Category: Book Reviews

The Best Horror Novels… Ever

Liam Smith 2 Comments

I love horror. I love reading horror novels, watching horror films, listening to horror-themed rock. Also, I write horror stories! I like to think I’m a horror author before being a writer of any other genre.

Naturally, I’ve searched once or twice for the best horror novels ever written. Different website and publications have different lists, but a certain clutch of books and authors cropped up more than others.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your reading pleasure: a compilation of all those horror novels that have made the most impact on the world of terror and suspense. I’ve already read a few, so I’ll write my own summaries where I can and leave the rest to Amazon. We’ll work our way through in chronological order, shall we? Without further ado, let us plunge into a world of untrammeled terror… The best horror novels ever.

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Why You Should List Every Book You Read

Liam Smith Leave a comment

Last year I began a little experiment.  I decided to make a note of every book I read. Why? I’m not sure; part of it was to see how many books I get through.  It’s never a bad idea to read more books!

I firmly believe that all writers should read many books – after all, it’s only by reading you see what others are achieving with language – and I wanted to see if I read as much as I thought I did.

What I found was fascinating.

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Out Now: The Greatest Show Under the Earth

Liam Smith 2 Comments

My latest horror novel, The Greatest Show Under the Earth, is released today. I’m hugely proud of it as it’s a bit more ambitious than my usual stories and it’s my favourite yet! I’d like to tell you a bit more about how I went about writing it. I can’t wait to hear what you all think about The Greatest Show Under the Earth.

Following the disappearance of a young girl at a travelling carnival, Zoe spots a pattern that will lead her on a journey fraught with danger, grief and horror. With time running out, Zoe must track an ancient evil and save her loved ones from a terrifying fate at the hands of The Greatest Show Under the Earth.
Roll up now and step right in…

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Reading William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist

Liam Smith 1 Comment

If you look up a list of the scariest horror films ever made, William Friedkin’s 1973 movie The Exorcist will most likely be on there.    And deservedly so: it’s an absolute shocker of a film, full of horrifying imagery and terrifying implication.  The Exorcist is more famous as a film than as a book, even though it’s based on an excellent novel by William Peter Blatty.  This Halloween I treated myself to reading the book and, as a writer, I learned a lot from it.

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What You Can Learn from Reading Bad Books

Liam Smith Leave a comment

Reading is wonderful. Books are wonderful. But some books are more wonderful than others. Some… are bad books.

We all have different preferences when it comes to reading. Sometimes it’s down to genre, or to what happens in a story, but mostly, I think, it’s down to a writer’s style and the way they construct a story.

I’ve just finished a book I found a struggle. We won’t mention any names here, but it was a genre I don’t dip into very often. But I like to read around and think that all writers should read widely, as you can learn just as much from a book you don’t enjoy as you do from one which is well-written and immersive. For one thing, you’re not so immersed in it as to stop thinking about the mechanics behind the book.

As a writer, you can’t please everyone, but you can still be mindful of a few pitfalls that make a book harder to read and harder to love. Here’s what I learned from reading what was, to me, a bad book.

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