Praise for Twisted Tales Events

'In the past few years Twisted Tales has become a major force in the promotion and appreciation of horror fiction. As well as putting on author readings and signings at bookshops it has expanded into organising larger events, bringing authors and critics together for discussions of the field. I've been involved in quite a few of both and have found them hugely enjoyable and stimulating - I believe the audiences did as well. May Twisted Tales continue to grow and prosper! If you love the field, support them! I do.' - Ramsey Campbell

‘Twisted Tales consistently produce well-organised events for writers and readers of horror. What really distinguishes Twisted Tales for me is the intelligent themes and investigations they pursue, and the high quality of the discussions they always stimulate. As an author I've been invited to three of their events and have been pleasantly startled, to near shocked, by the attendance levels - two out of three were even sold out. I salute anyone who contributes so much to the literary and cultural life of horror fiction.’- Adam Nevill

'Twisted Tales events are wonderful... a great way of promoting 21st century horror fiction. Supported by Waterstone's Liverpool One and really well organised, Twisted Tales brings together established names in the genre as well as new voices and of course readers. Looking forward to much more to come...' - Alison J. Littlewood

Monday 29 August 2011

Apparitions reviewed by Lorna Jowett

Apparitions
UK, BBC
Originally Aired 2008
Producer: Carolyn Reynolds, Tony Wood
Writer: Joe Ahearne


Despite the huge amount of TV horror that exists, some people still think you can’t really do horror on TV: that television is too mainstream, too concerned about “least offensive programming”, not niche enough, not cult enough, and not daring enough. Horror fans know, however, that innovative horror has debuted on the medium that brought us Quatermass, Ghostwatch and Being Human (or, across the Atlantic, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows and Dexter) even if they’re often categorised as something other than horror, something more TV. It’s difficult to see Apparitions as anything other than horror. But it’s definitely horror for television and this is where it gets interesting. Apparitions is The Exorcist on TV. Even now, it seems unlikely and, on BBC1, almost incredible. I remember seeing trailers for it and thinking, it’ll never work. But, by mixing realist horror with bankable BBC elements, including a star actor (Martin Shaw) and a writer/ director with a track record in fantasy and horror as well as mainstream television (Joe Ahearne), it did, gaining a 20.6% audience share for its first episode.

Anyone familiar with Ahearne’s work, knows he previously wrote and directed 6-part Channel 4 series Ultraviolet (1998), an unforgettable revision of the vampire hunter story, as well as directing various episodes of Doctor Who early in its reboot. Fantasy mixed with realism is common on TV but before Misfits and Being Human, Ahearne was taking the aesthetic tradition of kitchen sink and social realist British TV drama and applying it to horror and the supernatural. Even in a story about vampires or about exorcising demons the setting, the world in which the characters move and the world in which the action takes place is utterly real, utterly contemporary, so when we do see demonic possession or exorcisms, these things are made real in a way that other, more extravagant and spectacular horror never achieves. That we see these horrors on our TV screen in our living room makes it, if anything, more grounded in the real.

And what do we see in Apparitions? Things barely imaginable for BBC1 in a primetime slot, even after 9pm. The basic premise of the show is that Roman Catholic priest Father Jacob believes that “Satan is not an exotic presence in our lives” (episode 1). Jacob is supposed to be examining proof of alleged miracles but is sidetracked into exorcism. Demonic possession and exorcism lend themselves to extreme body horror and despite Ahearne saying in pre-release publicity that “This is a story where the exorcist is centre stage – not the possessed victim,” Apparitions does not shy away from these elements. In the very first episode one of Jacob’s friends has his skin flayed from his body and dies. In another, a rapist incarcerated in prison is possessed, not by a demon but by a saint (episode 3), causing him to literally sweat blood. It doesn’t stop other prisoners trying to rape him in the washroom. In yet another (episode 4), a 70-year-old pregnant woman tries to secure an abortion. The visceral nature of these scenes is rendered in detail. When Jacob’s friend and student Vimal is flayed, we see the aftermath rather than the process, yet the camera lingers on the pools of blood and exposed flesh, blue lighting (another favourite of Ahearne’s) serving to make the blood look eerily black. The body is seen again in the following episode during an autopsy, this time brightly lit. A bible is later bound in Vimal’s skin, and close-up shots show the marks of hair follicles in the book binding – a subtle but stomach-twisting reminder of the grisly killing.

Apparitions aired on BBC1 and BBCHD, positioning it as a flagship show and affording the best possible medium for its special effects. Effects and spectacle are always an issue in screen horror and Ahearne wanted to avoid CGI because he believes it lacks emotion, a feeling shared by many horror directors in film and TV. The more complicated stunts are rooted in performance, grounding them in something tangible rather than in the details of make up, wirework and effects. Some proposed scenes were cut because they were judged to be less “real” and therefore out of keeping with the rest of the show and its authentic feel. Still, what remains is remarkable in a primetime drama on BBC1. Not surprisingly Ahearne admits that there was “quite a bit of nervousness about extreme horror on television because we don’t tend to do a lot of it”.

Apparitions made it to BBC1 partly because it was Martin Shaw’s idea. I hadn’t watched Shaw on television since The Professionals (1977-81) because his work for TV tends to be for a mainstream audience and I don’t watch much mainstream drama. With a career of acting that includes stage roles and occasional film parts and that started on TV in 1967, Shaw is a well-known face on British television. His most famous roles are in TV staples such as detective, medical and legal drama series and Ahearne describes Shaw as being “at the top of television.” This very bankability sells Apparitions as a primetime BBC1 drama, despite its high level of horror and inclusion of the supernatural. Shaw brings the authority of his past roles to playing Father Jacob, as well as their mundanity, to counterpoint the fantastic elements of Apparitions.

