Macabre Minima – Ho Ho Ho

My 91st published short story, Christmas Lights, is included in the anthology Macabre Minima – Ho Ho Ho on Black Hare Press out just in time for Satan, sorry, Santa, to come barrelling down the chimney and empty his sack all over your floor.

Check out this stonking cover art!

Christmas Lights is inspired by what is often referred to as the shortest story ever written commonly attributed to Ernest Hemingway, which I can reproduce here in its entirety because it’s only six words long:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

It says so much with those six words, I started wondering how much more I could say with a hundred.

Macabre Minima – Ho Ho Ho is out now on Black Hare Press.

String in the Bathroom!

I am excited to report that one of my short stories, String, is included in the anthology That Old House: The Bathroom, compiled and edited by the fabulous Angel Herrin from Voices from the Mausoleum. If you’re a horror lover, check out her awesome YouTube channel. Found Footage Fridays are not to be missed.

Anyone who follows my work will know that I have written some pretty gruesome shit in my time. And some weird shit. Sometimes I knock something out that is both gruesome AND weird. But everything else pales in comparison to String, which is essentially about a dude sitting in the bath pulling something out of his arse (come on, we’ve all done it). It’s definitely a horror story, probably edging towards the bizzaro, but there isn’t anything paranormal about it. Instead, it highlights a rare medical condition that makes you sit in the bath and pull stuff out of your ass. No shit. Okay, there’s a little bit of shit, but not much. I’ll be quiet now.

Please buy the book, and go subscribe to Angel’s channel. You won’t be disappointed.

Peace out.

Taking The Old Tip Road to the Horror Library

Remember those public information films where you were forced to watch kids drown, get run over, or be abducted by presumed perverts in a bid to ‘keep us safe?’

In the UK there was one warning us against climbing into discarded fridge freezers, because there’s no handle on the inside and you’d get stuck in there. I don’t recall kids climbing inside discarded fridge freezers being much of a problem, even where I grew up in Wales, but we had a public information film about it anyway. Looking back now, maybe we didn’t. Maybe I dreamt the whole thing. Regardless, the images of a kid trapped inside a fridge freezer at a rubbish tip until he either suffocated or starved to death stuck with me, and years later, a lot of years later, actually, I wrote a story about it.

In an email, the esteemed editor at Dark Moon Books Eric J. Guignard said after he read it, the story stayed with him, which I take as a compliment. It’s very much how I felt about the original concept. It burrowed into my mind and festered there, demanding to be written, though it took a very long time for me to do anything about it.

You can find it in the new anthology The Horror Library Volume 8 on Dark Moon Books, where it sits proudly alongside stories by Bentley Little, Ai Jiang, Steve Rasnic Tem, Eric Nash and more.

Beware, Biter!

My latest story is featured in the new anthology The Shacklebound Book of Drabbles. Well, as the title kind of gives away, it’s actually a drabble. I am lucky enough to have worked with the editor Eric Fomley before, and I am sure he will do this book and its contributors proud just like he does all his other projects. Just check out the cover:

I seem to have fallen in love with drabbles recently. Last year I contributed That Time of Year Again to Meghan’s House of Books, Cat’s Eyes to Heartless: Holiday Horrors, and The Hungry to Drabbledark II which, incidentally, is also available on Shacklebound Books if drabbles are your jam. Come to think of it, The Hungry and Biter could almost be kissing cousins. They are definitely related.

I must warn you, though, Biter is pretty gross. And no, it isn’t about vampires. Or zombies.

The Shacklebound Book of Drabbles is out now.

Finders Keepers in Biters

Finders Keepers, my collab with Michael McCarty, is included in his latest collection…

Biters.

They thrive in the shadows, hungry for blood, hungry for human flesh. BITERS, from 5-time Bram Stoker Finalist Michael McCarty, is a thrilling collection of 4 zombie stories and 4 vampire tales by a veteran author of over fifty books and numerous stories and works of nonfiction since the 1980s. Within these pages you will find excitingly original and macabre tales of biters of all sorts to make you shiver and even question your own sanity, featuring incredible special guest co-authors! Dare, if you will to enter the world of….BITERS!

Biters is available now on Black Bedsheet Books

Finally Out of Time

People often ask me why I am so obsessed with creepy stuff. It’s almost as if it isn’t healthy or something. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, and concluded that raiding my big sister’s stash of horror paperbacks as a kid probably has a lot to do with it. I was also heavily influenced by my grandad. The main reason, however, is that I was brought up in a house where a lot of weird shit happened.

