Novel writing, tropes and themes, assembling collections and more! Welcome, dear listener, to the first of two extensive interviews in which authors Sam L Edwards and John Linwood Grant question each other. “What?” you say. “That sounds terrific!” And then, after some thought: “Oh, you mean nepotistic mumbling between chums about how writers earn squat. Dullsville.”

But hey, hang on! Often we at greydogtales have little knowledge of our interviewees apart from a recent book release, so cut us some slack when we have someone we know.

Today we ask Sam L Edwards about his new collection, and about his writing in general…

ON DEATH OF AN AUTHOR

greydog: Good to have you back, Sam. This time, for obvious reasons, we want to focus mostly on your forthcoming collection, Death of an Author, so, let’s get straight down to it.

First of all, the collection is split into two quite different main sections – Fantasies & True Secrets, and Miskatonic & Madness. Was this a deliberate choice from the start, or simply how the material fell as you assembled it?

sam: Well let me start by saying “Thanks for having me.” You and I have developed a good friendship, along with an online banter which has become sort of infamous. But you were one of the first writers to really welcome me into the fold, and I’ve never not been grateful for that. Also, you know I love your ramblings on greydogtales, and have been hounding you for an interview for some time.

The choice to split the collection into two sections was deliberate, and a third section was added after an emergency flight out of Colombia due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after which I wrote the story ‘The Last Mayflies out of Bogota.’

I’ve always liked collections that are effectively “samplings” of an author’s work, and I think that the first section is a sampling of sort of classic pulp/weird fiction monsters and concepts. I consider my story ‘Bestia’ to be a hack-and-slash adventure tale, albeit focused on mothers and daughters in a dying Texas gulf town. My story ‘Office Hours and After’ is…really I’d call it a “wizard story” but with a twist at Miskatonic University I really shouldn’t reveal. So the idea to have one section designated for what I’d broadly call “Weird Fantasy” and what I would broadly call “Mythos” was always the plan.

greydog: How does this one differ from your first collection Whiskey and Other Unusual Ghosts?

sam: Again, I like the sampling aproach. When putting together Whiskey and Other Unusual Ghosts though, there were some stories that really stuck out and had no business being there at all. My story ‘The Cthulhu Candidate’ was one of them. And Congressman Marsh went from this one-off meme to a reoccurring character, both in the background/foreground in several stories. So, I had to have a place for all my “Lovecraft” stuff and it couldn’t be in Whiskey. Then I had stories inspired by Clark Ashton Smith, some Howard stuff…and it just wasn’t fitting with the unifying horror of Whiskey.

These stories…I’m not sure I’d call them “horror.” There are many horrifying stories. I think ‘Christmas At Castle Dracula’ is rather scary because it probes questions of faith, a critique of nationalism and human history, and so on. I think my vignette ‘Standing There’ is one of the scariest things I’ve ever written, because it is about a truly random, inexplicable ghost encounter.

But overall, the stories are more “fun” than those in Whiskey. Even the most grim Congressman Marsh stories have a tongue-in-cheek humor in them, though the tone is not always humorous. The characters are also far more kinetic. My Whiskey protagonists would fall to the floor, weep and tear their hair out. Granted, I believe the reaction was warranted. But in Death of An Author you have a far more diverse cast. A lot of women characters, though this wasn’t intentional. And they fight back. They’re gunslingers, star athletes, vampires, mages, and so on. Not all of them fight back, but most of them.

greydog: We notice that you chose not to include either your Central American orientated ‘political’ stories (excepting ‘Last Mayflies’) or your troubled Bartred clan supernatural tales in this collection. Are you saving them for later, or did you feel they would skew the book in a different direction?

sam: I guess I should start by clarifying “Central American” and “political” stories. I have to tell you: I’ve lived in several Latin American countries, studied the region extensively and thusly really come to appreciate dense jungles as a setting. Out of all of my published stories, only one is explicitly set in an actual Latin American country. The rest are wholly fictional settings, purposely unnamed because I do not think it is the place of a white writer from the United States to write about ongoing conflicts in countries they are not citizens in. That’s not saying I’m taking any judgemental position, but I just don’t want to contribute to any perception of Latin America as “backward” or “violent.” Frankly, I don’t believe the United States is in a place to talk.

