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Showing posts from November, 2020

A Seed in a Soil of Sorrow by Keith Anthony Baird

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  When the death cult calls ... what are you running from? The path to the Viridian Chapter is paved with many sorrows. It's a sect which sits on the site of a brutal atrocity, and one which harbours numerous dark secrets. Leader, Hans Lehmann, is a visionary bestowed with remarkable abilities, with followers who are prepared to offer their lives in exchange for his promise of a utopia. On the cusp of autumn, a lone seeker arrives to discard his former life and embrace his rebirth as a chapter disciple. Stark lessons within a strict regime are the lure for those who have been traumatised by their uncaring past. The promise of a doomsday ascension through the waste of flesh proves at odds with a union between two souls who must flee the confines of the commune, if their love is to stand a chance of being fully realised. But will the inner circle elite discover this betrayal and exact a terrible retribution, or will they escape the clutches of the sect's unstable originator and l

Interview with Dan Coxon, author of Only the Broken Remain

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  Today I’m chatting with Dan Coxon, an author I greatly admire. He’s been a part of the British horror/strange fiction scene for many years. He’s been at the helm of the legendary Tales From The Shadow Booth anthologies as well as the multi award winning anthology, This Dreaming Isle, and now he has his debut short fiction collection Only The Broken Remain coming out with Black Shuck Books 1)    Tell us a bit about yourself I’m a writer and editor based on the outskirts of London, probably best known for editing the anthology This Dreaming Isle (shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Awards and the British Fantasy Awards). I’m also editor for Unsung Stories (Best Independent Press, British Fantasy Awards 2018 & 2019), and a freelance editor at Momus Editorial. My short fiction has appeared in Black Static , Nightscript and Not One of Us , and the anthologies Nox Pareidolia and Humanagerie , among many other places. Earlier this year I had a mini-collection, Green Fingers , publis

Only The Broken Remain by Dan Coxon

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  I could see into the room well enough, but there was nothing there. No furniture, no ornaments. A rusted sink streaked with black and grey. An empty light fitting. Nothing more than a thick layer of dust on tired linoleum, forming a furred carpet that stretched undisturbed into the empty room beyond… There was no neighbour. It occurred to me for the first time that I might be going mad. A young man joins a circus where the mysterious ringmaster is more interested in watching him fail. An immigrant worker forms an unlikely alliance with his housing estate’s foxes. A fraudulent accountant goes on the run, but loses herself in the dry heat of Australia. This debut collection from Dan Coxon unearths the no man’s land between dreams and nightmares, a place where the strange is constantly threatening to seep through into our everyday reality. Populated by the lost and the downtrodden, the forgotten and the estranged, these stories follow in the tradition of Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman a