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:

King For a Year – Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Earlier this year I got involved in a project curated by Mark West, with the aim of discussing the works of Stephen King. Every week for 52 weeks, a different writer chose a different book. I chose Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and got a bit carried away. This is my unedited contribution.

“Since 1980 or so, some critics have been saying I could publish my laundry list and sell a million copies or so, but these are for the most part critics who think that’s what I’ve been doing all along. The people who read my work for pleasure obviously feel differently, and I have made this book with those readers, not the critics, in the forefront of my mind.”

Among the highlights of any SK collection is the introduction, which often contains semi-hidden pearls of wisdom and unrestrained glimpses into the mind of one of the greatest writers of his generation. The above short passage is at once insightful, humble, witty, and scathing toward his perceived detractors. Elsewhere in the often brutally honest forward, he claims to have read (probably in Ripley’s Believe it or Not!) that people completely renew themselves every seven years, every muscle and organ replaced by new cells. He makes the point that it had been seven years since his last short story collection, Skeleton Crew (actually, it was eight, Skeleton Crew was issued in 1985, but who am I to argue with the Master?) and the first, Night Shift, was released seven years before that. Strange, then, that the first line of the first story (Dolan’s Cadillac) should be…

I waited and watched for seven years.

Or maybe it was deliberate. Who knows?

It goes without saying that I’ve always been a huge King fan. I am the Constant Reader who he addresses directly so often. I guess you are too, or you wouldn’t be reading this. And there was me thinking I was the only one. Still, at least we have some common ground to build on. One of the truly great things about literature is that it unites people of all ages and creeds and from all walks of life. King’s work has certainly done that. From the long-haired pulp paperback-buying hordes of the seventies, right up to the mobile phone waving, Dome-loving Gen Y, King speaks to us all. I plucked my first SK book from my older sister’s collection of scary paperbacks soon after I was mature enough to decide what I wanted to read. It was the seminal ‘Salem’s Lot. And since then I’ve been hooked. I’ve read the vast majority of his books at least once, and there are some I’ve read several times. Nightmares & Dreamscapes, originally published in 1993, isn’t one of them. It’s been at least 20 years since I last opened it, which is one reason I thought it might be cool to revisit for this project.

The first thing I noticed is how different everything is. Obviously, the book hasn’t changed. The book will never change. I have. And I always will. When I first read this book I was in my early twenties, and still living with my parents in the Welsh valleys. I had a car, a girlfriend and a crappy job putting things in boxes. That was half a lifetime ago, and a lot has changed since then. I’ve lived in different places, changed jobs, relationships have come and gone, and I sold my Hyundai Sports Coupé years ago. SK has probably been the only constant. Him and punk rock. Time changes everything, not least your perspective on life.

I smoked a lot of weed in my twenties, which may account for the fact that I have no recollection of reading several of these stories whatsoever. I sort of remembered Dolan’s Cadillac, but it would be a huge understatement to say that I didn’t fully understand the complexities of it all back then. On the surface, not much happens, and it would be easy to dismiss it as a bloated, overlong diatribe about a man with a chip on his shoulder digging a big hole. But like so many other King stories, its more about the telling. The journey is more than half the fun. Other early highlights include The End of the Whole Mess, which is about two brothers, one of whom is so ridiculously intelligent that he winds up using that intelligence to do something really stupid. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, King claimed his own brother, Dave, was the inspiration behind it. We can only hope the real Dave King isn’t as batshit crazy as his fictitious incarnation. Suffer the Little Children, a little shocker about a teacher who may or may not seen going ever-so-slightly mad, is flat-out one of the most disturbing things in King’s locker. Originally published in a copy of Cavalier in 1972, it’s also one of the oldest here. One of the most interesting and noteworthy stories is Dedication, a tale of witchcraft and woe which is by turns heart-wrenching and horrifying, with an almost palpable undercurrent of edgy tenderness.

Some of these tales struck a chord and lodged firmly in my memory, for whatever reason. And reading them again gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Like having a chat with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while. Rainy Season, a creepy little yarn about a couple facing a sudden rash of murderous toads, and Night Flier, the story of a jaded newspaper hack on the trail of a serial killer, fall into this category. Both are so typically King that you would know who penned it just from reading the first few paragraphs. It’s quite weird (and often hilarious) as a British guy to read Americans writing about Britain. But the truth is, the odd cringe-worthy cliché (“Got a spare fag, mate?”) aside, King just about pulls it off in Crouch End, which was originally written for an anthology with the title New Tales of the Cthulu Mythos. That pretty much tells you all you really need to know. Thank God the real Crouch End isn’t quite as weird as the one described in the story.

