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Book signing at Ottakar's, Bishops Stortford, 2006
Mick is married to Clare, Len is not, and there are two children between us, Iain Maynard and Emily Sims. We both live in Hertfordshire, about 25 miles apart. We began writing in 1972 with short horror stories that were either Pan Horror type stuff or very atmospheric mood pieces. Our first sales were in 1974, with Curtain Call to London Mystery Magazine for £7 and a second story, Benjamin's Shadow to Hugh Lamb for his Taste Of Fear anthology. Hugh has remained a lifelong friend. Our writing settles into four main periods - the early traditional ghost story period of about ten years from 1974: a middle period when we wrote a lot without sending much off for possible publication. During this period we wrote and broadly destroyed about 11 novels, and wrote numerous stories. This 'barren' period lasted about ten years from about 1984. The third period began around 1994 and is when we began again in earnest and happily continues to the present day. During this period most of the published work featured on this website was written. The fourth ten year period began around 2004 with the publication of what currently is our last story collection, Falling Into Heaven. This phase is dominated by novels. Of course there are always a few short stories written along the way. “Maynard and Sims. Those are the guys who write ghost stories and traditional horror, full of quiet and subtle effects, whose work you describe as 'atmospheric' because you're too old and self-consciously macho to admit they scared the crap out of you.” Peter Tennant Our CV goes out like this at present – Their first supernatural novel, Shelter, was published mass market in July 2006 by Leisure in USA. Their second, Demon Eyes, was a December 2007 publication by Leisure, and the third, Black Cathedral, the first Department 18 book, was published early 2009, with a fourth, Night Souls, the second Department 18 book, scheduled for June 2010 publication. They are also working on a crime thriller trilogy series of novels and three adventure thriller novels. www.michaeljamesleonard.com is under construction. Scripts from their ghost stories are being developed. Numerous stories have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, the anthology, Strange Tales, which won the World Fantasy Award 2004 and the Del Rey anthology, The Children Of Cthulhu. Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and 1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, one introduced by Hugh Lamb and the other by Stephen Jones, and Falling Into Heaven in 2004. Novellas, Moths, The Hidden Language Of Demons, The Seminar, and Double Act, have been published in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007 respectively. They worked as editors on the first seven volumes of Darkness Rising, and the two annual Darkness Rising anthologies. They co-edited and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They wrote essays for the Mark Chadbourn website At The World’s End. Contact can be made at Michael@micksims.f9.co.uk 3 Cutlers Close, St Michaels Mead, Bishops Stortford, Herts, CM23 4FW, England And they can also be found at http://www.myspace.com/maynardsims On Facebook, separately under Len Maynard & Michael Sims. And they have a message board at http://www.horrorworld.org/massmarket.htm They are mentioned at
www.dept18.com
“Not
only has their influence shaped the supernatural fiction field in the
United Kingdom over the past couple of years, but now they are making
significant ingress across the Atlantic.” |
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Copyright © 2008 L.H. Maynard & M.P.N. Sims |