Now the second: “political.” You know, I never get comfortable with that. I take it as a badge of honor, but I believe you and I have talked about this in our chaotic Facebook Messenger conversations. I consider all my stories to be about characters and their dilemmas. But I also believe that horror writers should write about what scares them. I’ve done my research on national collapses, insurgencies, coups, political corruption, democratic backsliding, and more. These themes scare me. So I write about them. And of course, no one exists in a bubble. Politics touches nearly every part of our lives and the idea that a writer wouldn’t eventually be forced to explore their feelings on the issue is a very strange idea to me indeed.

And then I’ll point out: Congressman Marsh is a politician. His stories are, in fact “political” in that they involve politics. And they also show one doesn’t have to travel far to find their own horrors in institutions, individuals and powers. Joe Bartred… all I’ll tell you, John, is keep an eye on one of the characters in Death of An Author. There is, in fact, a planned Bartred connection.

But the shortest answer? Yes. There is in fact, another collection put together. Like the others, it’s split into two halves. The latter half is a series of stories taking place in a fictional character/location, Antioch. This is also the setting of my novel. Without spoiling too much, all I can say is Antioch and its stories are supposed to reflect very contemporary themes and anxieties about democratic backsliding, nationalism and its consequences.

And one day I’d like to write more Bartred stories. I wrote the bulk of them when I was a new writer, so Joe just seems like a different person to me now. Someday soon, hopefully.

greydog: What made you decide on the overall title? Your story ‘Death of an Author’ itself, though a lovely, moving piece, is probably one of the least typical Edwards story we’ve read.

sam: I’ll take that as the least typical Linwood Grant compliment I’ve received.

The answer is simple: it’s the most important story to me in the collection. I’d had the idea for the story for some time before writing it. It’s a novel enough premise: a dying pulp writer being visited by all of the characters he’s ever written. But then my grandfather went through hospice and died of cancer. Without getting to much into the inner stories of my family, which belong to more people than myself and thus aren’t wholly mine to share, it was a tender time for us. It was sad, yes. But we also tried our best to step up for each other, and we were all much more vulnerable during those days than we had been for some time.

The experience totally changed the emotional core of the story, and gave me an imperative to write it. Being with my grandfather the night he died, not the moment he died but the night, really changed me. And it changed the story.

greydog: Very understandable. OK, the Fantasies & True Secrets sections is strongly tilted towards re-interpretations of classic mythic and horror concepts. We take it that you like challenging common tropes?

sam: Honestly, I would love to just write haunted house stories with all the tropes attached. But to do that, you have to be a very good invoker of tone and feeling. Say what we will about Lovecraft, the man could layer on dread like few others. But I’m not that talented, so I rely on characters, who act as my guard rails to make sure that my stories don’t go too far afield.

I never considered myself one who challenged tropes, to be frank. Writing about vampires, I tend to just think about them as people. Awful people, heroic people, who struggle to live in the sun. I would say more than anything else, I enjoy producing writing that invokes some sort of adrenaline when I’m writing it. Whether that’s terror, disgust or the sort of a feeling of a kid playing with all of their favorite toys at once.

greydog: The source of Miskatonic & Madness is more obvious, but what’s your relationship to the whole Lovecraftian Mythos business? Peripheral, close, or haven’t really thought about it? You mentioned his handling of ‘dread’ just now.

sam: Like a lot of us, Lovecraft was my gateway drug. I came to Lovecraft by way of Metallica, which was a band my dad and I bonded over when I was younger. I’d always had a morbid fascination with horror, but Lovecraft was an entirely different level. I admit that at the time I read him I was very young and was really blinded to much of the racism until I encountered that rather unfortunate cat name.

I don’t spend too much thinking about Lovecraft and mythos these days, but that will probably change. I think Lovecraft stays relevant for many reasons. I think Scott R. Jones said in an interview once that as long as racism is at the forefront of society, Lovecraft’s racism will remain a constant topic. I agree with that sentiment, and I really don’t see how we run away from it or accept it. There’s a reason that the young man defending Innsmouth in ‘The Referendum Over Innsmouth’ is so seamlessly an alt-right provocateur.

At the same time, yeah, no one invokes an atmosphere of dread like Lovecraft. And I think the novelty of the Mythos as a shared playground that people can bring their own toys to means it will always be a place writers flock to.

greydog: Which stories here are particularly important to you the writer?

sam: Oh wow. Let’s see. Obviously ‘The Death of An Author.’ I think that ‘I Keep it In A Little Box’ is a very important one, given that I wrote it for my friend Christopher Ropes, who himself has a collection coming soon which you should all invest in. ‘With All Her Troubles Behind Her,’ might be my favorite child. I love the main character, and I love weird westerns. I had an absolute blast writing that one.

