Episode 2: Silent As The Grave

Here’s our second episode. Slightly nastier than the first, but at least this one has a happy ending…

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Episode 1: Dead Skinny (again)

For those who may have missed it, and because I’ve only just worked out how to embed audio on this site (Yes, I know), here’s last month’s episode, Dead Skinny, just in time to whet your appetite for this month’s

Silent As The Grave should arrive in your inboxes (inboces?) tomorrow afternoon…

Sweet screams…

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Gloaming Script: Dead Skinny

Hello. As an exciting treat, and so that you can all read exactly what we cut out, and record your own versions and all sorts of exciting things, here’s the script to last month’s episode.

(If you do record your own version do let us know, we’d love to hear it. We could have a Gloam-off…)

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IN THE GLOAMING EPISODE 1-October 2009- Dead Skinny

Sweet screams…

Filthy Beggary

Hello. As you might know, In The Gloaming is made available completely free to anyone who wants to listen and hoard what we make.

There are, however, certain costs involved in making them (website hosting and storage for the audio files, that sort of thing). If you’d like to help out, please feel free to donate below.

If not, then don’t.

Either way, download and enjoy all you want. Then tell your friends… Thanks for listening…

The Man In Black & Nathaniel

This week’s The Man In Black is the best of the series so far. A nicely nasty and satisfying tale, with some horrible moments. It’s almost worthy of a place in The Gloaming…

Oh, and that thing about the weird coincidences? That every episode of theirs reflected something we were doing? That’s nothing to worry about. There was nothing spooky this week.

Apart from the fact that the villain of the piece was called Nathaniel…

Sweet screams…

A review (and a confession)

When I first sat down over the summer to start doing some serious work on In The Gloaming I didn’t know what a chapbook was. I had never heard of Michael Marshall Smith. I thought horror was all shiny, fat, black books with skulls on the front, wedged into the pockets of teenagers’ school blazers. I didn’t know anything about modern horror, and I wasn’t expecting to find much that I was missing much.

Still, I settled into a Costa with a pot of tea, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: No. 19. Half an hour later, my tea was cold, the book was closed in front of me, and I had been staring into space for so long the Costa staff were beginning to worry. I had been punched in the gut by the very first story. I had been punched in the gut by Michael Marshall Smith.

I was stunned. Where I had been expecting pointless gore and bad prose, I had found something strangely beautiful and utterly nasty. I had found ‘The Things He Said’, a vicious tale with a killer ending. I wanted to read more. I was hooked.

Almost the whole anthology was great (it had a much higher hit rate, in my opinion, than this year’s effort: the 20th book in series), and, in one book, it changed my opinion of a genre.

Truth be told, I’m still not exactly sure what a chapbook is, but they seem to be books containing just one or two stories. When I saw that Nightjar Press were selling one by Michael Marshall Smith for just £3, I decided to buy it. (I thought of it as being like buying a single, rather than a novel’s album; but that dates me horribly, too, I’m not sure what analogy the kids today would understand. “I thought of it as a happy-slapping, rather than a full-blown knife-crime.”)

The cover for WHWYWUITN

What Happens When You Wake Up In The Night is another great story, although it seems unassuming as first. It still creeps up on me when I’m not thinking about it. It’s controlled, cool, masterful in the way it doles out information, and slowly gets more deranged. It’s a nightmarish story, and I mean that as a compliment…

In short, if you’ve £3 you would otherwise have spent on the gaming tables, loose women, or intoxicating beverages, why not pop on over to Nightjar Press, and spend it on a signed, limited-edition chapbook (whatever that may be). You’ll get chills, the satisfaction of supporting a small publishing effort, and an actual collectible thing.

Sweet screams…

(PS – Nicholas Royle, who runs Nightjar Press, also has an excellent story in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: No. 19 )

A Living Legend Speaks…

We got a lovely note from Ramsey Campbell the other day. For those of you who don’t know who Ramsey Campbell is, he is ‘Britain’s most respected living horror writer’ according to the Oxford Companion to English Literature; he is a past Grand Master of the World Horror Convention; and in 2007 he was made a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild.

He listened to Dead Skinny, and had this to say: “I thought that was really pretty horribly funny… Tasteful the tale isn’t, but enjoyable for sure.”

And if it’s good enough for a living legend…

This is just getting spooky…

I do hope you’re all listening to The Man In Black on BBC Radio 7. If you like what we do, you might want to have a listen.

When the first episode was broadcast on Halloween, a day after the release of Daed Skinny, I was amused to hear a number of similar elements: a lead character who wastes away, hair dropping out, and a weird prominence for loose teeth. How rare, I thought, and continued writing Episode 2.

Episode 2 is called Silent As The Grave, but its original title – the one that I planned for it originally – was ‘Death Us Do Part’. Have a listen when it comes out at the end of the month, and you’ll find out why. Episode 2 of The Man In Black is called… ‘Death Us Do Part’. Again: rare…

Then I listened to their third episode, ‘Flesh’.  I don’t want to give too much away before we release Silent As The Grave. However, we finished recording it last Wednesday (before The Man In Black came out), and had the rough cut on Friday afternoon.  The sharp of ear may well notice at least one… similarity.

It’s enough to make you believe in ghosts…

Mentions, mentions

Over the last couple of days, we’ve had nice mentions from the people at The Black Glove and Hellnotes.

Why not pop over and have a look?

Our new merchandise store

We love the logo. We think Marcelo’s done an excellent job on it, and we hope you like it, too.

If you’d like to buy merchandise with the logo on, you now can, from here: http://www.cafepress.com/inthegloaming

It would make an ideal Christmas present for an infirm, wealthy relative who’s prone to rewriting their will…