A story I didn’t fully appreciate first time around is Home delivery. As it unfolds, it changes from a Delores Clairborne-style yarn about a young mother preparing to give birth on a secluded island, into a fully-fledged zombie story. The tale is expertly crafted, the textures and tones of the words King uses throughout adding to a hollow sense of isolation. Another tale that hits you harder after you have some years under your belt is My Pretty Pony. It’s probably the farthest thing from ‘horror’ in this entire collection, poignant in the extreme, it is a study on the nature of time and how it seems to move faster as you approach the end of your run. The story behind this story is just as interesting as the story itself. As everyone probably knows, King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman also had a pseudonym. Enter one George Stark.

In the early 1980s King was simultaneously working on a Bachman book called Machine’s Way, and a book (which began life as a lengthy flashback incorporated into Machine’s Way) by Stark called My Pretty Pony. The projects disintegrated, but Machine’s Way later morphed into The Dark Half while My Pretty Pony was buried in a file until 1989 when it resurfaced as one of those posh limited edition coffee table books none of us can afford.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a pretty weighty tome containing 24 stories and its pages numbering a grand total of 816. Included are five previously unpublished stories, the pick of which being the Ten O’ Clock People, a close relative of Quitters, Inc from Night Shift, which is set for an imminent theatrical release having been the latest of SK’s works to be given the Hollywood treatment. It has to be said, this isn’t his best book. It isn’t even his best collection. There’s a bit too much imitation and what can only be described as low-brow fan fiction for my liking. Derivative in the extreme, Crouch End is a homage to Lovecraft, The Doctors Case to Conan Doyle and Umney’s Last Case to Raymond Chandler. It’s all weirdly reminiscent of your favourite artist doing a covers album. It’s entertaining enough, but you can’t help but feel it’s lacking something, making this less of a Greatest Hits and more of an unessential B-sides collection. I can’t imagine even hardcore baseball fans being overly enamoured with long and tedious non-fiction piece Head Down. If you don’t know much about baseball, like most people outside the US and Japan, then you’d have no chance. Still, there’s enough decent material here to make the whole exercise worthwhile and as we all know, King at his worst still shits all over 99% of other writers at their best.

The King for a Year Project can be viewed in it’s entirety HERE:

Inside Harberry Close

A few months ago, the writer Gregory Norris asked me to contribute something to his website about my story, Harberry Close, which was included in the recent anthology Dead Harvest on Scarlet Galleon press alongside one of his.

Dead Harvest – Front Cover

I was more than happy to oblige, and here it is.

Until quite recently, I lived in east London and worked in the south-west. That meant a near two-hour journey through one of the busiest cities in the world, during rush hour, twice a day, five days a week. That journey used to drive me mad with all the pushing, shoving, and elevated stress levels. It wasn’t an easy route, either. A typical commute consisted of a 15-minute walk to the nearest tube station, the Central line to Bank, the Waterloo & City line to Waterloo station, an overground train, and a bus. I absolutely hated the Central line. It was slow, ponderous, and you invariably ended up squashed into someone else’s arm pit.

If the weather was bad, or if there was some kind of strike or other disruption, it could easily add half an hour or more to my journey, which meant I would arrive at work late, then have to stay late to make the time back. I’m sure you get the picture. Waterloo station represented the mid-point in my journey. As such it always filled me with a strange mixture of emotions. On one hand it was encouraging to know I was halfway to my destination, but at the same time it was a bit soul destroying to realize I still had some way to go. I actually quite like Waterloo. Despite always being chaotic and full of stressed-out commuters, it’s one of London’s nicer transport hubs. There’s quite a decent pub on the platform, and an excellent burrito place. Anyway, as I waited on the platform every morning, I often found myself wondering what would happen if I somehow got on the wrong train. Where would that wrong train take me. Maybe somewhere like Harberry Close?

I started thinking about worst-case scenarios, and couldn’t think of a better (or worse) one. I made the name up. There is no actual Harberry Close. At least, I don’t think there is. I wanted something that sounded quintessentially English, and very nearly called the story Strawberry Hill. That is a real place. My train sometimes goes through it. I’ve never got off there.

The original version of this piece can be found here.

http://gregorylnorris.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/behold-dead-harvest.html

Dead Harvest is here!