‘The Referendum Over Innsmouth’ was written by a very angry writer. There has a lot which happened in the United States over the past five years that really dispels any myths that our institutions are invincible, or that there is something exceptional about them. Charlottesville was the moment which inspired the story.

I also have a soft spot for ‘She Never Killed Her Spiders.’ I don’t know why. I just do. It has a lot of banter and I like writing banter.

Then there is ‘The Last Mayflies Out of Bogota,’ which was really my COVID trauma story. We all have COVID trauma stories, but my sudden departure from Colombia still makes me sweat to this day. All this time later.

ON WRITING STUFF

greydog: Now, let’s go wide a bit. We know that over the first few years of your literary life, you’ve encountered both the pleasures and the frustrations of small and independent presses. What would you advise new and emerging writers, on the basis of what you’ve experienced?

sam: I guess I’ll give the advice I would have wanted about a year ago:

Expect this writing thing to come in waves. The first wave is your creativity. I’m a runner, or someone who is trying to get back into running, so I like the concept of “the wall,” this thing you hit that seems insurmountable and exhausting. You may hit a writing “wall.” And that’s not writer’s block, that’s different and I’ve never really had it. I mean that moment where you just don’t want to write. At all. The idea of opening a Word document may make you depressed, physically ill. That’s normal. Don’t write those days. Talk to other writers, read. Step away. It’s okay if you do.

Another wave is a popularity wave. For a moment there, John, it seemed like I could sell all of my stories in a matter of days. But that stopped, particularly as a lot of my reliable markets started to close. And I, at the time, took that to be a reflection of the quality of my work. What else am I supposed to think after all, if my work is no longer good enough to sale? Well, now people are biting again. Sure, it’s not at the pace it was when I started out, but honestly that’s okay. I look back on young Edwards and that guy…he could hustle. Elder Edwards does not have that sort of energy.

So, it’s okay to not write and to not sell stories. This is weird advice for writers, who write and sell stories. But remember you’re also a person, not a machine.

greydog: Given how much we’ve talked over the years, we might as well ask: your writing career mainly blossomed in the same five or six years as did that of failed plumber John Linwood Grant, and you were in regular contact. He also wrote the introduction to your new book. Clearly, he was both a protective auntie and a proud uncle, telling you to stay on your skateboard and to pay no attention to Mrs Pralowski and her annoying cat. Her trash-can was hardly dented. Do you see any areas in which your work or approach coincides with his?

sam: I’d like to think so. It would mean a lot to me. You and I both write character-centric stories. We both like occult detectives. We have strong opinions about dogs. Truly, I couldn’t think of a more apt comparison.

greydog: We also remember that we were also going to ask you something about Russians, but maybe that was because we’d finished our home-made Turkish Delight vodka. The coffee bean vodka didn’t work – it was horribly bitter. Maybe it was to do with your love of Russian literature. We’ll let you take over on this one.

sam: <Russian cricket noises> I just finished some short stories by Nikolai Leskov. I recommend ‘The Spook’ and ‘A Robbery’. Leskov is Russia’s answer to Saki and O. Henry, the missing link between the humorous fantasy of Gogol and the heart-breaking realism of Tolstoy.

greydog: There we are – a two-line guide to Russian literature. That’ll do, unless we ever remember the point we had. So, we know that you’ve now completed your first novel – so lots of time dictating flowing paragraphs to your secretary, in between sipping mint juleps. Or was it slightly harder than that?

sam: Remember when I talked about “the wall?” I hit “the wall” about 9,000 words into my novel. Which is far earlier than other writers I’ve talked to who have made the decision to write a novel.

It was difficult, because I had a very big idea and had never told big stories before. There were muscles that I had never used. I’d liken writing a short story to building something you can hold in your hand. You can carefully mold it, hold it. A novel is more like building something you have to live in.

So my first secret to novel writing is finding a very interested publisher who entices you with allusions to money. I talked about my “wall” with the venerable Ross E. Lockhart, who told me to send him what I had. Mr. Lockhart read it, and told me that if the manuscript were complete he would be making me an offer.

