Spoken In Whispers

[dem bones]

Andrew Llewellyn - Final Entry: Anthony 'Ern' Shaw, popular chief electrician and maintenance super at the Royal Liberty NHS Trust, is very selective where taking a lover is concerned. Every night he pays a visit to the morgue to select a looker from the new arrivals for fun and games. Yesterday, a 24-year-old equestrienne, Penelope Hewitt, was thrown from her horse and killed by a hit-and-run motorcycle hoodlum. A delighted Anthony is giving her corpse a good seeing to when a mean-spirited dust cloud of cosmic radiation particles kills the moment .........

Ian Taylor - Behind A Painted Smile: (Darrell Buxton [ed], Fifth BHF Book of Horror Stories, 2021). Dolly Dumpling boasts they're the greatest panto double act on the Northern circuit, but, after thirty years of playing the clown, Simple Simon has had enough. He'll be breaking up the partnership at the end of the season. Fatally, Simon confides as much to Chloe Hastings, the latest chorus girl to attract Dolly's unwanted attentions. Chloe blurts as much when the fat slob tries to molest her. Dolly Dumpling does not take kindly to the news.

[dem bones]

Andrew Llewellyn & Ian Taylor - Oxford to Cardiff, via Hell: Insane with grief over the death of his little boy and subsequent break-up of his marriage, Joe Dixon enlists a perma-drunk acquaintance to help him retrieve Oliver from his grave in Wolvercote Cemetery on Halloween. An evil spirit takes full advantage to unleash a reign of bloody murder.

Told — in part — by a detective hired by Deborah, the former Mrs. Dixon to protect she, new partner John McAteer, and his son, Toby, from her deranged stalker ex.

Andrew Llewellyn - Crichton Cottage: 57-year old Mrs. Patricia Marchant's thrilling fling with a much younger man is brought to an abrupt end. Dishy Daniel is abducted by a handsome Eastern European brother and sister, recently moved in at the posh villa along the way. Bloody Lithuanians.

Ian Taylor – I Am Not Alone: Stalked through a lonesome house on the hill, the ground floor strewn with the limbs of a butchered family of six ....

Andrew Llewellyn - Martha, My Dear: ]: (Darrell Buxton [ed], Fifth BHF Book of Horror Stories, 2021). Julia Harrison learns — too late! — that if your car break down in the wilds of Somerset, under no circumstances should you mistake the local cretin for a good Samaritan. The lad has ... needs, after all. Same goes for the boy's father and his enormous pet Tamworth Sow. As with the ghastly Hamburger Lady, not a story you're likely to forget.

Ian Taylor - One Last Round: Jim Hodcombe is too diligent a milkman to allow a fatal heart attack to prevent his completing a round. Ed and Kate Treacy are made to pay an extortionate price for a single bottle of congealed milk they didn't want. As with I Am Not Alone, a bad dream from which there is to be no merciful awakening.

[dem bones]

Andrew Llewellyn - Celestial Crush: Chris Wigley, sixteen, the popular kid everyone hates (captain of school team, ladies man, preferential treatment in all things, etc.), organises a coach trip to the Bristol Ice rink. Spotty Samuel Isaac books a seat, hoping there'll be an opportunity to talk to the new girl, Theresa, who, in his estimation, compares favourably to Rosanne Arquette in Desperately Seeking Susan. Better still, she seems to like him!

Robbie Griswold is not only Isaac's best mate, he secretly fancies him. Mindful his friend is easily hurt, he cautions the boy against getting his hopes up - a looker like Theresa just has to be spoken for. And she is. That smarmy bastard Wigley has claimed first dibs! On the drive home, to Robbie's disgust, Wigley, Theresa and their snide mates ply Isaac with drink and gob over the back of his coat. If they only knew just who Robbie was descended from, they'd know better than to bully the boy he loves. On the evidence of this and story ##5, author is something of a specialist in outrageous left-field twists and denouements.

Ian Taylor – Billy Moon: "Billy Moon is real, he just isn't Billy. He's Ash, Billy Moon was always Ash. When he was alive, 'Billy' was his way of asserting control when he wasn't in the same room. If Billy was watching, then it meant Ash was watching and would know if you weren't doing what he wanted." Harper Lane Estate, a depressed and decaying breeding ground of violent crime, drug abuse, and prostitution with a spiralling suicide rate. Linda Jay, twenty-four, widowed with two kids when her husband was shot dead in a botched post office raid, is working all hours to keep a roof over their heads while they and hundreds like them await rehousing. In truth, Ash, a religious fanatic and control freak, is no great loss — but then it's not as if he's truly gone. The house is haunted by Billy Moon, the bogeyman poltergeist he fabricated to keep them in line. With Ash in the ground, Billy has grown more powerful and possessive than ever, feeding from the misery and sin of the estate. Linda has run through a succession of loser pick-ups before she's approached in The Casbah by a guy who attended the same school. It's clear from the off that she and Matt Norton are soul mates, but will their relationship make matters worse?

Werewolves, vampire, necrophilia, grave robbing, evil spirits, a flesh-eating demon, OAP's, when pantomime dames go gaga, etc - old friends for sure, but reinvigorated over twelve engaging horror shorts and an introspective (?), desperately grim haunted flat novella (the latter, Billy Moon also features personal pick of Selene Paxton-Brooks' illustrations; a spectral Linda on P251). Allan Bryce's endorsement, "in the classic tradition of the Pan Books of horror" seems about right, especially the more downbeat, kitchen sink psychodramas, though I'm not quite sold on comparisons to Chetwynd-Hayes.

Still none the wiser if Spoken in Whispers is the first BHF Book of Horror spin-off — did this mysterious 'E H Bourne' character's novel ever see the light of day?

[iant]

Cheers Dem,
I've always wanted to attain levels of 'desperately grim'!

The Pan Books were certainly foremost in our mind so very pleased that you agreed with that vibe,

As for whether we are BHF... I suppose that has become a smidge more complicated since Andrew and I got announced as the new editorial team for BHF.
In actual fact, Spoken in Whispers was a Taylew production, the writing project being entirely specific to the two of us away from BHF, though as we retained the rights to our BHF work, we did make use of three previously published stories. And of course, artist Selene and proofreader Darrell are BHF associates, so the waters are muddy...
But, I think Taylew will continue to be just Andrew and I writing, BHF will be, as before, a much larger pool of writers and artists. We have much to discuss during our first face to face editorial meeting in October, but any BHF volumes and potentials spin-offs by other BHF writers, etc wil no doubt remain BHF and Andrew and I writing as a collaborative pair will be Taylew. 
I dare say I have/have not cleared that up!
Ian