'Phobic' review

M'friend Ra Page of Comma Press decided last year that he wanted to launch a new series of horror anthologies that very much address the contemporary world. He somehow failed to ask me to edit it, but hey; I was invited to contribute. And did. The book's called 'Phobic' and it's just been reviewed in the Guardian, hurrah! And the review says:

Phobic: Modern Horror Stories, edited by Andy Murray (Comma Press, £7.95)
With Phobic, editor Andy Murray sets out to provide a fresh take on an old genre, with horror stories set in a world of mobile phones, the internet and computer gaming, fears induced by climate change, child abduction and the sheer terror of going to Ikea and not finding a single thing you want. Contributors range from established genre names such as Ramsey Campbell, whose claustrophobic snapshot is one of the book's highlights, to newcomers such as Maria Roberts, whose "By the River", told in a detached yet thoroughly engaging voice, shows society falling apart under the stresses of extreme weather. The relative newcomers to horror provide both the highs and lows of this anthology: Hanif Kureishi's "The Dogs" offers little, whereas Dr Who writers Paul Cornell and Robert Shearman contribute, respectively, a genuinely disturbing tale of the overlap between a computer game's world and reality, and a brilliantly funny and poignant tale about the inevitability of death. The remaining highlight of a patchy but rewarding anthology is Chaz Brenchley's "The Deadly Space Between", a moving story of art, love and loss.

*g*

(For those who'd rather, the same story is also available in the most recent Phantoms anthology: six new ghost stories, with CDs of a live reading, in a most handsome volume and available from me...)

Reasons to be cheerful

Because I have an ache, an urge to cook, more than a single man can conceivably need to eat;

And because my house is in such chaos that I cannot bear to invite even old friends round, to eat dinners and such;

And because I have sworn to bring the house to order, little by little;

And because I have been saying jokingly for years that I need to organise my spices into alphabetical order;

And because if I repackage the spices into stackable containers it will make far better use of my so-limited storage space;

And because this would leave me with Even More empty jam jars of various sizes and descriptions (these being the current storage-units for said spices);

And because such a repackaging process would inevitably lead to a lot of "Oh, I didn't even know I had that! What can I do with...?";

Therefore it seems good to me to declare - in public, yet - that I have made a decision; and that decision is, that I need to make a lot more pickles and chutneys and jams and such. Which will involve all the pleasures of cooking, and the use of spices known and unknown, and the use of jam jars too. And will leave me with a constant succession of Gifts, which I can give to my friends in lieu of inviting them to dinner.

Yes, indeed. This works, on just so many levels...