Hello, you incredible creature! A quick post to fill you in on all the latest from me.

I have a new novel due in October. Woohoo! It's called Ghoster, and will be available from October 24, barring any delays, which obviously can happen in publishing. Would certainly be nice to get it out for Halloween. You can check out the current incarnation of the blurb at Amazon UK and indeed Amazon US. Needless to say, if you were to pre-order Ghoster, then this would set you up among the gods in my eyes! If you do this, let me know on Twitter and I will shower you with gratitude.

Incidentally, my mailing list subscribers were the first to receive the news about Ghoster a couple of weeks back, direct to their inbox. So if you're not one of them and don't want to miss out in future, then sign up here and get a free book while you're at it, plus 25% off books in my Payhip store! WHAT A SAVINGS.

I also have a new YouTube channel. Well, to be precise, I started a YouTube channel in 2007, then did very little with the account, apart from the odd video of swans and San Sebastian's Old Town. But now I'm really trying to make use of that opportunity, so I'm posting videos about writing, Jack Sparks, old-school VHS, retro video games and whatever else feels like fun. I'm genuinely enjoying making these videos, which is a good sign for the longevity of the channel. 

Join me over there and hit Subscribe, so that you'll never miss a new upload!

Okay, so now you're basically up to speed. Thanks, love you, bye!

Hello! Here's all my latest news:

NEW BOOK AVAILABLE NOW!
Over the last five years, I've been compiling an ebook collection of 30 of my favourite interview articles I wrote, back when I was a rock journalist. These are mainly from Kerrang!, between 1992 and 2002. I'm really happy with the finished product, titled From The Front Lines Of Rock.

Among the bands included are Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Garbage, Faith No More, Eminem, Manic Street Preachers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. Lots of big names.

I've added an afterword to each article, plus over 200 footnotes throughout the book. God, remind me not to compile a book involving footnotes again any time soon. I'm massively grateful to Phil Lunt, who stepped in to handle the final formatting.

Check it out at Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada and any other Kindle store worldwide. Using the Look Inside feature, you can actually read the introduction, plus the first two interviews! LUXURY.

JACK SPARKS HITS THE STAGE IN LONDON!
Here's a wonderful thing: my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is among the novels featured in the latest OFF Book club night, which takes place on Friday October 27 at Waterstones Piccadilly in London. 

One of the scenes from the book will be performed by an incredible acting troupe! Can't wait. And as if that wasn't thrilling enough, they're going to do the same with Sarah Lotz's literally chilling novel The White Road, and Giorgio de Maria's The Twenty Days Of Turin!

Sarah and I will be there on the night, and tickets are still available.  Grab 'em here! 

MCM LONDON APPEARANCES!
Happy to say I'm once again a guest at this month's MCM London mega-event!

​I'll be on panels, and doing signings, alongside fellow authors like Shaun Hutson, Joe Pasquale, RJ Barker, Edward Cox, Jamie Sawyer, Catriona Ward, Ben Aaronovitch and Una McCormack! See the full Author's Corner line-up here, then check out the rest of the site. Needless to say, as always at MCM, there's a hell of a lot going on.

VIRTUAL HORROR FESTIVAL!
Can't make MCM London? Check out Lounge Books' phantasmagorical Horror Lounge online event over Halloween. Actually, check it out even if you can make MCM London, you beautifully compulsive soul. Various authors will be writing and chatting and all kinds of stuff. See the Horror Lounge page here. 

News ends! You may now go about your day.

Following the terrible Grenfell fire tragedy in London, my publisher Orbit Books and I wanted to do our bit to help. So we're taking part in the Authors For Grenfell initiative, in which various authors auction things to raise money for the British Red Cross London Fire Relief Fund. 

The item we're auctioning is a one-off proof copy of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks. Let me explain...

In the months running up to the novel's release in 2016, Orbit created some super-special proofs, designed to go out to early reviewers. These were very cool indeed, featuring added pieces of physical paper, some typed, others handwritten, to compliment the 'found footage' feel of the book. Here's a picture of the incredible Orbit team putting these together by hand.

Only 85 of these super-special proofs were made, and I'll make this particular auction copy a one-off by adding a few extra paper notes to it myself, in 'character' as Jack. Plus, I'll sign and dedicate the book.

You can bid by adding a comment on the Authors For Grenfell auction page for this item, with your bid amount (and the currency if it's not GBP). As is the case with all the other amazing auctions of Authors For Grenfell, this will end at 8pm BST on Tuesday, June 27, 2017. It's valid worldwide, so get over there and sling some cash at that comments section.  Here's the AFG site's FAQ page for more details of the whole set-up.

