Blog Posts

8-Bit Childhood: The Games We Played

5/3/2016

I haven’t played videogames in many years. Now, before the pitchforks come out and you all take to Google Maps to figure out where I live so that you can set fire to my house and murder my chickens, let me explain why. I have several other hobbies which take up all of my time. When I’m not writing or reading, I’m training at the gym, and when I’m not doing those three things, I’m trying to keep my son fed and watered and occasionally bathed.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

However, it wasn’t always like this. As a child, and as a spotty teenager, I was a rabid—if not competent—gamer. Many hours were spent steering a mutant blue hedgehog through Green Hill Zone. I could batter the shit out of Dr Robotnik all day long, and Bowser took a pasting just as often. Growing up, console graphics were like modern-day glitches; if a fifteen-year-old was gifted a Frogger cartridge nowadays, and the console upon which to play it, there would be hell to pay. Childline would get involved, there would be lawyers, parents would end up serving ten-to-life in Sing Sing.

My brother and I were fortunate. Over the course of our childhood, we sampled many of the computers and consoles available at the time. Our screeching ZX Spectrum (48KB Ram! That’s less memory than your average garden hose) kept us entertained for years. We made our own games using the three-hundred-page program book which came with the computer, games which turned out to be nothing more than a rudimentary clock slowly ticking around the monitor, or an extremely basic choose-your-own-adventure RPG. So not only were the graphics shit, but you were the one responsible for putting them there in the first place. There was something almost masochistic about that, which is probably why I’m on so much medication as an adult. Thanks, Clive Sinclair.

Things got slightly better with the NES, and then the SNES—which was our main console throughout our entire childhood—but Photoshop was still many years off. Thankfully, we had Mario Paint, a basic drawing utility whose only redeeming feature was its built-in fly-swatting game, Gnat Attack. With Mario Paint, I created many awful 6fps B-movies, which were saved by hooking the whole thing up to a VHS and hitting record.

Still think you’ve got it tough, millennials?

When we weren’t creating our own Mario-themed texture stamps in Mario Paint, my brother and I would spend hour upon hour working our way through Super Mario All-Stars (1993), leading Link upon ridiculously tedious quests in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), kicking seven shades of shit out of each other in Super Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1992), and steering an anthropomorphic fox through the galaxy in Starfox (1993). Other games came and went--F-Zero, Sim-City, Kid Klown in Crazy Chase, Streets of Rage—but those were our mainstays, the ones I always remember playing, and the ones I would happily return to now.

If only the kid, whatshisname, didn’t need a bath once a week.

The Bad Game is out now from The Sinister Horror Company.

YOU DON'T PLAY IT... IT PLAYS YOU.

Hemsby is thriving; a seaside town on the up. The holidaymakers are flooding in, and so is the money. For the majority of those who live there, the resort is idyllic.

But not for Jamie Garrett. Fifteen years old and bored to tears, Hemsby is the last place he wants to be. Aside from the occasional sea rescue, nothing exciting ever happens.

That's about to change as a mysterious new game arrives at the beach-front arcade. No one knows of its origin, or the rules of the game, but soon it is the talk of the resort, attracting children far and wide with its complex gameplay and surreal graphics.

When the children of the resort become the perpetrators of uncharacteristic and brutal violence, Jamie realises that it is a side-effect of the game, and sets out to pull the plug on the machine before it is too late.

Dare you play THE BAD GAME?

Amazon UK
Amazon US

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The Bad Game Release Day

5/2/2016

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The Bad Game, published by those wonderful people at The Sinister Horror Company, is released today. The novel is available as a Kindle book as well as a paperback.

YOU DON'T PLAY IT... IT PLAYS YOU.

Hemsby is thriving; a seaside town on the up. The holidaymakers are flooding in, and so is the money. For the majority of those who live there, the resort is idyllic.

But not for Jamie Garrett. Fifteen years old and bored to tears, Hemsby is the last place he wants to be. Aside from the occasional sea rescue, nothing exciting ever happens.

That's about to change as a mysterious new game arrives at the beach-front arcade. No one knows of its origin, or the rules of the game, but soon it is the talk of the resort, attracting children far and wide with its complex gameplay and surreal graphics.