Jacob is at the centre of this drama, though whether it validates his position is unclear. In Ahearne’s previous series, Ultraviolet, vampire hunters were as much in danger of losing their humanity as any vampire recruit: in Apparitions, Father Jacob is accused of being mad and deluded by many other characters. Shaw makes his character’s faith convincing but repeated denials and disbelief from those who encounter Jacob continually undermine any sense of rationality (in the diegesis and for the viewer). Moreover, to most of those he interacts with, even associates in the church, Jacob’s faith is as exotic as demon possession. “Many of those beliefs are out of place in a secular society like Britain,” comments Ahearne, “and it creates great conflict which is the engine for drama”. Similarly, the rituals of Catholicism function here as another form of spectacle, contrasting with contemporary secular society (abortion clinics, prisons, psychology) and with other religions (Islam in episode 5), as horror does with realism. While shooting the majority of the series in Liverpool or London underpins the show’s contemporary social realism, location shooting in the Vatican enhances a sense of simultaneous realism and exoticism in the finale episode.

It should be apparent from this description that religion and the Roman Catholic Church are not depicted simplistically here. The Exorcist supposedly went down well with the Catholic authorities, since its priests are heroic figures fighting evil to the death. The very idea of a priest as hero might make some reluctant to watch Apparitions but, since this is a drama created by Ahearne, it’s not that clear-cut. The church as an institution is painted much less sympathetically than Father Jacob. Religious belief is, perhaps, upheld by the narrative to the extent that it suggests demons exist. But Apparitions really tackles religion as morality and neither offers definitive answers, nor gives only one view. It debates the nature of evil: are bad things in society the work of the devil or is this just ducking the issue and avoiding social responsibility?

Although Ahearne notes that Apparitions makes reference to classic horror films (and to Silence of the Lambs, a prestige production that also effectively brings horror into the mainstream) the series engages with “current live issues” and contentious areas for contemporary Catholicism such as abortion, homosexuality and the holocaust. With episodes negotiating potential child abuse or post-traumatic stress disorder, the show ranges from intimate family life to international conflict. Many of the episodes raise questions about violence, for instance: about how it is used and justified, when it might be acceptable, and when it is considered criminal or simply evil. While Apparitions delivers spectacular “horror” exorcisms or possessions on a regular basis, Ahearne is more interested in extremes of good or evil, and in how we judge extreme acts and extreme beliefs.

Some online reviewers comment that the show is a mish-mash of exorcism horror movie clichés. Of course it is: that’s how genre works, whether it simply recycles, or whether it renegotiates and re-presents. Vimal, Jacob’s friend and student is attacked and flayed in a bath house, apparently having given in to repressed homosexual desire. Cliché? Well, yes, but homosexuality remains a major issue for the Catholic Church (and other religions), homophobia is still rife in contemporary society, and self-loathing is nothing new to Catholics. Vimal’s sexuality is something many around him prefer to ignore; his death is a threat close to home. And, like countless horror protagonists, Jacob must live in fear that all those close to him will die before he can defeat the evil only he seems to believe in.

Apparitions and its reworking of possession and exorcism will not appeal to all horror fans. Ahearne knows exactly how to use TV and its realist conventions to best effect for horror, so it’s surprisingly low-key in places, surprisingly graphic in others. As in most contemporary TV horror the grey areas of morality are to the fore. Adding religion just makes it more challenging. Can you be objective about vampires? Probably. But religion? Like it or loathe it, religion still affects how we see the world and Apparitions sketches out how it can be a vehicle for complex TV horror.

----

Lorna Jowett is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, where she teaches some of her favourite things, including television, film, horror, and science fiction, sometimes all at once. Research currently focuses on genre, aesthetics and representation in television, film and popular culture. Her monograph, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2005, she is on the editorial board of Slayage: the Journal of the Whedon Studies Association and she is currently writing a book on TV Horror with Stacey Abbott.

Monday 22 August 2011

Regicide by Nicholas Royle [Preview]

Welcome to the first of our new content type, an exclusive preview chapter of an upcoming horror novel that we're more than a little excited about. Our first preview comes from British Fantasy Award winner Nicholas Royle who, you may remember, did our very first event with us. The novel is called Regicide and it's due out on September 1st. Here's the blurb:

Carl meets Annie Risk and falls for her. Hurt by a recent relationship, she resists becoming involved. A chance find offers distraction: Carl stumbles across part of a map to an unknown town. He becomes convinced it represents the city of his dreams, where ice skaters turn quintuple loops and trumpeters hit impossibly high notes.... where Annie Risk will agree to see him again. But if he ever finds himself in the streets on his map, will they turn out to be the land of his dreams or the world of his worst nightmares?


Thanks to Nick and to Solaris for providing this preview. Enjoy!

-

‘There are few things impossible in themselves; it is the application required, rather than the means to make them succeed, that we lack.’

