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Post by dem on Nov 11, 2020 16:35:37 GMT
Paul Finch - The Christmas You Deserve: Five Festive Terror Tales (2020) The Merry Makers
The Unreal
Krampus
The Tenth Lesson
The StainBlurb: Christmas, the happiest time of year. Plum puddings, candy canes, carols by the fireside.
But outside, the mist lies deep and still. Frost gnaws at your fingertips. Shadowy forms lurk in the evergreens.
It’s the season for ghost stories. For dark warnings. For eerie myths drawing on the blood rites of the past …
The Christmas present that wants to butcher you.
The horned devil in the Santa Claus suit.
The terrifying events at Mistletoe Hall.
The movie makers trapped in a winter nightmare.
The annual puppet show that ends in death.
Five more festive terror tales from the pen of best-selling thriller and horror writer, Paul Finch.The original intention was to hold off until next month, but could resist no longer. The Stain: December 23rd. Stafford Wilkes and entourage descend on Godley Grange, a remote mansion in the New Forest, to prepare a script for their next horror movie. Encouraged by trophy wife Mk. IV, Mr. Wilkes, 74, a former power-broker of British cinema, hopes to revive the fortunes of Lionhart Productions with a belated sequel to Lonnie Abelard's censor-baiting 'sixties Satanic Gothic, Daemonia. Abelard's much-banned movie was a gratuitous perversion of Willis Roxborough's 1920's morality play of the same name title, and, it seems, the late author has no intention of allowing further sacrilege. It is soon apparent that someone - or something - is out to terminate project The Stain and all involved in her. 101 pages of Old Dark House/ Film crew in peril novella with bonus demon and "most evil fucking snowman I've ever seen." It's very seasonal!
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Post by andydecker on Nov 11, 2020 20:30:07 GMT
Paul Finch - The Christmas You Deserve: Five Festive Terror Tales (2020) This looks like a great pudding. (Or is the word flummery?) I wonder how hard it would be to make some of those. |
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Post by Swampirella on Nov 11, 2020 20:35:43 GMT
Paul Finch - The Christmas You Deserve: Five Festive Terror Tales (2020) This looks like a great pudding. (Or is the word flummery?) I wonder how hard it would be to make some of those. I guess it would depend on whether you used a real or artificial skull.  |
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Post by andydecker on Nov 11, 2020 21:03:02 GMT
This looks like a great pudding. (Or is the word flummery?) I wonder how hard it would be to make some of those. I guess it would depend on whether you used a real or artifical skull. You have a point here. :-) According from what I learned from TV shows like Bones or CSI I'd either need a really big kettle for boiling or a lot of those flesh-eating beetles. Maybe I should look at A*z*n for skull baking mould. |
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Post by ripper on Nov 14, 2020 15:21:41 GMT
I've written elsewhere about how much I enjoyed one of Paul's previous Christmas collections, In a Deep, Dark December. Some great short stories and a real cracker of a novella. It looks like the same winning formula again from Paul with this new collection.
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Post by dem on Nov 17, 2020 10:32:04 GMT
I've written elsewhere about how much I enjoyed one of Paul's previous Christmas collections, In a Deep, Dark December. Some great short stories and a real cracker of a novella. It looks like the same winning formula again from Paul with this new collection. It is indeed, Rip. As mentioned In a Deep, Dark December has now been issued in paperback (as has The Christmas You Deserve), so will be starting that one ... soon. The Stain is an instant Film-Crew-in-Peril classic, but if anything, I prefer; The Merry Makers: December 24th, somewhere between Bournemouth and Bristol. Kelsey's car packs up during a snow blizzard, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere. Up ahead - a solitary light. Kelsey calls at the remote mansion requesting use of the telephone. There isn't one. Mistletoe Hall is home to an old couple, James and Amy Parnell, who seem inordinately keen to convince him they don't celebrate Christmas in any shape or form, for hasn't the Protector abolished doing so as a heresy? Kelsey, by now thoroughly unnerved by their behavior, wants out, but his drink has been drugged. The Parnell's, ardent loyalists both - James fought at Edgehill and Marston Moor - have their midnight visitor figured for a Roundhead spy. So be it; he shall be the guest of honour at tonight's terrifying festivities. |
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Post by dem on Nov 27, 2020 11:32:19 GMT
The Unreal: (Wigan Little Theatre Christmas Newsletter, 2015). "I warn you, exposing frauds is my trade, my reason for living." Hetherington, a debunker of alleged hauntings via his popular internet show, Fear Itself, spends Christmas Eve investigating the cause of supposed supernatural phenomena at the Ambridge. With the theatre secretary retired for the night, Hetherington has the premises to himself but for the life-size marionette cast of A Christmas Carol, and it's not as if they're likely to get up to any mischief!