When the children of the resort become the perpetrators of uncharacteristic and brutal violence, Jamie realises that it is a side-effect of the game, and sets out to pull the plug on the machine before it is too late.

Dare you play THE BAD GAME?

Amazon UK
Amazon US
Waterstones
Barnes & Noble

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Creative Writing Walsall | Six-Week Course

1/3/2016

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I will be teaching a six-week course covering the basics of creative writing at Southcart Books, Walsall. The course begins on Thursday 25th February, and will run every Thursday between 7pm and 9pm. For more information on how to book securely via PayPal to confirm your place on the course, please visit www.creativewritingwalsall.co.uk.

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Film Review: Digging up the Marrow (2014)

6/30/2015

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Whether you like them or not, it seems that found footage films are here to stay. But instead of sticking to the same formulaic and often tedious approach (documentary crew head off into the middle of nowhere in search of witches/ghosts/mythological beasties), filmmakers are finally coming up with new and inventive ways to approach the subgenre, and Adam Green is one such director.

In meta-documentary Digging up the Marrow, Green plays himself, and it’s a shrewd bit of casting as he looks and sounds just like himself. After a brief introduction in which various well-known members of the horror community are asked about their thoughts on monsters, Green is interviewed in his office about a strange piece of fan mail he recently received from a man called William Dekker. According to the missive, monsters are very real. Not only that, but they are living in the ground beneath us in a place the letter’s author has christened ‘The Marrow’.

Intrigued, and more than a little pleased that Dekker has chosen him to expose the world of The Marrow and the creatures therein, Green sets off with his trusty crew (also playing themselves) to investigate.

Dekker (a great tongue-in-cheek performance by Ray Wise) has some secrets of his own, though, and the further Green and his crew, ahem, dig, the more they start to doubt this strange man’s intentions.

Digging up the Marrow is a lot of fun, and should appeal to fans of Holliston and the Hatchet movies, despite being something of a departure for Green. The creature effects (based on the artwork of Alex Pardee) are strong, and Green’s motives (“I’ve always wanted to believe in monsters, ever since I was a kid.”) are plausible, but what really pushes this film up a notch is genre veteran, Ray Wise, who was given plenty of room to improvise, according to a recent magazine interview. Throw in cameos by Kane Hodder, Tom Holland, and Mick Garris, and you’ve got yourself a fun little movie. And if you enjoy it - though it appears to be dividing opinion amongst genre fans - there just might be more to come, perhaps in the form of a TV series. I, for one, would welcome it with open arms.

Dir: Adam Green
Starring: Adam Green, Ray Wise, Kane Hodder
DVD Released: 22 June 2015
Classification: 15

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Wanderlust | Book Cover Reveal

5/20/2015

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I am beyond thrilled to reveal the cover artwork for my forthcoming novel, Wanderlust, released on June 9th by Steamworks Ink. This stunning piece is all down to the magnificent Martin Hanford, whose work has featured on T-shirts, heavy metal album covers, Interzone Magazine, Games Workshop novels, and loads more.

London 1902. Renowned art thief and cat-burglar, Abigale Egars, is good at her job. Assisted by contraptions created by her tinkerer and mentor, Octavius Knight, she is a ghost, evading the Met. at every turn. Unceremoniously abducted from her bed in the dead of night, Abigale learns that The Guild, an insidious and powerful organisation, has implanted a device in her head, a contraption that will administer poison directly into her system at the flick of a switch if she doesn't do what they say.

Blackmailed into stealing three priceless artefacts by The Guild, Abigale must avoid being captured by her arch-nemesis, Detective John Wesley Alcorn, but he's the least of her troubles.

Wizards, magic, necromancers, it's all very real, and Abigale is soon up to her eyeballs in it. Can she survive London, Saint Petersburg and Paris in one piece, steal the triptych and return it to The Guild before the wizards take it from her?

Can she stay alive long enough to save the world?

For review copies, interview requests, and other media enquiries, please contact Adam directly at adammillard@outlook.com or Catherine Stovall at cstovall@steamworksink.com.

