketed funds they’d raised through crowd funding and pre-orders. Big scene. Long story short, the publishing rights on Missahpes & Rejects quickly reverted back to me and the dance began again.
Luckily, it soon found a new home, in the book Handmade Horror Stories put together by Frost Zone Press, the lovely people who just last year published my story Alone, Or… , and edited by the supremely talented MM MacLeod..
As the marketing material says, “Handmade Horror Stories is an anthology of art and craft-themed short horror fiction. From quiet horrors to chilling nightmares, these tales give new meaning to being creative.”
I’m pleased to announce that my short story Harberry Close is included in the anthology Railroad Tales on Midnight Street Press.
Table of Contents:
THE TRACKS THROUGH THE FOREST John Kiste
AWAYDAYS Allen Ashley
THE HOOSAC TUNNEL LEGACY Norm Vigeant
RAILWAY MUTTON CURRY Nidheesh Samant
THE NUMBER NINE James E. Coplin
GHOST-WALKER Andrew Darlington
SPARROW’S FLIGHT Nancy Brewka-Clark
HARBERRY CLOSE C. M. Saunders
GEISTERBAHNHOF Saoirse Ni Chiaragáin
THE ANNIVERSARY David Penn
ACROSS THE VALE Catherine Pugh
WHERE THE TRAIN STOPS Susan York
THE NIBBLER Gayle Fidler
SHORT PLATFORM Gary Couzens
WILSHIRE STATION Caitlin Marceau
AND YOU HEARD THE RATTLING DEATH TRAIN Simon Bestwick
NOT ALL TRAINS CRASH Steven Pirie
BALLYSHANNON JUNCTION Jim Mountfield
CABOOSE Andrew Hook
THE TRACKS Michael Gore
THE DEVIL RIDES THE NIGHT TRAIN Curtis James McConnell
THE PIER STATION George Jacobs
THE SAMOVAR A. J. Lewis
Between 2013 and 2017 I lived in London. I was working long hours and commuting for up to four or five hours a day, so I didn’t have much time to write fiction. I think of Harberry Close as a good representation of my ‘London period,’ along with Vicar on the Underground and maybe Subject #270374. I don’t think its much of a surprise that two of those stories feature public transport prominently and the other is about an overworked and under-appreciated journalist who goes mental and decapitates his boss.
I wrote about the origins of Harberry Close, which was first published in Dark Harvest, in more detail here. Thanks to Trevor Denyer for giving it a new lease of life!
In the market for some creepy holiday reading? Good. Your timing couldn’t be better, because my new book, Back from the Dead, has just dropped on ebook and paperback.
Here’s the blurb:
A collection of zombie fiction from British journalist and dark fiction writer C.M. Saunders, featuring two complete novellas alongside short stories previously published in the likes of Morpheus Tales, Crimson Streets and the anthology Digital Horror Fiction Volume 1, plus a brand-new novelette.
Also includes an exclusive introduction and artwork by the award-winning Greg Chapman.
Featuring:
Dead of Night: young lovers Nick and Maggie go camping in the woods, only to come face-to-face with a group of long-dead Confederate soldiers who don’t know, or care, that the war is over.
Human Waste: Dan Pallister wakes up one morning to find the zombie apocalypse has started. Luckily, he’s been preparing for it most of his life. He just needs to grab some supplies from the supermarket…
‘Til Death do us Part: When the world as we know it comes to an abrupt end, an elderly couple are trapped in their apartment. They get by as best they can, until they run out of food.
Roadkill: A freelance ambulance crew are plunged into a living nightmare when a traffic accident victim they pick up just won’t stay dead. He has revenge on his mind.
The Plague Pit: A curious teenager goes exploring the Welsh countryside one summer afternoon and stumbles across a long-abandoned chapel. What he finds there might change the world, and not for the better.
Dead Men Don’t Bleed: A gumshoe private eye is faced with his most challenging case yet when a dead man walks into his office and asks for help solving his own murder. Complete and unabridged version of the story previously published as ‘Dead Man Walking.‘
Drawn from a variety of sources, all these tales have one thing in common; they explore what might happen if our worst nightmares are realized and people came BACK FROM THE DEAD.
