S.J.Budd

Hey folks, My latest tale, Never Forget Me is out now in Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine , your got to place for all things dark and creepy! I am featured in the Spring 2017 issue which you can buy on Amazon Never Forget Me follows the tale of a young woman who finds herself back in her hometown. The very place from which she fled in order to have a better life. But yet she feels there is something calling her back. One day she stands by her window and sees a ghost. The ghost of the girl she once was and is powerless to resist her call. Enjoy! About the Author S.J.Budd is a writer of all things weird and creepy. Previously her tales have been featured on Deandman's Tome,  Sanitarium Magazine, Dark Gothic Resurrected, Liquid Imagination, Aphotic Realm, Aurora Wolf, Aphelion, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Wild Hunt, Danse Macabre, Shadows at the Door, Inner Sins, Bewildering Stories, Siren's Call and many more. She lives at  www.sjbudd.co.uk   a...

I started reading this book as part of my book club. Initially I had thought it a fairly bog-standard horror story. Five young people stay in a cabin in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, nothing else for company other than some man-eating monsters. I started off reading this feeling I was in predictable territory and started guessing which characters would die and which ones would live. Except this was no predictable book. Ania Ahlbon writes in a way that has you really caring about all the characters creating a really tense atmosphere as you know some of them were going to meet a really grisly end. You want to be able to tell them as you read. The book starts off at a very gentle pace as we are introduced to twins, Jane and Ryan Adler who are spending their last weekend at the parent's luxurious cabin in the Colorado mountains before it is sold. Ryan is about to depart for a new job in Switzerland and wants to spend some time with his sister and childhood best f...

Hi Folks, So far 2017 has been a promising year, I've had four short stories accepted into magazines and my latest, The Forgotten House , has recently been published at Aphotic Realm  - the home of strange and sinister fiction. This is an exciting brand new magazine which I'm very pleased to be a part of.  There was one house that always caught Kirsten’s imagination. It stood out against its handsome neighbours, which had all been modified and improved with extensions and conservatories. It seemed forgotten and abandoned by everyone else, and because of that Kirsten felt a strange affinity to it. For she too had been forgotten. If you enjoyed this tale then you might be interested in Spells and Persuasions: 9 short stories of dark fantasy. This is my debut collection of short and terrifying short stories available for just  99p on Amazon!

I have to say I was really impressed at the size of this collection, 25 short stories, you are definitely getting your moneys worth. I first discovered Embers by Kenneth W.Cain as I'm a really big fan of Crystal Lake Publishing. Previously they  have release some great horror short story anthologies such as Gutted which contains stories from Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and Kevin Lucia. Crystal Lake have also released some really great original novels such as Pretty Little Dead Girls by Mercedes M.Yardley. They have also branched out into non-fiction with horror writing guides which have been incredibly helpful over the years. So when I saw this I was eager to take a look. Looking at the beginning pages it is clear this is no novice writer he's had countless other things published in various genres. The first tale, The Chamber , was just so dark and chilling I knew this would be a great read. A very strong story to open the collection with. What makes ...

So I started reading Mechanisms of Despair just before going to bed, which was a big mistake as I found myself plunged into an existential crisis. Why is there so much darkness in the world? Is everyone really out to kill me? What's on the other side? Should I ever stay in hotel again?  Is Christmas safe? What really happened in the war? And so forth and so forth. But by morning I had recovered enough to carry on with this dark collection of short stories. There are seven tales in all. Which I gruesomely enjoyed. Gary Buller has a great talent for creating really foreboding scenes which make you feel a bit queasy. His imagery when it comes to gore is very precise giving his writing a really visual feel, which is kind of terrifying. Suffice to say this is a really powerful debut, all killers, no fillers! The highlights for me in this collection are The Way Out and The Way in. I love the subtle ways in which these two tales are connected. The Present was also utterly terrify...