That lit a fire under me. I then took every weekend in the summer of 2020 to work on the novel. I mean, full day shifts writing the thing and reading Russian Literature (Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad and Life and Fate, two of the best novels ever written). I quickly learned that my outline was not going to work. There are characters in the final story who were not in my outlines, unplanned events, abandoned conceits. I very quickly got over my wall and moved the novel forward by asking “what would I want to read next?” As a consequence, there’s not much in the way of filler or padding in the story now.

greydog: Finally, is there one single tale in Death of an Author which you would recommend as ‘quintessential Edwards’? And when is the book due out?

sam: A younger Edwards would have a recommendation, but after the damn cat story from Whiskey became the most consistently popular story I don’t think even I know what a ‘quintessential Edwards’ story is. If any stories have cats in them, that’s the one. The book is due out on 25^th June.

greydog: Sam L Edwards, thanks for joining us, and all the best for the new collection.

sam: Thank you, John, and good luck with Biscuit. He seems like a handful.

<Biscuit the Appalling, puppy of this parish, eats remaining notes>

Death of an Author, by Sam L Edwards, is currently on pre-order from the publisher:

https://journalstone.com/bookstore/the-death-of-an-author/

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In a day or two, Sam L Edwards interviews old greydog. So be there, or be… well, someone who isn’t there…

In which, dear listener, we consider how nurture beats nature, as we end up with a Staffordshire x puppy who believes he’s a lurcher. Quite how this worked out we have no idea, but there’s little doubt that Biscuit, our ten month old staffy-type pest, thinks he’s a long dog. Just a short longdog, that’s all. And we wonder how often this sort of thing happens.

If you didn’t already know, it all began as one of those accidents, where we reluctantly took on an unwanted pup who had been rejected twice, most recently by a family with kids – he was too boisterous for them. I say ‘reluctantly’  because we had planned for another lurcher, but this poor little soul was around eight weeks old, and in need, and so…

We’re fairly experienced, and have had difficult dogs – like our late Jade, a lurcher rescued from the streets of London who had a tendency to shriek at everything, and to try and bite visitors, but who was gentleness personified with family members. But anyway, this new, lively scrap was young, and could surely be trained. Besides, decades ago we had rescued a full staffy who was the softest dollop imaginable, How hard could it be?

So we sailed into this with all the confidence of someone walking over the cliff edge in a thick fog…

Thus the new arrival was introduced to the rest of the pack – two much older long dogs. Conscious of his bull terrier element, we didn’t want a name that had any aggressive sound to it – no shouting “Come here, Fang the Destroyer!” in the local fields – and so he became Biscuit (or Ick-Bick, when he was really good).

At first he was what you might expect. Poorly house-trained, ridiculously full of energy, always hungry, and bitey. Not aggressive, but heavily focussed on sinking his teensy teeth indiscriminately into pullovers, cushions, shoes – and any limbs we left lying about (in fact, he has so far totally destroyed at least nine pairs of shoes).

We soldiered on, despite the destruction of property. He took to ‘Sit’ quickly, and his house-training improved week on week. Then we noticed that he was attempting to bond with our thirteen year old female long dog, Chilli (a deerhound x greyhound).

Now, Chilli is a total boss dog, being solitary when she wants to be, annoyingly sociable when wanting attention, and a demanding Empress to other dogs, who she dominates. Once they understand she’s in charge, she plays with them enthusiastically, but she won’t be subservient to any other hound. Rottweilers have crouched, grovelled and shown their bellies to her – literally.

As our ailing but amiable  old fellow, Django, was keeping out of this, we feared disaster. Chilli did not suffer fools gladly, let’s put it that way.

We tried not to interfere. Dogs are dogs, and if you’re fortunate, they find their own acceptable levels of interaction eventually.  Biscuit was certainly unbearably persistent and very demanding with Chilli, enough to earn some savage snaps, snarls, and once a bloody ear, but he would not give up. And after a couple of months, something interesting happened. She began to initiate bitey-face with him, as she had with Django when they were young.

He responded with joy, and despite never knowing when to stop, entered into daily sessions, the two of them filling the house regularly with what sounded like an unfeasibly large, starving wolf pack engaged in mortal combat. Mouthies and bitey-face became a big part of his life.

