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.

Voided Substructures

I have a new story published in Minor Literature(s), ‘Voided Substructures’. A story of toxic masculinity, friendship and regrets about the past.

You can read it here: https://minorliteratures.com/2021/05/04/voided-substructures-gary-budden

Dead Ink Halloween Takeover

Thanks to everyone who attended the Dead Ink Halloween takeover on Halloween last night! It was great fun – watching readings from the brilliant Naomi Booth and Lucie McKnight Hardy, reading my story ‘Sky City’ from the newly published London Incognita and answering questions afterwards.

You can watch the whole event here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-5jB_FmI3/

London Launched

A big thanks to everyone who attended the online Instagram launch for London Incognita last Thursday night, hosted wonderfully by Heidi James.

If you don’t know Heidi’s work then I seriously recommend you check out her recent novel The Sound Mirror published by Bluemoose this year.

If you missed it, you can watch the whole event on the Dead Ink Instagram page here:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CGF9qLTlQS5

First LONDON INCOGNITA review

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/

LONDON INCOGNITA and HOLLOW SHORES – Audiobooks!

Both the newly published LONDON INCOGNITA, and my first collection HOLLOW SHORES, are now available in Audiobook from, produced by WF Howes!

They are available to buy via Audible- click on the links below.

LONDON INCOGNITA PUBLICATION DAY!

LONDON INCOGNITA is published today by Dead Ink!!

Late-capitalist urban weird fiction about the most exciting and horrifying of places - London.

About the book:

London Incognita chronicles a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two-thousand years of history, as seen through the eyes of its desperate and troubled inhabitants. A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and buildings burn down, the citys selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of London.

Paperback: https://deadinkbooks.com/product/london-incognita-pre-order/

Audiobook: https://audible.co.uk/pd/London-Incognita-Audiobook/1004019424

CONFINGO

My story ‘What Never Was’ is published in the new issue of Confingo.

It’s available to order directly here.

LONDON INCOGNITA

I am delighted to announce that my second book of fiction, LONDON INCOGNITA, will be published by Dead Ink in October 2020. You can currently pre-order it by becoming a Dead Ink subscriber here.

Includes the Shirley Jackson Award shortlisted Judderman.

ABOUT THE BOOK

London Incognita chronicles a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two-thousand years of history, as seen through the eyes of its desperate and troubled inhabitants.

A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and buildings burn down, the city’s selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of London.

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.

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 CONSTELLATION OF WONDROUS PLACES

Here is a reading of my story 'A Constellation of Wondrous Places', filmed in Morden Library as part of my City of Stories residency. I am running workshops in Merton on the 12th and 19th of June – all the info here!

ENFIELD TOWN, WHERE WE PAINTED FIRE ACROSS THE SKYLINE

Old trains clank as they ease in and out of the overground station. We listen to the tannoy admonish a man who rides his bicycle along the platform.

Our neighbour with carcinogenic lungs smokes below, hacks, fights for breath every single day.

There's a low ambient hum to the outer city that I adore, a meshed murmur of commuters' voices, slow moving traffic, station activity, the shrieks of schoolkids, the flap of a wood pigeon's wings.

Look one way and see the shimmering monuments to excess that form the London skyline. Look the other, over the roofs of the town, to the woods and unexpected green of Trent Park. 

As dusk comes, we paint fire across the skyline.

NOTES ON THE LANDSCAPE PUNK SCENE

Extract from the introduction to Magnesium Burns: The Collected Zines, 1999–2011 (Punk Positive Press), by Melissa Eider.

---

The 'landscape punk' scene of the mid-to-late-2000s was formed around the nexus (some said unholy trilogy, some said bunch of wankers, depending on your view on the whole thing) of NOMADIC TRIBE, DEAD INDUSTRIAL ATMOSPHERE and SCARP. 

Ranging from gypsy-traveller style folk-punk to dark and brooding epic crust and post-hardcore, the scene took a great deal of inspiration from not only classic works of eco-themed English literature like Richard Adams' WATERSHIP DOWN and THE PLAGUE DOGS (the Brighton-based FALL OF EFRAFA being the most noticeable band to do this), but also the popular genres of London-focused psychogeography, deep topography and urban landscape writing as popularised by writers such as Nick Papadimtiou, the politically charged landscape writing of American writers like Rebecca Solnit, the weird fictions of people like Joel Lane, and crucially the Incognita series of books republished by Malachite Press. 

The Incognita series included lost classics by Alexander Baron, Hecate Shrike, Maureen Duffy, Michael Ashman and D.A. Northwood, among many others, resurrecting a valuable archive of hidden London literature. The tracks 'Juddering' and 'Demon of Woodberry Down' by SCARP, both references to Northwood, became iconic of the scene and have remained enduring classics of the punk, post-rock and hardcore underground well into the twenty-teens.

NOMADIC TRIBE released only one album, the critically- regarded but commercial flop, 'Concrete Palimpsest', a record heavily indebted to nineties underground hardcore acts like SCATHA, A FIELD IN ENGLAND and SEDITION.

DEAD INDUSTRIAL ATMOSPHERE (their name of course an homage to the great LEATHERFACE) are still going strong. Albums like 'City of Worms' and 'Miracle at New Cross Gate' are considered staples of any discerning underground music fan's collection. They tour regularly across the UK and Europe, but have distanced themselves somewhat from the landscape punk scene.

SCARP split acrimoniously and with much bad blood, effectively ending the scene; something which has been well documented elsewhere (in the pages of Magnesium Burns in fact – read on).