Out of the Darkness, Writing the Uncanny, Best British Short stories

It’s been a long time since I posted an update on here for various reasons, and I’m happy to say since the last post I’ve had stories and essays in three different publications.


I have an essay in Writing the Uncanny: Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction, ed. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Dead Ink) titled ‘Half-Concealed Places, or a Particularly Humdrum Uncanny’. The essay is about weird and uncanny fiction’s interaction with edgeland and psychogeographic writing, and how it can work powerfully in seemingly ‘humdrum’ spaces.

I was honoured to be invited to contribute to an anthology featuring writers such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Jenn Ashworth and many more.

You can buy it here.


I have a new story in the charity anthology Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories) called ‘The Residential’. Themed around mental-health, all proceeds from sales of the book go to the charity Together for Mental Wellbeing.

‘The Residential’ is a new London Incognita story, about the everyday stresses and rage induced by life in a city like London – specifically when all the systems that keep the city fail. It’s also about the eeriness and uncanny nature of suburban streets.

Once again, it’s a pleasure to be in an athology with so many brilliant writers of the weird – Laura Mauro, Malcolm Devlin, Aliya Whiteley, Gareth E. Rees and many more.

You can buy it here.


My story ‘What Never Was’, first published in Confingo magazine and part of last year’s collection London Incognita was selected for Best British Short Stories 2021, ed. Nicholas Royle (Salt). It feels like a real stamp of approval to have one of my stories included in this collection, and I’m very grateful to be in such good company.

You can buy it here.

First LONDON INCOGNITA review

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A great first review is in for London Incognita, from Jackie Law on the Never Imitate blog. A flattering and perceptive review:

The London portrayed is home to the homeless – druggies and ghosts. Graffiti and rubbish abut closed off building sites, keeping the discarded from areas now shiny and gentrified. Beneath are the sewers, where giant rats gorge on fatburgs, and a mythical queen lures urban explorers…

I have read several, excellent non fiction books about urban explorers and psychogeographers seeking out the mostly unregarded aspects of well traversed spaces. This short story collection does this masterfully, with the addition of melancholy wraiths and the Londoners whose lives they change. It is a dark love story to the city.

You can review the full review here: https://neverimitate.wordpress.com/2020/10/02/book-review-london-incognita/

NIGHTSCRIPT VI

I am delighted to announce that I have a new short story appearing in the forthcoming volume of Nightscript.

CONTENTS

Dauda’s Return — Timothy Dodd
The Patent-Master — LC von Hessen
Let Your Hinged Jaw Do the Talking — Tom Johnstone
The Best Thing About Her — Ralph Robert Moore
What Crows Mean — Julia Rust
A Postcard From White Dunes — Jeremy Schliewe
Baddavine — Dan Coxon
Beyond the Lace — Charles Wilkinson
The Gods Shall Lay Sore Trouble Upon Them — Christi Nogle
A Photograph — Alexander James
The Owner— Francesco Corigliano
Passed Pawn
— Selene dePackh
The Death Bodies of Kanggye — Kurt Newton
Loneliness — James Owens
Victims of a Transitional Time in Morality — J.R. Hamantaschen
The Whisper Gallery — Amelia Gorman
Long Rock — Gary Budden

Volume VI will be released on October 1st. Preorder information can be found here.

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UNCERTAINTIES VOL. 4

I am very happy to say that my story ‘We Pass Under’ is included in the upcoming edition of Uncertainties, published by Swan River Press and edited by Timothy J. Jarvis

Numbered edition of 100 also available while supplies last.

You can PRE -ORDER here

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THE SHADOW BOOTH Vol. 4

I’m pleased to have a second story in the excellent Shadow Booth series, edited by Dan Coxon. I was in the very first volume with my story ‘Where No Shadows Fall’ so I am delighted to be back with a new piece of short fiction, ‘Collector of Games’, that focuses on the hunt for mythical video-games and the pitch-black reaches of the dark web. Dan has gathered a really stunning lineup of writers for this volume, so I really recommend getting hold of a copy. You can pre-order a copy here: http://www.theshadowbooth.com/2019/08/the-shadow-booth-vol-4-coming-this.html

Table of Contents reads as follows:

  • The Devil of Timanfaya by Lucie McKnight Hardy

  • The Tribute by James Machin

  • The Larpins by Charles Wilkinson

  • Drowning by Giselle Leeb

  • You Are Not in Kettering Now by Andrew McDonnell

  • Hardrada by Ashley Stokes

  • Defensive Wounds by James Everington

  • The Verandah by Jay Caselberg

  • The Salt Marsh Lambs by Jane Roberts

  • The Box of Knowledge by Tim Cooke

  • His Hand by Polis Loizou

  • Terminal Teatime by Anna Vaught

  • Collector of Games by Gary Budden

  • One Two Three by Marian Womack

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AN INVITE TO ETERNITY

An Invite to Eternity. Tales of Nature Disrupted, takes its cue from John Clare to address the most pressing issue humanity is facing: anthropogenic climate change.  Edited by Marian Womack and myself, and with a foreword by Helen Marshall.

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THE SCORCHED MUSIC OF THE EMPEROR WORM

‘There is a writhing worm in all of us, waiting to be freed.’
– From The Salvage Song of the Larks, and Other Stories, by Michael Ashman

I have a story in the latest Coffin Bell Journal that you can read here.

A PERSONAL ANTHOLOGY

I was pleased to contribute to the excellent ‘A Personal Anthology’ series run by Jonathan Gibbs. The concept is simple – a writer chooses twelve pieces of favourite short fiction and explains why others should read them.

My list:

  1. ‘Black County’ – Joel Lane

  2. ‘The Stains’ – Robert Aickman

  3. ‘The White Cat’ – Joyce Carol Oates

  4. ‘The Husband Stitch’ – Carmen Maria Machado

  5. ‘Wide Acre’ – Nathan Ballingrud’

  6. ‘An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk According to One Who Saw It’ – Jessie Greengrass

  7. ‘The Horse of Iron and How We Can Know It (And Be Changed By It)’ – M John Harrison

  8. ‘Four Abstracts’ – Nina Allan

  9. ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ – Algernon Blackwood

  10. ‘The Cheater’s Guide to Love’ – Junot Diaz

  11. ‘The Last Clean, Bright Summer’ – Livia Llewellyn

  12. ‘The Unwish’ – Claire Dean

You can read it here.

‘Fiction is becoming darker, weirder, bent-out-of-shape’

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I was very pleased to get a mention in the Irish Times this week, via their interview with Ashley Stokes of Unthank Books. So thanks Ashley! He said some kind things about my work, as well as my good mate Gareth E. Rees, as well as mentioning us in the same breath as Angela Readman and Daisy Johnson (Fen was a brilliant collection). Here are some choice quotes:

'At grassroots level, and by that I suspect you mean writing that’s not influenced by MA programmes, is becoming darker, weird, twisted-out-of-shape, dripping with fear of the end and apocalypse. The new writing I’m enjoying at the moment – the likes of Gary Budden and Gareth E Rees – are potholing in these caves.

'I also find myself looking out for Angela ReadmanDaisy Johnson and Gary Budden, the latter being someone who meshes weird horror with a very English rumination on place and landscape to create stories simultaneously eerie, yet oh-so realistic.'

You can read the whole thing here.

CONTEMPORARY 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