At the same time, our teensy monster had clearly been observing both Chilli and Django with fascination. Following Django’s lead, he learned how to counter-surf in earnest, and how to try poking the fridge open (perpetual Djangoid behaviours). Then he started sprawling and sleeping upside down in exactly the same position as our lurchers, and trying to copy some of their usual postures – even though he was too stubby to manage all of them.

And we wondered about this… there was every sign that he thought himself a long dog. He began to get pickier about his food, like Chilli, and to alternate mad zoomies with long naps – and yes, whilst many dogs do a range of these sort of things, Biscuit appeared very much to have modelled himself on his adults. Which was either amusing or horrifying, depending on what you think of lurcher habits.

So, nurture does appear to be winning out. We lost dear Django to arthritis and Cushings earlier this year, but Chilli and Biscuit are now a classic odd couple. A tall, slender black long dog with a white mask, and a short-legged staffy x determined to walk, play, sleep and live like a lurcher.

Impostor, or honorary member of that noble clan? We are inclined towards the latter – and are relieved that we didn’t rescue a goat. There’s only so much chewing a household can take…

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Back in a couple of days with some weird book stuff, and then maybe more magnificent lurchery things. You can subscribe for free to be updated when we post – it’s top left on computers, but where it is on mobile phones, we have no idea…

We’re back in action at old greydogtales, dear listener, with lots to come over the following months, but let’s get right in there today with exciting news from Occult Detective Magazine…

OCCULT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE IS PROUD TO PRESENT

A bumper new issue – over 100,000 words – featuring both unpublished stories and reprints new to the magazine’s pages, all generously offered by some terrific authors to promote the magazine. None of these tales have appeared in ODM before, and one or two are otherwise hard to find.

ODM #0 is completely FREE as a thank you to loyal readers over the last few years, and as a taste of what the magazine does for those not in the know.

This special issue includes stories by:

• Mike Carey
• Sam L Edwards
• Joshua M Reynolds
• Bev Allen
• Paul Finch
• Willie Meikle
• E J Stevens
• I A Watson
• Jilly Paddock
• John Linwood Grant
• Mike Chinn
• Adrian Cole
• Rosemary Pardoe

Plus a host of non-fiction articles and reviews by G W Thomas, Tim Prasil, Dave Panchyk, and Dave Brzeski. With art by Autumn Barlow, Adam Benet Shaw and Enrique Meseguer.

ODM #0 is available at no cost now in pdf, epub and mobi formats (see below). A limited edition print edition may follow later.

FREE DIRECT DOWNLOAD OF THE FULL ISSUE

 

Occult Detective Magazine #0 PDF

Occult Detective Magazine #0 EPUB

Occult Detective Magazine #0 MOBI

If you have any download problems, just email

occultdetectivemagazine@gmail.com

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And the next regular issue, ODM #8, will be out soon, with all-new tales of unwise investigations, eerie events and catastrophic encounters – plus the occasional victory for the occult detectives.

This issue will include:

• Brandon Barrows – Angel Scales
• Melanie Atherton Allen – The Voice on the Moor
• Paul StJohn Mackintosh – Ghost Trainspotting
• Uche Nwaka – Spirit Counsellor
• Rhys Hughes – Memory Fumes
• Robert Guffey – Committee of Mystery
• Rebecca Buchanan – The Bones are Walking
• D G Laredoute – Theatre of the Mind-Read
• C L Raven – The Dead Shall Rise
• Carsten Schmitt – Tahdukeh
• Christina L White – Becoming Art Deco
• I A Watson – Vinnie deSoth & the Saucer People

Plus the usual reviews, and interior art (so far) by Mutartis Boswell and Andy Paciorek.

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And do come back soon for our usual range of strangenesses…

A rare and simple thing, today, dear listener, as we post an actual book review. Not a hoax. Not a rambling offshoot into weird stuff by Yours Truly, but an honest-to-gods piece on a new and unsettling novel – We Wait from Megan Taylor – by our regular guest reviewer Dave Brzeski (Spoiler: He really likes it).

“A novel well worth reading; in fact it genuinely rewards re-reading. Quite simply this is the best modern Gothic… the best haunted house story I’ve read in an awful long time.”

We Wait comes from Megan Taylor, the author of novels How We Were Lost, The Dawning and The Lives of Ghosts, and a short story collection, The Woman Under the Ground.

