On Writing Groups (part 1), by Paul Melhuish

After a prolonged period of silence (sorry about that, we've all been too busy writing and publishing!), we're going to start a series of posts detailing what we get out of being involved in a writing group.

First up is Paul Melhuish, horror writer and Morris Man.

 ‘To be honest Paul, the concept just isn’t believable. A spaceship lands in a field in Bedfordshire in 1952 and no one makes a fuss about it. The thing just sits there for decades.  It’s even given National Trust status in your story and the only thing standing between it and the public is a fence with a KEEP OUT sign. This sign of first contact is largely ignored by the rest of the world. It just doesn’t work.’ 

I was three quarters of the way through my epic novel of small-town alien incursion, Britain’s answer to The Tommyknockers or so I thought. I’d send out the first couple of chapters to the writers group thinking it would wow them with its inventiveness, its oddness.  Its unheimlich.

They weren’t impressed. The concept didn’t work.

This was exactly what I needed to hear, a consensus where all the group could see the flaws.  The members are all experienced writers, all published (some even involved in publishing and editing projects) and they knew what they were talking about.

For me the best course of action was to abandon the novel for now and begin another idea I'd for a horror novel about a cursed Morris dance. A few months down the line I submitted the opening chapters for this book to be workshopped by the group and they agreed that this concept did work. Yeah, there were some changes to be made, easy fixes, but on the whole the consensus was that this idea had legs.

I joined the Northampton Science Fiction Writer’s Group in 2003 and before this wasted months and years working on projects like the National Trust Spaceship idea. I also had a rather inflated opinion of myself as a writer, not questioning ideas for their validity or thinking about the mechanics of writing. In a literary sense I was stuck in a wasteland of unsolicited ideas, floundering alone, no idea of how to break into the publishing world. Thankfully they saved me from this wasteland and beat out the inflated opinion of myself by forcing me to consider concepts like POV, voice, repetition, things I’d never considered before. And they were picky. Here’s an example of how much attention to detail they encourage you to anticipate.

‘Paul. You’ve used the sentence “the sound shook the molecules of the air”. This is how sound travels anyway. You need to change it to, maybe, “the sound shattered the molecules of the air.”’

I’m making it sound like as if every month I’m judged by stony-faced old men in a courtroom. It really wasn’t like that and still isn’t (editors note - he's lying, it's exactly like that...)

We’re all writers and we encourage and support each other. They point out the flaws in work to make it better. Not many of my ideas are as flawed as the National Trust Spaceship idea but there are aspects that need to be improved and you need other people to point them out. They’re honest because they want you to succeed. Think Craig Revell-Horward from Strictly Come Dancing (editors note - please don't...). He might come across as a bit of a bastard but he’ll tell you where you’re going wrong to improve your performance. Okay, they are not quite as scathing as him. Mostly.  Being in a writer’s group isn’t all about learning by increments. As a writer there’s nothing more uplifting than having a room full of fellow writers telling you what you’ve written is good and to keep going with it.

There have been some great times since 2003.  My first convention in 2009; nervously walking into the bar alone only to hear Ian Watson, a member and mentor of the group, call me over, ask me what I wanted to drink and thus kicking off a weekend of writery chat and making lots of friends.  In 2010 the group each had a story published in Shoes, Ships and Cadavers: Tales from North Londonshire, published by Newcon Press with an introduction from Alan Moore, launched at our own convention called NewCon 4.  All of us from the writers group sat along a long table with Alan at the head, each signing copies.

Last year, my novel High Cross was launched at FantasyCon. I was afraid no one would come to the launch but the guys from the writer’s group were (which was very reassuring) and in the end, a lot more people turned up.  I sold about twenty books.  None of this would have happened without the group.

When I submit the first few chapters to a publisher, I can do so with confidence of knowing it’s been workshopped first. The best thing you can do as a writer is join a good writer’s group and prepare to be knocked off your pedestal. I can’t imagine what sort of writer, or person, I’d have turned out as if I’d continued floundering in the literary wasteland, writing about National Trust spaceships and collecting nothing but rejection letters.


