Reminder: Event in Liverpool

If you can't make Friday's Charity event in Lancaster then do not despair as all three authors will also be doing an event in Liverpool at our traditional Twisted Tales home of Waterstones Liverpool One on Saturday 16th June.

Twisted Tales of the Supernatural
An evening of horror and dark fantasy stories from some of the top authors in the field

Waterstones Liverpool One, 12 College Lane, L1 3DL
Saturday 16^th June 2012, 5 - 6.30pm

With readings by
Graham Joyce
Best-selling, award-winning author of The Tooth Fairy, Memoirs of a Master Forger (as William Heaney), The Silent Land, and Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Alison Littlewood
Author of A Cold Season, as featured by the Richard and Judy Book Club, and with short story publications including Best Horror of the Year
Simon Kurt Unsworth
World Fantasy Award nominated Lancaster-based author of Lost Places, Uneasy Tales, and Quiet Houses

There will also be a Q & A with the authors and signing session.
Free Event

Facebook Event

Twisted Tales at World Book Night

April 23rd is World Book Night and as part of Liverpool's celebrations there's a big event featuring all sorts of authors at Waterstones Liverpool One. We'll be there to close off the evening with some great Twisted Tales readings from Ramsey Campbell and Alison Littlewood.

The whole evening starts at 5pm, but the Twisted Tales segment will begin closer to 7pm.

Other events on the night include a quiz, a raffle with some great prizes (horror and otherwise), poetry readings, and a reading and Q+A with local favourite Maureen Lee.

The event is FREE to attend.

Part of the World Book Night celebration is the great book give-away, there are some great horror books in this year's list and we'll have some copies to give away on the night to the first few audience members to arrive.

 Facebook link for event.

PS Publishing Showcases in Lancaster and Liverpool this January

January 2012 sees Twisted Tales branch out into Lancashire as we bring our PS Publishing Showcase to Lancaster on Saturday 28th January, the day after our Liverpool based event.

At the moment the only way to reserve a FREE ticket is to contact us at twistedtalesevents@gmail.com There's no commitment, we just need to know how many are turning up in advance so that we can make sure that there is sufficient seating.

NEW EVENT: PS Publishing Showcase

Here are the details on our next event(s). Poster and facebook page coming soon, but for now book it into your diaries:

Twisted Tales presents...
A PS Publishing Showcase

Featuring readings by:

Ramsey Campbell: 'Britain's most respected living horror writer' (Oxford Companion to English Literature), 'He must be given serious consideration as the greatest horror writer of our time, and perhaps of all time' (S. T. Joshi)

Pete Crowther: 'Reports of the demise of the darker genres abound, but vigorous, genuinely fearsome work such as Crowther's demonstrates that the genre is decidedly undead' (Publishers Weekly)

Paul Kane: Award-winning author of the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy and PS’s The Butterfly Man, co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

Plus a panel discussion, Q&A and signing session
6-8pm Friday 27th January 2012 at Waterstone's Liverpool One, L1 3DL
and
6-8pm Saturday 28th January 2012 at Waterstone's King Street, Lancaster, LA1 1JN

To book your FREE tickets, please email PS Liverpool and/or PS Lancaster to:
twistedtalesevents@gmail.com

Happy Halloween: Event Round-Up

Happy Halloween fellow Twisted Tale-ers, and happy birthday to us!

This weekend marks the 1st birthday of Twisted Tales and we sealed the deal in fine fashion with a double bill of events. The first at Halton Lea Library in Runcorn, the second in our more regular location of Waterstone's Liverpool One. Both events were cursed by my failure to bring my camera which means we've begged and borrowed the photos you see below, other than that they went superbly. Thanks to everyone who came to the events, and to everyone who has come to all our other events over the last year - don't worry, there are plenty more to come...

An Evening of Occult Horror

Halton Lea Library, Runcorn.

Part of the library's 10th annual Paranormal Week. Originally the billing included John Reppion but he had to pull out at the last minute, Adam Nevill and Ramsey Campbell were more than capable of taking up the slack however and entertained the substantial Runcorn crowd to brilliant readings from The Ritual and The Grin of the Dark respectively. There was then time for a panel discussion between Adam and Ramsey about the nature of the occult and its role in fiction, before being thrown open to audience questions.