It took me a long time to process everything, but when I saw the submission call for Out of Time, a new anthology on Timber Ghost Press, I saw an opportunity to finally put everything down on paper and, er, exorcise the ghosts.

From the blurb:

Are ghosts real? The question has haunted us for ages. Almost every culture in the world has tales and stories of the unknown things that lurk in our periphery. Contained within are 26 true stories about ghosts, poltergeists, haunted houses, unexplained events, and possessed items. You’ll find stories about strange noises, objects that vanish and reappear in odd places, dolls that refuse to sit still, haunted battlefields, abandoned castles, and much more! But beware: after reading this anthology, you might just start believing in the things that are trapped out of time.

Featuring tales from Kristi Petersen-Schoonover, Errica Chavez, Judith Baron, Nat Whiston, Caryn Larrinaga, C. J. Hislop, Lisa H. Owens, Lehua Parker, Chris Tyroak, Amanda Cecilia Lang, Caillou Pettis, T. J. Tranchell, William Presley, N. A. Battaglia, Bryan Stubbles, Nathan Alling Long, Susan E. Rogers, Kelli A. Wilkins, John Stratton, C. M. Saunders, L. E. Daniels, Catherine A. MacKenzie, Rebecca A. Demarest, A. Morton, Brianna Malotke, and Nathan D. Ludwig.

Out of Time is out now on paperback and ebook.

Drabbledark II

I’m pleased to announce that my story The Hungry is included in Drabbledark II: An Anthology of Dark Drabbles, out now on Shacklebound Books. The anthology, edited by Eric Fomley, promises, “A ton of amazing dark horror, science fiction and fantasy drabbles.”

The Hungry was inspired by Dan Simmons’s The Terror, itself a fictionalized account of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to the arctic. I’ve always thought they should’ve known better than to get on a ship called HMS Terror. They may as well have called it HMS You’re Fucked.

Check out the amazing cover art:

Go here for the full ToC.

Drabbledark II is out now on ebook and paperback.

Trigger Warning – Speaking Ill

My short story Eeva is included in the new anthology Trigger Warning – Speaking Ill, edited by John Baltisberger and published by Madness Heart press.

From the blurb: “Through strange, terrifying, and disgusting horror, these 9 authors ensure that death is no safe space. No corpse will escape their due through death, but will instead be allotted the full measure of what our authors have in store.”

This is your trigger warning.

Eeva is ostensibly a story about getting a Facebook friend request from some murky figure in your past and all the memories that it might dredge up. That’s probably something we’ve all experienced. On a more personal level, its about a Finnish exchange student I met (who wasn’t called Eeva) at university who may or may not have been a vampire. Vampire or not, the bit about her inviting three blokes on a weird group date simultaneously really did happen. By the end it turned into a ‘last man standing’ scenario. Maybe they do things differently in Finland.

Writing for Horror Tree, Rebecca Rowland said, “For those readers trapped in the monotony of working “stuffed in a corporate box,” C.M. Saunders’ “Eeva” revisits the youthful excitement and nostalgic novelty of strange desires. The narrator receives a friend request from a woman he knew briefly in college. Most of his social media inquiries are from “obviously-fake catfish accounts made in the image of busty Russian beauties called Layla, or Filipino women who tell me they love me then ask me to buy them a new phone,” but this notification piques his interest, and that’s because Eeva isn’t a textbook case of lost love. Hidden beneath her bohemic façade was a primal nature that went deeper than the narrator ever could have imagined. To reveal any more would be to spoil the climax, but be warned: readers should go forth with a strong stomach.”

You can read the rest of her review here.

Trigger Warning – Speaking Ill is out now.

Heartless Cat’s Eyes

Cat’s Eyes, my disturbing little drabble about dating dangerously, is included in Heartless, part of the ‘Holiday Horrors’ series of anthologies published by Black Ink Fiction.

From the cover:

What happens when love goes horribly, gruesomely wrong? A red wedding, a sacrifice to Saint Valentine, blind dates gone amiss…there are so many ways romance can be twisted. This anthology, with over 40 international authors, is not for the faint of heart.

Heartless is out now on ebook and paperback

The Colour out of Deathlehem: An Anthology of Holiday Horrors

Season’s greetings, come all ye faithful and all that jazz. Christmas is supposed to be about giving, a sentiment that often seems to get lost in these capitalist, consumer-driven times. It just feels good to do things for other people. Sometimes.

Anyway, back last year, 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 twist. The resulting collaboration, Finders Keepers, can be found in The Colour out of Deathlehem, the latest charity release from Grinning Skull Press. By my reckoning, this is the eighth volume of holiday horrors they have published to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

The Colour out of Deathlehem is out now on paperback and ebook.