The ghostbuster is here on a dare. He's accepted the challenge of Stella Mandrake, "stage witch, or magician or some such nonsense," to spend a night alone in the Ambridge, see if he's still such a sceptic the following morning. She still blames him for the suicide of her partner, Roger Shelburn, who Hethering aggressively persecuted as the most conniving and avaricious of fraudulent mediums.
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Post by dem on Nov 28, 2020 12:33:51 GMT
The Tenth Lesson: Wynbrook Cottage, near Tolworth, Surrey. Unknown to his legion young fans, Adam 'Mr. Christmas' Tregarron, author of the lucrative 'Wynter' series for young adults, despises the festive season and all who celebrate same with a passion. His ex, Sophie, a Pagan and hedgewitch, resolves to teach his a lesson. It seems her magic is more potent than she realised. Snowed in on Christmas Eve thanks to a freak blizzard, Tregarron and his home-help are stalked around the cottage by a mystery gift with murder in its wooden heart.
It sure doesn't do to despise belief in the supernatural and/ or the celebration of Christmas in a Paul Finch story.
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Post by ripper on Nov 29, 2020 14:11:00 GMT
The Unreal: ( Wigan Little Theatre Christmas Newsletter, 2015). "I warn you, exposing frauds is my trade, my reason for living." Hetherington, a debunker of alleged hauntings via his popular internet show, Fear Itself, spends Christmas Eve investigating the cause of supposed supernatural phenomena at the Ambridge. With the theatre secretary retired for the night, Hetherington has the premises to himself but for the life-size marionette cast of A Christmas Carol, and it's not as if they're likely to get up to any mischief! The ghostbuster is here on a dare. He's accepted the challenge of Stella Mandrake, "stage witch, or magician or some such nonsense," to spend a night alone in the Ambridge, see if he's still such a sceptic the following morning. She still blames him for the suicide of her partner, Roger Shelburn, who Hethering aggressively persecuted as the most conniving and avaricious of fraudulent mediums. If I wasn't already planning to buy this one, the inclusion of a story with puppets/marionettes would seal it. |
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Post by dem on Nov 30, 2020 10:57:37 GMT
If you fancy a sneak preview, Paul very generously allowed us to include it on the Vault Advent Calendar for 2015, though it may have been revised for book publication. Anyway, you're best off with the book! An episode in final story, Krampus - by popular demand, Grandpa Ludwig regales his family with his true Christmas ghost story - sees a former Nazi rebooted as an evil department store Santa ... |
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Post by paulfinch on Nov 30, 2020 15:39:12 GMT
Sounds like you enjoyed it overall, DB.
Very good to hear.
Thanks for the write-ups.
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Post by dem on Dec 1, 2020 10:23:22 GMT
Sounds like you enjoyed it overall, DB. Very good to hear. Thanks for the write-ups. I particularly enjoyed The Merry Makers and The Unreal, though all five are effective. Star performance of the collection, Amy Parnell in 'Hooded Horse' mode gave me a bit of a turn, which doesn't happen often enough these days. In a Deep, Dark December should be up in a week or so. |
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Post by ripper on Dec 1, 2020 11:31:43 GMT
I am deliberately delaying buying the book for a couple of weeks. I want to save it for reading over the festive season, and I know if I buy it right now then I won't be able to resist reading it straight away. I am also going to buy Paul's novella, Sparrowhawk, as it is also set at Christmas, I believe.
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Post by paulfinch on Dec 1, 2020 14:34:38 GMT
That's correct, R.
SPARROWHAWK is a Victorian ghost story set during a bitterly cold Christmas.
Without wanting to sound like I'm pushing it too much, it was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award in the capacity of Best Novella.
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Post by ripper on Dec 1, 2020 14:53:30 GMT
I saw the summary for Sparrowhawk and liked the sound of it; I am a fan of ghost stories set in Victorian times, particularly when it is also at Christmas. I think it will make a good companion piece to The Christmas You Deserve.
By the way, may I ask you if the husband and wife private investigator team in The Killing Ground (in A Deep Dark December) have appeared in any more of your stories?
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