Paul Melhuish is a writer with short stories published in various magazines. His latest novel, High Cross, was published last October by Horrific Tales Publishing. 

Joyland, a review by Mark West

NSFWG member Mark West reviews "Joyland", which he considers to be Stephen King's return to top form.

 paperback cover by Glen Orbik

All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure.

It’s 1973 and Devin Jones is a 21-year-old college student, recently dumped by his long-term girlfriend (though still a virgin) and looking forward to working his summer vacation at the Joyland amusement park in North Carolina.  Over the summer and into the Autumn, he’ll meet new friends, a boy with a psychic gift and encounter the ghost of a murdered girl.

Told as a reminiscence by Devin in 2013 (“I’m in my sixties now, I’m a prostate cancer survivor, but I still want to know why I wasn’t good enough for Wendy Keegan”), this is what I would consider as prime King (and it’s the first book of his I’ve read in almost ten years).  It does take its time to get going (and the structure isn’t immediately clear) but as you read you quickly realise the pace works perfectly - we get to know his friends, the park and its people and history, the owner of the guesthouse, the area and the times (music plays a key part in that, but there’re plenty of pop culture references and there’s a lovely in-joke in the name of a travelling circus).  The characterisation is spot on and so deftly done you feel you know these people almost immediately.  From Devin, who we desperately want to see succeed (and shake off the thoughts of Wendy), to Erin Cook (Hollywood Girl) and Tom Kennedy, fellow summer workers who become a couple and life-long friends of Jones (though we later find out sad news about Tom), there’s never a false moment for any of them.  The secondary characters are just as well-drawn, springing to life with verve, like Emmalina Shoplaw who runs the guesthouse, Mr Easterbrook, the owner of Joyland, who dresses like a mortician and insists that the workers of Joyland are “here to sell fun” and Devin’s Dad, a quiet, widowed, purposeful man.  The park team - from Fred Dean, whose transformation from manager to worker is as much a surprise to us as it is for Devin to Lane Hardy, all tight-jeans and jaunty hat and rhyming couplets; from Eddie Parks a mean man who Devin saves and who maybe returns the favour, to Madame Fortuna, a Brooklyn native who channels Bela Lugosi to deliver her psychic readings.  It is she who tells Devin that he will meet a boy with a dog.

That leads us to Annie Ross and her son Michael, who has the gift of second-sight but is stricken with muscular dystrophy.  They live in a big house off the beach and whilst she doesn’t acknowledge Devin as he walks by on the way to work, the boy does.  When Devin helps him to fly his kite one day, they become friends and the gradual thawing of Annie to him is what gives this novel its heart - we come to understand why she is the way she is, we understand and empathise with the pain she feels watching her son die and we want to hold and comfort her as much as Devin does.  Their relationship, from that first meeting to the final page, is beautifully observed and as heart-warming as it is amusing.

The selling point (but not the real point) of the story - “Who dares enter the funhouse of fear?” - revolves around the fact that a young woman called Linda Gray was murdered in the Horror House ride (which Eddie Parks runs).  Madame Fortuna won’t enter it and Tom sees something in there that scares him, but Devin is intrigued and with help from Erin, he solves the crime and finally flushes out the “Carny Killer”.  I liked that angle, I enjoyed the detective part of it (though you’d be hard pressed to call it a crime novel), but that’s not what the book was about.  To me, “Joyland” is about the power of love and friendship (as a lot of King fiction is), it’s about the amusement park and a way of life that no longer really exists (and carny-speak, The Talk, is used a lot, shorthand such as ‘ride-jockeys’ for the operators, ‘rubes’ for punters and ‘points’ for pretty girls).  It’s about joy (Devin dresses up as Howie the Happy Hound, a role that other ‘greenies’ hate but he loves because of how the kids react to him) and the fun and simplicity of childhood but it’s also about loss (Wendy, Devin’s mum) and the way life often doesn’t go the way we want it to.  Stephen King, for me, is often at his best when dealing with nostalgia (“The Body” being absolutely key to that theory), telling a story that on the surface might be horror or mystery or crime when in fact it’s actually about coming of age and charting a rites of passage that speaks to most of us.