Here's the Jack Sparks auction page

And here are just a few of the other tremendous auctions:

Claridges tea and book reading with David Walliams

Name a character in a Philip Pullman book

Be an extra in Iain 'The Inbetweeners' Morris' new film

​And here's the full list of auctions.

Just for the sake of absolute clarity: any wonderful bidders should bid over at the Authors For Grenfell page itself.

​Thank you! Blog ends.

Hello Dolly!

I'm at London's massive MCM Comic Con event this weekend on Saturday and Sunday, quacking and signing copies of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.  Here's the schedule of my two panels. See you there?

​SATURDAY MAY 27
Panel: Scary Stories for Scary Times
The World is a scary place right now and we’re all a little fearful of what’s around the corner, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still love to be scared!  It’s been proven that in turbulent times the horror genre thrives.  Join scribes Ed Cox (THE RELIC GUILD TRILOGY) Jason Arnopp (THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SPARKS) M.R. Carey (THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE) and Claire North (THE END OF DAY) as they discuss what makes us turn to scary stories for comfort during scary times. 

• Panellists:  Jason Arnopp, M.R. Carey, Claire North, Moderator:  Ed Cox
• Exact Time:  3:15pm – 4:30pm
• Lower Platinum Suite – Author Signing Immediately afterwards – Books available from Forbidden Planet Int.

SUNDAY MAY 28
Panel: Orbit Presents:  Old Vs New
Orbit has been publishing the best genre fiction since time began.  Okay.  That part we made up, but they have been in the game for a very long time.  Forty years to be exact!  And we figured the perfect way to celebrate that milestone would be to team a bunch of veteran Orbit writers against a bunch of rookie Orbit writers and watch the sparks fly!  Join veteran authors M.R. Carey (THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE) Claire North (THE END OF THE DAY) Stephen Aryan (CHAOSMAGE) and Jamie Sawyer (THE LAZARUS TRILOGY) as they go up against young guns Nicholas Eames (KINGS OF THE WYLD) RJ Barker (AGE OF ASSASSINS) Jason Arnopp (THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SPARKS) and Adrian Selby (SNAKEWOOD) in a battle of steely wills and wily wit.  Actually they’ll probably just shout juvenile insults at each other but it should be fun to watch nonetheless. 

• Panellists:  M.R. Carey, Claire North, Stephen Aryan, Jamie Sawyer, Nicholas Eames, RJ Barker, Jason Arnopp, Adrian Selby, Moderator: Moderator: Leila Abu El Hawa
• Panel Duration:  1hr/15mins
• Exact Time:  11:15am – 12:30pm
• Lower Platinum Suite – Author Signing immediately afterwards – Books available from Forbidden Planet Int.

Incredibly, this is not fake news.

Even though I've had a whole year to absorb the shock and the divine majesty of all this, it still feels utterly surreal and amazing.

Yes, Imagine Entertainment, the Hollywood production company founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, have optioned my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks. I expect you know Imagine's pedigree, but just in case, they've made huge Ron movies like Apollo 13, The Da Vinci Code and Frost/Nixon, as well as the likes of 8 Mile, Katy Perry: Part Of Me and the upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.

I'm writing the first draft of the Sparks screenplay as we speak, and I'm having a real blast. Ron and his great folk at Imagine have been an absolute pleasure to deal with.

As for more details, I promised that my newsletter subscribers would hear those first. So if you'd like to hear how this development deal came about, or what it's like to have a meeting with Ron Howard, sign up to the newsletter and get a free book!

Here are a couple of online articles about the deal:

Screen Daily

Movies.com

I'll also be talking about the deal in the next issue of the mighty Starburst magazine, out April 21. Oh, and the US paperback edition of the book is imminent: April 4 through Orbit Books. Shriek soon!

​Here's The Last Days  Of Jack Sparks at...

Amazon UK | US | Canada

Yesterday, I wrote the final line of my second novel, one year and one day after Orbit Books published The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.

There's still plenty of editing work to do on this book, but the damn thing exists, fifteen months after I started work. This has not been an easy journey, but books very rarely offer anything of the kind.

So!  The book is called Key Man.

Your front door key is not unique.

If a homicidal maniac walked from house to house for long enough, trying the same key in each front door, he might eventually open yours.

Six-year-old Emilee Brink finds this out the hard way, when a hooded figure enters her family's Las Vegas home...