La Rochefoucauld, Maximes

Chapter One
THIS IS WHAT happened before I found the map.
     I went out with Annie Risk. I’d met her only two days earlier at Jaz’s party. We went out to a pub and for something to eat in the West End, and then afterwards I was leading the way back to her hotel because I thought I knew where I was going. I should have done, having worked as a cycle courier in a former life. Still, there would always be one or two areas where my sense of direction would fail me. Grey areas between districts, where the streets appeared indistinguishable from each other.
Annie Risk didn’t know this part of London at all, so she was relying on me. It was only sensible, although she clearly didn’t like giving up responsibility, especially to a man. But by the end of the evening I think she’d decided I was probably all right. She could trust me this far. In any case, now that I’d lost my way, we were equals again.
     One street turned into another at a right angle. None of them appeared to be named and the Georgian terraces that lined them looked identical. The windows were dark, the doors locked tight. The air was warm. We turned right and right again, then went straight on and turned right once more.
     I sensed Annie watching me as I pushed my nose forward into the sticky night haze of petrol fumes and fast food. She must have thought I was trying to sniff our way out. I was. My sense of smell is renowned. Or it should be. I wondered what she made of my appearance. I had long hair which had been dyed black so many times it was beginning to spoil. My face is big and stupid – open and kind, an old girlfriend had told me; I’d like to believe it – and by late evening it’s usually dark with stubble. My eyes are grey and they don’t always manage to hold your gaze. Although it depends who you are, I suppose. At the time I had this beaten old white leather jacket which I loved and wore always. With it that evening, if my memory is reliable, I was wearing a baggy white cotton shirt and tight black jeans. Jaz often told me the jeans made me look ridiculous; other people just said they were retro. In any case, they emphasised the thinness of my legs, which for one so tall – I’m over six foot – did make me look kind of odd. My cowboy boots – worn outside the jeans – were black with a white butterfly motif on the back. Because of the pack of Camels I kept down the left one I walked with a slight limp.
     I don’t know, I liked the way I looked, or I’d grown used to it and felt pretty comfortable about it. It had been a long time since I’d had to worry about what someone else might think.
     I kept looking around for landmarks. But there weren’t any and if the doors had numbers, I couldn’t bloody well see them.
     ‘It’s around here some place,’ I said, peering into the gloom for a way out of the seemingly endless maze. A pulse in my temple had begun to irritate me and I thought I might be getting a headache. The night air was close and thick. But the evening had filled me with hope and I was determined not to let things get to me. These streets couldn’t go on forever. We’d find Annie’s hotel. I hoped she wouldn’t think me foolish for leading her into this warren and not being able to find the way out.
     ‘It must be quite an expensive hotel,’ I said. The area we were in – south of Euston Road, east of Paddington, on the edge of Marylebone – was not exactly cheap.
     ‘Actually no,’ she said. ‘Not for me anyway. It’s run by a friend of a friend of mine’s dad and I get a special rate. It’s where I always stay now when I come to London.’
     The distance from one streetlamp to the next remained constant. The windows on all sides were dark, many of them shuttered.
‘How often do you come down, then?’ I asked her as I glanced across the street.
‘The last time must have been two, three years ago.’
The pulse in my head throbbed. I wondered if I’d had too much to drink. ‘It’s not exactly a regular thing then?’ I said.
     She lived in Manchester in her own flat and earned her living as a graphic designer. Already, from the sparse details she’d given me, I’d pieced together a picture of her flat. Tucked away in a row of terraces like the ones filing past us now, it was small and warm. She liked cushions and hanging things – rugs on the wall and curtains in doorways – and somewhere there would be a kitten drowsing. In contrast to all of this would be her computer, occupying pride of place on the small desk by the window. I imagined her sitting there early in the morning perhaps, still in her dressing gown, the cat purring in her lap, as she clicked and double-clicked, pulling the design on the screen one way and squeezing it then changing her mind and altering the whole thing.
At Jaz’s party I’d been struck by her right away. We’d chatted a bit and after several beers I was relaxed enough to ask if I could see her again. She’d said no. But it was in my nature not to give in, even if I sensed complete futility. Anything’s possible had always been my motto, though with women this was more an article of faith than the result of experience.
     Annie had said it wasn’t a good idea because she would be going back to Manchester, and in any case she didn’t want to complicate her life.
     She was about five foot five with black hair, dark eyes of indeterminate colour, a loose top, a baggy dark grey and green cotton skirt with tassels and lace-up leather boots. The more we talked, the less I allowed myself to be distracted and the more I felt my slightly drunken smile relaxing into a stupid grin.
She’d finally given in to my request in spite of her resolve. Perhaps she saw something in me she liked. We could have some fun before she went back, she might have been thinking.
     ‘Just go for a drink,’ she said.
     ‘Maybe something to eat as well,’ I pushed.
     ‘OK, but then I’m going back to my hotel and back to Manchester.’
     I raised my hands in innocence.
     We met in town, just off Cambridge Circus. I’d walked down from the Caledonian Road after locking up the shop. She was wearing a cut-off red denim jacket and the same tasselled skirt as at the party. Her dark hair was drawn back in a ponytail; a few strands escaped and fell in front of her ears.
I stopped staring and we stepped into the Cambridge for a drink. We stayed for over an hour and when we came out Annie’s hair was loose. She was no longer making a clear effort to remain beyond my reach, but I hung back nevertheless.
     Usually, when I knew someone only from afar and then spent time with them in close company I saw through the daunting exterior to the younger, more vulnerable person underneath. Some men revealed themselves as boys and in my eyes would never grow up again. Annie showed signs of the girl she had been but that was all they were – signs and clues to the woman she had become. She laughed a lot after we’d had a couple of drinks and though her words of warning about going back to Manchester free of complications rang clearly in my head, I began to feel that more might be possible.
     We had some pasta in a scruffy little Italian, the Centrale, and shared a bottle of wine. Annie’s eyes sparkled. Still I didn’t push it.
     ‘I’ll walk you to your hotel,’ I suggested as we hit the sultry pavement again.
     She fluffed her hair with both hands. ‘I could get a cab.’
     ‘It’s a lovely night,’ I said, reaching into my left boot for my cigarettes. I cupped my hand around my lighter. She told me the address of the hotel and I said confidently, ‘I know where that is. No problem.’ We walked through Soho. I noticed people glancing at us. We looked good together. I said to her, ‘The world is full of all sorts of possibilities and you’ve got to make the most of them, or what’s the point?’
     ‘Yeah, right,’ she said.
     I had thought I was happy being single but now I was excited. As I sneaked sidelong glances I saw her lips constantly breaking into a smile. No complications, she’d said. Yeah, right.
     ‘How long have you lived in London?’ she asked me.
     ‘Nine years,’ I told her. ‘But it was working as a courier that helped me find my way around. That’s when I met Jaz.’
     We crossed Oxford Street and turned left towards Regent Street.
     ‘It’s warm, isn’t it?’
     Annie nodded. ‘Do you know the way?’ she double-checked.
     ‘Oh yes.’
     The deeper into the maze we penetrated the more hopeless our chances seemed to become of finding the hotel, at least before its front door was shut for the night. And yet, I thought, the further we walked the nearer we were to eventually hitting a street I recognised.
     ‘You’re very optimistic,’ she said.
     ‘I’ve always thought you can influence the outcome by the way you think,’ I said, while she looked unconvinced. ‘I know these streets…’ I went on, and her look changed to one of incredulity. ‘I mean I don’t know this actual street but I can picture the area on the map and it’s impossible to get lost. As long as we keep walking, sooner or later we’ll reach a familiar street.’
     ‘They all look familiar to me,’ she said. ‘Familiar to each other.’
     I had to admit she was right, and for a moment I imagined we’d entered another world in which quiet city streets could multiply. It was that kind of evening. It felt weird. The only limits seemed to be those of my imagination.