“Joyland” is a beautiful book, a well paced and gripping read, full of humanity and light and darkness and topped with an ending that made me cry.  If you only know Stephen King as a horror writer then you would be doing yourself a favour to discover this loving nod to life, to growing up and falling in love and, yes, to getting older.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

a map of Joyland, created for the hardback edition by Susan Hunt Yule

The hardback cover.  I'm a big fan of Robert McGinnis and whilst this perfectly serves the pulpy tradition of crime novels, it does include a bit of a spoiler.

this blog post originally appeared on Mark's site on 20/6/13

The House Next Door, a review by Mark West

NSFWG member Mark West reviews Anne Rivers Siddons, first published in 1978

It was an architectural masterpiece - every young couple’s dream house.  Suddenly, within it and everywhere around it, families began to suffer, to go mad…to die.

And then, with mounting terror, the family next door was struck with the paralysing fear that they were next…that the pure horror of the house could not let them live…

that their salvation lay in fire and murder…and that to survive, they must enter and destroy - 

The House Next Door

(from the back cover of my 1982 Ballantine Books edition)

Their love would never be the same.

Colquitt and Walter Kennedy enjoyed a life of lazy weekends, gathering with the neighbours on their quiet, manicured street and sipping drinks on their patios. But when construction of a beautiful new home begins in the empty lot next door, their easy friendship and relaxed get-togethers are marred by strange accidents and inexplicable happenings.

Though Colquitt's rational mind balks at the idea of a "haunted" house, she cannot ignore the tragedies associated with it. It is as if the house preys on its inhabitants' weaknesses and slowly destroys the goodness in them -- ultimately driving them to disgrace, madness and even death.

Anne Rivers Siddons transports you deep into the heart of a neighborhood torn apart by a mysterious force that threatens their friendship, their happiness and, for some, their very existence.

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time - ever since, in fact, I read Stephen King’s analysis of it in “Danse Macabre” - and although it took me a long time to get hold of a copy (I finally found mine, the 1982 Ballantine edition from Canada, in a charity shop), it’s definitely been worth the wait.  Written as a contemporary novel and published in 1978, this still works perfectly with only a few hints betraying the fact that (as I write this review) it’s 36 years old.  

Col narrates the novel (apart from a brief epilogue) and she and her husband Walter are normal people, as the prologue spells out.  Thirtysomething and deeply in love, they’re not rich but not poor, they have good friends, they have a nice house in a nice area (plus a summer cottage on ‘the island’) and life in Atlanta treats them well, with Walter a partner in an ad agency and Col a freelance PR person.  When Col hears that the McIntyre lot next door to them is due to be developed, she hates the idea since it means that a lot of trees and wild life will have to go, along with their privacy.  Then she meets Kim Dougherty, the architect, who is very proud of his creation and once the house is up, Col falls for its beauty.

"[The house] commanded you, somehow, yet soothed you.  It grew out of the pencilled earth like an elemental spirit that had lain, locked and yearning for the light, through endless depths of time, waiting to be released…The creek enfolded its mass and seemed to nourish its roots.  It looked - inevitable."

The first occupants - part one of the book - are Buddy and Pie Harralson, expecting their first child and from moneyed Southern families.  Buddy is a lawyer, Pie is a perky kid who has a complex about her “daddy” and it’s clear the two men don’t get on.  Very soon, small animals - birds, chipmunks, the Harralson puppy - are killed, “smeared out of life”, though after the police are called, the murders stop.  “It was as though the murderer, having made some small point to the Harralsons, had moved on.”  The Harralsons host a house-warming party and everything goes wrong - a display of homosexuality leading to a heart attack - in a way that not only destroys lives, but the trappings of it, the reputations and standing.  It also takes its toll on Dougherty - he’s very proud of his creation but it blocks his creative drive and at the party, he realises “there’s something wrong with this house.”