That's the premise. Hope it appeals. Key Man currently has a release date of January 18, 2018 via Orbit Books. If you were to pre-order this thing before it even has a cover, then this would set you up among the gods. The gods! So if godly status appeals, you'll find a handful of links at the end of this post.

This year, I've cut right back on social media, mainly to gain work focus. I'm only on Twitter at the weekend, for instance, and now keep my personal Facebook deactivated as default. Really makes a difference and I'm liking it a lot. But while I'm tweeting and posting less, I plan to really make a go of my free e-newsletter, The Necronoppicon. Hopefully I can send one of those out every few weeks from now on. 

Here's the online version of my most recent edition of The Necronoppicon, which went out last Sunday and told subscribers about Key Man first, as well as recommending Netflix documentaries and going into a little more detail about regaining work focus in the social media age. Like the look of it? Hit Subscribe on that page and join us! Add 'tell arnopp at gmail dot com' to your Contacts list, to be sure of receiving each startling missive!

Subscribers will be the first to hear details from me about the movie version of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, currently in development. Oh, AND when I write the next Necronoppicon newsletter, I'll randomly pick one subscriber to receive a glossy US hardback edition of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, personally signed to them. Even though me signing a book sadly halves its resale value. Join us!

Goodbye! Don't forget to triple-lock your door.

KEY MAN PRE-ORDER:

Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon Canada 

iBooks US | iBooks US | iBooks Canada

Waterstones (with working title!) | Blackwell's (ditto!)

Well now, that was a weird year. Out in the world at large, so many terrible things happened that made you feel as though reality itself was being warped by some sadistic overlord.

In terms of worldwide events, 2016 was the worst year in living memory. In terms of my career as an author, however, it was the best.

Hello, cognitive dissonance. But if it's all the same to you, I'm going to focus solely on the professional stuff here, as I cast a glance back over 2016. This is, after all, mainly a blog about writing - and there are enough hardcore doomsayers out there across social media, saying all that doom without seemingly giving much thought to the potential mental states of their readership.

My debut 'solo' novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks clawed its way out through Orbit Books' rib cage in March. It's the story of an arrogant celebrity journalist who sets out to debunk the supernatural and ends up dead. So Orbit and I thought it only right and respectful to throw a wake for Jack at Orbit Towers in Central London. You can see snippets of my heartfelt eulogy in the video below...

So that was surreal. I also interviewed one of my own fictional characters from the book, Alistair Sparks, in a two-part audio interview (hear them both here), which was even more surreal. 

Even before the novel was released, the support was amazing. I mean, seriously. The mighty Christopher Brookmyre, Robin Ince, Andy Nyman, MR Carey, Jenny Colgan, David Schneider, Sarah Lotz, RTE 2FM's Rick O'Shea, Radio 1's Daniel P Carter, John Higgs, Cat Vincent, Andrew O'Neill, Rob Boffard, Rebecca Levene, Lisa Jewell, Chuck Wendig, Paul Tremblay, Amazon UK and the iBooks store were among the very first to get behind Sparks, which was incredible. And then, two months after the book's release, I received a voicemail message from Alan Moore (Alan Moore!), who also gave me and Orbit some blurbage including the tremendous phrase 'A magnificent millennial nightmare'. I'm still coming to terms with all this, along with other unexpected events like the book being chosen for Simon Mayo's Radio 2 Book Club (thank you librarians, thank you The Reading Agency!) and being nominated for The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize and a Goodreads 2016 Award.

So many other celebs, authors, bloggers and journalists were incredibly kind and generous to this novel, but I won't list them here for fear of missing people - and well, for fear of this post just becoming one big list. Thank you all. It's honestly been astonishing. One of the very best things about this year, though, has been complete strangers popping up on Twitter and Facebook to tell me how much they liked the book. That's still happening on a regular basis now, which gives me hope that Sparks ​will retain some appeal in 2017. Orbit's US paperback also emerges in April, which will hopefully inject further reanimation fluid into the old devil dog.

I'd also like to thank the sci fi and fantasy community, authors and readers alike, for making me feel so very welcome during my first public appearances as an author, at Edgelit, Nine Worlds, Fantasy At The Court, Fantasycon, the monthly British Science Fiction Association event and the MCM London Comic Con. I gave my first book readings at some of these, which was a new and scary experience. Here I am quacking away on an Edgelit panel alongside the extraordinary Sarah Pinborough (whose new novel Behind Her Eyes is going to blow a million wigs clean off when it emerges January 17!)