IT WAS ONLY when we heard the telephone ringing in the next street that we realised how strangely quiet it had been up until then. Not only were the streets we were walking through devoid of traffic, but there was no distant murmur of cars heading west on the Marylebone Road. There were no sirens wailing beyond Baker Street, no Tube trains rumbling underneath our feet, there was no drunken abuse being hurled from pub doorways. There weren’t any pubs.
     So we both heard the phone before we reached the street. The ringing got louder as we approached the house it was coming from: a house with dark windows just like those on either side, with nothing special about it apart from this insistent ringing.
     I looked at Annie and she smiled nervously. I raised my eyebrows and we carried on past without stopping.
     ‘I wonder who’s ringing,’ she said as we turned into the next street.
     I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It must be important to keep ringing for so long and this late.’ The sound was barely audible now and I realised that was because other noises had intruded. I could plainly hear the faint hum of passing traffic and the light step of pedestrians coming from the end of the street.
We turned right and a hundred yards later stumbled blinking into Marylebone High Street. Looking at each other, we said nothing. I just took a cigarette from the pack squeezed down my boot and lit up.
‘It’s straightforward now,’ I said, loping into my stride and casting an eye back for Annie. She seemed to be walking closer to me, whereas I had expected she might back off now we were in more familiar surroundings. I slowed down fractionally to allow her to catch up. If she did decide to see me, would I always be as thoughtful? Was that what she was thinking?
     We walked on.
     ‘This is it,’ I said, taking a step back from the building and looking up at the full height of it. ‘It doesn’t exactly leap out at you, does it?’
     There was no hotel sign, just a polished brass plaque bearing the number 23. Something about it disturbed me and the pulse in my head returned. I made a mental note to drink several glasses of water before going to bed. ‘Why so low key?’ I asked, nodding towards the hotel.
     Annie shrugged. ‘They don’t need to try? I don’t know.’
     For a few moments we both stood there awkwardly, a yard apart in front of the hotel.
     ‘Well, thank you,’ I began as I bent down to kiss her on the cheek. But I didn’t finish because she turned her face towards mine and met my mouth with hers. She allowed the tiniest amount of give and I could sense the hardness of her teeth behind the softness of her lips. I felt an instant, euphoric pleasure.
     Annie pulled away and looked down. Apart from feeling I ought to apologise for the taste of my cigarettes, I didn’t know what to say or do.
     Annie was muttering something about going in before they shut the door. Her cheeks were flushed.
‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she said as she made for the doors, probably hoping I wouldn’t ask the question I wanted to ask: could I see her again? She looked back. I’d started to look away and my hair had fallen forward to curtain my face, so she almost certainly couldn’t make out my expression.
     I watched through the glass in the door until she’d collected her key and been swallowed by the ornate, gilt-decorated lift, then threw my head back and took in a deep breath from the stifling night. I made off down the street like a child wading through the shallows at the seashore. My mind was swimming with pictures of Annie’s upturned face, thoughts about seeing her again and the smells and sensations of her hair brushing my cheeks as we kissed. I found myself yearning for more. There was no excitement the equal of this. Anything really was possible now. I turned left, and right at the bottom of the street, then left again, heading east.
Because my head was full of Annie Risk it took me a while to realise I was locked back into the maze of streets it had taken us so long to negotiate before. It was the silence that made me realise it and, once again, only when I heard the faint ringing of a telephone. Something made me believe that it was not only the same telephone, but that it had been ringing non-stop since we’d passed it on the way to the hotel.
     Soon I was in the very same street and approaching the house. The ringing grew louder. I looked around: the street was empty, all the windows plunged into dark reflection. The thick air enveloped me like the still waters of a deep pool. The telephone continued to ring.
     I reached into my boot for a cigarette and spun the wheel on my lighter.
     The telephone rang.
     I took a deep drag and dropped the cigarette without bothering to grind it with my boot heel. Afterwards I couldn’t fully account for what I did next except by restating the fact that it was a weird evening. Getting lost in streets I thought I knew. Also, I was high on a cocktail of drink, cigarettes, arousal, imagination and Annie Risk. It felt as if the universe were spinning around me. I felt a compulsion and I didn’t question it. I just went ahead and did it.
     Within moments I had climbed the four steps and tried the door, only to find it locked. I took off my jacket and bunched it up against a small square pane in the window. Delivering one swift punch to the jacket I broke the glass which seemed to melt rather than shatter and flow into the interior gloom.
The telephone was still ringing.
     I reached an arm through the hole and fiddled with the catch until it sprang open. The window opened easily after that and I jumped into the room. For one sickening airborne instant I feared the floor would give way under my feet, but it was solid.
     I crouched and looked around. The ringing seemed to be coming from a room deeper inside the house. Slipping into my jacket I stepped as lightly as possible to the door, my way lit by the glow of streetlamps. In the hallway, illuminated by a faint glimmer from the half-moon of stained glass above the door, I orientated myself. The ringing was coming from the dark end of the hall. My breathing had become shallow. It was not only that I was frightened by the possibility of disturbing the owner of the house, I was still gripped by the feeling that this wasn’t an ordinary evening. I was buzzing. I had to answer the phone. It was important.
     At the end of the hall were two doors.
     I tried them both. The telephone was behind the second.
     I saw it from the doorway. Black and lobster-like it sat hunched on a small wooden table draped with a white sheet which looked as if it had been daubed with black ink.
     It was still ringing; now, of course, louder than ever.
     The thick carpet sucked at my feet as I started to cross the room and I worried I might lose a boot. The air in the room smelt musty and old, as if by opening the door I had broken the seal on a long-kept secret. Perhaps the phone had always been ringing. Air swirled past me as I used my arms like a swimmer to move forward.
     I hesitated for a moment as I stood over the little table. What if the phone went dead just before I picked it up? I almost hoped it would.
     I lifted the receiver and the ringing stopped. The Bakelite felt clammy in my hand as I raised it to my ear. On the edge of hysteria a woman’s voice just had the chance to utter these words – ‘Carl! Help! Come quickly, Carl! Please!’ – before the connection was severed.
     As I stood there in the darkness and the line buzzed, I became more and more frightened.
     I didn’t tell you my name, did I? That was deliberate. As you’ll have guessed, my name is Carl.

