Review: Phallic Obsession by Andrew May

The Book

The title story deals with the bizarre case of a disgraced professor of anthropology, Merrigan Blake, and her museum of sacred phallic iconography collected from all over the world. But there’s another, more sinister side to Dr Blake’s obsession – one that involves a vast conspiracy by an evil race of reptilian humanoids. It’s all in her mind, of course, but that makes it no less dangerous – as naïve student David Gracewell discovers when he’s drawn into her world of crazy paranoia. The collection also contains two other stories on related themes, “The Cult of Zagoth” and “The Masculine Cross”. All three stories deal, at least in part, with the academic study of phallic symbolism, particularly in an occult or pseudo-religious context. But THIS IS NOT EROTIC FICTION. There are no explicit sex scenes, and very little use of “non-academic” sexual terms.

My Thoughts

Andrew is a master of the weird fiction genre and these three tales are no exception. Deliciously wicked and Gothically sinister these three tales will make you shiver. It’s a short book and a quick read, a thoroughly enjoyable foray into the macabre.

The Dragons are Coming

 

I have a new novel in the pipeline, a dark fantasy set in Scotland. I'll be telling you more in the coming weeks, so watch out for my cover reveal! Not long to go now!

99 Tiny Terrors will be with your soon!

There’s nothing better than a short, sharp slice of flash fiction to get the mind working. 99 Tiny Terrors is an anthology that the reader can dip into for something deliciously dangerous in a short amount of time or spend an afternoon trolling through blood soaked stories from all over the world including Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United States, and Wales.

Featuring stories from the devious minds of Seanan McGuire, Ruthanna Emrys, Meg Elison, Wendy N. Wagner, Scott Edelman, Cat Rambo, Tim Waggoner, and more.

 

“99 TINY TERRORS is an absolutely wild ride through some truly weird territory. Fast, freaky, furious, and fun! Highly recommended!” --Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of INK and V-WARS

Check out the kickstarter campaign - lots of goodies up for grabs!

Flashes of Darkness is out!

Flashes of Darkness has been unleashed on the world.

Fifteen sinister stories.

Five exciting authors.

Available from:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Pre-order Flashes of Darkness.

Our little flash fiction collection is now available for pre-order of Amazon, and I have to say that the process was much easier than I expected. 

I managed to find out a lot of information online before I started so I had already read up about the pricing options and about how to choose your categories and keywords, as well as being aware what I needed for the Tax questionnaire as a non-American.

There was also plenty of information as I went through the process, which was clearly laid out and quite straightforward. All in all the whole thing took about half an hour.

The bulk of the work, for which we have several of our fellow forum members to thank, was all done beforehand. The collection was thoroughly edited and had been converted into epub format ready for upload. We also have some lovely cover art, again, already set up in the correct file format. It really has been a collaborative effort and huge thanks to everyone involved over at the SFFWorld Forums. You guys are amazing!

Flashes of Darkness will go live on 2nd September 2021, but you can pre-order your copy now. There are some great stories!

Flashes of Darkness UK

Flashes of Darkness US

Living in a Dystopian Novel

There is a blurring of fiction and reality. The world we live in has changed, in many ways not for the better. We thought we were safe, living in our technological bubble. But all that is changing.

It really does feel as if we are players – minor characters in a real-life dystopian novel. We didn’t choose these roles. But now we have to let the story play.

Over the years I have written about climate change – Cli-Fi – Climate Fiction it was called. Nobody reads it any more. Probably because it is real now. Climate fact. I wandered down to the harbour at Spring tide and the roads alongside the harbour wall were awash. Two weeks ago at the last spring tide it was the same. Cars were ploughing through, sending up plumes of spray. The salt water will rot their bodywork but the drivers don’t seem to care.

People have other things to worry about. There’s a virus spreading across the world, out of control in many places. Nobody bothers too much when it’s somewhere else. But it’s not somewhere else. It’s here. It’s happening now.

