THIS IS THE PAGE FOR OCCULT HORROR, BLOOD AND GORE AND ICE-COLD CHILLS UP THE SPINE
The sensational press called it the Breckland Triangle, the three cornered area of Breckland where in the short space of a few weeks the outbreak of serious fire incidents soared out of all normal proportions.
Houses, factories and crashed vehicles burst into infernos of flame. The death toll mounted, often from what seemed to be some inexplicable form of internal human combustion. In the skies above the jet fighters from the nearby USAF Air Base pose the constant threat of a major disaster.
Is the new and bitterly opposed toxic waste plant somehow responsible, contaminating the air with an invisible poison?
Or is there something more sinister, a more ancient force of evil stalking the dark Breckland forests?
Perhaps the key to the mystery lies in dreams, in the wild tormented nightmares of a once great monastery sacked by a howling mob, of Satanic orgies at the blood-soaked Druid’s Altar, and the curse of a beautiful witch wreathed in flames.
218 pages US paperback $9.50. Kindle e-book $6. 50
UK paperback £9. 15
It was out there somewhere offshore in the thick swirling mist which filled the pitch black night.
It was a diffused sound which could have come from any direction, or from all directions
AS THOUGH THE SEA ITSELF WAS SCREAMING
The sea creatures were not unknown. They were frequently sighted and recorded in the days of sail when ships moved silently under wind power, or lay becalmed in remote parts of the world's vast oceans. The sightings stopped when the ships were fitted with noisy thudding engines and kept to direct but relatively narrow sea lanes which the creatures learned to avoid.
But the creatures were still there, far down in the abyss depths, where they might have remained, unseen and undisturbed, if Aztec Three had not exploded to turn the sea above them into a sea of fire.
The creatures moved east across the Atlantic. They were angry and they were hungry, and for those who had to live and work upon the sea it was the beginning of a savage, screaming nightmare.
217 pages. US paperback $13.30 Kindle e-book$6.60
UK paperback £9.15
Read the first chapter in my Far Horizons travel blog or download it here.
THEY WERE SHIP-WRECKED IN PARADISE ---
BUT PARADISE HID A TERRIBLE SECRET
A romantic second honeymoon cruising around the paradise islands of the South pacific had seemed the perfect cure for a failing marriage. But for Nicola and Greg Conway it hadn’t worked and a freak storm and sudden shipwreck with enigmatic skipper Jack Baker was not part of their plan.
They were washed up on to a tropical island occupied by a small religious community. The Children of New Eden lived a seemingly idyllic existence but were shrouded in mystery.
Why had the cult fled from California, and why was the small community graveyard filled with a disproportionate number of little girls.
Soon Nicola begins to wonder if their presence here was entirely by chance, for it seems that Jack Baker has his own agenda.
As the tensions heighten and the mysteries deepen the malevolent presence of an ancient stone idol watches over them from a forbidden cliff top temple site high above the beach.
Read the first chapter in my Far Horizons travel blog or download it here.
COMING SOON
The plants were an abomination with an insatiable thirst for blood.
They crushed their prey with long, seeking tendrils, absorbing the blood through their leaves or sucking it up by their roots as it dripped to the earth. They began with small birds and animals, but as the plants grew and grew, so did their appetites.
They were born in the forbidden zone of Siberia, an alien spawn of mutation and devastation. From there they spread.
Barry Gordon takes his wife and children on a working holiday to isolated Lairg Island in the Shetlands. His project is to write and photograph a book on the annual bird migrations coming down from the frozen Arctic.
But the ultimate horror has arrived on Lairg. The island is cut off by raging storms and the great flocks of exhausted birds are falling food for the growing nightmare. Not since THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, has mankind been threatened by something so unutterably foul.
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WITCHFIRE
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
During the scorching hot summer of 1976 I was a member of the retained fire crew at my home town of Brandon in Suffolk. It would have been called a volunteer crew in the US. We were in the heart of Breckland, an area of gorse and bracken covered heath land and plantations of fir tree forest. Everything was tinder dry and through July and August we were racing non stop from one fire to another, heath fires, forest fires and blazing fields of standing corn. There was barely time to sleep or eat. I rarely finished a meal and never finished a paragraph on the book I was trying to write. At one stage I did thirty hours of non stop fire-fighting, riding from one fire to the next. To end that very hot summer an American fighter plane crashed with a full load of fuel on take-off from the USAF base at Lakenheath. It set a square mile of forest alight and took three days and thirty fire engines to get it under control. At about the same time I read an account of the fascinating phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, and the idea for WITCHFIRE was born.
SERPENTS IN EDEN
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
SERPENTS IN EDEN began as an idea for a film script. The film producer David Fairman had placed an advert in RED HERRINGS, the monthly newsletter of the British Crime Writer’s Association. In it he outlined his intention to make a major motion picture based on the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin who had spent the final years of his life in Tahiti. Fairman planned to shoot the film on location in the South Pacific. To make the whole project economically viable he had hit on the idea of shooting a second film in the same location once his big film was in the can. His camera and production teams would already be on the spot and he would only need to fly out a second group of actors. He wanted a good crime story and he was inviting any CWA members who had published thrillers in a south sea setting to send a copy for his consideration.
By this time I had written thrillers set in every corner of the globe except the South Sea Islands, but that did not deter me from making an immediate reply. I suggested that he might be better off with an original script and sent him three idea outlines. SERPENTS IN EDEN was the one he liked best.
A few exhilarating weeks followed, writing the full outline, trips to London, meetings and discussions. It seemed like a brilliant idea and if Fairman could achieve it then there would be more tandem film projects to follow in other exotic foreign locations. All that was needed was the financial backing.
In the end it all faded away into silence and lost contact. The financiers were obviously not convinced. However, I kept the script outline and it has finally become a book.
FLOWERS OF EVIL
THE STORT BEHIND THE STORY
This one was an idea from Toby Roxburgh, my editor at Futura Books. Futura were looking to establish a couple of horror authors on their list and my agent at the time suggested that I could provide what they were looking for. Toby was a John Wyndham fan and he enthusiastically pointed out that there had not been a horror book with man eating plants since THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. He was convinced that the market was ready for a new variation on the original theme. I went away and dreamed up the idea of plants which crushed their prey in their tendrils and then greedily absorbed the dripping blood. Toby was delighted.
The book did well. Futura published it in English paperback, Bantam published it in the USA, and it sold a clutch of foreign translation rights. There was even a flicker of film interest.Sadly an economic recession came along. Futura was absorbed into Macdonald and quickly disappeared. Toby disappeared with it. It was a time when many publishers and editors were disappearing, as though sucked into a black hole from nowhere. It was another horror story.
For the moment it is still offered as a free download, but I am planning to set it up with Create Space and Kindle.