-

Regicide is due out from Solaris on the first of September. For further information on the publisher and author please visit their respective websites:

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Previewing a Preview: Regicide by Nicholas Royle

On Monday we'll be posting our first example of a new type of content for the Twisted Tales blog: preview chapters of exciting upcoming horror releases. Over the coming months, mixed in with the usual reviews, event news, articles and interviews, we hope to be able to bring you chapters or excerpts of unreleased forthcoming horror titles (with the kind permission of authors and publishers). The first book to be given this treatment is Nicholas Royle's Regicide. Here's the blurb:

Carl meets Annie Risk and falls for her. Hurt by a recent relationship, she resists becoming involved. A chance find offers distraction: Carl stumbles across part of a map to an unknown town. He becomes convinced it represents the city of his dreams, where ice skaters turn quintuple loops and trumpeters hit impossibly high notes.... where Annie Risk will agree to see him again. But if he ever finds himself in the streets on his map, will they turn out to be the land of his dreams or the world of his worst nightmares?

British Fantasy Award winner Nicholas Royle has written a powerful story set in a nightmarish otherworld of fathers and sons, hopes and dreams, love and death.

So check back on Monday morning for the enticing first chapter of Regicide which is due out from Solaris this September. For further information on the publisher and author please visit their respective websites:

Monday 15 August 2011

Limbo reviewed by Tim Franklin

Developed by PlayDead
Published by PlayDead
Released in 2010
Available for Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, PC (Steam)
Certificate: Mature (M) - advisory only

As Limbo opens, you are presented with a forest of black trees, huge trunks stretching the height of the screen in a barcode pattern of black, white light, and more black. Behind and between them the forest stretches away, deeper, wrapped in heavy mist. The earth is black loam covered in black grass, and the light that penetrates the gloom is diffused by the constant fog. Where a solid beam of light makes its mark, it is painfully bright; over-saturated as a bad photograph. A little boy opens his bright white eyes and blinks - perhaps you didn’t notice him, lying on his back in the grass, because he too is completely black. He sits up, and now you’re into the game. You walk to the right, and begin your journey.

You will notice the way Limbo is presented to you before you notice what is being presented. In the videogame graphic landscape, currently dominated by hyper-realism and brown urban palettes, Limbo’s expressionistic greyscale startles and charms. Limbo’s game director Arnt Jensen developed the art style for Limbo while working as a concept artist at IO Interactive, as a way to keep himself sane in the increasingly corporate work environment. After an initial aborted foray into programming the game himself, he released a video of Limbo’s art in motion onto the internet, seeking out developers who could turn his animation into a game. The team that formed from this search is now the game studio Playdead, and comparing the final game to Jensen’s mock-up it’s apparent that the consistent, striking art style has been the guiding principle throughout Limbo’s development, informing the other aspects of the game’s design.

Although the doll-headed profile of the human(oid) characters will prompt some comparisons with Burton, Limbo is closer to the eerie gothic illustrations of Edward Gorey, or the expressionist silent cinema of Germany in the 1920s. The forests later give way to an urban hell straight out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927): environments warp and mutate to produce dreamlike distortions of scale that evoke Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The nameless protagonist is tiny in the forest, pursued by a gargantuan spider and dwarfed by the trees all around, but his encounters with industrial machinery suggest a built environment more to his scale. The random junctures between radically distinct environments, arbitrary mechanisms and improbable urban constructions throw the notion of a consistent world into doubt. The effect is uncanny and unsettling.

The sound design in Limbo deserves a special mention: eerie, airy and industrial, the synthesised soundscape hisses with a low level of static and an understated note of menace. It’s a benchmark in restraint, and combines with the panoramic hugeness and stark desaturation of the game’s environments to create a deeply immersive experience that floods the senses with white noise while depriving them of detail. When something disturbs this equilibrium you fix on it immediately. Limbo is best played in a dark room, in an empty house, with headphones clamped over your ears.

