My top-ten horror films #9

9 – THE GHOUL (1975) God knows how I got away with it, but I remember very clearly staying up to watch the horror double bills that played on BBC 2 on Saturday nights. Maybe my parents were unusually liberal; maybe I watched from the stairs… but anyway, I was just eleven years old […]

The Best Horror of the Year

Volume 5 of The Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow and published by Skyhorse, will contain my short story The Pike. The book will be available from the beginning of September. You can pre-order it here in the UK or here for US customers.

Obligatory cat post

I’d always wanted a cat and when I bought a flat in Stamford Hill in 1997 it felt as though the time was right. It was a Maine Coon or nothing for me. I have always admired them, and was enchanted by their inquisitive nature, the odd sounds they produce and the sheer size of […]

My top-ten horror films #10

So having polished off the ‘mainstream’ movies, I might as well share with you my go-to films when I want to get my creep on… 10 – THE PEARL OF DEATH (1944) Is this a horror film? Probably not in the conventional sense. But it was for me when I first watched it, aged around […]

Non-horror films… bubbling under

Ten films that might once have been on my list, and are still important to me (in no particular order): There Will Be Blood Blue Velvet Barton Fink 2001: A Space Odyssey North by Northwest The Deer Hunter Into the Wild Glengarry Glen Ross The King of Comedy Spartacus

The Dated Novel

In 2003 I wrote a novel called Blonde on a Stick. The climax to that book occurs on the roof of the train shed at St Pancras, accessed via the desiccated rooms and corridors of the rotting Midland Grand Hotel. A chase scene beforehand had taken in the construction work occurring around what is now the […]

My Top Ten non-horror films #1

1 – CHINATOWN (1974) An utterly sumptuous film, beautiful to look at, brilliantly scripted, directed and acted, and containing everything you would want from a story: drama, thrills, intrigue, humour, tragedy and a deep, painful twist. Robert Towne’s screenplay is an object lesson in writing for the movies, but fair play to Roman Polanski for […]

My Top Ten non-horror films # 2

2 – THE GODFATHER (1972 – 1990) I’m going to be cheeky and include all three films as one entry, mainly because whenever I watch the first, then I always end up watching the next two as well, so for me this is just one big story. I love the look of the films, dark, […]

Interview and story

Mihai Adascalitei interviews me for Revista de Suspans. There is also a story, Slitten Gorge, and another outing for my recent blog post Doorstep Horror. The site is in Romanian, but there are English translations to be found. Check the links to the right of the page.

My Top Ten non-horror films #3

3 – THE CONVERSATION (1974) I loved the rash of paranoid thrillers that came out in the 1970s, particularly The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation. Sandwiched between the first two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, this was Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘quiet’ project, but it was no less […]