The staff at the library were great and set everything up perfectly (shout out to Janette and Mike) and the audience were superb.

(Photos from eximiusparanormal.wordpress.com )

Adam Nevill reading from his novel The Ritual.

Adam and Ramsey discuss the occult,
Twisted Tale-ers David McWilliam and Glyn Morgan in the middle.

House of Fear
Waterstone's Liverpool One, Liverpool

An event tied to the release of the new haunted house anthology House of Fear published by Solaris. A good sized crowd took their seats to hear readings from three authors who feature in the collection: Nicholas Royle, Lisa Tuttle and Adam Nevill. Once again there was time for a panel discussion and the three authors swapped their tales of hauntings (or lack of) and spoke about their inspiration and writing process, we then took a few questions from the audience before signing some books.

(As is probably evident these photos are from a camera phone and not of great quality, but thanks to Anna Garnett for providing them. Hopefully some others are on their way to us soon and they'll be added into the post once they've been received).

Twisted Tale-er Glyn Morgan introducing the night's proceedings.

Adam Nevill reading from Apartment 16.

 

David McWilliam leads the panel discussion on haunted houses with Nick, Lisa and Adam.

Once again, thanks to everyone who came out for their pre-Halloween scares. We announced our next event this weekend too - expect full details in a midweek post.

If you have any pictures from the events please let us know, we'd love to see them and feature some on our blog (fully credited of course).

Once again: happy Halloween, but remember - horror lives on all year round!

NEW EVENT: An Evening of Occult Horror at Halton Lea Library, Runcorn

We are very happy to be able to unveil the first of our planned events to celebrate this year's Halloween, and also our first anniversary of promoting the best of 21st century horror. 

This event has been organised with Halton Lea Library as part of their Paranormal Week and will feature three fantastic talents giving readings, discussing the occult in horror fiction, and answering your questions.

Twisted Tales are proud to be able to present to you:

Ramsey Campbell,

A stalwart of Twisted Tales events and one of the most qualified people in the world to talk about the occult in horror fiction. Ramsey has won numerous awards for his fiction, with his new novel Ghosts Know forthcoming from PS Publishing.

Adam Nevill,

Formerly the editor for the Virgin Horror line and now a bestselling author in his own right, with his third novel The Ritual released in 2011. We are very excited that Adam has agreed to travel so far to be with us and discuss the role of the occult in horror, which is prominent in his own fiction.

John Reppion,

Co-author (with Leah Moore) of graphic novels such as Raise the Dead and The Complete Dracula, John also wrote 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool and so is uniquely placed to compare the fictional use of the occult with reported spooks and scares from Merseyside. He also kindly designed our amazing event poster for us.

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The details in brief:
Thursday 27th October,

7-9.30pm,

Halton Lea Library, Runcorn,

FREE event -

reserve tickets by e-mailing

paranormalweek@gmail.com

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Hopefully see many of you there! (Official Facebook event here)

Twisted Tales #3 Roundup

On Friday 28th January we had our third Twisted Tales event. After the fantastic benchmarks set by the first two events we always knew we'd have a difficult time with this third event - not being tied into a specific book launch or another event such as Halloween. The support of the people of Liverpool, and indeed the wider area as well, however has bowled us over and the third event was as much a success as the previous two. Below you can see some pictures of the event which featured three authors giving readings: superb Twisted Tales debuts from Alison Littlewood and Joel Lane and a repeat performance from the ever brilliant Conrad Williams. Once again our readers were a joy to work with and we cannot express our gratitude enough, but big thanks also has to go out to the crowd of supporters who came along to hear the readings, ask questions, buy books and get them signed. I'd especially like to thanks Ramsey Campbell and his wife Jenny, Simon Bestwick, Allyson Bird, and Sharon Ring. Last but not least we should thank TTA Press's Roy Gray who sold copies of Black Static and Interzone on the night and helped to publicise the event, the support of such respectable publications and figures from the horror community fills us with confidence that we can keep running Twisted Tales events both in Liverpool and beyond promoting horror into the 21st century.

