The contents are as follows:

• The Tenants of Ladywell Manor (reprint from Cthulhu Unbound 2)
• The Persistence of Memory
• The Chamber of Tiamat
• The Unfinished Basement (reprint from Dead But Dreaming 2)
• The Mill Dance
• The Death of Sergeant George
• Where the Kobolds Dance
• Rhythm and Booze (a new MIDNIGHT EYE novella)

Here’s the blurb

Music can transport you. It can bring sunshine on a cloudy day and lift your heart in times of trouble. But there is another side, a darker side, to music. Allow yourself to be open to a different melody, and who knows where the music will take you.

In this Lovecraft-inspired collection you will follow the dance into dark places, down dark passageways, where dark melodies play.

Music has played a big part in my life over the years, and it was only logical that some of my love would seep out into my fiction. In these stories we have harpsichords, bhodran, pianos, church organs, drums and dancers of all shapes, sizes and dimensionalities. It contains some of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Listen closely, you may hear The Music of Erich Zann.

Coming in signed, limited edition, hardcover this summer.

And yet another kick-ass cover from Wayne Miller to complete the package.

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Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I’ve also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I’m usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature — what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man’s dabbling with it, can throw up.

All of this means I can’t avoid writing about the beasties, from Giant Crabs in CRUSTACEANS, to Yeti in BERSERKER and ABOMINABLE, man-eating seaweed in THE CREEPING KELP, Native Indian Wendigo in NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO and Giant Ants in GENERATIONS.

See the the list below for more details. There will be more to come…

Novels

• The Creeping Kelp (hardcover, paperback, e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Invasion / The Valley (Paperback / Dark Regions Press)
• Crustaceans (hardcover, paperback, e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Night of the Wendigo (hardcover, e-book / Darkfuse)
• The Invasion (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Valley (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• Berserker (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• Generations (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• Island Life (e-book / Dark Regions Press)

Short Stories

• Abominable (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Stuff that Dreams are Made of (Zombie Kong anthology / BOTD Press)
• The Colour that Came to Chiswick (Gaslight Arcanum anthology / EDGE)
• The Chronicles of Augustus Seton (e-book collection / Dark Regions Press)
• The Tenants of Ladywell Manor (Cthulhu Unbound 2 anthology / Permuted Press)
• Rickman’s Plasma (Creature Feature anthology / Penny Dreadful)
• Rickman’s Plasma (Lovecraft Ezine)
• The Call of the Dance (Lovecraft Ezine)
• Variations on a Theme ( Escapepod )
• In the Coils of the Serpent ( Pseudopod )

Novels Coming Soon

• Professor Challenger: The Island of Terror (hardcover, paperback, e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Ravine (hardcover, paperback, e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• The Plasm (hardcover, paperback, e-book / Dark Regions Press)

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I grew up on the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of ‘the sight’, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.

I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as ‘weird shit’. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading Fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

I’ve also been influenced by many Scottish writers.

Stevenson in particular is a big influence. He is a master of plotting, and of putting innocents into situations far out of their usual comfort zones while still maintaining a grounding in their previous, calmer, reality. His way with a loveable rogue in Treasure Island and Kidnapped in particular is also a big influence. Other Scottish writers who have influenced me include John Buchan, Iain Banks and, more in my youth than now, Alistair MacLean and Nigel Tranter. From them I learned how to use the scope of both the Scottish landscape and its history while still keeping the characters alive.

But I think it’s the people that influence me most. Everybody in Scotland’s got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can’t stop them. I love chatting to people, usually in pubs, and finding out the weird shit they’ve experienced. My Glasgow PI, Derek Adams is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

See the the list below for more details of my Scottish Fiction. There will be more to come…

Novels

• Watchers: The Coming of the King (e-book / KHP Press)
• Watchers: The Battle for the Throne (e-book / KHP Press)
• Watchers: Culloden! (e-book / KHP Press)
• Watchers: Omnibus (paperback / KHP Press)
• Eldren: The Book of the Dark (paperback and e-book / KHP Press)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet (paperback and e-book / KHP Press)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Sirens (paperback and e-book / KHP Press)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Skin Game (paperback and e-book / KHP Press)
• The Concordances of the Red Serpent (paperback ( Seven Realms Press ) and e-book (Dark Regions) )
• The Road Hole Bunker Mystery (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• Generations (e-book / Dark Regions Press)
• Island Life (e-book / Dark Regions Press)