Part two picks up the story as Buck & Anita Sheehan move in.  She’s been ill and he seems over-protective, though as the days and weeks pass, it comes to light that they lost their only son in Vietnam (in a tragedy similar to the one in which Anita lost her father and brother).  Anita receives phone calls with no caller and she sees her sons death in a TV movie that no station was carrying.  As she retreats into depression another neighbour, the well-respected Virginia Guthrie, helps out but can’t prevent the ultimate betrayal.  Although I won’t say what that is, Col witnesses the incident and she’s unable to tell anyone else, which ties her into the dark secrets of the house.  The house affects Kim further, leading him to try it on with an uncomplaining Col and their almost-tryst is witnessed by Walter, who is driven into a rage that they only just manage to avoid.  From this point on, as our heroes become keenly aware that something is askew, the tension begins to crank up.

Part three has the Greene’s move in.  On the surface, Norman is an overbearing, ex-army college lecturer and his wife Susan is quiet, tolerant and moneyed.  Their daughter, Melissa, is 8 and during a party she has an accident that - again - causes distress but also highlights that Norman is a monster.  At this point, the house comes between Col and her close friend Claire Swanson, another neighbour who has always been supportive and this section is beautifully written and full of pain.  When the end comes for the Greene’s, that resolution - a tragedy of the mundane - is heartbreaking as it plays out.  At this point, Col and Walter decide enough is enough and finally make a stand but the reaction is one they expect - ridicule, ostracisation and pity - and we see this once lively couple driven to extremes that couldn’t have been contemplated at the start of the book.  As everything collapses around her and Col mourns her previous life, with friends and laughter and good futures to look forward to, there’s a real sense of loss.

Then we get the final, shocking twist of the knife.

This is a wonderful book, that had me enthralled from the start to the gut-punch finish.  Wonderful written (and simply told), the whole thing is perfectly constructed and the language is often beautiful (when the Swansons move out, Col observes - “About a waiting house [there is] a sort of mournful abandonment, a wistful air of ‘Why are you leaving me?  What went wrong?'").  For the most part, Col has a lovely narrative voice and the home she shares with Walter, their sanctuary, is the exact opposite of Dougherty’s modern marvel and Siddons uses it to create a warm, homely base.

The Atlanta location is well used, from the seasons (Siddons writes the heat of summer and the coolness of the evenings so you feel as if you’re sitting on the Kennedy patio) to the mixture of old and new money (and old and new values) and the dialogue has a lilt that is pleasant to read.  The characters are well-drawn and believable within the situation (even if, as with Col sometimes, they are occasionally too stuck-up about things to be sympathetic) and the book has a nice pace to it, taking its time to set things up but with a mounting sense of tension behind it all.  The three stories (each new neighbour has its own part) give it a feel of interlinked novellas, but that works too, with Col acting as the bridge between them.

However, the novels masterstroke is the house itself.  Whilst a lot of bad things happen in it, most of them - as characters point out - could be ascribed to terrible bad luck and it’s only as a sum of the whole that gives Col’s fear of it being haunted any credence.  But is it, or is it just the fact that we have an unreliable narrator who is slowly unravelling over 278 pages?  Personally - especially regarding the ending - I think it’s the house because it doesn’t only wreak havoc on its occupants but destroys the people around it, fragmenting the neighbourhood, wrecking long-standing friendships and creating terrible secrets that help to grind down daily life.  As the blurb says, “It is as if the house preys on its inhabitants' weaknesses and slowly destroys the goodness in them -- ultimately driving them to disgrace, madness and even death” and that’s perfect.  

“The House Next Door” is a great read and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This review originally appeared on Mark's blog here

Badgers Waddle, behind the novel by Nigel Edwards

My most recent publication though Greyhart Press is Badger’s Waddle, a rather peculiar book if I say so myself – actually, a number of other people have said so, too!