I went to the supermarket and the shelves were bare. Not all of them, but oddly people are stockpiling toilet roll. There’s a craziness about the world we live in. Historians of the future will study it in great depth, I have no doubt. Maybe they’ll puzzle over the toilet roll panic. I certainly did.

Maybe I need to brush up on my survival skills. Do I know where to forage for food? Could I skin a rabbit? Should I be building a bunker at the bottom of my garden? Or will a well-stocked freezer and larder suffice?

Will it all blow over and life continue as before? Will the summer be one of spritz in the sunshine, laughing at the craziness of it all?

Either way, I still get the feeling that I’ve been trapped in a novel. An oddly surreal novel.

The next few weeks will tell.

Signs in the Skies

Last night I saw a pink rainbow, arching over the sea. It was dusk and threatening thunder. The approaching rain clouded the surface of the sea and blurred the horizon. Then the rainbow appeared, glowing pink against a dusky sky. I stood and watched until the sun set behind me, the rainbow dulled and the night closed in.

I took this picture but is doesn’t do justice to the magic of the moment.

Sacred Wells

We wandered through the village towards the Abbey ruins and pushed open an iron gate to take another path; through the cemetery, past the gravestones. Here, down a cobbled track, in a dell surrounded by a grove of lime trees, was the sacred well.

Springs and wells have been revered by people for thousands of years and standing here in the Easter sunshine surrounded by birdsong and daffodils and listening to the tranquil sounds of the running water pouring out from the Earth, I knew I was standing somewhere special. For this is St Augustine’s Well in Cerne Abbas. It was once part of the Abbey and previously had a shine built on top of it, but that has been stripped away and all that remains now are the stone channels through which the water flows.

One strange thing about this well are the ribbons which festoon the surrounding trees. I am aware that in some places people dip rags into healing waters and then tie them to nearby trees as healing prayers. Indeed, this well does come with its own batch of folklore attesting to the healing properties of these waters, but I’m not aware of this being a local tradition, and many are ribbons rather than rags.

And so I’m curious. Why do people do this? Is it a healing ritual, are people tying their prayers to the trees, or is it simply a memento of their visit, a bit like graffiti? There are also a fair few ribbons tied to the trees around the abbey ruins, and that makes me think that it might be the latter.

(A bit more information about this well can be found on the Dark Dorset Website.)

Victorian Gadgetry

During the summer break we took a trip north, and one of the places we visited was Cragside House near Rothbury, Northumberland – and what a fabulous feast of Victorian gadgetry and technology was waiting for us!

The house is stunning, surrounded by a truly amazing rock garden and extensive grounds. It was built by a very successful Victorian industrialist, engineer and inventor Lord Armstrong (inventor of the hydraulic crane) and his touch was all around, even though the astronomical observatory and laboratory were long gone.

Cragside was the first domestic house to be lit using hydroelectric power and to this day electricity is generated on the premises using an Archimedes screw. In the ancient world the Archimedes screw was used to move water uphill, but in this case the action is reversed, the flow of water from the burn being used to turn the screw which in turn runs the generator that provides electric power to the house.

The gadgets and devices inside the house were equally exciting. The house was fitted with a lift which which was controlled by a hydraulic pump and in one of the rooms I found this wonderful example of an early Victorian electric fire.

 

But my favourite was this – ever the practical man - the kitchen was fitted with a Victorian version of a dishwasher!



Cragside House is owned by the National Trust and well worth a visit if you are ever up that way.

A Boagane and A Giveaway

My mother comes from a tiny village on the Isle of Man called Maughold (pronunciation Mack-uld). I grew up listening to the tales that she and my grandmother used to tell us – of the fairy folk and strange mythical creatures that prowled the cliffs and woodlands, the moorlands and the hills.

Over the years I’ve tried to track these legends down, but the names of these creatures are words I have only ever heard spoken and never seen written. And that is a problem with Manx words – how on Earth do I spell them to type them into google? Take Maughold for instance? See my point. (Okay, if you’re a Manx speaker it probably all makes sense. But in our family the language died with my Grandparents.)

