The Real Best Stories of H. P. Lovecraft 

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So: you wish to explore the squamous and eldritch pleasures of the real best stories of H. P. Lovecraft? Fear not. For in reading that most terrible and forbidden volume Necronomicon, I have discovered and unearthed the ten of his greatest. Lovecraft is, in many ways, the father of American horror as we know it. He’s also hella wordy and deliberately archaic in style. His work can be sublime (see this list) or utter dreck (The Dream Quest of Uknown Kadath – there’s five hours I’m never getting back). 

Well. The moon is gibbous. The dark is stygian. Let’s explore the antediluvian libraries of Lovecraft’s cyclopean works. 

Honourable Mention: The Whisperer in Darkness 

A cautionary tale about the dangers of long-distance friendships. Also why you should never trust people who insist on writing letters instead of just talking to you. Our protagonist gets roped into a conspiracy about alien fungi from Yuggoth and doesn’t realize he’s in trouble until the reader is practically screaming it at him. It’s a bit of a slow-burn and hasn’t made my top ten. But something really stuck with me about The Whisper in Darkness. Think brains. Think space. Think no bodies. 

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2024: A Year of Writing

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2024 has been a funny old year for my writing. In fact, it’s been a year of so much upheaval and change that, looking back from the tail-end, I can’t believe it’s all happened in the space of twelve months. I look at my reading list and can’t believe I read The Goldfinch and books by Merisha Pessl and Katherine Min so recently. They feel like they belong to another chapter in my life. As does so much of my writing. Let me walk you through my 2024.

New Digs 2024

The Lady K and I made the decision to relocate early in 2024 and things moved at record speed – we moved from Brighton to Salisbury in April. I love Salisbury. I grew up on Salisbury Plain and I’m thrilled to be back. But there was a complication. We moved in April and the academic year finishes in July. I chose to teach at my Sussex-based school until the academic year was done. There were a few reasons. I didn’t want to have the extra pressure of joining a new school in the final term and I didn’t want extra change at a time of so much upheaval. Mostly, I really enjoyed my school and wanted to finish up properly with a class I’d really bonded with. Of course, for twelve weeks, I’d be living and working two hours apart.

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The Best Children’s Horror Books: Ten Chilling Reads for Young Readers

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Being both a teacher and a horrorhead, I was thrilled when my Year 5 class asked if I could recommend any children’s horror books to them. Well, these books from my personal collection offer just the right amount of creepiness to keep kids engaged. Let’s take a look at ten of the best horror books for children. Prepare to capture imaginations, send chills down spines and maybe even keep your kids up a little later than usual.

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The Dragon and the Cross: A St. George’s Day Poem

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A couple of years ago, I started writing a St. George’s Day poem. I had this idea, see — well, more of an image, in my head. I’d seen a billboard with an England fan’s face on it. White greasepaint, red cross, as solemn as if his life depended on the match. Who knows, maybe it did. I don’t have much truck for football myself, but it did spark an idea in me. Rather than St. George a chivalrous knight, why not St. George a berserker, a raging, painted warrior fighting for his faith against his hellish opponent? I could write about that.

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Saltburn and the Gothic Tradition

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Okay, so Saltburn might not be as hot on everyone’s lips as it was when it dropped on Amazon just before Christmas, but I only just got to watching it because nobody told me it was a gothic film. A gothic film? If I’d known that, it would have earned an immediate Go-Straight-to-the-Top-of-my-Watchlist ticket without passing go. Unconvinced? Do the neon club scenes of the first five minutes have no place in the gothic canon? The almost-contemporary mid-00s setting? Ah, but what about the references to Shelley and Byron? What about that bloody scene on the garden bench, or that, ahem, penetrating scene on the fresh grave?

Let’s take a scalpel to Saltburn and see what tropes of the gothic tradition we can lay out on the slab.

Saltburn

In naming itself after an ancestral home, Saltburn joins itself with some familiar titles in the gothic tradition: Northanger Abbey, Gormenghast, Rawblood, Crimson Peak… It’s a kissing cousin to even more – The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udulpho, The Fall of the House of Usher – and joins Manderley and Bly Manor as the seat of a rich family and a corporeal symbol of their legacy. Like the aforementioned piles, naming the house makes Saltburn is a character in its own right: a warren of wealth standing above and untouched by the seductions and Machiavellian plots within it. It stands like a stone in a blood and tear-stained river.

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