Tag: ghost story

Corpse Road Blues

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Corpse Road Blues, my first short story collection, is available in both paperback and ebook formats.

Fifteen original and previously published stories that explore what it means to be haunted; fifteen spectres, wraiths and shades lost on the old corpse road; fifteen chances to find peace.

“This is a fine collection of short dark tales. Eric Nash balances the grim with the soulful as real emotion interweaves shadows and elements as disparate as Greek mythology, marginalised community bigotry, voyeurism, body horror and rural folk creepiness.” Paul E Draper, author of Black Gate Tales.

“…so brilliantly horrible, it’s left some mental images that are going to be lingering for a very long time! I’m having to take a bit of a breather in-between each story, they really do pack a punch. But that’s no bad thing, writing this good should be savoured rather than all gobbled down in one go.” Steph Lay (author of Taking the Red Ways).

The paperback comes with a vintage wraparound cover designed by Adrian Baldwin, illustated by Mutartis Boswell. It is published by Demain Publishing.

Bonus material – if you’re a fan of origin stories, then there’s a series of posts on the blog that discuss the inspiration for each story in the collection. There’s also a Spotify playlist dedicated to the book, and if you have your own choice of songs that fit the stories, let me know, I’ll add them to the playlist.

Corpse Road Blues is available here: Paperback / Ebook

Corpse Road Blues origin stories continued: The Memory of Hannah Babinski

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Welcome back, and if you’re here for the first time, thanks for joining us. The Memory of Hannah Babinski is the sixth story in my collection, Corpse Road Blues from Demain Publishing, and influenced by the coast, kissing gates, and the 2020/21 Lockdown.

I recently did a workshop about Psychogeography and Flow, led by the wonderful Kerry Hadley-Pryce (author of The Black Country) in which she talked about how walking feeds creativity. I often wander through both urban and rural landscapes giving my brain space to digest current projects or find inspiration for new ones. In rural settings, I often come across kissing gates which I find quite charming. As you probaby know, this type of gate doesn’t require a securing latch, and swings back and forth within a framework, gently knocking or ‘kissing’ both sides of the enclosure. And… the awkward navigation of the gate can also provide lovers with an opportunity to kiss.

Like all gates, these weathered, wooden posts are liminal spaces, crossings from one place to another. When The Memory of Hannah Babinski was beginning to form, I considered the consequences of something getting caught in a kissing gate, not a tangible object like a piece of clothing or a limb, but maybe an echo of a kiss, maybe a memory.

The story takes place on a clifftop. The coast has always had a hold over me. I regularly feel the pull of the sea, and often end up riding my motorcycle to greet the waves, or travelling parallel to them throughout the seasons. Standing on the edge of a country, overlooking the vast body of wild and surging water, the howling wind whipping around you, brings with it a sense of wonder and a humbling of the spirit. I hope I’ve captured a little of that in this story.

And Lockdown? That time that means different things to different people: silence, the beauty of it, or its unsettling quality; Nature’s reclamation of the streets; grief, anger; the fear of being trapped at home with a violent partner—a real horror faced by too many people.

If you’d like to read The Memory of Hannah Babinski, you can buy Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 3, Her Saving Grace

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Welcome back! And if you’re new to my origin story posts, thank you for joining us.

Her Saving Grace is for anyone who has a little voice whispering doubts inside their head. You know the one. You’re trying to convince yourself that you have a handle on things, sure, but the quiet mutterings are tiny sharp teeth gnawing at your nerves. They coat that frayed network with acidic spit, and dissolve your self-esteem, your fragile confidence, what little self-worth you have left. The terrible voice is there 24/7, taking everything and giving nothing, not even the briefest respite from its unhurried consumption of you.

Probably like yourself, that voice stays with me. So this story is a little bit of a ‘fuck you’ to anxiety.

For those still out there in the dark, Corpse Road Blues is my short fiction collection, due for release on 28th February from Demain Publishing. The fifteen stories in the book look at what it means to be haunted; what drives an apparition to cling to this earth, to those still living; is there a way to be rid of a tortured soul, and is that what we really wish for?

If you’d like to read Her Saving Grace, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 4, Addressing the Heart

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Thanks for coming back. And if you’ve just joined us, welcome. Okay, day 14, and it’s the turn of Addressing the Heart, the second story in my collection, Corpse Road Blues, due for publication on the 28th February from Demain Publishing.

The spark that gave Addressing the Heart life was a conversation with a friend. We got to talking about mobile phones over at their place one evening. At the time, I was one of the few who hadn’t caught up with the technology, sticking with an old Nokia that was only good for texting and calling—just what I needed it for. My friend and his partner were trying to convince me otherwise by raving about the latest model from a popular brand. With some excitement, they mentioned that they were able to track each other on their new phones. The idea that both wanted to track their partners, and were indeed happy to be tracked, disturbed me enough to scratch black ink onto paper.

Of course, Addressing the Heart became much larger than a story about phone tracking. Over the years, I’ve flirted with the idea of possession, demonic or otherwise, in my work, and I saw that this story – through the process of drafting – lent itself to that topic. Here, I’ve hopefully approached spirit possession from a less used angle.

Addressing the Heart is a tale about letting go, love, and humanity, and a definite favourite with my beta readers.

If you’d like to read the story, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 5, When the Sun Shines

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Corpse Road Blues is my short fiction collection that’s due for publication on the 28th of February from Demain Publishing. The fifteen stories in the book look at what it means to be haunted; what drives an apparition to cling to this earth, to those still living; is there a way to be rid of a tortured soul, and is that what we really wish for?

Leading up to the release of Corpse Road Blues and beyond, I’ll be posting a series of blog posts revealing the inspiration behind each story. Welcome to the countdown, it’s a pleasure to have your company.

When the Sun Shines is the first story in the collection, and remains one of my personal favorites.

The first story I ever published was an epistolary piece about a disappearance. The magazine that published it was the product of one woman working all the hours to put together a bunch of weird stories, every month (I think), for readers of speculative fiction. I was nineteen at the time, and I don’t have my contributor’s copy anymore, nor do I remember the title of that magazine or the story, but I do know that the work was about a portal in a pond. I always wanted to explore this idea further. I just didn’t realise it would take another thirty years.

There’s something about finding the peculiar and the horror in the ordinary that appeals to me, and a lot of my fiction deals with this. The portal I imagined for When the Sun Shines took the shape of that transient body of water: the puddle. I love how puddles appear in liminal places like pavements and roads and abandoned sites, the middle of fields after a heavy storm. They are often gloomy, but can be uplifting, too. They invite the child in everyone to splish and splash in their shallow bodies. I’m also delighted by the word itself, pud-dle. Puddle. It sounds like a resigned, self-effacing state of mind, or a humorous mess. Certainly not murderous.

That had me thinking. Soon I picked a particular puddle, then added a chunk of reality that has hopefully transformed the story into a gut-wrenching tale of grief, sibling rivalry, and ultimately, acceptance.

If you’d like to read When the Sun Shines, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.