However, at last I have managed to track one of these creatures down.

My Grandmother used to tell us about a horrible sprite that haunted the village with its screams – and this creature was called a Guv-Na-Scoot. A bit of imaginative googling later – and there it was! A Boagaine (or I believe more commonly Buggane) called a Gob-ny-Scuit.

Bugganes were demonic creatures said to be covered in black hair, with claws, tusks and a large red mouth. This particular one terrorized the inhabitants of Maughold with its terrible screeching when the wind blew in for a certain direction. However, a certain William Kinnish was determined to find the source of the periodic wailing that so worried his neighbours and did indeed  discover the source – a cleft in the cliff face that acted as an Aeolian harp when the wind blew in from a certain direction. And so the buggane was nothing more than a natural curiosity.

The cover art on my short story collection, The Scribbling Sea Serpent, relates to one of the stories inside called The Screechers. And the inspiration for this story was – yes, you’ve guessed it – the Gob-ny-Scuit.

And so on to the giveaway. I am offering up one signed copy of The Scribbling Sea Serpent and to enter please use the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Scribbling Sea Serpent – now out in paperback!

If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a paperback copy of The Scribbling Sea Serpent then I’m delighted to be able to tell you that now you can.

Yes – the paperback edition is now available both from Amazon (UK) and Amazon (US)

However, if you prefer the electronic format then I’m afraid you are going to have to wait a few weeks.

I’m planning a number of exciting launch events to coincide with the Kindle edition coming online – I’ll be hosting a facebook party and you can expect there to be a giveaway too!

I will also be appearing at the Yeovil Literary Festival at the end of October to launch it to the physical world – so if you are in the vicinity I hope to see you there!

But more on all this nearer the time…

In the meantime, if you want to know a bit more about CFZ Publishing and maybe check out some of the other titles available under the Fortean Fiction imprint then do visit their website.

Why an Ouroboros?

It is an ancient symbol, the ouroboros, a serpent biting its own tail, as ancient as recorded history, and maybe older. It is a symbol common to many cultures, from the writings of ancient Egypt – where the snake god Mehen coils around the sun God Ra and protects him during his journey through the night - to the Norse legends of the serpent Jörmungandr; a creature so large it encircles the entire Earth, biting its own tail. When it lets go the world will end.

It is a global image, transcending cultures, found not just in Europe and the Middle East, India and China and Japan, but also in the art of Native American Indian tribes, and the Aztecs. The ouroboros truly is a symbol that encircles the world.

But what of its origins? What ancient mysteries does it seek to answer? Did our ancestors stare up at the marvels of the sky and see the Milky Way Spread above them like a serpent across the heavens? Did they wonder at the cyclical nature of the seasons, of day and night, of life itself? Does the ouroboros in some way encompass all these things; life and death, the universe, eternity?

I started keeping this blog shortly before I sold my first short story, to record my journey as a writer and share the things I learned along the way, celebrating each story sale and good review. So, as I bring my short stories together into one volume, it seems fitting that the title of this blog in turn has become the title of my collection – The Scribbling Sea Serpent has come full circle – a bit like the ouroboros!

So it is doubly fitting that this image of the serpent biting its tail, this ouroboros, symbolic on several different levels, should appear, not just on the cover of The Scribbling Sea Serpent, but also as a chapter heading at the start of each new story.

Expect to see the cover on here very soon. I can’t wait to share it with the world.

In the meantime do check out some of the other titles CFZ Publishing has out under its Fortean Fiction imprint.

A Short Story Collection

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been busy pulling a number of my short stories together into a collection. This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, especially since a good number have already been published but have now gone out of print. I originally thought I might self-publish them, but then a friend of mine told me about a publisher he had been doing some work with, CFZ publishing. Like many small publishers they are quite niche, but their niche is one that fits well my style of fiction. So I’m going to give them a try.

