2009: The Summer of Vampires

Just a quick post to let you all know that Dunraven Road will be published on June 20 and is now available to pre-order! Head on over to Immanion Press to secure your very own copy. After all, what is summer without sadistic vampires and dangerous underground cults in the back streets of Devon?

You can read the first chapter on my website.

I’m also on Facebook, so feel free to sign up if you want to be kept updated on news and announcements… The excitement never ends!

One Month to Go!

I’ve had an exciting couple of weeks. Mainly because I got to see the cover of Dunraven Road for the first time, check out the awesomeness! :

The cover was designed by the multi-talented Lucas Swann (he’s also the keyboardist and programmer for Uninvited Guest) and the model is Lenore, who’s a presenter for Rockworld TV – and makes a fantastic vampire

Here’s the synopsis:

“In the sleepy backwater of Dunraven Road, a group of hedonistic friends are trapped in a deadly prison of their own making. When Zach, their enigmatic leader, brings his long term plans to fruition and paves the way for a sadistic vampire cult, their fragile world begins to break apart. Fuelled by dangerous passions and an insatiable craving for ‘red’, the group must decide whether to succumb to the sweet lure of the abyss, or stand and fight for their very survival.”

Dunraven Road will be available to buy from next month – Watch this space!!

I’m a Print Whore

I’ve had a good, busy week this week. So maybe this won’t be another depressing post (here’s hoping!) I received my contributor’s copy of Ballista and it looks great. It was nice to see my name next to some really decent stories. I particularly enjoyed Between Mist and Cloud by Alison J. Littlewood. It’s completely different to anything I write, there’s no full-on gore, but it’s really creepy. Me, I like writing about blood… and guts… and sometimes the consumption of body parts. I’m a visual visceral hoochie. Oh, and my name’s on the front cover! Yes, all the contributors’ names are on the front cover, but it still gave me a cheap thrill

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is also out, along with part three of The Undead Alliance. I thought my novella would be ending with this issue, so was pleasantly surprised when I realised there will be a part four published before the end of the year. Very cool.

Both these magazines are professionally put together, well edited and full of excellent writing (if I do say so myself, except I don’t want to because I’ll sound like a big-headed fool…), which is more than I can say for certain other publications I’ve had the misfortune to be associated with. I put up with my name being spelt incorrectly the first time, because I know better than most that typos happen. The second time however, even after my extremely polite email trying to rectify the matter (which was obviously ignored), made me more than a little angry. It’s Barnard-Smith, not BERNARD-SMITH for gawd’s sake. Learn it, use it, it’s my goddamn name, feel free to wear it out.

New writing is going well too, although I’ve been hard at work on something very different from the carefully planned, meticulously sculpted novel I thought I would be hard at work on. There is a character from my first novel who just wouldn’t leave me alone until I continued his story. I have a weakness for tall dark men with fangs and an unholy appetite for blood, so obviously I obliged him. I thought I would take this new story as far as I could before running out of steam (I already knew what happened in the first three chapters before I started it), then go back to the meticulously planned novel and work on that until I had more scenes for the new story. Well, I’m into chapter four now and I’m still going. Writing about vampires is just too much fun. Maybe I’ll finish that grand novel about the labyrinthine city next year…