​SLADE HOUSE by David Mitchell
Remarkably, this is the first David Mitchell book I’ve read, but it certainly won’t be the last. A surprisingly scary and disturbing piece of work, this short novel apparently inhabits the same world as The Bone Clocks, but you don’t need to have read that one in order to appreciate the madness here. We follow several different characters as they encounter the titular building for different reasons, each of them seven years apart. Naturally, everything goes great and they all have a lovely time. Cough. It’s a brilliantly effective ghost story which makes especially great use of POV shifts and perspective shifts in general. Loved it. (UK | US)

LOST GIRL by Adam Nevill
What I particularly admire about Adam Nevill is the sincerity and passion he pours into every sentence. You constantly feel the work, and the depth of imagination, which fuel his novels. And in a publishing industry where horror is the genre that dare not speak its name and generally veers towards restraint, Nevill seems happy to stay hardcore. While Lost Girl, with its more bookseller-friendly title and cover, might initially seem to mark an attempt to reach a broader audience, it’s the most brutal thing of his I’ve read, which is great. A near-future thriller about a father determined to find his abducted child, it painstakingly catalogues every scrap of hell the man wades through. Seriously bleak and deranged, it’s a gruelling experience and one I highly recommend. (UK | US)

​DAY FOUR by Sarah Lotz
This, as the title kinda suggests, is the sequel to 2014’s blockbuster novel The Three, which was a stone-cold killer of a supernatural thriller. This one is a different beast, in a good and intriguing way. Whereas The Three spanned the globe, charting the global response to three plane crashes in which only three children survived, this semi-sequel takes place aboard a cruise liner. Yes, Lotz is heartlessly and systematically amping up our fear levels about every form of public transport. Really hope she doesn’t next turn to my favourite, the train. The eerie atmosphere is strong with this one, which again hints at a massive overarching storyline working away, virtually behind the scenes. And like The Three, it suggests that humanity has more to fear from itself than any creepy kids. (UK | US)

ZER0ES by Chuck Wendig
Mr Chuck Wendig, the human word machine, The Wordinator, is a veteran practitioner of whip-crack prose that comes atcha like an automatic rifle. I’m a big fan of that style, which carries you effortlessly along with it, and Zer0es is a mighty cyber-thriller about five hackers funnelled into working for a shady government op in order to avoid prison. This evergreen premise provides a springboard into pleasingly unpredictable lashings of sci-fi, action and horror: Zer0es ends up being quite a different novel from the one it started out as, which I tend to enjoy. By the end, it has explored man’s relationship with machine in profoundly disquieting ways, while piling on a whole bunch of cinematic carnage, body-horror and strong, mouthy characters. A riot! (UK | US)

TOUCH by Claire North
North’s The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August was awash with mindboggling metaphysical magnificence, and Touch again showcases her uncanny knack for existential thrillers with a dash of horror. I already waxed lyrical about this book in my blog post earlier this year about offering a safe pair of hands as a writer, so I’ll just say that it’s about an entity, our narrator, which has the ability to jump from one human body to the next, commandeering each like a coldly calculating joyrider. The writing is once again superb and if you haven’t had the pleasure, you’re really missing out. (UK | US)

A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS by Paul Tremblay
Definitely the coolest title of the year, and Tremblay backs it up with one hell of a scary ride. I was always going to love this book, given that he and I seem to share reference points, like The Exorcist, John Carpenter’s The Thing and the found-footage aspect of The Blair Witch Project, as well as Mark Z Danielewski’s House Of Leaves. It’s the story of two young sisters, Marjorie and Meredith, one of who begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia (or possession?) and ultimately attracts a TV documentary crew to the family home. Marjorie and Meredith’s relationship is handled beautifully, as are the framing devices, but what really stayed with me were some of the most insidiously creepy ideas I’ve ever read in a novel. And Paul Tremblay looked like such a nice man, too. (UK | US)

THE DEATH HOUSE by Sarah Pinborough
I said these were in no particular order, and that’s true, but there’s no point denying that The Death House is my favourite novel of 2015. I put off reading it for a while, purely because the concept of a house where ill children go to die didn’t exactly sound like it would put a spring in my step. And God knows, this book is not full of knock-knock jokes. Pinborough handles death and illness here with much the same unflinching tough-love she employed in her excellent 2013 novella The Language Of Dying. Yet there’s such a beautiful flipside to The Death House: one which is all about savouring each moment to the full. I found myself entirely immersed, and tears escaped my battle-hardened head not once, not twice, but THRICE. Sweet Jesus. On the day I finished reading, I went down to Brighton beach and had a good, long, appreciative look at the sea. I can’t imagine that this unusual behaviour and reading The Death House were at all unconnected. Read it. (UK | US)

​I should add three things...
 
