Best Horror of the Year 2

And the stories in "They That Dwell in Dark Places" are described as 'traditional and nicely creepy', and possibly the cup of tea of 'those who enjoy M.R. James'.

I'm a big fan of the Files/Barringer story you've got coming up next, John, although I'm not sure if it'll be to your taste or not. The rest are a patchy lot.

"Each Thing I Show You Is A Piece of My Death" by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer. An excellent story that's a bit difficult to summarise (and in fact I think I need to read it another couple of times to work out exactly what was going on) but basically it's a riff on the 'possessed / evil film' subgenre only here the evil in the film is able to infect other films and internet video clips. Told in the form of emails and recorded interview tapes to reflect the 'collage' effect that the experimental film-makers who are central to the story are aiming for with their new project I thought this was great.

"The Nimble Men" by Glen Hirshberg. What are those weird lights in the sky? Not exactly the aurora borealis, a stranded aeroplane and its passengers get a closer look in a tale that didn't so that much for me.

"What Happens When You Wake Up In the Night" by Michael Marshall Smith. I actually raced to this one first (admittedly because of its BFS awards success which is the kind of thing I really shouldn't let colour my opinions). It's a short sharp nightmarish little tale but it's a bit weird it won an award. But then what do I know? ;->

"Wendigo" by Micaela Morrissette. This book's run of pretty decent stories as far as I was concerned came to a grinding halt with this piece that I'm afraid I had to give up on about three pages in. Very densely written prose has never been my thing and once I got to the bit where a shopping spree yielded three lines of obsessive detail about what was bought, after similar paragraphs detailing someone's reaction to the things they had been eating, and I realised there were another 10 pages to go I did the very rare thing of skipping the rest of the story entirely. No idea what this one was about. Sorry, Michaela.

"In the Porches of My Ears" by Norman Prentiss. I have no idea if this is really a horror story but it's a bit weird and the majority of it doesn't prepare you for the ending, (except of course it actually does without you realising it). Utterly unexpectedly this turned out to be one of the loveliest and most touching stories I've read in ages. Really very good indeed. Well done Mr Prentiss.

Is that really a practical material for a sledge?

It's probably helpful if you've a lot of downhill mileage to cover.

"Lotophagi" by Edward Morris. Another one that has me wondering quite why I forked out actual money for this book. The narrative is hard to get into as the narrator appears to be some dropout hippie type who goes to live with a bunch of other people who never wash in some kind of commune in the forest miles away from anywhere where they read Samuel Delaney novels and pick weevils out of each other's hair. A monster raises its ugly head although quite why it doesn't run away at the sight of such people I have no idea. Our narrator escapes to write brick thick hard SF novels (honestly). At least I think that's what happens but I found the way in which this was written bloody hard work and I skimmed a fair bit of it. Apologies to anyone who thinks I might have spoiled the ending but honestly I'm doing you a favour.

"The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall" by Kaaron Warren. I haven't read 'Slights', Kaaron Warren's novel that was a BFS freebie a couple of years ago, but this story isn't half bad. Gina and Rose specialise in getting hold of exceptionally rare breeds of dog - you know, like the ones that have been so specially bred that their brains are too big for their skulls, or the ones that now have legs so tiny they can no longer walk. Sent into the depths of the Fijian jungle by a dodgy doctor their task is to recover four specimens of the extremely rare 'vampire dog'. This one's a goodie - a bit like a cross-fertilisation of literary fiction with the jungle pulp tales of Hugh B Cave and as a result this gets a big thumbs up, even though I would have preferred an ending even nastier and less moral than the one we get. And I might even check out the novel.

My review of DEAD LOSS by Carole Johnstone from BLACK STATIC #13:
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Dead Loss - Carole Johnstone

"Lachlan hated bottom-trawling. Hated the very idea of it: of a vast weighted net dragged over rock and corpse and wreck."

And the story-winners keep coming, no mistake! Hugely impressed by this tale of the North Sea near Scotland and Norway (far rougher and foreboding than that part where I live on its coast in North Essex!).

I am not an expert on trawler-fishing but this seems to evoke the state (emotionally and technically - otter boards, enabled cookies) of being right there in the thick of the British Shipping Forecast, and not only the weather - the things that one might trawl in distant trenches that either Innsmouth or Hodgson may blench at. 'Bottom-fishing' is a term in Investment Banking - but here Creation's pecking-order takes on a new dimension, and you won't know exactly what I mean till you read this literally reverberating story. The protagonist is not exactly in love with the sea. Nor is the sea in love with him. But there is a symbiosis and catharsis here that quite obliterates finer emotions about Fate and philosophy.

Like the previous two stories it tells of giant versions of things or unseen versions that things hide within themselves. Breeds apart. And here I imagine to myself that the catch will be fish bigger than even Islington Crocodiles! Giantism-in-action. Shock and awe. But I've only skimmed the surface. (22 Oct 09 - six hours later)