"What distinguishes Kate Farrell’s work is the extraordinary accuracy and vividness with which she sets up her situations. She has an eye for detail and an outstanding ear for the way people think and speak. It is far from fanciful to see this at least partly as the product of her experience as an actress. In the theatre, a natural faculty for observing one’s fellow human beings is trained and honed. Listen to the narrator of “Waiting”. If you don’t know someone like that personally, you will have certainly heard her talking just behind you on a bus at some time. The intonation, the accent, the understanding, and the lack of it, are all so true to life. But the people Farrell evokes are not all from one social stratum, or one nation. Here is an ancient and corrupt Irish Priest (“The Way the Truth and the Life”), here is the wife of a notorious Argentinean dictator (“Las Cosas Que Hacemos por el Amor”), or the two Spanish schoolchildren in “The Efficient Use of Reason”, and they are all done with the same conviction, the same ruthless accuracy. Farrell’s eye is not heartless, but it is unclouded by any kind of sentimental affectation; her horrors emerge from what we sometimes call the commonplace. Very occasionally she touches on the supernatural, but when she does she does it superbly as in one of my favourites among her stories “A Murder of Crows” which shows that she can do an uncanny rural atmosphere with grim poetry as well as anyone. It is the gift of every worthwhile writer in this genre to make us realise that just beneath the surface of the banal and ordinary, there yawn great abysses of wonder and terror. I don’t know quite why this realisation, in the hands of a writer like Farrell, should be so thrilling, enjoyable even, but it is. There is not a dull page, not a dull sentence in And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After." From Reggie Oliver 's introduction to And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After
Contents are:
Introduction by Reggie Oliver
Mea Culpa
Helping Mummy
A Murder of Crows
No Junk Mail
All in a Row
Dad Dancing
The Way and the Truth and the Life
My Name is Mary Sutherland
The Efficient Use of Reason
How I Got Here
His Family
The Sands are Magic
Once Upon a Time
A. Reeves Tale
Las Cosas Que Hacemos por El Amor
Peacock Blue Dress
Alma Mater
Waiting
Mea Culpa was first published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011
His Family was first published in The Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012
Dad Dancing was first published in The Tenth Black Book of Horror, 2013
Helping Mummy was first published in The Screaming Book of Horror, 2012
The Sands are magic was first published in Terror Tales of the Seaside, 2013
Waiting was first published in Kitchen Sink Gothic, 2015
Alma Mater was first published in The Eleventh Black Book of Horror, 2015
Jessica Palmer has had 28 books published, both fiction and nonfiction. Her novels – horror, fantasy and science fiction – were released by Pocket Books in the United States and Scholastic in the United Kingdom. She has written two textbooks about Native American history, which were published by McFarland, and an encyclopedia of natural history released by Harper Collins’ label Element Books and later by Thorson in the UK.
Palmer has also written ten science-and-technology manuals on the topics of explosives and radiation. These were distributed globally. It was this work that brought her to Great Britain in 1988.
The daughter of a professional clown, Palmer refers to her switch to writing fiction as an exercise in damage limitation. She taught classes and conducted workshops on creative writing and publishing at North Shropshire College in Whitchurch, Stanmore College and the Islington Arts Factory in London.
As a journalist, Palmer won awards in New Mexico and Texas for writing features, public service and breaking news – the most recent in 2013. Palmer has also written satirical columns for newspapers, including “A Slice of Life” and “How to Make Love to your Personal Computer.”
Her two loves are writing and animals. She started a nonprofit in Kansas for wildlife rescue and has held a wildlife rehabilitation permit since 2002.
Other Visions of Heaven and Hell are a series of sometimes inter-related stories about our ideas of Heaven and Hell, sometimes hilarious - sometimes horrific - but always entertaining.
Contents are:
Devil's Due
The Faithful
And now, a Word from our Sponsor
Heavenly Bodies
On the Wings of a Prayer
Fallen Angel
A Stitch in Time
Infinity
No Good Turn
Leap of Faith
Divine Comedy
Force of Habit
The Gates of Hell
Hell on Wheels
Cinderella Revisited
Last Laugh
Sisters
A Cold Day in Hell
Cheap Shots
What the Dickens
When Hell Freezes Over
Bad Medicine
Wrong Number
A Snowball's Chance
Devil Woman
To Be or Not
The King's Plate
An Afterthought
About the Author
"Last Laugh" was first published in Weirdbook #28, Autumn 1993, edited by W. Paul Ganley
"Cinderella Revisited" was first published in Weirdbook #29, Autumn 1995, edited by W. Paul Ganley
"What the Dickens" was first published in Substance Sept 1995
The Monster-Maker by W. C. Morrow
The Man Who Went Too Far by E. F. Benson
The Interval by Vincent O'Sullivan
The Doll's Ghost by F. Marion Crawford
The Dead Smile by F. Marion Crawford
The Ghost-Ship by Richard Middleton
The New Catacomb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner
The House of the Dead Hand by Edith Wharton
A Wicked Voice by Vernon Lee
Phantas by Oliver Onions
J.
Sheridan Le Fanu (An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier
Street)
E. F. Benson (The Judgement Books)
Vernon Lee (Oke of
Okehurst)
Vincent O'Sullivan (When I was Dead)
Edith Wharton (The
Eyes)
W. C. Morrow (A Story Told by the Sea)
Irvin S. Cobb (The
Unbroken Chain)
Edith Nesbit (From the Dead)
Robert Murray Gilchrist
(Witch In-Grain)
Amyas Northcote (The Downs)
J. H. Riddell (The
Uninhabited House)
Things That Go Bump in the Night edited by Douglas Draa and David
A. Riley is now available in trade paperback from Parallel Universe
Publications. 365 pages long, this bumper volume contains 19 classic
weird stories by Sir Hugh Clifford, Edward Lucas White, William Hope
Hodgson, George Allan England, F. Marion Crawford, Frederick Marryat, E.
F. Benson, W. C. Morrow, Amyas Northcote, M. P. Shiel, Lord Dunsany,
Perceval Landon, Robert E. Howard, G. G. Pendarves, Henry Brereton
Marriott Watson, Irvin S. Cobb, Huan Mee, Abraham Merritt, Nictzin
Dyalhis, and Edith Wharton.
The Ghoul Sir Hugh Clifford
The House of the Nightmare Edward Lucas White
The Voice in the Night William Hope Hodgson
The Thing from Outside George Allan England
For the Blood is the Life F. Marion Crawford
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains Frederick Marryat
The Room in the Tower E. F. Benson
His Unconquered Enemy W. C. Morrow
The Late Mrs. Fowke Amyas Northcote
Xélucha M. P. Shiel
A Narrow Escape Lord Dunsany
Thurnley Abbey Perceval Landon
The Black Stone Robert E, Howard
Werewolf of the Sahara G. G. Pendarves
The Devil of the Marsh Henry Brereton Marriott Watson
Fishhead Irvin S. Cobb
The Black Statue Huan Mee
The Pool of the Stone God Abraham Merritt
The Sea-Witch Nictzin Dyalhis
The Lady’s Maid’s Bell Edith Wharton
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