Each year, as summer fades to memory, and the sky begins to grow dark, and the leaves change colour and fall, the faint, fetid scent of death—of slowly rotting things—begins to drift in, hanging on the chill air like a ghostly pall, making us wonder what this year’s harvest will produce.

Well…the harvest is here. And it’s dead.

With these 50 dark tales (and nearly 700 pages of terror!) readers will experience fear, depravity, love, and loss. And a kind of chill that won’t soon leave your bones.

My contribution, Harberry Close, is the story of a frustrated commuter who gets on the wrong train and ends up somewhere he never wished to be. But that’s just the beginning of his nightmare.

DEAD HARVEST is a crop like no other—and includes stories from: Richard Chizmar, Tim Lebbon, Jeff Strand, Ronald Malfi, Greg F. Gifune, James A. Moore, Benjamin Kane Ethridge, Tim Waggoner, David Bernstein, Richard Thomas, Jon Michael Kelley, Brian Kirk, Chad P. Brown, Lori R. Lopez, Stuart Keane, Tim Jeffreys, Ahimsa Kerp, C.M. Saunders, Martin Reaves, M.L. Roos, Gregory L. Norris, Angeline Trevena, Jeremy Peterson, Christine Sutton, Gregor Cole, Lori Safranek, Jaime Johnesee, Bear Weiter, Kyle Yadlosky, Aaron Gudmunson, Sara Brooke, C.L. Hernandez, Patrick Lacey, John Grover, Todd Keisling, Jason Andrew, Dana Wright, Andrew Bell, E.G. Smith, Amy Grech, Mark Patrick Lynch, Wayland Smith, Jonathan Templar, Marie Robinson, Michael McGlade, Jordan Phelps, Nick Nafpliotis, Matthew Pedersen, Bryan Clark—and introducing Billy Chizmar.

Enter the harvest and get lost . . .

Front Cover

Edited by Mark Parker, Scarlet Galleon Publications, LLC

Adventures in Independent Publishing: Part 3

Launch Day

Market primed, you can finally hit ‘publish.’ The KDP service allows you to utilize various promotional offers, such as discounted pricing or offering your book free for a limited time. With X: A Collection of Horror, I opted for the latter.

Why would you choose to give the results of your hard work away for free?

To raise your profile, that’s why. You might also garner some favourable reviews from the buying (or free downloading) public, which will help boost sales in the long term. Some of them may like your stuff enough to swing by your blog, or even buy something else you put out.

Promotion, promotion, promotion!

I quickly learned that even if your book is free, you still have to promote it. Otherwise, nobody knows its available and it sinks like a stone amongst all the other free books. The obvious thing to do is bombard your Twitter and Facebook accounts with links and updates. This is a perfectly reasonable, but limited strategy, because unless you show a little initiative it’s quite difficult to reach beyond your existing circle of friends. A great way to make new friends (read: potential buyers) is to be active on Goodreads. This is the social networking site of the dedicated reader. And writer. So get involved – leave reviews, rate books, comment on threads. Engage potential readers. Of course, there are many other social networking avenues like LinkedIn and Instagram. Exploit these as much as you can but in my experience, they have limited marketing potential. The two biggest are Facebook and Twitter, so lets look at them in a bit more detail…

Facebook

A lot of people are very selective about who they allow on to their ‘friends’ list, often preferring to keep it to people they know in real life. That’s fine. Unless you are a writer, then you have to unlock the huge marketing potential of Facebook and use it to your advantage. At the last count I had 1,168 ‘friends,’ only around 15-20% of whom I would consider actual friends. The rest are other writers or publishers with whom I have loose relationships, friends of friends, and random people with whom I share similar interests. Plus, if a reader ever emails me directly to say they liked one of my books, I invite them to add me on Facebook. These are the people that make up my target audience, and probably the ones most interested in my writing endeavors.

Don’t rely solely on status updates. Be aggressive. And no, that doesn’t mean threatening to pull people’s heads off if they don’t be your Facebook friend. It means being proactive. Facebook is like a worldwide meeting place. A bar without the booze (unless you bring your own). It has literally millions of groups, places where like-minded people flock together to exchange views and opinions. Find the ones that apply to your chosen genre and live in them. They are not difficult to find, just run a few searches. If your book is about Teddy Bears with Uzi’s, there’s probably a group devoted to that. This is your audience. Talk to them. They won’t bite. After that, target the groups about Teddy Bears, then the ones about Uzi’s, then the ones about guns in general. You get the idea. A word of warning; don’t simply repost the same book link over and over again, or you might find yourself losing friends rather quickly. At least try be a bit creative about it.