 
We'd love to get your feedback on the event so that we can improve future ones. Please enjoy the photos below and then leave us a comment or two:

Alison J. Littlewood giving her reading

Joel Lane reading with Alison and Conrad in the background

 

Joel reading to the crowd

Conrad giving his reading

Twisted Tales #2

Friday 26th November was our second Twisted Tales event. Obviously we knew that we had a hard act to follow with the great show and attendance of the last event. However, we were not to be disappointed. We had great attendance which is a brilliant result given that the first one had the advantage of being associated with Halloween. As for the performance, we can't praise our three authors (Simon Kurt Unsworth, Paul Finch, and Graham Joyce) enough - they provided the varied, entertaining and spirited readings we want to show off at Twisted Tales and were a joy to have in Liverpool. Initial feedback from the audience was also overwhelmingly positive and TTA Press seemed to get a good night of it too with a reasonable number of magazine sales and subscriptions taken out.

Overall it went really well and we'd  love to get your feedback on the night. Below are some of the photos taken:

Simon Kurt Unsworth reading his pirate horror tale "An Afternoon with Danny"

Simon Kurt Unsworth

Paul Finch reading "Elderly Lady, Lives Alone"

Paul Finch who got the best post story "Ooooo" from the audience

Graham Joyce at work

Graham Joyce

Graham Joyce reading a very moving section of new novel The Silent Land

Twisted Tales #2 Coming Soon

On the 26th November we are proud to be able to bring you the follow up to the recent smash hit Twisted Tales event.

Twisted Tales #2 will take place at the same venue, Waterstone's Liverpool One, at the same time, 6pm, and it will bring you the same high quality short fiction from published authors. We're co-hosting this event with TTA Press's Black Static, which celebrated editor Ellen Datlow describes as 'the most consistently excellent horror magazine published'. All of the authors have appeared in either Black Static or its precursor The Third Alternative. This time we'll be hearing stories from Paul Finch, Simon Kurt Unsworth, and Graham Joyce.

Paul's latest novel Stronghold has recently attracted a movie option, and his festive horror novella, Sparrowhawk, will be published by Pendragon Press in time for Christmas. Paul has a short story in Zombie Apocalypse, recently praised in The Financial Times. To date, he's had ten books and nearly 300 stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic, and has won International Horror Guild and British Fantasy Awards.

  

Simon is a World Fantasy Award-Nominated author who has a collection of stories, "Lost Places", in print with Ash Tree Press, a second collection is on its way from PS Publishing. He has also been widely anthologised in publications such as The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror, Lovecraft Unbound, and Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes.

 

Graham is the Multi-Award-Winning author of The Tooth Fairy, Memoirs of a Master Forger (under the pseudonym William Heaney), The Devil's Ladder, Smoking Poppy, and upcoming The Silent Land, He's also working as part of the writing team for the eagerly awaited horror video game sequel Doom 4.

Friday 26th November 2010

6pm - 8pm

Waterstone's Liverpool One

12 College Lane, L1 3DL

Tickets £2 - On Sale Now

(£2 redeemable against any horror book bought on the night, 
plus it enters you into a draw to win one of four amazing prizes)

To book tickets call 0151 709 9820

Inaugral Event: Twisted Tales #1 for Halloween

Friday 29th of October was the very first Twisted Tales. An amazing 65+ people came to hear authors Tom Fletcher, Nicholas Royle, Conrad Williams, and Ramsey Campbell read a short story each and sign their books at Waterstone's Liverpool One.

Overall we consider the event a massive success and are eternally grateful to the authors for giving us their time, and to everyone who attended. We think, and hope, that a good time was had by all.

Below are a select number of photos taken on the night:

Tom Fletcher

Tom reading to our considerable audience

Tom reading

Nick reading from Black Static

Books!

Conrad Williams

Conrad reading from "Use Once Then Destroy"

Ramsey Campbell reading

Nice audience POV of Ramsey reading

Ramsey reads as the others (and the skull) look on

 Next event: November 26th 2010 - Check back for more info soon!