That mention of Lady P's novel has reminded me how pitiful my own reading efforts were this year. I don't think I even reached double figures, which is terrible. My only excuse is that publicising Sparks and writing Book Two soaked up way more time than I'd imagined. I will do better in 2017. Right now, I'm reading Sarah Lotz's The White Road, due May 2017. Super-creepy! Loving it.

If you bought The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, ​reviewed it, helped spread the word and/or helped make me feel like I was a proper author at the year's various events, then you have a special place in my black, mutated heart. Releasing your debut (solo) novel to the world, while hoping to lay the foundations for a long term career, that's a frightening business, but each of you made it less so. Thank you.

I'll leave you with news of a major Jack Sparks development, which I should be able to announce properly in January. There's now a folder in my Dropbox called Jack Sparks The Movie. The head-spinning events that led to that folder's creation were very much another reason for all my cognitive dissonance in 2016, let me tell you.

Wow! You made it through this thick swamp of self congratulation. Have a fackin' medal.

​2017 will see a reduced social media presence from me, so I'd be delighted if you signed up to my mailing list, to which I plan to send e-missives more regularly from now on. Happy New Year!

Hello to your face!

My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks has somehow made the semi finals of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016. Which is astonishing, since this puts it alongside ludicrously stiff competition from books by the top drawer likes of Joe Hill, MR Carey and Paul Tremblay!

It would be amazing for Jack Sparks to reach the finals. So if you're willing to help, and genuinely believe the novel to be the most deserving in this year's Horror category, you can change my life with a couple of clicks! 

CLICK ONE: Straight to the Goodreads Horror voting page

CLICK TWO: Click on the voting button for the novel of your choice!

I believe you have to be a Goodreads member to vote. The deadline is just over 24 hours away at the time of blogging.

If you can indeed help, either by voting, or spreading the word, then you are literally a saint in my eyes. A glittering golden giant of a saint. And that's all there is to it. FAREWELL FOR NOW, you awe-inspiring beauty.

Hooray, I'll be at the MCM London Comic Con tomorrow (Saturday Oct 29th) and will be doing Stuff as follows...

12 midday (Silver Theatre): a panel about horror and dark fantasy, alongside Alison Littlewood, Verity Holloway and moderator Leila Abu El Hawa. It's right up my alley and I hope it's right up yours too. (Sorry, that sounded vaguely impolite.)

1pm-2pm: I'll be signing copies of my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, possibly while humming Satanic psalms. If such things exist. WHO KNOWS. You can buy the book at Travelling Man's stall at the event, and doing so sets you up among the GODS.

Maybe see you there! And while I've got you, this happened on Wednesday night...

Yes, as promised/threatened, Timebomb trilogy author Scott K Andrews quizzed me at the British Science Fiction Association's monthly event. Thanks very much to the BSFA for inviting us, and to all who came along - I had a great time, even though evil Andrews ambushed me with questions from my own book about interviewing people! What a swine.

I started the event with a five-minute reading from Jack Sparks, which was nice. 

Courtesy of BSFA genius Chad Dixon, you can see the archived Periscope video of our chat here.

You can also hear the audio recording here. 

One last news snippet: my novelette Auto Rewind has made its Kindle debut.  It's all about the 80s, Doctor Who, nostalgia and nail guns. Bye!

Hello! This article features no spoilers about The Walking Dead, except for speaking generally about how very unpleasant the show’s Season Seven premiere was. But you probably gathered that anyway.

The Walking Dead’s Season Seven premiere has stirred a tidal wave of online think pieces. Many of these ask whether the show has finally overstepped some kind of imaginary mark. Some of them downright state this as fact.

In Its Season Premiere, The Walking Dead’s Brutal Violence Finally Went Too Far

Maybe The Walking Dead Went Too Far With The Gore This Time

The Walking Dead: Has Gore On Television Finally Gone Too Far?

In addition to these headlines, I’ve seen plenty of online folk declare that they won’t be watching The Walking Dead any more. Which would of course be fine in itself, if some of these declarations didn’t also suggest some degree of finger wagging.

So many of these reactions seem to treat this AMC TV show like an infant that overfilled its chamber pot. Too much, too far, bad Walking Dead!

If The Walking Dead really has gone too far for someone, then it’s gone too far for them, which is an important distinction. It’s no longer to their taste. It no longer matches their viewing preferences. But there is no objective mark that the show is not allowed to cross, apart from AMC’s weird swearing regulations... 