Twitter

Building up a Twitter network is a long, laborious process that requires some level of dedication. Appropriate use of hashtags can help target specific groups of users, and some writers swear it has good marketing value. Others, like me, are yet to be convinced. It all seems rather disposable and lightweight to me. Whatever I think, with a reported 243 million worldwide users, its potential reach is immense. Utilizing it is another matter. Tweeting is very in vogue at the moment, especially amongst the celebrity fraternity. If you ‘follow’ anyone with large amounts of followers, especially other writers, it won’t hurt to send them a tweet asking for a retweet. Sometimes you’ll get lucky. I tried this approach when promoting X: A Collection of Horror, and was lucky enough to be retweeted by several notables with several hundreds of thousands of followers. My Twitter activity did garner me a few new followers but from what I could tell, this had absolutely no impact on sales whatsoever.

Blog Posts

If you take writing seriously, you should have a blog. If you don’t have one, get one. There are a lot who offer basic packages for free. I use WordPress. Presuming you already do, make good use of it. Post regular updates, and always try to include something of value instead of just random thoughts or book promos. If you are stuck for something to blog about, just write a simple book or film review. The best way to build on your blog following is to visit and comment on other blogs. You may also find that people you ‘meet’ in the blogosphere will very often add you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.

https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com/

Listings

There are numerous sites that list free books, and even send out newsletters to their subscribers, which often number in the thousands. Some charge the writer a fee, others are free services that are presumably sustainable through advertising. A Google search will throw up dozens. Have a look around, and find out which ones work best for you. Here are two that I used:

http://thedailybookworm.com/

http://addictedtoebooks.com/free

My first indie offering, X: A Collection of Horror, is out now:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IGHTFC8

Part 2 of Adventures in Indie Publishing, covering advice on editing, cover art and priming the market, can be found here:

Adventures in Independent Publishing – Part 2

Part 1, featuring an overview of the industry and an introduction to Kindle Direct Publishing, can be found here:

Adventures in Independent Publishing: Part 1

X: A Collection of Horror

Ten slices of horrifying dark fiction. Seven previously published in magazines or anthologies, and three exclusive to this collection, along with an introduction and extensive notes. Featuring exclusive cover art by Greg Chapman.

This is what happens when you ‘wake up’ inside a dream, when the urban myth you heard turns out to be so much more, and when that hottie you pick up in a bar springs a terrible surprise. But what do you do when your wife gives birth to something not entirely human? When your past discretions come back to haunt you? Or when a serial killer moves in next door?

Click the cover for more info.

X: A Collection of Horror, by C.M. Saunders

Table of Contents:

Introduction: That’s Entertainment
A Hell of my Own Creation
A Thin Disguise
Monkey Man
The Awful Truth
Mr. C
Fame / Infamy: A Deconstruction
Another False Dawn
The Night Everything Changed
The Devil & Jim Rosenthal
Club Culture
Afterword

Available now at a special price.

WARNING: Adult content.

“A superb story teller, Saunders is well on his way to becoming a true master of the macabre.”

Mark Edward Hall

This is a DeadPixel publication:

http://www.deadpixelpublications.com/cm-saunders.html

Dark Visions 2

My short story, The Elementals & I, is included in the new anthology Dark Visions 2, on Grey Matter Press.

Out now on ebook, paperback to follow.

The journey into darkness continues…

Dark Visions 2

Big pharma is big business. And fierce competition demands extreme methods in order to develop the new wonder drug. To what horrifying lengths will a greedy corporation go to marketing their frightening, mind-altering drugs to unwary consumers? They’ll do whatever they need, no matter the ominous consequences.

In its original form, The Elementals & I is one of my oldest stories. I wrote the first version 15 or 16 years ago. Then I lost it. The bastard. But I kept the general idea festering away in a dark corner of my mind, and finally got around to writing a much-improved revamp last year.

Dark Visions 2 also features stories by A.A. Garrison, David Murphy, Chad McKee, John C. Foster, David Blixt, Edward Morris & Trent Zelazny, and many others.

