'"Martin Goodman has created the baby from hell, mashing ROSEMARY’s BABY, Interview with the Vampire and The Mummy' into a darkly blood-stained adventure that moves across space and time in a new twist on the vampire tale. Told in an intense and intimate style Dr. Spock would not have approved, FOREVER KONRAD Konrad is a treat to read - a gripping, uncanny, gothic adventure." 


—Clive Bloom, author of Gothic Horror.
Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University
 
"

An intense and compelling tale of the supernatural, Forever Konrad shows us all the stages of a monster coming to maturity. It combines psychology at its darkest with a genuine sense of the uncanny—a powerful and disturbing experience."

—Ramsey Campbell
 


Mark is my oldest friend in the writing business. I think it was 1986; I know it was at a convention. He came up to me, or I went up to him. He was in awe of me he told me later, because I’d published a few stories, whereas I genuinely was in awe of him, because he had published, or was about to publish, a novel, TOADY. I hadn’t even written a novel, never mind published one. We were born the same year (the same year, coincidentally, as Phil Nutman). We became close friends. I would visit him and his lovely girlfriend, the artist Nel Whatmore, in Leeds. He would visit me in London.

I attended Mark’s wedding; he attended both of mine. It was Mark who informed me of the passing of our great friend Joel. It was Mark who was once unfortunate enough to be talking to me on the phone when I fell asleep, because I was so tired, possibly jet-lagged, after a long journey. He told me later he’d hoped I’d fallen asleep, but couldn’t be sure. Maybe I was messing about, he’d thought, or maybe I’d died.

So you might think I shouldn’t be writing this. I’m too close to Mark, not impartial. But this is an introduction, not a review. Not only does it not matter, it’s an advantage.

Reading is an intimate act. We feel a particular kind of intimacy with the author. This is especially the case with short stories, because they are short, because they are so intense, and because we often read them in a single sitting. Reading these stories of Mark’s, which represent his output over the last three decades, I can see his development as a writer, which bears some similarity to my own, since we started writing at the same time and share a lot of the same influences and enthusiasms. One story has a similar premise to the premise of one of mine, which he probably hasn’t read. (We’re on the same path; we see the same things.) But, we do different things with it. Whereas I don’t engage, Mark talks to the ghost. There are a few ghosts, of one kind or another.
 Mark wrote recently on social media that he has a weakness for nostalgia. He may not have used the word ‘weakness’ and I don’t intend any negative connotation by using it myself. I share his weakness for nostalgia. Let’s call it a strong inclination towards Pan and Fontana anthologies of horror and ghost stories. If you didn’t already know that, you’d be able to guess it, from this book. Anyone who follows Mark’s social media posts knows how much he loves Doctor Who. But if you didn’t know, you’d probably guess it after reading at least one of these pieces, ‘What Nature Abhors’, with its smothered mannequins in shop windows that will remind readers, who are also Doctor Who fans, of the Autons. There’s something about the atmosphere of the silent, empty town, in that story, that’s straight out of Doctor Who, particularly when the four men burst out of the pub door, like an irruption of the strange into the normal, producing a frisson for the reader.

The same feeling of unease is generated at various moments in ‘The Red Door’, whenever the unreal becomes manifest in the real. Tucked away inside enthusiastically demonstrative stories about monsters and the walking dead are quiet little moments that unsettle powerfully. A character hesitates before knocking on a dead woman’s door, for example. Why? I love that hesitation.

There are ideas that would not be out of place in a Stephen King collection—like theme parks where you dodge stray bullets from the distant past—and sentences that have Ramsey Campbell written all over them: ‘Meacher might have ventured inside to freshen his dry mouth with something sweet and fizzy if the pub’s wooden doors, so hefty they put him in mind of a dungeon, had not been firmly shut.’ I can’t immediately think of another writer who might assign the title ‘Puppies For Sale’ to a story that is basically a descent into the most horrible waking nightmare. Similarly, ‘Holiday Romance’ is not very romantic; it and one or two other stories bristle with the anxiety of ageing and a fear of mortality, particularly resonant, perhaps, for readers born in 1963 or earlier.