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Adam Howe on Writing and Black Cat Mojo

3/16/2015

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Thanks for having me, Adam. Before I start plugging my book like a motherfucker – Black Cat Mojo: available now, folks; it’s awesome – I’d like to tell you how I got here. I won’t start from my birth. The year 2000 ought to do it.

Back then, Hodder & Stoughton and The Observer newspaper ran an international writing competition to coincide with the hardcover release of Stephen King’s non-fiction book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Unpublished writers were invited to write a Stephen King-style story. The winning story would be chosen by Stephen King, and published in the UK paperback edition of On Writing. The winner would also be granted an audience with The King.

Pretty big fucking deal, I’m sure you’ll agree, and I imagine every unpublished horror scribe worth their salt subbed a story; maybe even one or two of you reading this?

The story I submitted – Jumper – follows a mentally unstable shop worker’s reaction to the suicide of a colleague. It was inspired by a suicide that occurred at the shopping mall where I was wage-slaving at an HMV store.

One afternoon, a man leapt to his death from the mall’s top floor, narrowly avoiding squishing one of my workmates. On the ground floor was a bank opposite a McDonald’s. My friend was leaving the bank when she stopped to check her purse to see if she had change for a cheeseburger. Stopping when she did saved her life; or the cheeseburger did, up to you. The man hit the deck directly in front of her. My friend quickly lost her appetite.

The mall was closed early that day – for the cleaning crew to get to work – and shoppers asked to leave. They did so grudgingly, pissed off that they weren’t allowed to ogle the smeared remains of the selfish sod who’d spoiled their shopping experience. I wrote the story in reaction to the crowd that day, and my own dissatisfaction with my job in retail.

For some time, I’d had a gag: Suicidal man threatens to jump from building; crowd gathers below, urging him to jump; man drops bomb onto crowd. Boom-boom, literally. It got a few laughs when I told it.

Now I knew what to do with it.

I’d been writing for years, mostly lame Stephen King knockoffs – funny how things turn out – but Jumper was the first thing I’d written that seemed to really click. This was due largely to what I’d learned from On Writing, especially King’s crash course in rewriting and editing. I followed his advice; hacked away at the story till it was lean and mean and more importantly, under the 3k word limit the competition required.

I was pleased with my effort – it felt like a step up for me – but I had no expectations of winning the competition, and in fact, the morning I got the good news, I’d forgotten I’d even submitted a story.

On learning I’d won – well, as you’d expect, I lost my shit. (Remember Goodfellas? Ray Liotta learns De Niro’s pulled off the Lufthansa heist and he’s pounding the walls of the shower, screaming “Jiiiiimy!” Like that.)

In recent months, I’d been doing a lot of soul-searching, racking up rejection slips and wondering if I was chasing a fool’s dream with this writing malarkey. Just to be published would have been a huge encouragement. It was mind-blowing to think that Stephen King had read something I’d written, let alone that he’d liked it enough to judge me the competition winner. I couldn’t comprehend that I’d actually get to meet the man; years later, and it still seems surreal.

I know I’m not alone here: Stephen King was the first writer whose work really spoke to me. As a kid, I was a sick puppy – sicker dog these days – and I was naturally drawn to the gruesome covers on my mum’s bookshelf. I can vividly recall the illustration of a bug-eyed, blood-soaked Sissy Spacek on the cover of Carrie; and the nightmares that book gave me, when I snuck it from mum’s shelf.

(King likes to hear he gave you nightmares as a kid, by the way.)

Despite the nightmares, I kept on reading, and soon I was compelled to write my own stories – in crayon, at first – filled with vampires and werewolves, killer clowns and rabid dogs. Over the years, as I graduated from crayon to pen to typewriter to computer, I remained a Constant Reader and Stephen King the biggest influence on my work. So to meet the man; to be published in his book…

HOLY SHIT!

It couldn’t happen fast enough.

And it didn’t.

It was another year before On Writing was published in paperback, and my story appeared. Seeing something I’d written in print for the first time, and in Stephen King’s book, no less, and with his endorsement: “Stephen King found the raw, punky style of this story appealing, and said that the surprise ending did, in fact, surprise him.” (I’d punked the King!) It was hard to believe that I hadn’t gone crazy. That this wasn’t just the fever dream of a madman.