A couple of months ago one of my short stories, Roach, about a cockroach farm in China (it’s a thing), appeared in the anthology Night Terrors 12 via Scare Street Publishing. I’m pleased to announce that as Scare Street continue their all-out assault on the world of horror fiction, this month sees the release of Night Terrors 14, which includes my creepfest Eyeless.
Eyeless is a gruesome little tale about an elderly gent who is moved into a care home where the residents receive visits from a mysterious supernatural entity after lights out. My intention with this was not just to write a straight-forward horror story, but also a dressed-up disquisition on life and the slow-death ageing process that we all have to endure, if we’re lucky.
Also in this volume you will find a realtor desperately tries to sell a haunted house before it consumes her body and soul, a young couple’s vacation at a campground takes an ominous turn when something menacing lurks nearby, and a haunting melody leads a curious girl to a bittersweet tale of love and loss. Because when night falls, a dance of death begins. And once the music ends, the only sounds you hear are your own screams of terror.
As always, Scare Street have assembled a killer cast of authors, including my old buddy and peerless sick, twisted bitch (she likes it when I call her that), Renee Miller, the full table of contents reading something like this:
1. Marshmallow Murderer by Melissa Gibbo 2. Organ Manipulator by Justin Boote 3. Camping with the Carnival by Jason E. Maddux 4. Serenade by Craig Crawford 5. Sold by Renee Miller 6. Gram’s Garden by J. L. Royce 7. The Gift that Keeps on Giving by Peter Kelly 8. The Womb by Edwin Callihan 9. Eyeless by C. M. Saunders 10. Dark Home by Simon Lee-Price 11. The Wooden Box by P. D. Williams 12. The Limb Farmer by Caleb Stephens 13. Ouroboros by Melissa Burkley 14. Crow’s Books by Ron Ripley
Roach, my ‘creature feature’ short story, is included in the new anthology, Night Terrors Volume 12 on Scare Street Publishing.
Here’s the ToC:
1. Cross Words by Peter Cronsberry 2. Hybrid by Justin Boote 3. Pipe Dreams by William Sterling 4. “For My Next Trick…” by Bryan Clark 5. Blood Debt by Susan E. Rogers 6. Smudge the Head by Kyle Winkler 7. See Me by Charles Welch 8. Half Larva, Will Travel by Andrey Pissantchev 9. Just We Two by Shell St. James 10. Caustic Whispers by Zach Friday 11. Roach by C. M. Saunders 12. Unarmed by Warren Benedetto 13. Gwen Speaks by Ron Ripley
I wrote the first draft of Roach in the autumn of 2019 when I was teaching at a college in Guangzhou, southern China. There are a lot of cockroaches in Guangzhou. The nucleus of the idea came from a news item I read about Chinese cockroach farms.
I ended up doing a ton of research and writing an article for Fortean Times magazine about it. fascinating stuff. These farms breed millions and millions of the little critters, the official line being that they are used in Chinese medicine. As a bi-product, they can also be used in waste disposal and even as a food source. Who knows? The whole thing, like most things in China, is shrouded in secrecy. This has led to speculation that these genetically modified insect armies could be weaponised, though probably not in the way described in the story.
I’m excited to announce my story Faces on the Walls has been included in the first anthology released by Ghost Orchid Press, entitled Home. It features one hundred stories and poems of exactly one hundred words each, all riffing on the theme of “Home.”
As the blurb says, “These tiny terrors run the full gamut of horror, from body horror and blood-curdling fear to atmospheric, lyrical Gothic tales. You’ll find haunted houses, burrowing parasites and suburban nightmares aplenty to delight, amuse and shock—all in an easy bitesize format.”
Faces on the Walls is based on a real-life paranormal incident I first read about when I was a kid. In 1971, strange stains began to appear on the kitchen floor and walls of a house in Belmez de la Moraleda, a small village in Spain. Soon, the stains began taking on the likeness of faces, sparking a decades-long interest in the ‘Belmez Faces.’ This story is a homage to one of the most terrifying things I have ever read about.
A couple of months ago, I was about 700 words into this cool little Christmas horror story I was writing about a dude that finds an old Santa suit, puts it on, and then finds he can’t take it off. It starts to grow on him, fusing with his skin. Not only that, but his behaviour starts to change. He’s not the man he used to be. For starters (sorry) he’s hungry all the time. No matter how much he eats, he’s still hungry. He eats, and he eats, and he eats.
