Your Place is in the Shadows

I have put together six of my finest short stories in a little collection for Kindle. It's called Your Place is in the Shadows and is retailing at minimum price.

At first the idea was to get some of my short stuff out there in the hope that it leads people to the longer stuff. But then I read these things again, and I'm not sure how similar they are. Some are crime, some more horror, others kind of sf or slipstream. Some are clearly set in a world similar to Mangel (or Warchester), others clearly elsewhere. The earliest was written way before I even thought about Deadfolk, others way later.

But I'm proud of them all. I have have written plenty of shorts, and I'm only picking what I consider to be the good 'uns for this (and one or two subsequent volumes later this year). Most have been published in mags, anthologies and more recently webzines, others not. And sometimes it's your favourites that don't find a home. In this case (and published here for the first time) it's "Shithead" (based on a card game I came across years ago in France).

If you are a fan of Royston Blake, maybe the story "Punchbag" will reveal a bit of where the old bruiser came from. The main character doesn't have the same dubious charm of Blakey, but he clearly shares some of his appetites. This was first published in the British Fantasy Society's magazine Dark Horizons in 2001.

One particular story I like in this batch is "Some Help From Stanley", featuring a spurned husband who yearns for the family from which he has been usurped. Help comes in the unlikely guise of a phonecall from the late Stanley Kubrick. I consider this my first major sale, hitting the pages of The Third Alternative magazine in 2002, which specialised in horror and weird. But I reckon this story could have just as easily been labelled crime.

See what you think.

Your Place is in the Shadows is on sale in the UK, USA, Canada and everywhere else in Amazon-land.