Announcing a Brand New Annual Anthology! THE SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES Release date: September 2014 Published by Spectral Press, edited by acclaimed, award-winning novelist Mark Morris (Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, Fiddleback and the forthcoming Obsidian Heart trilogy) and inspired by the Pan and Fontana books of horror and ghost stories, which were hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s, The Spectral Book of Horror Stories will be the first volume of a non-themed annual horror anthology, showcasing all-original stories by the very best writers in the genre. Each yearly volume will contain around fifteen to twenty stories, and will be available in paperback and e-book format across all platforms. The cover for each volume will be a new and original work by multi-award-winning artist Vincent Chong. The Spectral Book of Horror Stories will be launched with a mass signing session at the 2014 British Fantasy Convention in York (September 5-7, 2014), though the book can be pre-ordered direct from Spectral Press at http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/the-spectral-book-of-horror-stories-table-of-contents/ The final Table of Contents for volume one is:   ON THE TOUR – RAMSEY CAMPBELL THE DOG’S HOME – ALISON LITTLEWOOD FUNERAL RITES – HELEN MARSHALL SLAPE – TOM FLETCHER THE NIGHT DOCTOR – STEVE RASNIC TEM DULL FIRE – GARY McMAHON THE BOOK AND THE RING –…

Mire House is dreary, dark, cold and infested with midges. But when Emma Dean inherits it from a distant relation, she immediately feels a sense of belonging. It isn’t long before Charlie Mitchell, grandson of the original owner, appears claiming that he wants to seek out his family. But Emma suspects he’s more interested in the house than his long-lost relations.  And when she starts seeing ghostly figures, Emma begins to wonder: is Charlie trying to scare her away, or are there darker secrets lurking in the corners of Mire House?  Who hasn’t dreamed of inheriting a rambling old house hidden in the heart of the countryside? I know I certainly have, even if it has seen better days and is a bit worn round the edges. It sounds like the perfect rural idyll. When the reader is first introduced to Emma, the sadness that permeates her character is quickly established. She has suffered recent loss and that trauma has left its mark. She is keen to escape the past, to find somewhere new where she can build a life and really belong. The opportunity to start again at Mire House seems almost too good to be true. As she starts…

The Mexican cenotés. Flooded caves that fracture the Yucatan Peninsula – places of mystery, the unexplored, and of ancient sacrifice. When Alex meets an old friend while travelling, he doesn’t realise how far the encounter will take him. For Rick is exploring deep beneath the surface of the world, discovering new cave systems, one leading to the next. And when Alex is compelled to follow he has no way of knowing just how deep he will be expected to go, or how dark are the places he will find there . . . Its time to dip my toes into the water that is the latest release from those cheeky scare-mongers over at Spectral Press. (See what I did there? … the story features a great deal of water…oh suit yourself.) Though only around twenty pages long Spectral’s latest chapbook, The Eyes of Water, taps into a plethora of primal horrors that I think many readers will be able to appreciate. The psychological impact of losing someone unexpectedly, fear of the unknown and starting to fear for your own sanity are all touched upon.  Driven by a desire for the truth, Alex travels ever deeper into the water-filled cave system….