From 'An Exhibition'
At the exhibition
Read MoreMOMUS QUESTIONNAIRE
I was interviewed by the sexy degenerates at Minor Literature(s) for their Momus Questionnaire series – have a read here
Read MoreNEW REVIEW
A great new review to see in the end of 2017 with – thanks to Dickens Does Books:
'“Really weird” is definitely one way to describe this collection, but I would prefer to choose enchanting, haunting or melancholic instead. Indeed, I’ve never read anything like it (and probably won’t again).'
Read the full review here.
REEDS FROM TARMAC, PEGWELL BAY, KENT 26/12/17
There is a sense of corroded history hanging heavy over Pegwell Bay. It is a place of invasion and amnesia, where you once could take a hovercraft to France, crossing the channel in as little as twenty-two minutes. Roman soldiers took their first steps into an alien land here. Vikings are commemorated for landing here. People sift the geological strata for signs the past, as they have done for generations. Once, just without reach of my own lifetime, it must have been a happy place, of arrivals and departures, holidaymakers and couples taking their first trips out of England.
Read MoreWINTER DOWN
The old and the new and the in-between all stand shoulder to shoulder, for now
Read MoreTHE TEMPERATE RAINFOREST
The temperate rainforest began at the bottom of my garden. In the green cathedral, where the bark was furred with fresh green moss and pale lichen, you could get a feel for what this land had once been. No: that was a guess on my part. I was projecting, for how could I truly know?
Read MoreD.A. NORTHWOOD & THE EDEN BOOK SOCIETY
Information concerning a new project I am involved with – the Eden Book Society. I have been helping research information and edit the papers of one of these mysterious authors, the proto-landscape-punk writer D.A. Northwood who lived in north London from the late sixties to the early eighties.
Read MoreNEW LEXICONS UPDATE
It’s been a while since I’ve done a New Lexicons update, mainly for the reason that Hollow Shores is now out in the world! Thanks to everyone who pledged for a copy on Kickstarter, bought a copy at the recent events, came said hello and got your book signed, and generally helped make this book happen. And thanks of course to Dead Ink for making it happen.
Read MoreINFORMATION CONCERNING THE MALACHITE PRESS
The Malachite Press was formed back in 1960. They started out doing reprints with lurid covers of some of the greats: Blackwood, Machen, Nolan, Shrike, before moving into publishing the dark imaginings of contemporary writers who crawled out of the counter-cultural explosion that would come, perhaps erroneously, to define that decade. Malachite Press moved into a form of hard-edged Albionic literature, dealing with myths both ancient and contemporary, rural, urban, and suburban.
Read MoreCONTEMPORARY SMALL PRESS REVIEW
I had a nice write up in The Contemporary Small Press, reviewing the launch night of the Diisonance anthology in Bethnal Green. I read my story (from the forthcoming Hollow Shores) 'The Wrecking Days' at the night:
Gary Budden read from his new story collection The Wrecking Days [NOTE: it's called Hollow Shores] which explores themes of nature and narcotics, writing from the margins of society ‘where reality thinned a little.’ His piece suggested that the artificial and the natural are not opposing at all, instead they are transcendent. Budden writes about youthful and reckless days spent on the London marshes. In such places of in-between, on the fringes of London, Budden writes about notions of being and belonging: the idea that ‘memory is a marsh’ as the world diffuses in mist and nostalgia. The marshes act as a psychogeographical jettison between two places, between city and country, between artifice and nature. Such spaces, as Budden presents in his collection, allowed them to explore their minds, without ‘shutting parts of yourself down.’ It was ‘a way of seeing the world for what it really is,’ to find their own version of what it means to be free: to be and belong on their own terms. But Budden acknowledged, through his tales of the wrecking days, that being able to see the world as it is can also pull you apart.
Read the whole review here
GREENTEETH
You can now watch 'Greenteeth', a short wyrd fiction super-8 film by Adam Scovell, based on my British Fantasy Award-nominated short story of the same name. It follows the gradual disintegration of a woman living on a canal boat in Kensal Green as the folklore of Jenny Greenteeth begins to manifest in a city of rapid redevelopment, rising rents and gentrification. It's an attempt to use folklore and the weird in the service of addressing a real modern problem. Enjoy.
ENTER THE SHADOW BOOTH: INTERVIEW
I was interviewed recently by Jim McLeod for Ginger Nuts of Horror, talking about Hollow Shores, landscape punk, psychogeography, horror, weird fiction and my story in the upcoming anthology, The Shadow Booth
Read the full interview here: http://gingernutsofhorror.com/interviews/enter-the-shadow-booth-an-interview-with-gary-budden
Read MoreWEIRD STORIES FOR WEIRD TIMES
I am delighted to announce that I will be speaking at an event with the legendary M John Harrison, at Waterstones Gower Street, London, on Thursday November 9th, in conversation with Glyn Morgan. Organised by the good people at Comma Press and Dead Ink.
Full event information is here.
NEW CROSS GATE TO TRINITY BUOY WHARF
A walk from New Cross Gate to Trinity Buoy Wharf along the Thames, with the writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell
Read MoreHARLEQUIN
Andy’s returned to the salt and shingle of the Hollow Shore. There are whispering reeds that grow from from boggy earth, and honking v-shapes of Canada geese overhead. It’s winter; or, a new ice age. In the distance, out to sea, are icebergs. Glaucous gulls and arctic terns in the air, the water's surface breached by leopard seals.
Read MoreNEW LEXICONS UPDATE
Busy times!
Read MoreBRITISH FANTASY AWARD NOMINATION
I'm very happy to announce that my short story 'Greenteeth' has been nominated for a British Fantasy Award! The story originally appeared in Black Static #50 and will be appearing in my collection Hollow Shores, out this October from Dead Ink Books.
Read MoreTHE WRECKING DAYS
So Hollow Shores is very nearly reaching completion. Last few tweaks and edits are being made – cover reveal and general announcements coming soon!
In the meantime here's a very short extract from a brand new story in the collection called 'The Wrecking Days'. Enjoy.
The vampire hunter lived in our town, pedaling its small streets on an antiquated bicycle. He’s famous, I remember my mum whispering to me as a kid. I saw him once during the Oyster Festival, standing on the beach just staring at the little ones as they constructed the oyster cairns, shell grottoes lit from within by flickering candlelight. On the Hollow Shore we had our own way of fending off the darkness, a darkness I could always sense. I saw my friends, my family, the relationships I entered into, as bursts of brief pyrotechnics or slow flickering flame that lit up the endless night. All to be ultimately extinguished, but that was not the point. The fight against the void, that’s what life was about. That’s what the wrecking days were to me. Our doomed resistance.
WHEN NO SHADOWS FELL
In the cemetery where the remains of the Moselle flow, where the dead live, a patchwork story of mine stitches itself together.
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