Steven Mace

Check out this picture of my four published books! I'm very proud of the latest one- 'The Splendour of Shadows', which is my second collection of short stories (fifteen of them, and 477 pages in all!) The others include my previous collection of short stories, 'Beyond Twilight' (fourteen of those), and my fantasy adventure novella 'The Pirate Princess'. Making up the quartet is my first novel, the fantasy-SF novel 'Copper Moon Rising'. You can buy my books here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SteveMace Or download them at Kindle: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B005JJLWX6  and http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B005JJLWX6

I've recently completed and published a new book. It is a collection of short stories entitled 'The Splendour of Shadows'. Unlike my previous collection of short stories, 'Beyond Twilight', all of the stories in this new collection were written in a shorter period of time before publication- between October 2010 and July 2011. Early versions of the stories 'The Visitor' and 'Bloodlines' were originally conceived way back around 2001/2002 but they have been largely rewritten and reworked by me in the past year while I was creating and compiling this collection. I'd like to especially thank Janne Olkkonen, who gave me permission to use the artwork 'Fear No More...' as the cover illustration for this book. A few words about the stories: Vortex (Genre: SF/Fantasy/Horror) This is the first of what I would call the 'Arcadian Tales' in this collection, which are linked to a universe where an organisation known as the Arcadian Vortex...

http://garyneedles.com/wordpress/ I found this interesting blog while I was browsing t'internet recently. This American guy is also an aspiring writer, and obviously influenced by H.P Lovecraft, and he also posts interesting articles on SF/Fantasy/Horror and on comics as well. Worth a look and also worth a browse through his articles if you are interested in horror fiction and fan criticism.

One of the problems I had with my novel 'The Pirate Princess' was writing it for a particular audience as children have a particularly affinity with pirate tales, but I wanted to introduce more fantasy elements and darker themes within the story too. In the end, I suppose my completed novel(la) was one that could be aimed at 'young adults' which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I still have a sense of dissatisfaction with the finished book. I have thought since I completed it that I could have done a bit more with it. That's why I'm planning to write a sequel, which will be a much more complex book. However, I didn't realise that Tim Powers had got there first with the kind of idea that has been playing on my mind for a while. I think I am still going to write the book eventually though but I'm glad that I didn't read 'On Stranger Tides' by Tim Powers before I wrote 'The Pirate Princess', as I wouldn't have wanted to be to...

I was fascinated to see that the classic 1980s horror-comedy 'Fright Night' has been remade, as the original is one of my favourite films. The remake stars Colin Farrell as the vampire Jerry Dandridge and David Tennant as the reluctant vampire-hunter Peter Vincent, while Anton Yelchin is the unwitting teenager Charley Brewster who discovers his next door neighbour Dandridge is a vampire. Those roles were originally played by Chris Sarandon (Dandridge), Roddy McDowall (Peter Vincent) and William Ragsdale (Charley). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1438176/ The original was definitely more of a horror-genre film than comedy from what I can remember (perhaps in the same manner as An American Werewolf in London ), and was a very frightening film in certain scenes: Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandridge in the original film The original Fright Night poster There was also a 1980s sequel, Fright Night Part 2, with Julie Carmen as Jerry Dandridge's sister seeking ...

I just thought I'd remind people about my Facebook page, where I also post news and other little tidbits: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steve-Mace/114497238566314 Please feel free to visit or even 'like' the page, as I'm usually quite active there. I've already finished my new book (a collection of original short stories) so in the next couple of months there will be plenty of news heading your way about my latest writings. I will be keeping you posted! The latest book will contain most of the short stories that I've been working on in the past year. Whereas the previous collection 'Beyond Twilight' contained stories that were written over a much longer period, from 1997-2010, this new book will contain material that I have written in the past twelve months. I think that the new stories are a discernable step up in quality, although they explore similar themes to the 'Beyond Twilight' collection and are mostly written in horror, thriller, fanta...

I finally got around to reading 'The Historian' by Elizabeth Kostova this past week. I enjoyed reading it, but it wasn't quite as good as I hoped it would be. It obviously carried a debt of inspiration to Bram Stoker, and was written in epistolary form as an appropriate tribute. However, I don't think the structure of the narrative with the changes in chronology helped the story. It was also difficult to distinguish a distinct change in narrative tone between the three separate characters of Bartolomeo Rossi, Paul and his daughter, and I found myself flicking back to double check where I was exactly in the story and who was writing this particular missive. Another problem was the fact that the story wasn't really that frightening. 'The Historian' is a book with wonderful prose, and Kostova describes the scenic travelogue sections of the novel with marvellous skill, and some sections of it are very atmospheric. Yet maybe the traditional vampire depiction do...