New free audio story ‘The Solstice,’ available now on Hawk and Cleaver’s The Other Stories Podcast

December 9, 2019 ~ Kev Harrison ~ Leave a comment

TheSolstice One of the things I love to do in my fiction is to use real-world folklore as inspiration, conjuring something dark and exciting from it.

This new story, ‘The Solstice,’ is a particular thrill for me, as it’s set in Portugal, my adopted home nation and uses folklore from the north of the country as the backdrop.

The masks described in the story, and the purpose for which they’re made, are still relevant today in the Tras-Os-Montes region of the country. I’d love to know what you think of it.

You can listen in the sidebar, below or wherever you listen to podcasts:

Cinders of a Blind Man Who Could See – Available for Pre-order Now

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 ~ Kev Harrison ~ 1 Comment

Available now for pre-order as a kindle-only edition, is Cinders of a Blind Man Who Could See, part of Demain Publishing’s ‘Short Sharp Shocks’ range of long-short stories. This tale of British folk horror, set in rural Cheshire (not far from where I went to university, a long time ago), deals with themes of loss, isolation, secrecy and strained family relations.

The back cover synopsis is as follows:

Something old lurks in Leonard’s Wood and something – or someone – in the sleepy village of Wincham is feeding it.

Now Owen must face it or risk losing his son forever.

Available now for £0.99 or $0.99, depending on your location, you can pre-order Cinders of a Blind Man Who Could See, here, so it will magically appear on your Kindle, April 19th.

Christmas Horror, Frankenstein Comes to Life and my First Novella

December 11, 2018December 11, 2018 ~ Kev Harrison ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday saw the release of my Christmas story, ‘A Christmas Eve Visitor’ on The Other Stories podcast. It’s a delightfully unpleasant tale for those who like their Christmas with a dose of dark humbug.

Listen Here

In other news, We Shall Be Monsters: Frankenstein Two Hundred Years On has been given the go ahead for release at the end of this month. I can’t confirm the exact date yet, but this anthology of fiction, essays, poetry and more besides, inspired by Mary Shelley’s timeless classic is so beautifully stitched together (pun intended) and my story in it, ‘Muscle Memory,’ is one of the pieces I’m most proud of in my short time writing. Keep up with it here.

Finally and perhaps most exciting of all, this week I put a contract in the post for my first novella. I can’t talk much about it now, as details are still being finalised, but it contains folklore and supernatural elements. I’m hoping it will be launched in early 2019. More news as I have it.

A Bit of News – At Last

October 21, 2018 ~ Kev Harrison ~ Leave a comment

Lately, things have been immensely quiet on this site. Since the launch of the amazing Lost Films, all of my other projects have been ‘in-progress,’ with no real end product to share with you all. But, with halloween just around the corner, things are about to get busy again.

Releasing any time now is Terror Politico, from Scary Dairy Press. There are so many great stories here and mine, ‘No Such Thing As A Free Lunch’ is perhaps one of the most disturbing I’ve written. I hope you’ll check it out and enjoy it. It’s a political horror release (the clue is in the title) and it’s hoped that the stories there are ones that will make readers think every bit as much as they shock and scare.

After this, I’m happy to say my first ever YA release is coming in the November issue of Frostfire Worlds, the YA speculative fiction magazine from Alban Lake Publishing. More news on that at launch. My story is ‘Your Blue Friend,’ a supernatural tale involving Egyptian ‘ushabtis’ and cosmic horror.

This week, I also sent back the final, approved version of my story, ‘Muscle Memory,’ a story set in a hospital that I don’t want to reveal more about, for Renaissance Press’ We Shall Be Monsters anthology of work inspired by the two-hundred year-old classic, Frankenstein. I can tell you that the proof I have seen of this book looks so gorgeous, you are not going to want to miss it.

A new release has also hit the shelves this week, in the form of The Horror Tree’s Trembling with Fear: Year One anthology, which features hundreds of short stories and drabbles by a wide variety of authors. My story, ‘The Long Road to Immortality’ is a chilling reference to the world of instant celebrity through technology and how it, sometimes, can bite back.

These releases are very exciting but, perhaps most exciting of all is the supernatural horror novel which I am currently working on, set in a long-abandoned mining community, where a man is looking to rehabilitate his family’s past with dark, unforeseen consequences. I’m aiming to finish the manuscript this year and to start shopping it to agents and publishing houses in 2019.

Finally, I have just sold two more stories this week. One, a dark sci-fi short will be featured on a well known podcast, while the other, a classic horror tale, will be featured in an anthology in 2019. More news on both, as and when possible.

The Summer of Scares

July 1, 2018 ~ Kev Harrison ~ Leave a comment

It feels like it’s about time for another blog post and a bit of an update. Traditionally, within horror and dark fiction circles, the beginning part of the year can tend to be terribly slow as releases are few and far between, and so 2018 has proved, to date. However, with summer well and truly here now, we begin to shift through the gears and releases start to come out thick and fast towards Autumn – Halloween in particular – and a swathe of releases.

So, here’s what’s coming up for me:

July sees the release of Beyond the Infinite: Tales from the Outer Reaches from Things in the Well. Edited by Steve Dillon, this looks like a great anthology, with tales by Clive Barker, H. G. Wells and Brian Lumley sandwiched together with new stories of sci-fi terror from Stephen Herczeg, Lisa Pais and yours truly (my story’s title is ‘A Precious Quarry’). The cover artwork is a thing to behold (see below) and I’ll be adding this to my list of publications as soon as it’s available.

Also coming in July or August will be another story for The Other Stories podcast. I’ve literally JUST signed the contract on this one. I was so happy with what they did with my previous story for them – ‘Show Cooking: Cannibal Edition‘ and can’t wait to see what they do with my story on the forthcoming theme of The London Underground.

Moving into August and perhaps the most eagerly awaited anthology release of the year at the moment is Lost Films from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. I mentioned this in a previous blog post from which you can place a pre-order for the book in paperback, or eBook format. The heavyweights writing in the anthology are both humbling and inspiring and I look forward to hearing what people think of the anthology as a whole and my story, ‘The Fourth Wall.’

In November, there will be two new releases, the first of which is my first Young Adult fiction release of a story called ‘Your Blue Friend,’ which will appear in the Frostfire Worlds magazine, from Alban Lake publishing. You can find previous issues of the magazine at the Alban Lake store. I’ll publish cover artwork here as and when it is revealed.

Also coming in November is Scary Dairy Press’ Terror Politico anthology, a collection of stories about the dystopian state of our current politics. My story ‘No Such Thing as a Free Lunch’ will hopefully provide a harrowing account of the status quo and make you think, while turning your stomach. The cover art for the anthology has been revealed (below) and looks terrific.

TerrorPoliticoCover-195x300

I still have my first novella – working title The Balance – under consideration with a publisher and I have broken ground on a new novel/novella, set in a long-collapsed gold mine, more news on that as it comes.

Sorry for the long update. I look forward to sharing these new stories with you in the near future. Enjoy the summer.