I’ve restricted myself to novels. If I hadn’t, then Stephen King’s The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams and Chuck Palahniuk’s Make Something Up – fine short-story collections which I’ve devoured over Christmas – would’ve entered the picture.
 
I’m not generally into straight sci fi or ‘other world’ fantasy, so books within those spheres tend to fall under my radar.
 
And like most people, I certainly didn’t read all the books I wanted to this year.  In fact, I was way off.  Just a few of the delights I’m still looking forward to absorbing are Tim Lebbon’s The Hunt and The Silence, Nathan Ballingrud’s The Visible Filth, Rob Boffard’s Tracer, James P Smythe's Way Down Dark, Adam Christopher's Made To Kill, Rebecca Levene's The Hunter's Kind, Mark Morris' Albion Fay, Stephen Volk's Leytonstone, Edward Cox’s splendidly-titled The Cathedral Of Known Things, Marlon James’ A Brief History Of Seven Killings, Gillian Flynn’s The Grown-Up and Stephen King’s Finders Keepers and Mr Mercedes. And I’ll wager there are plenty more I’ve momentarily forgotten about.
 
So which were your favourite novels released in 2015?  Lay 'em on me in comments. 

And hey, have you downloaded my free novelette Auto Rewind yet?  Get it here, in all ebook formats known to man or beast.

Ho ho ho!  My new novelette Auto Rewind is now available to one and all, and it won't cost you a penny, a cent or whatever your tiniest unit of currency happens to be.

Yes, to celebrate the March 2016 release of my Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, I'm giving away short stories, every couple of months.  Auto Rewind is the first.  Set at Christmas, it's a dark thriller awash with 80s iconography, psychological horror and nail guns.

Stephen Skipp loves his mother, who he thinks is “really old” at the age of 27. They have a great time in their London home, renting films on VHS and watching TV, even if Stephen can hardly ever get her to watch Doctor Who on Saturday nights.

If their life is so very ordinary, though, then why is a dead body slumped in the corner of their living room – and another in the downstairs toilet?

Here's where to get Auto Rewind for free RIGHT NOW:

iBooks (epub): Grab it in your local iBooks store

Nook/Barnes & Noble (epub): UK | US

Kobo (epub): UK | US | CA

Smashwords (all formats incl Kindle): Click here

Inktera (epub): Click here

Scribd: Click here

Any problems with links, downloads etc? Let me know.

Enjoy!  Well, hopefully you will.  And if you're suitably moved, you might consider helping me out in one of three ways:

• Spread the word, either by quacking on social media, recommending the book to friends or leaving a review at your favourite retailer. All that stuff is so very helpful.
• Support me over at Patreon: the site which allows people to make a recurring pledge for each new thing a creator makes, starting at $1 per thing. In return, pledgers get exclusive perks. James Moran and I made a ludicrous two-minute pledge video over there for all to see.
• Whack me over some cold hard e-cash, via PayPal!

Needless to say, none of the above kind actions are in any way obligatory.  Auto Rewind is a free book, and I want you to have fun with it.  If fun's quite the right word.  Merrrrrry Christmas!

Want to interview me for your website?  Contact me here.

Wondering who designed that lovely cover?  It was Caroline Fish, whose site Mad Old Cat Lady you must visit.

(With thanks to this Tools For Authors page.)

Orbit Books UK have been toiling away on the creation of special advance review copies of my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.  Look at them here, in these pics, going the extra mile.

And here's a quick Vine-based flick through the book.  Backwards.

Lastly, here's a nice piece at Tor.com, about the announcement of the book.

And here's a page at the Jack Sparks tribute site, where you can read an extract.

Good day to you!

Hello!  As The Bookseller revealed yesterday, I now have a two-book deal with Orbit Books.

​This is a great big bag of wonderful.

Founded in 1974, Orbit have published the late Iain Banks’ work.  As if any more Impressive Info were needed, they’ve also published some of the finest genre novels I’ve read in recent times.  I’m talking about the likes of MR Carey’s The Girl With All The Gifts, which I absolutely loved, and Claire North’s mind-bogglingly great novels The Fifteen Lives Of Harry August and Touch.

My God.  Talk about esteemed company.

This deal was the result of a four-way auction between publishing houses, which confirmed my long-held suspicion that my AM Heath agent Oli Munson is an evil genius, disguised as a charming and dapper gentleman. 