It was another year before I’d meet King.

At this time, I was working at a crime bookstore called Murder One. We’d often host author signings. One of them was Peter Straub – in London with his great collection, Magic Terror – whose work I admired as much as King’s. Peter was kind enough to sign my ‘lucky’ copy of On Writing. I hoped it’d be a nice icebreaker for when I met Steve. (Years later, I met Joe Hill at a signing for NOS4A2, and asked him to sign the same lucky book. He politely refused, and I realised in hindsight he probably gets that shit all the time: schmucks asking him to sign his dad’s books. Ha-ha. Sorry, Joe.)

In 2002, the day finally arrived, and I jetted out to New York City. (Insert Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’ here.) The meeting was held at a writer-run bar and grill called The Half King. I was chaperoned by two lovely ladies from Hodder & Stoughton. Nervous as hell, but managing to keep my cool – at least until he arrived.

First impressions: King’s a big dude. He towered above me, lunging forwards for the handshake. “Steve King,” he said. When I introduced myself – stammered some sort of reply – it caused a moment of confusion, because of course I’d used a pseudonym for the story. (My reasons for using the pseudonym are now lost to me; chances are it’d seemed like a good idea when I was drunk.)

My hour with King was over in a heartbeat, and I was so star-struck, it’s hard for me to recall exactly what was said. I made a lame wisecrack about being his biggest fan; that he was having lunch with Annie Wilkes. I remember he was furious with Dubya Bush, whom he said had stolen the presidency; he was delighted when I compared Bush to Greg Stillson. The release of 28 Days Later was on the horizon, and we debated the merits of slow versus fast zombies. I’m a slow-zombie man myself. “What about The Return of the Living Dead?” he argued for the other side. “Those fuckers were fast, man!” Conversation moved to the notorious Milgram Experiment. Eyes twinkling mischievously, he asked if I would have pressed the buzzer on command. When I admitted I wouldn’t have needed to be told twice, he gave a knowing laugh.

After lunch – fish and chips for me; macaroni cheese for Steve – he signed a box of books for me. (Man, this was just getting better and better!) He also signed my lucky copy of On Writing, now replete with a hello to him from Peter Straub. He congratulated me on winning the competition, but seemed disappointed to learn that I planned to embark on a screenwriting career. With a groan and a roll of the eyes, he told me: “Write a fucking novel.” (Good advice, it turned out.)

And with that, our hour was pretty much up. He wished me a good stay in New York, and suggested a nice midnight stroll in Central Park. “Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked. He laughed, said: “Duh, yeah.” King was in town to plug his latest novel, From a Buick 8, and to announce his retirement from writing. “It’s time to hand it over to the younger guys,” he told us, horrifying the ladies from Hodder, and putting absolutely no pressure on myself whatsoever. Fortunately his retirement was a bluff. And of course, no one knew then he was hiding a pair of aces up his sleeve, namely his super-talented sons, Joe and Owen. Before he left, we had our picture taken. And then – like Keyser Soze – he was gone.

In one of the books Steve signed to me, he wrote: Don’t give up!

Good advice any young writer should take to heart.

It was ten years before I was published again.

Having turned my hand to screenwriting, I had several original feature film scripts optioned; rewrote, doctored, and edited other people’s projects; took a whole bunch of meetings with a whole bunch of industry folk; but nothing I wrote ever made it to the screen, and I had precious little to show for all my hard work. I began to understand why King had rolled his eyes when I told him I planned to write screenplays.

Added to this, a drinking problem had progressed to alcoholism. My work suffered. If I was able to write anything at all, it was invariably shit. “Write sober; edit drunk,” Hemingway wrote; who also blew off his head with a shotgun when those lines blurred irreparably. Not to mention my life had became a real horror story. In my experience, the romantic clichés of the drunken writer are quite different to the squalid reality. It was a long time coming, but with the support of my partner, and my family, I finally got help for my problem.

2015 marks my fourth year of sobriety.