For more info about this release or Grey Matter Press, click away:

http://greymatterpress.com/dark-visions-volume-two-from-grey-matter-press-now-available/

Splatterlands: Reawakening the Splatterpunk Revolution (Book Review)

Splatterlands: Reawakening the Splatterpunk revolution

By definition, splatterpunk first emerged in the mid 1980’s as a reaction to the more traditional, suggestive horror story, and was characterised by bloody, visceral, in-your-face horror depicting the true effects, physical and psychological, of extreme violence. This new anthology on Grey Matter Press aims to breathe life (or death) back into the ailing genre by lining up new up-n-comers with more established writers. Dubbed ‘a collection of personal, intelligent and subversive horror,’ Splatterlands certainly delivers. Editor Sharon Lawson explains, “In Splatterlands, we have assembled a collection of stories whose themes intend to show that horror can, indeed, be considered literature. True horror is not just about uncontrolled violence, excessive blood or sexual degradation of women, or men for that matter. And because we believe that, we’ve created Splatterlands, a collection that we call ‘Horror with a Point.’”

A growing band of horror fans believe that the purpose of this much-maligned genre is to push boundaries, if not smash them down with a sturdy axe. And this collection endeavours to do just that, exploring such controversial themes as religious fanaticism, physical and mental abuse, societal corruption and good old-fashioned serial killers, and kicking off in style with with a nasty little shocker called Heirloom, by Michael Laimo. Two of my favourites in this impressively gory set of 13 are Housesitting by Ray Garton, which warns of the danger of snooping, and Party Guests by Chad Stroup, which takes us into the mind of a very disturbed individual. The story that lives longest in the memory, however, is the Defiled by Christine Morgan, a twisted account of Viking rape and pillage that comes to a satisfyingly vengeful end. As you would expect in a collection of this size, there is a small amount of filler, ie. some stories are stronger than others. But the even the weaker stories serve a purpose here as they make the jewels in the crown shine even brighter.

Grey Matter is quickly becoming one of the leading independent publishing houses. Unlike some of their competitors, everything they do is of the highest quality. This is well worth a punt, and look out for the upcoming Dark Visions 1 and 2, which promise to be even better. Look out, fly-by-night publishing houses, there is a new kid on the block. They have your number, a sharp knife, and they are creeping up your stairs right now.

Available from: http://greymatterpress.com/books/

This review also appears in the following places:

http://www.deadpixelpublications.com/
http://morpheustales.wix.com/morpheustales#!supplement/c14cx

Irregular Round-up

A lot has been going on lately. It’s hard to keep track of things myself. So, here’s a quick recap of the past couple of months:

I now have an entry on the Authors Database, which is a bit like IMDB. Except for writers, obviously. There you will find an updated bio, pics, links, and all the usual crap.

http://www.authorsdb.com/authors-directory/5060-christian-saunders

My latest reviews just came out in Morpheus Tales 22. Find out what’s hot and what’s definitely not. The supplement is a FREE download, so you have nothing to lose!

I signed up to Authorgraph, where readers can request electronically signed copies of my books. Apartment 14F: An Oriental Ghost Story, Dead of Night & Devil’s Island, as well as books by thousands of other (probably better) writers.

http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/CMSaunders01

That’s innovation, baby!

I did an interview for my friends over at AmeriCymru, a website for Welsh expats, where I talk about my roots, China, and writing. The website is mainly centered on America, but not exclusively.

http://welsh-american-bookstore.com/index.php/Interviews/welsh-writer-cm-saunders.html

And an interview for Features Exec Media Bulletin recently about freelance journalism. This is where I inadvertently incurred the wrath of a raging feminist on Twitter, who disapproved of the fact that I work for men’s lifestyle magazines and am in favour of glamour models. Maybe I’m not the one with the problem, sweetheart!

http://www.featuresexec.com/bulletin/interview_article.php?id=16717#.Uk6iXuteu9G

Sakina Murdock very kindly did a profile of me for her stonking new website, which focuses on offering advice for novice writers:

http://sakinamurdock.com/2013/10/writing-route-want-grow/

I also posted a couple of new pieces about football and MMA on the Huff Post UK. All my posts are archived here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/chris-saunders/

The first anthology by DeadPixel publications has just been released, which includes my short story ‘Altitude Sickness.’

http://www.deadpixelpublications.com/flying-toasters.html

Finally, the new anthology from Sunbury Press, ‘Undead Living,’ includes ‘Handsome Jack.’

http://www.sunburypressstore.com/Undead-Living-9781620062852.htm

Maybe its all the off-field controversy, or that win over Swansea, but sales of From the Ashes: The REAL Story of Cardiff City FC, have been going through the roof recently. Up the Bluebirds!