Settings range from small towns to central London, via isolated farmhouses, exclusive residential avenues, and out-of-season seaside resorts. There’s even, for fans of Mark’s Punk Monday feature on Facebook, a visit to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the unlikely company of a strangely believable Sid Vicious. The vibe of the collection generally, packed as it is with horror, disease, and anxiety, is definitely more ‘Bodies’ and ‘Problems’ than ‘Holidays in the Sun’. Nevertheless—or do I mean ‘so’?— I very much hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

You’re in for a good time here.
 If you’re anything like me—and considering you’re holding this book, I’ll venture that we share some common ground – you love a good monster movie. Aliens, Godzilla, King Kong, Them! To this day, I watch these movies alongside the wonderstruck ghost of my ten-year-old self. A good monster movie (heck, even some of the bad ones) will fill you with the illogical but magnificent fears you only experienced as a child, before reason and common sense jumped behind the wheel and steered you into adulthood.

Books are equally capable of providing this creature-feature thrill. Stephen King’s The Mist springs immediately to mind. Then there’s Guy N. Smith’s Night of the Crabs, and Brian Keene’s The Conqueror Worms. And how about the vesps in Tim Lebbon’s terrifying novel The Silence? Or the mutated spiders in Sarah Pinborough’s Breeding Ground?


The list goes on . . .

And now we have THE STORM.


Paul Kane knows what he’s doing. I’ll start right there. This man breathes horror. One look at his Twitter feed will tell you that; Paul regularly posts about the movies he spends his evenings and weekends watching. Hell, not just one movie, but five or six-marathon movie sessions, encompassing new sci-fi/horror, and the classics, too. This is a passion for Paul. A religion. A way of life. And it shines through in his storytelling. What we have in THE STORM is a love letter to movies like Monster from the Ocean Floor and Attack of the Crab Monsters, with generous notes of Wyndham, James Herbert, and Hammer Horror. Everything is handled expertly, the action measured out, and those B-movie moments are deliberately and unapologetically hit. I got the sense, reading THE STORM, that Paul wrote the entire thing with a huge grin on his face.


I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think so.

While clearly paying its respects to classic sci-fi/horror, THE STORM stands alone as a spirited, engaging read. The main characters embody their B-movie roots. Keegan, our suitably rugged hero, is an ex-military, former convict trying to find balance in a world gone to hell (and that’s even before the monsters show up). There’s Gemma, our beautiful female protagonist, fighting to maintain control of an unthinkable situation (as well as her feelings for our misunderstood hero). And there’s Dillon Stewart, a seven-year-old American boy with a psychic gift.
 Great fodder for any apocalyptic situation, right? But there’s a depth to these characters —and to the secondary characters, too. Against a backdrop of outrageous horror, we see complicated and very human relationships between husbands and their wives, children and their parents, between siblings, friends, and colleagues. The B-movie tropes are affectionately in place, but not at the expense of character. I repeat: Paul Kane knows what he’s doing. He is in control, and it’s easy to trust him to take us along for the ride.


And what a ride! If you’re looking for a quietly unsettling, contemplative horror tale, then you’d better look elsewhere. But if you’re in the mood for a balls-to-the-wall, page-turning, dynamite blast of monster mayhem, then you’ve come to the right place.
 It’s all here. Delivered with enthusiasm and understanding and a skilled storyteller’s touch.
 Okay, I’ve jabbered for too long. This is it—you’re a page away. Go grab a drink and some popcorn, and get ready.


It’s time for TERROR!

For EXCITEMENT!

For NIGHTMARES and THRILLS!


It’s time to sit alongside the ghost of your ten-year-old self.
 Welcome to the monster show.