Within six months of rehabbing, having returned to writing prose fiction, I sold my first short story since Jumper was published; and my second in the same week. Since then I’ve sold a bunch more, and slowly but surely I’m building towards writing the “fucking novel” Stephen King advised me to write all those years ago. I’m not quite there yet. But my novella collection, Black Cat Mojo, is a step in the right direction.

The book contains three offbeat, darkly humorous crime/horror novellas.

Of Badgers & Porn Dwarfs:

To pay back a gambling debt and avoid being castrated, washed-up dwarf porn star Rummy Rumsfeld (of Snow White spoof Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Up Your Ass We Go) must overcome a geriatric pederast, redneck pornographers, a morbidly obese nymphomaniac with serious personal hygiene issues, the ghost of his religious zealot mother, a dwarf-eating badger, and George Lucas.

Jesus in a Dog’s Ass:

Dumbass desperadoes Hootie and Poke incur the wrath of a trailer trash church group, not to mention God, when they kidnap a Jack Russell terrier with the figure of Christ in its butt.

Frank, the Snake, & the Snake:

After testifying against notorious mob boss ‘Snake’ Cobretti, embittered ex-wiseguy Frank ‘The Tin Man’ Piscopo emerges from Witness Protection to embark on a disastrous drug deal that leaves him fighting for his life against a giant Burmese python with a taste for Italian-American.

PLUS the bonus short story,

The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death:

Carny barker Bunny Gibbons buys serial killer Ed Gein’s car with plans to exhibit the infamous ‘Ghoul Mobile’…only to realise he’s bought more than he bargained for.

I don’t know quite how it happened, but it took me getting sober and sane to write the craziest fucking book of my life.

Writing this stuff, in a new ‘voice’ for me, I had no idea what response I would get. Thankfully the advance reviews have been better than I could have hoped.

Walt Hicks for Hellnotes writes: “It’s almost as if someone smashed Dashiell Hammett’s seamless noir patter, Elmore Leonard’s pitch-perfect ear for hapless characters, Quentin Tarantino’s sardonic sense of irony and Clive Barker’s unflinching portrayal of sexual pain/pleasure into a blender, mixing in a heaping helping of Stephen King’s pop culture mise-en-scene framing. Howe bobs and weaves, pulling it all together in a denouement that is as satisfying as it is completely unexpected.”

David James Keaton says: “Like tuning in to Irvine Welsh’s Animal Planet, Adam Howe has conjured up something pulpy and hysterical here… If you’re tired of all that respectable, snooze-worthy shit with silhouettes on the cover, try something like this, a book best consumed on the subway in a paper bag, or at the zoo.”

And no greater authority than Adam Millard weighs in with: “Utterly compelling, uniquely twisted, and funny as hell, Black Cat Mojo is simply magnificent!”

But don’t take their word for it; check it out for yourself.

Stephen King will always cast a long shadow over my work, but so many other great writers have inspired me, and influenced the writing of this book: Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, Lawrence Block – just to mention a few – and perhaps mostly notably, Joe R. Lansdale, whose work I only recently discovered and whose humour and mastery of tone I found to be a revelation.

On the rare occasions I re-read Jumper – and it’s been a looooong time – I see the work of a young rookie writer with so much still to learn. But that story won me the opportunity of a lifetime, and has opened so many doors for me. It also marked a notable improvement in my work, and was the first step towards me finding my ‘voice,’ albeit a ‘voice’ that was still yet to break. I’ll always be proud of it. But Black Cat Mojo is where I’m at now, and I hope folks will enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it.

Coming up next in October is the novella Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (thanks to Joe Lansdale for that badass title). This Southern Gothic kidnap thriller is Jack Ketchum/Richard Laymon DARK. Then it’s Damn Dirty Apes – an insane mix of Jaws, Roadhouse, and Scooby Doo – another novella that might’ve fit alongside the stories in Black Cat Mojo. I’m also between drafts on my first novel, One Tough Bastard, in which you’ll meet washed-up 80s action movie star Shane Moxie, and his hyper-intelligent chimpanzee sidekick, Duke, and follow their misadventures through the Hollywood underbelly as they butt heads with Bulgarian Mafia.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

Click the image below for more information. Black Cat Mojo is out now from Comet Press.