Your little boy will die, often; strangely silent as his neck snaps, his back breaks, and his torso is chewed up or his head is impaled with sudden rag-doll violence on a spike and the lights in his eyes go out. The world is littered with death-traps, some accidental (there is no shortage of deadly drops, precarious tree trunks or shorting electric circuits) and others literal, apparently constructed by Limbo’s itinerant pack of lost boys who appear from time to time to lethally bully your avatar and then flee. The art style colludes with the environments to make them even more deadly, obscuring some threats by blending them into the background and making others literally undetectable. This doesn’t feel like a failure on the designers’ part, but more like the product of a malicious and mischievous sense of humour. Often the only way to crack a puzzle is to die in the teeth of it, again and again. It’s a testament to the charm of the game and the satisfaction of completing one of Limbo’s deathtrap puzzles that this morbid design mantra will rarely spoil your fun.

Limbo channels the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft (of Cthulhu fame). Trapped in an incomprehensible universe of perpetually shifting rules and geometry, your boy is treated less with malice than with supreme indifference by his many murderers. Death at the spear-tipped talons of your spider nemesis is particularly ignominious: immediately bored with its kill, the arachnid flicks away your tiny corpse and returns to its previous repose.

Despite the persistent terror, this isn’t a nihilistic experience. After every failure you are presented with an immediate chance to repeat, and potentially escape, the previously fatal trap. There is always a way to succeed - inevitably, given that this is a game and not a Beckett play - but it still feels significant. Coffined in spider silk, enslaved by a mental parasite, trapped in a slowly filling water-tank, the nameless protagonist will engineer (or stumble across) some way to escape from his bind, rendering his previous deaths inconsequential. It will just take a few drownings or decapitations to figure out how to get to that point. Despite having no facial features except for eyes, your boy seems to be plucky and likable. Compare this to the state of the torture porn genre, a realm where violence begets deeper and deeper violence, and your little protagonist’s adventures become a humanist crusade to assert personhood in the face of an uncaring universe.

Limbo’s gameplay is satisfying and simple. It’s a puzzle platformer, a genre that went neglected for years until Portal (Valve, 2007) reminded everyone what was so fun about it - encountering seemingly impassable obstacles, from which you must glean some notion of a path and a plan before committing yourself to a rapid bout of twitchy reflex gaming that will either transport you to the other side, or the grave. Limbo shares a 2D design with its ancient forebears Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (Oddworld Inhabitants, 1997) and Heart of Darkness (Amazing Studio, 1998), as well as their penchant for graphically inventive deaths and Heart of Darkness’s child protagonist. The puzzles rely on a modern physics engine which is subtly implemented. You may find yourself getting stuck on puzzles that cry out for binary solutions (switch on or switch off?) but which must be resolved by careful manipulation of momentum, inertia, and later in the game, magnetism and gravity. There are entire games in the marketplace devoted to each of these conceits; Limbo bends the rules of the game world a little at a time, never staying too long with any one idea.

Limbo is in fact very slight; a play-through should clock in at about the 4 hour mark. Given the low price-point for the game, this doesn’t grate too much (pound for pound Limbo compares favourably with cinema and comes out even stevens against budget DVDs), but the ending will come as a surprise, appearing at no particular dramatic juncture. This is perhaps a weakness of Limbo; while the levels are immaculately designed, there is nearly no narrative structure. You progress from left to right, away from one trial and towards another. This is made tense by the sympathy the hapless protagonist generates, and the awful beauty of the world he is locked in, and the game constantly innovates both its puzzles and landscape, pulling you on with pure entertainment. But the context for the boy’s actions - he seems to be seeking out a girl - is only suggested in very fleeting moments throughout the adventure. Even Mario had more plot.

Limbo is a creative whole. The plot and the gameplay have been folded around a singular graphic style that is never compromised. Purity of purpose has created something that is both beautiful and playable, wince-inducing and addictive. Limbo knows its limits, and perhaps that is the real reason for its abrupt ending: when the good ideas run out, the game stops. Compared to the lacklustre padding in many mainstream games, this seems immensely preferable: a short, sinister and utterly unique little game that will make you die again and again and again and come right on back for more.

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Timothy Franklin works for Lancashire's literary development agency, Litfest. He's nearing the end of a course in playwriting at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, and a collection of reviews and mad railings at the government can be found at his blog, Unsuitable for Adults. He's a gamer, and that's where his interest in horror is most keenly focused.

Monday 8 August 2011

Photos from Hellbound Hearts

On Friday we held our special event Hellbound Hearts: The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror. Despite contending with some decidedly un-spooky weather, it being a gloriously sunny day outside, you arrived in your droves to hear readings from Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane and Mark Morris. The authors were then joined by Twisted Tales stalwart Ramsey Campbell and the quartet discussed the influence of Clive Barker, their favourite moments of his career and some of the issues raised by his work. Particularly wonderful to hear were the anecdotes Ramsey was able to offer as someone who was present at the emergence of Clive as a figure in the Horror community, and who played a role in his development as an author (albeit one downplayed with some modesty by Ramsey who insisted that he just happened to be a writer who was there, and thus showed a young Clive that "it can be done").

The event also doubled as the UK book launch for the Hellbound Hearts anthology and we were glad to sell a good number of copies of this wonderful collection of stories inspired by the Hellraiser mythology written by such horror luminaries as Conrad Williams, Neil Gaiman, Karen Armstrong, Tim Lebbon, Christopher Golden and others. If you didn't pick up a copy on the night (you missed the opportunity to get it signed by both editors Paul and Marie, as well as a contributor in the form of Mark) you can pick it up from all good stockists.