As it happens, Dave and I also had the pleasure of publishing Megan’s excellent short story ‘Exposing the Dead’ in Occult Detective Magazine #5 (then called Occult Detective Quarterly).

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WE WAIT by Megan Taylor

Eyrie Press, paperback and Kindle

Review by Dave Brzeski

I’ve seen comments from more than one reviewer who compared this novel to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It’s immediately obvious that they weren’t referring to the plot. There’s no group of characters actively investigating a haunted house here. I could also see some thematic similarities to Stephen King’s The Shining, but that would be equally misleading. This is very much its own book.

We Wait opens with an introductory passage in italics, which purports to be the whispering spirits of Greywater House, the country estate of Maddie’s family. There are several other such passages here and there as the story progresses, but despite this, the supernatural element here is handled with great subtlety, which benefits the book immeasurably.

Maddie is brought to stay with her Aunt Natalie at Greywater House, under a cloud due to events which occurred at her boarding school. She has been allowed to bring along her best friend, Ellie, who looks on it as a great adventure.

Things soon start to turn sour, even before they reach the house, as Ellie sees something that almost causes their car to crash – but there is apparently nothing there. The tone of the book from here on is tense and somewhat bleak, and it gets progressively more so. The skill with which Megan Taylor introduces all the players while hinting at their many secrets is quite extraordinary.

The aged, bedridden relative, confined to a room at the top of the house is a classic Gothic horror trope, but I’ve rarely seen it handled in such a skilled, and very unsettling manner as it is here. Aunt Natalie’s bedridden mother, who we rarely see, or hear from – in fact she doesn’t get a single line of dialogue, nor do we find out her name (Marcia) until fairly well into the book – absolutely creeped me out. The very thought of entering that room is instilled with a palpable feeling of dread.

Ellie isn’t only there to support her friend… she is also in dire need of a break. Her own mother is dying of cancer, which really doesn’t help her delicate emotional state. Naturally, whatever supernatural influence pervades the house finds in Ellie a prime target.

I need to make a confession here – I read this a while back, then attempted to write a review. I found it very difficult to encapsulate what I felt, so I abandoned it for a couple of months. Then I approached the book again, having decided to make notes as I went along this time. The trouble is, this is one of those books you want people to have read already, so you can discuss it without risk of spoilers, compare how you interpreted various events etc.

There’s so much I’d like to say about just the first part of this novel, but I find myself severely hampered by that sticky problem of spoilers. It is impossible, however, to not mention one aspect of the girls’ relationship, as it’s a central theme to the book. Let me just say that Aunt Natalie has her own reasons for disapproving, and the reaction of Maddie’s father, Hugo, when he returns at the end of the first part, is not pleasant.

Part Two, set thirty years earlier, concerns Natalie’s story when she was close to the same age as Maddie and Ellie, and as the secrets of her family are gradually revealed, we begin to see parallels. It’s a story of bigotry, jealousy and dark deeds, which the house has absorbed, and these echoes of the past are in danger of being repeated.

One of the more obvious such parallels is the scenario of another girl and her school friend at Greywater House. This time, it’s Natalie, and her friend Jessica who are more or less in the same situation as Maddie and Ellie in the first part. This time we also have a younger Hugo, and their harridan of a mother.

The girl, Jessica, is the daughter of Marcia’s brother-in-law from his first marriage, which means she’s not even a blood relative. Marcia’s sister has basically dumped her stepdaughter on Marcia. Here, it’s the nature of Natalie and Jessica’s relationship that angers Marcia, and there’s no getting away from the fact that she is a bigot. She plots to separate the girls by having her rake of a son seduce Jessica. It becomes apparent over time that this is a very complex novel. It’s not just about bigotry over the girls’ sexuality, nor is it about the other dark secrets the characters are keeping hidden or the house’s malign influence. Everything feeds off of everything else.

In the third and final part, we come back to the present, and things rapidly come to a head. It’s not an easy read, if I’m honest. There’s a level of despair that becomes almost overwhelming. Don’t be discouraged by that, though. This is a complex novel well worth reading; in fact it genuinely rewards re-reading. Quite simply this is the best modern Gothic… the best haunted house story I’ve read in an awful long time. I’d go as far as to say it’s possibly one of the best, period.

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More about Megan Taylor’s work at:

www.megantaylor.info

And We Wait is available now:

We Wait on Amazon UK

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Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives I & II

Edited by John Linwood Grant

amazon us

amazon uk