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Larry II: The Squeeequel - Coming Halloween 2015

12/31/2014

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The Dead: Todeszellen (Dead Cells) Released in Germany

11/5/2014

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The Dead 1: Todeszellen, the German-language edition of Dead Cells, is released in Germany today. This is the first of many works Voodoo Press will be translating and releasing in the coming months, and I'm thrilled to be working with such a fantastic publisher.

As a prisoner in one of the most brutal facilities imaginable, Shane Bridge thought that he'd seen it all. Surrounded by murderers, rapists, gangsters and paedophiles, Shane had managed to survive his three years in one piece. With parole just around the corner, and his wife and daughter at home awaiting his return, Shane has high-hopes for the future.

When a new inmate is brought in, carrying with him a deadly virus, Shane soon realises that his plans, his release, and his very survival are in jeopardy.

With the virus spreading, turning guards and inmates into flesh-eating zombies, it's up to a few survivors to figure out how to escape the facility, how to get along...

...and how to stay alive.

Als Häftling eines der schlimmsten Gefängnisse das man sich vorstellen kann, denkt Shane Bridge, dass er bereits alles gesehen hat. Umgeben von Mördern, Vergewaltigern, Gangstern und Pädophilen, hat Shane drei Jahre lang überlebt. Mit der Aussicht auf seine baldige vorzeitige Entlassung, steckt er große Hoffnung in seine Zukunft zusammen mit seiner Frau und seiner Tochter, die ihn zu Hause bereits sehnsüchtig erwarten.

Doch als ein neuer Häftling ankommt, der einen tödlichen Virus mit sich trägt, erkennt Shane schon bald, dass er seine Pläne zu überdenken hat und er von nun an um sein Überleben kämpfen muss.

Kaum hat sich der Virus ausgebreitet, verwandeln sich sowohl die Wachen, als auch die Insassen zu fleischfressenden Monstern. Nur wenige haben überlebt, zusammen überlegen sie, wie sie hier herauskommen …

… und wie sie am Leben bleiben können.

Amazon.de

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Autumn: Horror in the East III

11/2/2014

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This Saturday, the 8th of November, Autumn: Horror in the East returns to Lowestoft. Now in its third year, Autumn has a brand spanking new venue - The Marina Theatre - and will run alongside the Horror-on-Sea East Film Festival. I will be there, along such talented authors as David Moody, Iain McKinnon, Andrew Hook, Craig Saunders, Rich Hawkins, Paul S. Huggins, and Darren Barker, with more to be confirmed. If you're not quite ready to let Halloween go this year, Jenny Jackson's Murderous Makeup will be on hand to gore you up to your heart's content.

There will be four panels: The Apocalypse for Dummies, Ghosts and Why They Interest Us, Cryptids and Creatures, and Putting Pen to Paper, so there will be plenty going on throughout the day. So come along and get some books signed, meet a horde of great writers, and slather yourself in blood and guts (some of which might be real, if previous years are anything to go by).

The event is completely FREE and kicks of at 10am.

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The Human Santapede - Competition Winners Announced

10/28/2014

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The results are in. The winners of a The Human Santapede signed paperback and a pack of 5 limited edition The Human Santapede Christmas cards are Dale Talbot, Colin Buckland, and Deborah Hart. The correct answer was of course B) Knecht Ruprecht. Thank you to everyone that entered. Stay tuned for more competitions soon.

The Human Santapede is released on November 15th and is available to preorder now.

AMAZON UK
AMAZON US

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Forward>>

8-Bit Childhood: The Games We Played

The Bad Game Release Day

Creative Writing Walsall | Six-Week Course

Film Review: Digging up the Marrow (2014)

Wanderlust | Book Cover Reveal

Adam Howe on Writing and Black Cat Mojo

Larry II: The Squeeequel - Coming Halloween 2015

The Dead: Todeszellen (Dead Cells) Released in Germany

Autumn: Horror in the East III

The Human Santapede - Competition Winners Announced

Adam Millard

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