Here are the photos from the event, we'd love to hear your thoughts so please comment below, send us an e-mail, facebook message, or tweet

(I apologise for the darkness of some of these photos, as I've already mentioned it was very sunny outside and positioning our readers in front of a glass wall may have confused my camera...)

Marie O'Regan reading her story 'The Real Me' to our audience

Paul Kane takes to the podium to read his story 'Strobe'

Paul Kane reading with Mark and Marie looking on

Mark reading his story 'Salad Days'
Ramsey Campbell regales the audience with Clive Barker anecdotes.


Four horror authors discussing the work of Clive Barker

There are plenty more Twisted Tales events in the pipeline so keep checking back for the latest news, in the meantime we'll have plenty of weekly content in the form of reviews, interviews and features.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

‘Midian: Down into the Unconscious’ by Suzanne J. Barbieri

Following on from last week's analysis of The Hellbound Heart, Suzanne J. Barbieri turns her attention to another of Clive Barker's novellas: Cabal.

WARNING: Contains significant spoilers.

The novella Cabal concerns the personality; the face we show to the world at large as opposed to our true hidden selves. The story examines the concepts of Duality and Persona, and the discovery of the Unconscious. The legendary underground city of Midian is home to the Tribes of the Moon; the Nightbreed. Despite the appearances of the Breed, and their taste for human flesh, they are not the villains. The real monsters are the humans who have for centuries persecuted the Breed for the crime of being different.

The story’s main character, Aaron Boone, makes the journey down into Midian and discovers the truth about duality, his own included. Many of the Breed are literally ‘two-faced’. When moving in the outside world, the Conscious, they wear human faces, while in Midian, the Unconscious, they wear their beast-faces; their true faces. As does everyone. None more so than Boone’s psychiatrist Dr Decker.

Decker’s alter-ego is a serial killer called the Mask. ‘Persona’ (the term coined by Jung to describe the public face behind which we conceal our true self), is the Latin word for an actor’s mask. Decker frames Boone for the murders he has committed as the Mask. Boone, plagued for much of his life with mental problems, has put his trust in Dr Decker, and although he cannot remember ever having committed the murders, he feels he shouldn’t doubt the doctor’s words.

Boone first hears whispers of Midian whilst in an asylum. Midian, they say, is a place of refuge for those with nothing left to cling to; the monsters and outcasts of society whose last hope is of finding the one place that will take them in and forgive them their sins, however profane those sins might be. Boone has reached the lowest point of his life. He believes himself to be a murderer, and is on the run. After a failed suicide attempt he decides that if death cannot embrace him, his place is in Midian.

After travelling many miles across virtually desolate terrains, Midian appears as if out of nowhere. Boone’s first explorations of Midian would have it a ghost town. Lightless and empty, it appears to be uninhabited. Desolate, he heads off to the town’s vast cemetery in search of a place to rest his weary body.

As he sleeps Midian stirs, as though from the depths of his dreams. At first an animal’s growls invade his dreams, waking him; then from the shadows, two creatures emerge who challenge his right to enter their refuge. One of these creatures is the shape-shifting Peloquin “... more reptile than mammal” who transforms before Boone’s eyes, inhaling his lizard features like cigarette smoke. Boone’s pleas that he belongs in Midian are ridiculed by Peloquin, who insists that Boone is not the murderer he thinks he is: “You’re not Nightbreed... You’re meat... meat for the beast.”

Thus Boone is at first denied Midian, because he is not ready. It takes death to make him ready. He must cast off his old life and outmoded concepts of reality so that he may be reborn into the richer world of the Unconscious. Only then may he enter the underground city of Midian. Yet Boone’s literal and symbolic death is a willing sacrifice. He wants so much to explore his Unconscious and understand his duality that no price is too much.

What Boone discovers is that he does indeed have a secret self, and that other self is not a murderer, but the Saviour of the Breed; he is Cabal, “who unmade Midian”, and who will remake it in the image of his choosing. Unlike Decker, whose suppressed dark side takes him over, Boone accepts his duality and takes on board the lessons of the Unconscious, and is made whole by the knowledge that he is something more and other than human.

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Copyright © Suzanne J. Barbieri -First published in Clive Barker, Mythmaker for the Millennium

Monday 1 August 2011

Marie O’Regan interviewed by David McWilliam

Marie O'Regan is a British Fantasy Award-nominated horror author and editor. She has had fiction published in the UK, USA, Canada, Italy and Germany, and her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published by Rainfall Books in 2006. Her genre journalism has appeared in such magazines as Dark Side, Rue Morgue, Total Sci-Fi Online, Fortean Times and Death Ray, among others, and she is currently editing a number of anthologies, both separately and with her husband, as well as co-Chairing FantasyCon 2011, to be held in Brighton [about which we've previously interviewed her]. Her first, co-edited, anthology, Hellbound Hearts, was released in 2009. A book of interviews with luminaries in the horror field, Voices in the Dark, was released early in 2011 by McFarland. Marie served in various roles on the British Fantasy Society Committee from 2001-08, including editing their publications and maintaining their website, and was Chairperson from 2004-08. Marie lives in Derbyshire with her husband (author Paul Kane) and children. To find out more about Marie, please visit www.marieoregan.net.