Badger’s Waddle (BW) isn’t a novel as such, more a collection of stories about some of the characters that live and die in the quaint and entirely mythical but quintessentially English village – or Hampton, to use the term suggested by my good friend Ian Watson! – of the same name.  There is a linear progression of sorts in that each chapter introduces (by and large) at least one new character who then becomes the focus for a subsequent chapter.  However, the story surrounding each character is not necessarily integral to the whole of the book, and this has upset some of the readers.  Convention dictates that a book needs a theme, and that the activities of protagonists are intrinsic to that theme but, for good or ill, that’s not the case here.  Certainly, the opening chapter ties in to the small collection of chapters at the end of the book, but in between there are stories that seem totally inconsequential to the gist of the work itself.

But, you see, that’s exactly what life in a real English village is like.  Although the inhabitants are bound together by virtue of the fact that they live in the same place, although they may interact for village-centric events such as fetes, or serve on committees together, or support their local church, their individual lives don’t overlap all the time.  Each has her or his own existence within the encompassing village environment.  Behind the door of every cottage is a story that no neighbour in any other cottage will know about, even in the most intimate of Hamptons.  This is why I decided to not observe the tradition of story structure in this case.

Another oddity of BW is that it crosses genre boundaries.  Again, convention says that a book should be classifiable as science fiction, or fantasy, or horror or whatever; but BW doesn’t conform to that either.  It’s a work of fiction so in the sense that all fiction is fantasy I suppose ‘fantasy’ is the most apposite term, but the tale does wander, crossing classification borders in the same way that Old Father Thames meanders across whatever counties happen to be around on his journey to the sea.

Then we come to the content and the debate that starts with chapter 3.  This is where the word ‘unpleasant’ starts to get used by readers, and chapter 4 about which the term ‘queasy’ has been used.  I’ll admit that these chapters (and one or two others) don’t make for easy reading by someone with easily offended sensibilities but they came from the same ether from where I plucked all the other mini-tales.  I didn’t set out to shock or offend or upset, but sometimes writing does that and the author isn’t – honestly – aware that there could be a negative side to what is written.  Stories write themselves, in my case.  I don’t plan ahead to chart a course; I just sit at the keyboard (I can’t even read my own hand-writing!) and watch the words appear by themselves on the screen before me.  It’s a kind of magic (the late, great Freddy) over which I have little control.  Sometimes it works smoothly; other times it can be a bit controversial.

Let me finish with a quote from one of many provided by readers (all viewable at Amazon or Good Reads or wherever).  This is from fibrochimp:

“Badger’s Waddle rocks, and rolls and sometimes makes you feel a bit queasy… but don’t let that put you off there are a lot of LOL moments!”

Badgers Waddle is published by Greyhart Press 

and is available in paperback from amazon.com  | amazon.co.uk 

and in Kindle edition amazon.com |amazon.co.uk  

Nigel Edwards, 2013

Conjure, a novel by Mark West

NSFWG member Mark West's 2009 short novel "Conjure" is being re-published by Greyhart Press, in both print and digital editions.  It was originally published, as a limited edition, by Rainfall Books and later as an ebook - the latter a venture West now disowns and regained the rights from as soon as possible.

West has also designed a new cover for the book.

Newly pregnant, stuck in a job she doesn’t like and mourning the death of her cousin, Beth Hammond’s life isn’t working out the way she thought it would.  So when her boyfriend wins a weekend away, at the east coast seaside resort of Heyton, Beth thinks this could be just what they need - some time to themselves, to get away and relax and make their plans for the future.

But as they begin their weekend, a JCB driver accidentally damages a centuries old memorial at the beach.  He hopes no-one will notice but something has - a presence that was buried beneath the memorial, sealed in a stone tomb, that now wants its revenge on the residents of Heyton.