Novellas and Short Stories

• The Chronicles of Augustus Seton (e-book collection / Dark Regions Press)
• The Auld Mither (e-book novella / Dark Regions Press)
• Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy (Short Story / Gaslight Arcanum anthology / EDGE)
• Carnacki: The Blooded Iklwa (Short Story / Dark Regions Press CARNACKI collection)
• Carnacki: The Beast of Glamis (Short Story / Dark Regions Press CARNACKI collection)
• Carnacki: The Dark Island (Novella / Dark Regions Press CARNACKI collection)
• The Midnight Eye: 1,2,3, Go (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• The Midnight Eye: The Inuit Bone (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• The Midnight Eye: A Slim Chance (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• The Midnight Eye: Home is the Sailor (Holiday of the Dead anthology / Wild Wolf)
• Total Mental Quality (Nova Scotia anthology / Mercat Books)
• Wee Robbie ( Big Pulp )
• Just a Par to Win ( British Expat )
• The First Silkie ( Celtic Myth Podshow )

Coming Soon

• The Midnight Eye: Call and Response (Cthulhu 2012 anthology / Mythos Books)
• The Midnight Eye: Rhythm and Booze (a novella in my Dark Melodies collection)
• Augustus Seton: The Silent Dead (Alt Zombie anthology / Hersham Books)

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My interest goes further back to the “gentleman detective” era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwood’s John Silence Sherlock Holmes and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, and, mixed in with that, a deep love of the American PI books and movies of the ’40s and ’50s.

My own occult Detective series character, Glasgow PI Derek Adams, is a Bogart and Chandler fan, and it is those movies and Americana of that era where I find a lot of my inspiration for him, rather than in the modern procedural.

He’s turned up in three novels so far, THE AMULET, THE SIRENS and THE SKIN GAME, all out now in print and ebook at all the usual online stores. There’s also a film company looking for funding to bring him to life, several short stories, and an anthology appearance in the forthcoming CTHULHU 2012 anthology from Mythos Books.

Derek has developed a life of his own, and I’m along for the ride.

There seems to be quite a burgeoning market for this kind of mixing of detection and supernatural, and I intend writing more… a lot more.

Novels

• The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet (in paperback and ebook from Black Death Books)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Sirens (in paperback and ebook from Black Death Books)
• The Midnight Eye Files: The Skin Game (in paperback and ebook from Black Death Books)
• Sherlock Holmes: Revenant (in paperback and ebook from Dark Regions Press)

Short Stories

• Carnacki: Heaven and Hell collection (in hardcover and ebook from Dark Regions Press)
• The Midnight Eye: 1,2,3, Go (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• The Midnight Eye: The Inuit Bone (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• The Midnight Eye: A Slim Chance (in my Variations on a Theme collection)
• Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy (Gaslight Grotesque anthology / EDGE)
• Sherlock Holmes: The Color that Came to Chiswick (Gaslight Arcanum anthology / EDGE)
• Carnacki: Treason and Plot (Horror for the Holidays anthology / Miskatonic River Press)

Online Appearances

• Sherlock Holmes: The Call of the Dance (Lovecraft ezine)

There’s more coming soon, the pride of place going to Professor Challenger: The Island of Terror – a novella I’ve sold to Dark Regions Press.

Other short stories coming include the following:-

• The Midnight Eye: Call and Response (Cthulhu 2012 anthology / Mythos Books)
• The Midnight Eye: Rhythm and Booze (a novella in my Dark Melodies collection)
• Carnacki: The Sisters of Mercy (Nightland Magazine in Japan)

I’ve also recently finished a Sherlock Holmes collection that I hope will see an appearance from Dark Regions Press and I’ve sold another Carnacki story to an anthology I can’t talk about yet.

I probably won’t stop until all the bad guys are caught.

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