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READING

Our Stories Currently Available To Read
Outside Our Collections
Can Be Found At These Locations
 

A new story ONION is published in Charles Black's new anthology
THE SECOND BLACK BOOK OF HORROR
February 2008 from Mortbury Press www.freewebs.com/mortburypress/
 

The US magazine Doorways issue 4 is December 2007/January 2008
A new story FRACTURED SOULS is included

In 2005 Stephen Jones selected our story Flour White And Spindle Thin
from Falling Into Heaven for his Best New Horror #16
Best New Horror can be purchased from all the major bookshops as well as online.

MIDNIGHT STREET #8
Reviewed by Steve Redwood

 This issue showcases the well-known devilish duo LH Maynard & MPN Sims, in the now customary Midnight Street format of two stories and an interview. The latter includes interesting information about the development of their writing (particularly how they set about a collaboration), the move from short stories to mass market novels, and their days of editing Enigmatic Tales and Darkness Rising. I’m sure many people reading this (if many people are reading this!) had their earliest breaks in one of these anthologies.

 Their first story here, North and South, is sneaky, because you think you’re headed for a nasty haunted-house story, but in this case it’s not the house that’s nasty, but the buyers (who are also, in a tragic sense, haunted). The worrying details pile up slowly, almost sedately, but keep the reader constantly questioning. The relationship between the couple is all wrong, and yet something is keeping them together, and why do they need six bedrooms, and why have they fostered other children if their own child is handicapped…? By the time we learn that four of the ‘severely damaged’ girls will sleep in the cellar, we realise the respectable couple may not be quite as respectable as they seem. A neatly-crafted little shocker, with an excellent structure, the duo’s hallmark attention to detail and setting, and an imaginative use of language.

 The second offering, Sliding Down the Slippery Slip, is a first-person narrative by a lady with an unusual taste in beverages. We learn from the very beginning that she has certain personality disorders, and there are references to the ‘first’ hospital, and so on. She likes absinthe, and has just bought a bottle from Elvis Presley (who short-changed her!). She also has a special bottle, now seemingly empty, that ‘beckoned like a stranger from a black-windowed taxi parked along the pavement by the Seine’. She has invited friends (all ladies: AC Evans’ erotic illustrations leave us in little doubt that these particular ladies find men de trop) to dinner, and by the end of the evening the new bottle of absinthe will be empty, ‘while my own bottle, my trusted friend, will be full to overflowing’. With what, one wonders. Given that when her dog drank the ‘special fluids’ from this bottle he soon died, we may at first think of the Borgias, but the situation is worse than that, as a new dinner guest is about to find out… The whole story, from the preparation of the food to the preliminary orgy and final crime, is told in a meticulous matter-of-fact manner, in keeping with the character of the speaker; indeed, it is the style of the telling which is its main strength. The Twilight Twins have certainly moved on from genteel ghosts!

	www.tartaruspress.com Details can be found at the Tartarus website about their hardback anthology STRANGE TALES (December 2003) It features our previously unpublished and uncollected story BETWEEN THE DEAD MEN AND THE BLIND   COMING HOME from the Echoes Of Darkness collection is included in Horrorfind Best Of Volume 2 see http://www.horrorfind.com/ Previously unpublished and uncollected our story SLIGHTLY ALL THE TIME is in the William Simmons edited USA anthology Vivisections http://store.yahoo.com/shocklines/vivedbywilps.html
	This Del Rey Lovecraftian book features A VICTORIAN POT DRESSER which is scheduled to appear in our next collection Falling Into Heaven in 2004 …the elaborate, quintessentially Lovecraftian construction of "A Victorian Pot Dresser" by L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims" Regina Schroeder on www.Amazon.Com Copyright © AmericanLibrary Association. All rights reserved  “I'm currently reading through my copy of THE CHILDREN OF CTHULHU, and last night I got to "A Victorian Pot Dresser." I've been looking forward to reading this one ever since I first saw the title and was intrigued by it many months ago. I'm glad to say the story fulfilled my hopes. A very deftly handled premise, with some great characterizations and elegant prose along the way -- in short, a really nice job. Thanks much for the reading pleasure.” Matt Cardin “I recently read (the)"Victorian Pot Dresser" tale from ‘Children of Cthulhu’.  A brilliant, brilliant story.”  Richard Gavin
	The story THE SHADOW MAN, co-written with John B Ford, is included in John's book The Evil Entwines. This story is one of twelve collaborations in the book between John and various authors, including Tim Lebbon, Ramsey Campbell, Simon Clark, and Thomas Ligotti. It is published by Hardcastle Publications.   http://www.feoamante.com/Stories/Tales/Contest1/beckon_stranger.html has the story BEWARE THE BECKONING STRANGER The story SHADOW PLAY is available in the Prime charity anthology Dreaming Of Angels www.primebooks.net
	Our story SALVATION which appears in our collection Falling Into Heaven (due 2004) is in this Eden Studios zombie anthology and has been optioned for a US movie. “Salvation Author: L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims Plague Stage: Post-Apocalypse Rating: 4.0/5.0 A simple, "old school" zombie apocalypse story about a horribly lonely man besieged by the living dead in his isolated farmhouse, resignedly going about the business of surviving without hope. The authors do a great job of emphasizing the nihilistic despair intrinsic in such zombie takeover scenarios. They also neatly sweep aside the question often asked on AFMBE discussion groups regarding how the military would handle the zombies by making the source of the zombie plague a literal plague.” Capsule Review by Dan Davenport USA http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6839.html
	http://www.horrormasters.com/ FIVE of our stories can be found at this website. The novella BORDER END from Shadows At Midnight; AN OFFICE IN THE GRAYS INN ROAD, AT THE END OF THE PIER and MALLORY'S FARM from Echoes Of Darkness, and an unpublished William Hope Hodgson tribute story THE SITE OF THE FIRST REDOUBT.   Infinity Plus Contains our story AN OFFICE IN THE GRAYS INN ROAD from Echoes Of Darkness and THE BASSINET from Shadows At Midnight   Our Story THE NICE HOUSE is included in this Horror Writers Association witch themed book from Design Image Group BELL BOOK AND BEYOND   “In tone and mood, it is easy to see why the work of this partnership is often compared to M R James. If James had a crown for the passing, to Maynard and Sims it would have to go.” Richard Wright,  UK.   "Stories of the occult convey a genuine creepy feeling, reminiscent of H.P.Lovecraft.” Russell Williams, Dark Realms magazine USA  “Reminiscent of the work of Ramsey Campbell.” Gothic Net, USA “Devotees of James, Aycliffe or Campbell, take note.” Zene, UK. “Truly distinctive style.” Springbeach Press, UK.   Home