“Mark West is a talent to watch”
Peter Tennant, Black Static

“Mark West’s writing has a heart and soul that many writers would kill for”
Jim Mcleod, Ginger Nuts Of Horror

“Mark West’s stories have a well-crafted, slowly increasing tension and dread, sometimes with a hint of creepy paranoia”
Gene O’Neill, Bram Stoker Award winning author of “The Burden Of Indigo”

The Demi-Monde: Summer is now available in paperback

The Demi-Monde: Summer, third in the Demi-Monde series, by NSFWG member Rod Rees is now available in paperback from Quercus.

Eight thousand years ago the Deluge destroyed the empire of the Lilithi, setting the race of super-warriors known as the Grigori loose in the outside world. They have lain hidden until now when – thanks to the creation of the dystopian virtual reality that is the Demi-Monde – they at last stand ready to achieve mastery of the Real World – and to cull HumanKind in the Final Solution.

Three girls stand between them and victory: Norma Williams, trapped in the nightmare that is the Coven, the viciously misandric Sector of the Demi-Monde; Ella Thomas, enslaved by the spirit of Lilith-come-again; and Trixie Dashwood, consumed by her hatred for Heydrich and his evil ForthRight.


Available from all good bookshops (for bricks and mortar fans) or online at Amazon (UK) and Amazon (USA)

Badgers Waddle,a novel by Nigel Edwards

Published by Greyhart Press

Available in paperback from amazon.com  |amazon.co.uk 

and in Kindle edition amazon.com |amazon.co.uk  

ePUB edition to follow in late summer 2013.

Life in the quaint English hampton of Badger’s Waddle is never quite the same as elsewhere in the country… or any other country for that matter.

The first sign of impending chaos was when giant rabbits breached the defenses all along the indeterminate length of the vegetable garden of Little Twee cottage.

To patch up the defenses took the combined efforts of the resident gastrognome and a Crippin & Hare Indifference Engine operated by Tavarius Truckle, the man with the highest ever score in an apathitude test. But when tourists start exploding at the village fete, bank deposits build up a critical pressure, and the church’s resident saint finds a loophole in his contract of supra-ecclesiastical employment, the whole hampton must unite to restore some semblance of normality (except for Tavarius Truckle, who’s far too apathetic to care). Only Goode Nurture, the nice old lady in the tall, pointy black hat, has been preparing for this moment, shaving her gibbons in readiness for the looming crisis.

This book will be lapped up by followers of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and fans of Tom Holt and Douglas Adams. But be warned… underneath the polite gentility of English good manners, this book is very, very, rude!

“A helter-skelter ride through life in rural England as seen through the lens of Alice in Wonderland.  Suffused with surreal charm and populated by perceptively-drawn larger than life characters.”  — Ian Whates, author of ‘City of Dreams & Nightmare’.

A short novel — 55,000 words

Artwork by Dean Harkness (click on the picture below to see his hand-painted artwork in super-sharp detail. All the characters and scenes come from the story.)

Update from Andy West

The Outcast And The Little One

Cover art by Sophia McDougall

In a distant future, human form has diversified into several races that are very different from the Elten – the original humans. On a largely tamed Venus, two such races struggle for survival and supremacy. The robotic, pacifist Aumons find themselves ever more suppressed by the exuberant, vital and exotic Clonir. But Arkhend, a new arrival at the Aumon’s Southern Arc, has first-hand experience of their enemy and is determined that the Brotherhood should not sink quietly into extinction but rather rouse themselves in defiance of the Clonir before it’s too late…

One of science fictions most exciting new voices, Andy West was runner up (along with Nina Allan) in the BSFA’s short story competition a couple of years ago. He has gone on to have short fiction published in a number of webzines and anthologies, including NewCon Press’ disLOCATIONS (2007) and Fables from the Fountain (2011), and we are now proud to present this, his debut novel.

The Outcast and the Little One is available as a special signed hardback edition, limited to just 50 copies, and as an A5 paperback.

Launched April 6th, 2012. 256 pages.

Signed Limited Edition Hardback: £19.99
Paperback: £9.99

Digital version available at Amazon (kindle) and Smashwords (various formats) for £2 / $3

www.newconpress.co.uk