The story was going well. Right up until the point where I realized I’d subconsciously nicked the plot straight from the Eli Roth film Clown (2014) and just replaced the clown suit with a Santa suit.
Bugger.
I posted in a horror writing group on Facebook complaining about my wasted efforts, prompting Michael McCarty to PM me suggesting what he called a ‘quick fix,’ which between us we adapted into a killer (sic) twist. The resulting story, Finders Keepers, can be found in the new charity release from Terror Tract publishing, who put out my novella Tethered recently. Here’s the cover and ToC:
Jonathan Lambert Thomas M. Malafarina Aaron Lebold Terry Miller L.C. Valentine R.C. Mulhare Edmund Stone Derek Austin Johnson Craig Gerald Ferguson David Owain Hughes Eric Kapitan Josh Davis Andrew Lennon Rob Shepherd Dusty Davis Mawr Gorshin C.M. Saunders & Michael McCarty
Finders Keepers is a Christmas story, but there isn’t much festive cheer on display. In fact, it’s pretty damn sick and twisted, and might change your perception of what constitutes a family meal forever. Trust me, you wouldn’t want this Santa coming down your chimney. And what was that quick fix suggested by Michael McCarty? You’ll have to read the story to find out.
TT, who use the slogan HORROR WITH ATTITUDE to great effect, are the same beautiful people who recently published my novella Tethered. As the title suggests, this particular anthology is a collection of dark stories which all have a spiky thread of humour running through them. I don’t know why, but to me, horror and humour are often interlinked. It’s the absurdity of it all; the way your mind becomes unhinged from reality when faced with the horrible, horrific or horrifying.
My contribution, Scary Mary, is a flash fiction piece I wrote in early 2020. It’s based on a popular urban legend called the phantom hitch-hiker, whereby a driver picks up a passenger one night on a deserted stretch of road only to discover that it’s a ghost. The set-up is a bunch of guys chatting in a pub, and the whole story builds to what I hope is a worthy mic-drop stinger at the end. It probably won’t win me many literary prizes, not that my writing ever has, but it might send a chill down your spine and then make you crack a smile, which is the whole point of this anthology.
My short story Grower is included in the new anthology Brewtality, out now on Evil Cookie, a new publishing company set up by the uber-talented K Trap Jones. All the stories in this book have a common them, which is something very close to my heart: alcohol.
Without giving too much away, Grower is about a guy who finds a tooth in his beer, and things just get weirder for him from there. It’s one of the most bizarre and flat-out surreal, stories I’ve produced in a long time. In fact, it’s probably one of the most bizarre and flat-out surreal, stories I’ve produced EVER. I wrote the original draft in the heady pre-COVID summer of 2019 whilst living in Guangzhou, and drinking far too much cheap Chinese beer. I was swigging on a can one night when I started thinking… what if?
This story was rejected by another prospective publisher I sent it to on the basis of being, “Too skin-crawlingly gross.” They also added, “The descriptions throughout this story were uncomfortably visceral and gruesome.” That’s a win for any horror writer, and I’m glad Trap wasn’t as squeamish and sensitive.
The original version featured a can of Budweiser as the vessel of doom, because I wanted to emphasise the discovery of something weird deep inside the ordinary and I hate Bud with a passion. Too gassy. But later I had a rethink, and decided it would be much more fun if I ditched the Bud in favour of a made-up brand of craft beer (just as I would in real life). Also, credit for that final killer line has to go to Trap himself.
Just look at this ToC!
I am truly humbled to be in such great company.
Brewtality is out now on paperback and ebook on Evil Cookie publishing.
I’m proud to have been invited to contribute to It Came From the Darkness, an anthology put together by Red Cape Publishing and Philip Rogers to raise money for the Max the Brave fund.
Please follow the link to find out more about the cause.
(from the official press release):
“A huge number of horror writers, poets, artists, and film makers have come together to support the cause and offer the reader something special. Each piece of writing begins with the same five words, but the stories themselves are all wonderfully varied. So dig in, take each tale one bloody bite at a time, and beware of what comes from the darkness.
Includes stories from David Owain Hughes, Matthew V. Brockmeyer, Tim Lebbon, Lou Yardley, Cortney Palm, Lee Franklin, MJ Dixon, Singh Lall, and many, many more.”
