Publication News: Moonlight Bay in Hellfire Crossroads Vol.3

More publication news- my sinister supernatural short story "Moonlight Bay" has been published in Volume 3 of Hellfire Crossroads, edited by Trevor Denyer.


A little bit of chronology: I first wrote an earlier version of this story in 2001/2002, and then I re-wrote it in 2008 (after a holiday in Cornwall, altering it to a Cornish setting). I still wasn't completely happy with the story, until I finally completed a definitive version in 2012. It is this version which now appears in Hellfire Crossroads, and will be appearing in my forthcoming new short story collection, Echoes and Exiles.

It's about a small coastal town in Cornwall with a dark secret. It took those two rewrites to capture the mood and atmosphere that I intended to create- I wasn't interested in Godzilla-style monsters or creature-horror, or anything particularly gory with this tale. I wanted  to depict a dark sense of unease. Imagine a situation something akin to a holidaymaker bathing on an idyllic beach, enjoying the summer sun and beautiful scenery... before they suddenly spot a shark fin gliding through the water, metres away from them. It's that idea of imminent danger lurking beneath a deceptively tranquil surface. The horror that exists in this story is much weirder, but that's the feeling I was looking for, combined with a sense of place and history.


"Moonlight Bay" is published in Vol.3 of Hellfire Crossroads- details are here and you can buy the entire volume to read at Amazon here:

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