But pulling your short stories together into a collection isn’t such an easy task, and here are a couple of things I’ve had to take into account:

Running order: This is a tricky one. The stories need to be sufficiently distinct from the ones they are adjacent to but not so different as to be jarring. I also wanted to mix up the previously published with the new material.

Opening stories: These are the ones that will appear on the kindle ‘look inside’ option and will determine whether the reader clicks the buy button or not. Therefore they need to give a good representation of the anthology and also be some of my better stories.

Final story: The collection needs to finish on a high note so the final story needs to pack a punch. This was quite easy. I have a piece of flash fiction that I feel rounds off the collection quite well.

Character names: I never noticed before that I have a tendency to reuse names. So for example where I had two stories featuring a character called Lucy, one of these needed to be changed, otherwise the reader might think the characters and the two stories are connected.

Editing: Some of my earlier stories, when I re-read them, needed a bit of tidying up since my writing has improved a lot over the years. Even some that have previously been published!

Title: Finally what should I call my collection? I thought about using the title from one of my short stories but none really stood out. Then my friend suggested I use the title from this blog. It is certainly fitting with the style of stories – science fiction and mild horror that could well be described as ‘weird fiction’, as well as echoing the cryptozoological bent of the publisher. So The Scribbling Seaserpent it shall be.

Early days yet – but I’ll keep you up to date with developments.

Monster Hunting

As mythical creatures go the monster said to frequent this loch has to be one of the most famous. Standing here on a stormy day as the wind whips up the surface of the loch into a noise of whitecaps it is easy to imagine strange creatures lurking within those icy depths.

Some of the sightings are well intended – people who genuinely thought they saw something, even if in time it turned out to be no beast but the wind carving strange patterns on the water, or the wake of a boat that had already passed on by.

What really fascinates me though are the hoaxes. Some people went to considerable trouble to create their fake monsters – from doctored images – perhaps the most common – to models made of floating hay bales. For decades they held the world convinced, until their deception was finally revealed.

But that doesn’t mean it was all one big hoax to boost tourism, or even a series of mis-identifications. Stories of strange creatures in lochs and waterways have been part of our mythology for thousands of years. Perhaps our ancestors knew more than we realise.

And what of the sightings we haven’t been able to explain away.

Is there a monster in this loch? I’ll leave it for you to decide.

Wistman's Wood

We headed up onto Dartmoor in the spring sunshine, followed the track north from Two Bridges – and came to Wistman’s Wood.

This is an eerie place of twisted trees and moss covered boulders - high altitude oaks that almost appear to be sprouting from the rocks themselves. Even in winter, when the trees are not in leaf, the woods are green, branches festooned with mosses and lichens, ferns sprouting from the boughs, as if to give them their own set of antlers.

Local legend claims that the devil inhabits these woods, his ferocious wisht hounds lurk among the rocks and the wild hunt rides out from here across the moor, baying for the blood of sinners. Most of the time this wood is dripping wet, shrouded in drifting mist and thin rain and you could well believe these legends to be true, the devil watching from between the trees, his hounds stalking you as you move among the rocks.

But this day of spring sunshine the woods seemed a friendly place, gnarled branches stark against the blue of the sky, mossy boulders forming a carpet of hummocks and a peaty stream bubbling over the rocks in the valley below.

It is a place of weird beauty.

A place of stories.

A place to come back to in moonlight…

Holding back the Sea

Last weekend we headed over to Portland and looked down from the heights at the waves crashing against Chesil Beach. This was a calm spell between the storms, but the sea was still a churning whiteness. At the height of the storms the waves have been overtopping the bank, the beach road flooded, the island cut off.

A huge quantity of shingle and pebbles on the seaward side of the bank has been scooped away and the army were moving in with their diggers, shoring up the defences and clearing the storm drains in readiness for the next onslaught. More gales are forecast, and these will coincide with a spring tide - never a good combination.