DM: What were your formative influences as a horror reader?
MOR: The first book of horror fiction I ever read was an anthology, Thin Air, aged nine. I kept taking it out of the school library every week until I left, at which point they gave it to me. It was a huge book, with stories such as ‘The Ash Tree’, ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’… classics. After that I was hooked, and read everything I could find in the genre, moving from classic stories like those above to books by King, Herbert… and then I found the Books of Blood, which was quite unlike anything I’d read before. Barker has remained one of my favourite authors ever since. I didn’t just read horror, though – as a child I read Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, adventure stories such as the Wilbur Smith novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs, crime novels, Westerns (I went through a big Western phase in my mid-teens: Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey etc.), fantasy and science fiction, including Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Moorcock, Mary Gentle, Tolkien, to name just a few – but horror was, and is, my first love. In film and TV, I remember watching Saturday night adaptations of things like The Ash Tree and The Signalman and being terrified, and of watching horror movies at the weekends in the dark, so as not to disturb my parents; the old Universal movies, Hammer films – Christopher Lee was the first Dracula I saw, so that remains a favourite; Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney – fantastic films.

DM: What was your first introduction to Clive's work? How did it affect you and how did it alter your perceptions of what horror is and can be?
MOR: It was the Books of Blood; I had the six-volume paperback set that came out. I still have them, and they’re very worn now, but I love them – especially since Clive Barker very kindly signed and drew in all of them for me a few years ago. The stories just had such a broad canvas – they wrote about horror in ways I hadn’t come across before, and there was a beauty and lyricism to even the most graphic tales. And subsequent books and then the films just enlarged upon that – showing a fantastical element I hadn’t come across in quite that way before.

DM: In what ways do you consider yourself to be influenced by Clive's work as a writer of horror fiction?
MOR: Oh God, where to start – I think probably in every way. I love his use of language, the breadth and scope of his work, the sheer scale – and, whether a short story or a novel, the emotion contained in his work and the way he expresses that. As with all writers, I read a lot, and very widely – Clive has always stood out, and continues to do so. And since I was lucky enough to meet him, he’s always been so kind – he continues to be an inspiration, to this day.

DM: One of the distinctive features of your fiction, like Clive’s, is the way in which you invest a great deal in your characters, lending your horror stories real emotional intensity. Is this something you consciously aim for?
MOR: Yes, it is. The key element to any story, for me, is the emotion invested in the characters. Without living, breathing, feeling characters, a story will fall flat, and won’t engage the reader. I try to make my characters as human as possible, and want readers to be able to empathise with them. It’s important to feel a story, as well as just read the words, to evoke an emotional response.

DM: What do you think of the numerous adaptations of Clive's works in various different media?
MOR: I think some of the early adaptations, like Rawhead Rex, were a bit suspect – but from Hellraiser on I’m a huge fan. I think my favourite movie adaptation, even though it’s flawed and could have been a much better film, is Nightbreed. I also love Candyman, Midnight Meat Train, Dread… pretty much all the later ones, really. There’s a very distinctive tone to Clive’s work that I love.

DM: How did the idea for Hellbound Hearts come about? To what extent did you aim to remain true to the mythology of the Cenobites and Lemarchand's Configuration?
MOR: Paul [Kane] had the initial idea and chatted to Clive about it on the phone – Clive loved the idea, and was so supportive, right the way through – even to painting us the first new Cenobite in twenty years, ‘Vestimenti’. He also gave us a foreword for the book. We wanted to remain true to the original mythos as contained in Clive’s novella, The Hellbound Heart, but we also wanted to allow the authors free rein to create new Cenobites and visions within that mythos. We were lucky to get a stunning line-up of authors, including Kelley Armstrong, Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola, Peter Atkins, Conrad Williams, Sarah Pinborough, Mick Garris, Tim Lebbon, Richard Christian Matheson, Nancy Holder, Simon Clark, Steve Niles, Sarah Langan, Nicholas Vince, Yvonne Navarro, Mark Morris, Barbie Wilde, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Nancy Kilpatrick, Gary A. Braunbeck & Lucy A. Snyder and Chaz Brenchley, an introduction by Stephen Jones and afterword from Doug Bradley – and Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean kindly allowed us to reprint their Hellraiser graphic story, ‘Wordsworth’. I think Hellbound Hearts shows a very broad interpretation of that mythos, and it’s all the richer for that.

DM: As was discussed in my interview with Paul, the two of you are editing the Mammoth Book of Body Horror. What was the impetus behind putting this anthology together?
MOR: Both of us are big fans of body horror, in literary and film form. We realised there’s very little out there in this sub-genre, so set about collecting both classic and new takes on the field.

DM: What are the attractions of body horror for you as a writer?
MOR: I think body horror is such a varied subgenre, when you look at it – the options to write in that area are wide open; from straightforward stories of bodies changing or altering through horrific or even supernatural means, to the more psychological aspects – such as the lengths people go to in order to achieve the perfect body, diseases like body dysmorphia and what that could make a person do… body horror offers a valid way of writing about all these things.

DM: I believe that you are also editing an anthology of women’s ghost stories; could you tell me a little about its focus and aims?
MOR: I am, it’s called The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, and that’s about as much detail as I can give at the moment, in terms of content. It’ll be released towards the end of 2012. Ghost stories are my favourite form, and I’ve always wanted to edit an anthology of these. That tied in with the current fuss about gender bias, lack of women submitting to markets etc… I wanted to put together a book of classic and new ghost fiction by women, to show that there is (and has always been) a lot of female talent out there, regardless of arguments to the contrary, and perhaps to encourage some new talent in the process. I’ve been lucky to find some amazing stories, from some amazing women.

DM: Aside from the publications mentioned above, what are your plans for writing and editing in the near future?
MOR: Editing-wise, there are a number of other projects at varying stages – some in progress, some still at very early stages. As far as my writing goes, I have some short stories out in anthologies this year, and am currently searching for a home for a supernatural novel. I’m also working on a script, and various other fiction projects here and there. As soon as I have concrete news on any of those, I’ll put them on my website