On 5th December 2020 Winter Tales went live on YouTube, a virtual event to replace a planned face-to-face event. You can watch it by clicking on the image above.
The event was organsised by Joseph Freeman who read alongside myself, Simon Bestwick, Mark Morris and Ramsey Campbell. For me, to read alongside such great writers was an absolute privilege, a real bucket-list fulfilling line-up.
Let me tell you a little about what they read and where you can find out more.
What better way to kick it off than with absolute horror legend, Ramsey Campbell. Ramsey read an excerpt from his novel The Wise Friend, available from Flame Tree Press, here. From this excerpt, I’m certainly intrigued. A sinister atmosphere is quickly created. Ramsey Campbell in a master when it comes to describing the strange. Check out his website here.
I was up next. No pressure there, following Ramsey Campbell! Thanks Joseph!
I read a story I’d written especially for the event, ‘Hands that Do the Devil’s Work’. Winter Tales 2020 is, at the time of writing, the only place you’ll find that story. I wanted to come up with something new that would work well as a reading, so I went for a first person tale that could very much me told. I’m rather proud of how it turned out, though the wording of the contract could do with a tweak, and there was one sentence which featured the word ‘yet’ twice which made me cringe!
You’ll find links to my work elsewhere on this blog.
Up next was Joseph Freeman. I first met Joseph at an event in Norwich in 2019 – an afternoon of horror readings called Midsummer Macabre. I was thn invited to read at the next event, last winter’s Winter Tales. This summer’s edition of Midsummer Macabre was the first online and can be found here.
Joseph read a great show story, incredibly atmospheric, called ‘The Waiting Room’. It was a story I knew from his collection, They Come at Dusk. I thought it worked really well when I read it, but it’s even better when read aloud. If you enjoyed ‘The Waiting Room’, I urge you to check out the collection. Find at more at his website.
Mark Morris’s first novel, Toady was released in 1989. He’s been prolific every since with his novels, series tie-ins, short stories and editing short story collections.
At Winter Tales, Mark Morris read ‘A Girl, Sitting’, first published in 2013 and included in his collection Warts and All available here. This one could well leave you with a lump in your throat. Damn, it hurt. A slow burn, with a creeping dread. Fabulous.
It was down to Simon Bestwick to bring us home. Simon had stepped in to plug a gap after another writer had dropped out, and we couldn’t have been in safter hands.
Prior to this event, I’d heard Simon Bestwick read at Edge-Lit for the launch of A Love Like Blood, so I was looking forward to hearing more.
‘In the Shelter’ is a great story. It gets straight down to business. We’re in a bomb shelte,r the bombs are dropping, and a knock comes at the door. What follows is a fabulous example of hos to build suspense and build and build and build upon the atmosphere. Fabulous work. Find out more about Simon Bestwick’s work here.
If you enjoyed the event, it would be great if you could support the writers that contributed to show, whether by buying a book, posting a review, sharing a link, or simply by leaving a nice comment on the video.