The two Orbit books will be unrelated standalones.  The first, The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, finally tells the full story of tragic celebrity journalist and social media star Jack Sparks, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2014.  Many questions will be answered.  For instance: why was he so convinced that the exorcism he saw in Italy was fake?  And what was the true origin of the creepy video which he insisted he didn’t make himself, despite it having appeared on his YouTube account?  

It’s been an honour to work on this project, because I’ll admit to having always seen redeeming features in Jack, however controversial and even hated he often was.  Back when I was a rock journalist writing for Kerrang! magazine, and he was working on the NME, Jack and I would often find ourselves waiting to interview the same bands.  This became a running gag and we’d often have a drink afterwards (or even before.)  There's no question that Jack strutted vainly along the thin line between confidence and arrogance, and his forthright views certainly upset a lot of people of faith, but he was also a very funny guy with his head screwed on in many ways.  It’s been an incredible, if disturbing and often upsetting process, to work on Jack’s final book alongside his brother Alistair, and I sincerely hope it brings some form of closure to the millions of Jack Sparks fans worldwide.

Jack’s personal website remains online at JackSparks.co.uk in an edited and curated form, as an enduring tribute to him.  Take a look and you’ll get an idea of his personality.  Maybe a sense of the downward spiral his life took during his final year on Earth.  You’ll also read anecdotes about meeting Jack from the likes of multi-talented Derren Brown collaborator Andy Nyman and the tremendous authors Sarah Lotz, MR Carey, Christopher Brookmyre and John Higgs. 

The first editions of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, for quick-on-the-draw early adopters, will be the trade paperback and ebook in March 2016.  These will be followed by the main release, a mass-market paperback in July.  There will of course be plenty more exciting details to come, but for now I just wanted to finally announce this deal – on Halloween!  I’m very excited to have found the ideal publishing partner for my first original novels as a ‘solo’ writer.  One of the greatest things about the news being out, is I can now publicly thank legends like Oli, who ‘got’ the Jack Sparks project from the very beginning, and my brilliant editor Anna Jackson who helped take it to new levels, again and again.

For irregular non-spammy updates, plus the insider’s view on what’s going on with The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, sign up for my e-mailing list The Necronoppicon here.  Also be sure to sign up to Orbit’s own Jack Sparks list, in order to be one of the first to read the full book!

​Oh, and one of the pages at JackSparks.co.uk contains a link to a hearty extract from the start of the book: the Foreword and the whole of Chapter One, to be precise.  If you enjoy it, feel free to spread the word and/or the link, using the Twitter hashtag #JackSparks if you’re so inclined.  Thank you!

Hello you!  Here are a few tough-love pointers about approaching people in the scriptwriting, TV, film, prose and generally creative industries.  Specifically, via e-mail.  I'm sure this won't apply to you, because you're lovely and you know better.  But it might.  And that being the case, you may find this useful.  Here then, are Eight Ways To Annoy People Whose Help You Want...

1) Appear in someone's inbox, out of the blue, and immediately ask if they'll read your project. 
If you really must do this - although you shouldn't - at least put some effort into that e-mail and a little finesse.  A pro script-friend of mine recently described receiving a really abrupt e-mail from a complete stranger, asking if he would read their script.  The e-mail barely introduced the sender and didn't even end with a sign-off line.  That's a great way to make a terrible first impression. 

When you've written and finished a thing that you like, it's easy to build up a head of zealous steam, to the point where you assume the world is waiting to read it.  Take a deep breath and calm yourself.  Approach your contact-to-be politely, lightly and in a personalised way which doesn't make them think they're Number 227 in your Xeroxed Introductory E-Mail campaign.  As I said, ideally don't ask them to read your project in this opening salvo.  You wouldn't do this during an opening exchange at a party, so why do it in Cyberworld?  And Good God...

2) Attach your project to your introductory e-mail
Don't do this, ever.  It's rude, even though it might not seem that way to you.  It's the equivalent of striding up to someone at a scriptwriters' festival, saying hello and shoving a hard-copy of your script into their bag.  Bear in mind that most writers - me included, sadly - can't read other writers' scripts, for two reasons: lack of time to read anyone else's work and legality (if a writer reads your script, then has a similar idea down the line, or is already working on a similar idea, you might turn out to be paranoid and insane and all, like, "You stole my idea!  I sue you!  I appear in your garden at 3am, harming myself and shrieking!").  So when you send someone a script right off the bat, that seemingly innocuous PDF of yours could well be violating the recipient's personal, professional and legal boundaries.  Once someone receives a PDF, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to prove they haven't read it, if things should turn all weird and litigious later on.  So don't put them in that position.