Those hand-wringing headlines really miss the point in highlighting the violence and gore, while invariably dredging up the lazy and sneery label ‘torture porn’ (don’t even get me started on how that term not only tries to brand a non-existent subgenre based on the excellent and very different horror movies Saw and Hostel, but insults horror fans by making presumptions as to why they enjoy horror.) The Season Seven premiere was no more gory or violent than the average episode of The Walking Dead. What was dialled up, to the highest possible setting, was the emotional content. The events of this episode were downright horrible. I expected them to be unpleasant, but actually didn’t expect the show to go so far, to the point of being mentally scarring.

But thank God it went there. This means a TV show managed to break through our numbed defences and inflict pain. It managed to stir empathy for other human beings, in an age which is increasingly all about me, myself and I. And different people react very differently to such transgressions. There’s going to be elation, rage and everything in between.

Plenty of people don’t enjoy being traumatised, which is absolutely fair enough. But of course, even a hard-hitting show like The Walking Dead only provokes trauma in a restricted sense, compared to real-life trauma. Most horror fiction only really offers horror by proxy. It’s a walk in the park, compared to the unthinkable sights seen on a daily basis in a war zone or an abattoir. Which is fine and necessary. Most of the time, we really don’t want to feed ourselves into an emotional wringer. There are things in this world that might ruin us if we truly faced them, as surely as staring at the sun. So we’re generally fine with the watered down versions seen in most horror fiction. Sometimes we’re even fine with one of a thousand generic ghost stories about a couple who move to a house in the country after losing a child.

While the horror genre is a very broad church, most of it offers a valuable social service: a safe place to explore horrendous things. It’s a psychological dress rehearsal for some of the very worst events that life may or may not have to offer. But it’s worth noting how rarely horror really does strive to make us feel something – how rarely it chooses to execute its almost unique ability to facilitate one hell of a psychological workout.

The Walking Dead premiere arguably offered a more painfully visceral brand of horror than any TV show before it. Jesus, even most movies. It trained an unblinking eye on a total nightmare happening to people we care about. It glanced at the painful truth of man's inhumanity. The whole episode was so tense as to feel like an ordeal, with a palpable sense of relief when it was over. It was an experience. Not just another way to pass an hour.

Any reviewers insisting it was “comical” are only exhibiting another example of the rainbow of reactions to true horror. Any reviewers insisting it was “pointless” are exhibiting that peculiarly modern tendency to judge the first part of a story in isolation from what will follow. Any reviewers insisting the violence was “gratuitous” are merely stating their personal preference for what other people’s art should be.

So, do I really think horror can never go too far, or was that just a nicely beguiling headline for this piece?

I truly do not believe in boundaries for this genre of fiction, partly because crossing lines can often be the whole damn point. For me, horror can be at its most effective when you have no idea how far it's prepared to go.

​The ugliest horror film I’ve ever seen is Mordum, the second instalment of the August Underground trilogy. It disturbed the living hell out of me, made me feel nauseous and brought out a cold sweat. While I don’t plan to revisit that movie, and almost wish I never saw it, I deeply admire the way the thing didn’t so much push the limits of horror as behave like they did not exist. Much the same goes for the super-extreme likes of A Serbian Film, Murder Set Pieces and the Human Centipede movies.

One of horror’s many jobs is to explore extremes, which is why I’m so proud of The Walking Dead for grabbing that baton. It’s a TV horror show that earned mainstream success, but has not behaved in a mainstream way. In fact, it has done quite the opposite. It’s perfectly understandable that many viewers will declare themselves out: that’s only a natural side effect of the show careering too close to reality for their liking. But nothing can take away the fact that this was one of the most unforgettable hours in TV history. Even those who hated it will remember it for a very long time. And all of this very much reminds me why The Walking Dead is my favourite show currently blazing a trail across TV.

As I said, horror can be so many things, all of which are equally valid.

At one end of the scale, horror can be the most subtle of suggestions. A chameleon element with the ability to creep into other genres.

At the other end, horror can also be a special effects blast. A kinetic gorefest that quickens the pulse while leaving the heartstrings mercifully untwanged.

But when horror decides to trash perceived boundaries and really make us feel something red and raw and aching, to the point of catharsis, let’s not be so quick to clutch our pearls. The clue was, after all, always in the genre’s name.

My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is currently half price in the UK Kindle store, at a mere £1.99 for a limited time! My novelette Auto Rewind is also new to Kindle this week.