The waves have been massive, close to 8m in height, and this little graph shows so well the sort of battering out coastline is getting as a succession of storms sweep through. (You can check out the data near you here) http://www.channelcoast.org/data_management/real_time_data/charts/

As an island nation our coasts are always going to be vulnerable to the effects of the sea, more so as sea levels rise, and this has been illustrated all too well by recent events – the undermined railway at Dawlish, the flooded coastal towns. There is even talk of a managed retreat from some coastal areas in Wales.

Suddenly the world of Red Rock doesn’t feel so fictional after all.

The Ghosts of Forgotten Roads

There’s something fascinating about ancient forgotten roads. They crisscross our countryside. So often we pass along them and do not see them for what they really are.

This looks like any other path through the forest but if you take notice you’ll see it is so much more – the width - the ditches to either side – the way it is ever so slightly raised above the surrounding heath. And then of course, its straightness – the final clue that betrays its true origin – a Roman Road.

For the best part of two thousand years people have trodden this path. First the Roman legions heading west, seeking out Cornish tin. Now the only people I meet are hikers and dog walkers. But we all tread the same road.

They say, if you come here late on a summer’s eve, as the shadows lengthen and the nightjars start to call, that Roman legionnaires have been seen marching through the dusk, the sound of Roman footsteps, the clank of armour and weapons.

Do all those people who once walked this road walk here still?

Only the forest knows.

Stormy Seas on New Year’s Day

2014 was ushered in with wild seas and stormy skies. I watched the waves crashing onto the rocks on New Year’s Day, the wind in my hair and salt spray on my lips as the horizontal rain plastered my jeans to my legs. It was exhilarating. It was wild. And I felt the promise of adventures to come. The stories I have yet to write.

 

The coastline and sea around here are full of stories – tales of shipwrecks and smugglers. You can visit the caves where the contraband was stashed, or dive on those wrecks. Each tells a story, a tale of bravery, or the tragic loss of life. The sea can be cruel, and those who earn their living from it know the dangers all too well.

 

Looking at those churning waters, watching the waves smash against the rocks, feeling the blast of the wind and covering my ears against the blare of the foghorn, I could fully appreciate the raw power of the weather. I rounded the edge of the lighthouse, exposing myself to the full force of a gale that threatened to blow me off my feet. The past few weeks seem to be and endless run of storms sweeping in one after the other, brief windows of thin sunshine in between. Another is due in tonight, then another.

 

Every time I walk down to the shore the sea is different, her mood changes in an instant, and there is a timelessness about her. I love to stand and watch the waves and soak up the mood, and then return to my writing desk, refreshed.

 

But this particular day I didn’t hang about, but hastened indoors for a mug of hot coffee and a dense slice of fruitcake, and a warm fire to help me forget the storm raging outside.

People of the Green Mounds

We raced to the top of the hill – to be the first to stand on top of the fairy mounds.

They say that if you listen carefully on a calm summer’s evening you can hear the fairy music playing.

They also say that should you fall asleep on the mounds the fairly folk will steal you away and you will never be able to return to your own world.

But we know it’s a tumulus – one of the many Iron Age burial mounds that line the hills in this region; the last resting place of someone who once lived and roamed this land – but is now forgotten.

Yet they were deemed worthy of a memorial to last millennia. And I can’t help wondering who they were.

This is what fascinates me about lost civilisations – a handful of artefacts and the rest is guesswork. And for a civilisation like that of the ancient Celts who had no writing but an oral tradition instead – when they were gone their words were lost.

What other civilisations have come and gone without our knowing?

Ants in the Woods

We sat in silence among the trees, hoping to spot an elusive red squirrel. There were traces of their presence all around – fresh gnawed pine cones – but the squirrels were hiding from us.

 

We did see a sika deer, a young stag who ventured close, rising up on his hind legs to browse the newly bursting spring foliage.

 

And further on we found the wood ants.

 

We came across a number of wood ants’ nests in the woods that day, but this one was particularly impressive.

The surface of this mound of pine needles, twigs, and other woodland debris, was covered with worker ants – the whole nest appearing to seethe. The smallest of creatures, working in unity.

Definitely the highlight of my day.