3) Attach your project to your introductory e-mail, because the recipient's colleague/boss/whoever has suggested you send it
This is still rude.  I know, because a good few years back, I did it myself.  A TV show's producer suggested I send a script to his script editor.  With a head full of zealous steam (beware, oh beware, the zealous steam), I rattled off an e-mail to the script editor and attached the script.  Never heard back from that script editor, and quite rightly so.  I still regularly wince at the very thought of it and groan at the fact that I'm possibly forever filed away in that guy's head under "Presumptuous Amateurs".  Even if someone else has recommended you send a script, still take that deep breath and write that polite, to-the-point introductory e-mail, explaining that X suggested you send them your script.  Do they have time to read?  That's much nicer, isn't it?

4) Play down the size of the favour
This is admittedly a relatively small pet niggle, and may be exclusive to me and my brain, but I doubt it.  Don't play down the size of the favour you're asking this stranger/new contact.  I'm talking specifically about saying "I wonder if you could do me a small favour...".  Oh, it's only small, is it?  I'll be the judge of that.  This is the kind of thing it's so very easy to write without thinking, but well worth a mention.

5) Chase them up on a read
If a relative stranger agrees to read your thing, for free, in their own time, don't chase them up on it within six months.  Seriously.  That's just wrong and will irritate the Christ out of them.  You have to be prepared to play the long game here.  I've waited literally a year for industry folk to read scripts, and personally wouldn't chase them before a year was up. 

If that impatient demon in your brain - the one entirely composed of zealous steam - forces you to chase someone up, at least do it indirectly.  Message them about something else - ideally something which isn't asking for another favour.  Nine times out of 10, this will jog their memory and provide a subtle prompt.  It still runs the risk of annoying them, but it's a lot better than a "Did you get my e-mail?" e-mail, a week after the first.  While I'm at it, let's all agree never to write "Did you receive my e-mail?" e-mails any more.  It's 2011.  The vast majority of e-mails get through.  We know this, and yet still we persist with this irritatingly transparent tactic. 

6) React badly to notes
So this stranger has read your thing for free and given you some thoughts.  You dislike and/or disagree with one or more these thoughts, so decide to fight your corner.  You passive-aggressively - or downright aggressively - inform the helpful stranger why they're wrong and/or why they've misunderstood your grand masterplan.  Congratulations!  They didn't particularly want any response to their notes (all those questions they asked in the notes were rhetorical, by the way, for your project-analysing use only) and now you're synonymous with two Twitter hashtags in their brain: #DifficultToWorkWith and #OverlyDefensive.  Tremendous.

7) Ask a huge question, the size of the MOON ITSELF
This one isn't exactly likely to enrage people, and is once again really easy to do without thinking, but it will assuredly make their life harder.  And if you've made their life  excessively harder, they won't thank you for that.  I'm talking about big, wide-ranging questions like "How can I go about getting into scriptwriting?".  That's big.  Whole books are written on that subject.  In fact, are you sure you shouldn't buy a tax-deductible General Script Advice book, rather than ask a pro to write several paragraphs of advice for free?  Then, by all means, you can ask more targeted, specific questions of this person.  This will serve a double-duty: it makes it a lot easier for them to answer the questions, and you seem more clued-up from the very beginning.  Everybody wins, nobody loses, hooray.

8) 'Forget' to thank them
Never forget to thank someone who has given you advice, help and especially notes.  This is possibly the most infuriating thing of all, and there seems to be an epidemic of this behaviour going around.  Almost every industry pro I talk to, shares the annoyance at not being thanked for helping people.  This now seems to be a 'thing'.  Strangers appear in your life, out of the clear blue sky (© Larry David), ask for help/advice/a script read, are given that valuable stuff for free, then fail to even thank the helper.  That's downright weird behaviour, which has certainly happened to me a few times now.  Why would anyone do that?  Besides being supremely irritating and ungracious, it pretty much guarantees that the person will get zero help or advice from me again.  Don't burn bridges.  Don't spread the epidemic which makes helping people literally a thankless task.

Writers, producers, script editors: anything to add to this list?  Comment away!  I want stories of people who have contacted you, out of the blue, and proceeded to screw up their chances of you ever helping them.  I'd also like stories from people who have made mistakes while contacting new people.  Let's stockpile this stuff and get a little closer to establishing Best Practice when progressing in this industry and forging new professional relationships.