One year ago I launched the second Nightmare Vacations novel: Blood Point — an Irish escape becomes a Midsummer night’s terror.
If you haven’t read it yet, the ebook of Blood Point will be 99p/¢ until Lughnasadh, the ancient Irish harvest festival on August 1st. You’ll have to read it to find out why this date is important in my folk horror story. If you have read it, please drop a review on your Goodreads or Amazon. Even one-liners make a difference.
On the road again
Another big date this week arrived when I booked my twelfth book fair or convention for the year. I set this as a goal at the start of 2026 and I’ve been adding to the list bit by bit, with the calendar now running until November 21st with my first Christmas book fair.
This summer I’ll be at Scribefest near Northampton on June 28th, the Coventry Festival of Books on July 12th and Leamington Spa Book Extravaganza on August 1st. September takes me to Birmingham, Bedford and Milton Keynes — you’ll find the full schedule on my website at Writer On The Road.
I keep saying it, but meeting readers has been the most unexpectedly rewarding part of my author journey (I know, bleurghh!), and I say that as someone who’s normally terrified at the prospect of meeting total strangers. Turns out, the ones who like reading are just fine.
Events aside, I’m feeling a little burned out at the moment, doing my best to write the next Nightmare Vacation, but I haven’t been able to focus on the simple pleasure of reading. It caught me by surprise that I haven’t finished a single book this month, so I’ve dug into my website archive for an extract from my review of HP Lovecraft’s weird horror classic, The Colour Out Of Space. I hope you enjoy it.
What I’ve read this month
The Colour Out Of Space by HP Lovecraft
It’s an understatement to say that HP Lovecraft is a controversial figure. In spite of this, he’s also enormously influential in horror and science fiction, almost single-handedly creating the genre known today as “cosmic horror”.
Before I knew anything about Lovecraft himself, I was a 1980s teenager fascinated by the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Unlike most RPGs, in CoC your heroes faced mind-boggling creatures that were as likely to drive them mad as dismember them. Gaming magazines like White Dwarf often contained discussions of the literature and I dove into the mythos with youthful verve.
Along the way, I learned about Lovecraft’s use of literary structure and linguistic techniques to disassociate readers from reality. His tales tried to communicate the horror of humans confronted with ancient, unimaginable and implacably hostile creatures of godlike power. It’s a nihilistic universe in which the light of humanity is desperately feeble — as Generation X as you can get!
One thing I enjoy about the mythos is that many contemporary writers subvert Lovercraft’s nihilism. They use his universe to lean into the importance of defending human warmth, liberty, democracy and diversity against a universe which sees us as little more than a psychic snack. The author is dead, as Barthes said, and his vile opinions with him.
Thirty years later, I was curious to find out what middle-aged me thought of Lovecraft’s prose.
The Colour Out Of Space is experimental fiction: an attempt to create a truly alien entity. Most contemporary SF featured aliens that looked very human (no change there) and he wanted to challenge the status quo.
Lovecraft was also an early proponent of stories set in a shared universe. Here, we find the fictional Massachusetts city of Arkham and its Miskatonic University. The learned narrator who finds something that’s beyond his comprehension is also a familiar figure.
The Massachusetts countryside, another common setting, becomes otherworldly and forbidding. The narrotor not only hints that it’s an empty and remote, but that “the immigrants” — meaning recent arrivals in America — don’t want to settle there.
Fundamentally, it’s a shaggy dog story that you might hear from a well-oiled regular in the local pub. The colour and many of the changes it brings are beyond description, so they remain beyond comprehension. This has nothing to do with class or education, as the learned men of Arkham and the simple country folk are equally confounded.
There ares only so many times you can substitute “indescribable” for a genuine adjective, but the trick survives the length of a short story. As someone who’s read a lot of Lovecraftian fiction, I know that it slips easily into a cliché through overuse.
You could almost call it a pastoral horror. The alien force creeps gently over the Gardners, in time with the seasons of farming life. They succumb gradually, driven mad, mutated or drawn into the well. It’s only at the climax that the pace accelerates in a day of mounting terror.
You can find the full review at Book vs film: The Colour Out Of Space by HP Lovecraft.
Indie books for June 2026
Buy a book and support independent self-published authors
Crown: Vampire Knights by Rick DeMille
In the dying light of medieval Spain, something ancient and evil stalks the dusty roads. When three vampire assassins slaughter a royal caravan, two mysterious knights in faded crusader tunics emerge from the darkness—not to prey, but to protect.
Ricardo and his son Stefan are reclusive Spanish noblemen, and vampires bound by an iron code: defend their lands, hunt the hunters, protect the innocent. But when King Alfonso summons them to face Malik al-Zahir—a terrifying vampire lord bent on conquering Europe—they must choose between the safety of isolation and a war that could consume their very souls.
As Malik’s thralls multiply and his psychic powers enslave Spanish nobles, father and son become the Crown’s secret weapons. But fighting monsters when you share their curse demands a terrible price. And Malik knows their weakness.
Medieval horror meets dark fantasy in this visceral tale of honour, bloodlust, and the razor’s edge between monster and man.
The Control Room Part 1 by Miriam Khan
He had planned the perfect revenge—until she came and changed the rules.
An encounter with an intriguing stranger on the train leaves nurse Aria Travinni with blood on her hands and in a world she never knew existed. Her wealthy Italian family has always kept dark secrets, but could murder be one of them? As unsettling events begin to unfold, she is forced to question everything she’s ever known.
Caine Savino has been tracking the Travinni family for years, driven by a single purpose: to avenge the brutal deaths of his parents. Careful, patient, and relentless, he has studied their every move. Their daughter Aria navigates the world without security or suspicion. She should be the perfect target.
Boarding the night train, he takes his chance. Only she isn’t what he expected.
The tables turn, and the hunter becomes the hunted
Because someone—or something—has been watching all along, and has sinister plans for the both of them.
The Control Room is a speculative romantic thriller that will pull readers into a world where revenge turns to obsession and destiny refuses to be ignored.
Dark Fiction Summer Sale
Get your holiday horror, thriller and mystery fix on Kindle Unlimited in the Dark Fiction Summer Sale. From the beach to the bar to way past your bedtime, you’ll be turning pages late into the night.
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