Thursday 25 April 2024

Waiting by Kate Farrell to be performed as a play at the Edinburgh Fringe


Actress and writer Kate Farrell has adapted one of her own stories, Waiting, into a play which she will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

Kate's story is included in her PUP collection And Nobody Lived happily Ever After, which is available as a paperback and kindle eBook. Prior to this it was also included in our anthology Kitchen Sink Gothic.
 
For more information, including booking information if you are lucky enough to be attending the Fringe this year, click on this link: Waiting - The Fringe
 
From Reggie Oliver 's introduction to And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After:
"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." 
 
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

You can order this book direct from us on this link, post free. 
 
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com  



Monday 15 April 2024

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 8 almost ready for publication


Things are on schedule for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 8 to be released as a paperback and kindle eBook by the 1st of May.

Friday 5 April 2024

DMR Books website shares review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 7

Our friends at DMR Books have just shared on their website an excellent review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 7 by Richard Fisher, opening with:

"David A. Riley's anthology series certainly has some longevity. With seven volumes to date it has eclipsed several seminal anthology series of the past. As I understand it volume eight will be published later this year with submissions reopening late this year or early next year for volume nine."

In actual fact submissions will open for volume nine on the 1st October for the full calendar month, with publication in November. And volume eight will be published on the 1st May. 

To read the full review click on this link: DMR Books


 


Wednesday 3 April 2024

Excellent, in-depth review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 1

There is an excellent, in-depth review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 1 on James Reasoner's Rough Edge blogsite. To read it in full just click on this link

"Overall, I found this volume to be really good, and if you’re a sword and sorcery fan, I think there’s a good chance you’d enjoy it quite a bit, too. I’m definitely planning to read others in the series. This one is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon."