Are you brave enough to listen to Halloween tales in a haunted Folkestone bar?
The ghosts of Eleto Chocolate Cafe, Rendevous Street, are once again hosting Hand of Doom’s Spooky Stories for Grown Ups on Saturday, October 26.
Come and and hear some monstrous, terrifying and silly tales from 8pm.
Drinks are available from the bar. Competition during the interval to win some ghoulishly cheap treats.
Tickets cost £6 and are available on the door or from Ticket Source.
Let us creep a little closer to Hallowe’en courtesy of Words That Go Bump in the Night – a spooky live lit event at the Warwick Arms Hotel, Jury Street, Warwick, on Thursday 10th of October. Be part of our invited audience and enjoy some exceptional 5 minute stories, poems and plays all with a ghostly, other-wordly theme. Run by author Jenny Heap, her Words Of events have been playing both Spring and Autumn seasons to ever growing audiences and participants. If you’ve never attended a Words Of live lit event before come along to Words That Go Bump In The Night on the 10th of October to hear some great writing from local authors. 7.30pm and £3 on the door. See you there!
We’re thrilled to announce that The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4 will be published on 24 October 2019! There’s a suitably folk-horror vibe to this one, with new stories by Lucie McKnight Hardy (author of Water Shall Refuse Them), Charles Wilkinson, Jane Roberts, Gary Budden, Ashley Stokes and many more (full lineup below). Once again, we’ll be publishing as an ebook and a mass-market paperback, which should match your copies of Vols. 1, 2 & 3 perfectly on the shelf.
Pre-orders are open now through our online store. If you’ve enjoyed Vols. 1-3 (or are just a fan of strange, uncanny short stories), please take a moment to pre-order your copy.
We’ve also dropped the price of Vols. 1 & 2 through until October, so if you’ve fallen behind now is the perfect time to catch up! Vols. 1 & 2 are only £6.99 in paperback until 24 October, and all three volumes to date are only £2.99 as ebooks. It’s the perfect time to catch up on all those stories you missed, from the likes of Alison Moore, Kirsty Logan, Mark Morris, Aliya Whiteley, Robert Shearman, Chikodili Emelumadu, Richard V. Hirst and many, many others.
But we haven’t told you the most exciting part! The Table of Contents reads as follows:
Hopefully you’re just as excited as we are. We think this might be the best volume yet. Don’t miss out.
Please show your support by pre-ordering your copy of The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4 here.
(Ebook pre-order here.)
Prepare to be scared this Halloween in the ghostly town of Folkestone!
Hand of Doom Productions once again invites you to gather round and hear some terrifying tales, monstrous monologues and scary sketches by Anthony White, Ribs Norman, Neil Dillon, Michele Sheldon, Adam Skipper, Louise Burgess and Charles Bain Smith.
It takes place on Saturday, October 27 at the Eleto Chocolate Cafe, Rendevous Street, Folkestone, from 8.30pm to 10.30pm. Doors open at 8pm.
Drinks are available from the bar (cash, no cards). Competition during the interval to win some ghoulishly cheap treats.
Tickets cost £6 and are available on the door or from Ticket Source.
When Eliot first spies the booth at the end of the pier, he wonders what it is. The canvas is faded, the striped pattern barely visible beneath years of dirt. The wooden boards are stained and bare. It’s the crude, handwritten sign that draws him closer, makes him reach out to pull the curtain aside. Enter the Shadow Booth, it says, and you will never be the same again.
The Shadow Booth, a new journal of weird and eerie fiction edited by Dan Coxon, is available now! Drawing its inspiration from the likes of Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman, The Shadow Booth explores that dark, murky hinterland between mainstream horror and literary fiction. Publishing as an ebook and a 208-page mass market paperback, it aims to publish familiar names alongside newcomers to the field, and to include everything from eerie literary ghost stories to finely crafted tales of Lovecraftian horror.
Volume 1 features stories by:
Alison Moore
Paul Tremblay
Gary Budden
Malcolm Devlin
Richard V. Hirst
Annie Neugebauer
Richard Thomas
Sarah Read
Dan Carpenter
Stephen Hargadon
David Hartley
Timothy J. Jarvis
Joseph Sale
Copies are available now from the Shadow Booth online store, or the Kindle ebook can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. There are also subscription offers on the website. Enter the Shadow Booth, and you will never be the same again…
Hand of Doom presents a night of Festive Phantoms & Yuletide Yarns at Family, Rendevous Street, Folkestone on Friday, December 16 from 8pm.
Gather around the giant table and let our expert readers regale you with six new ghostly and macabre Christmas tales written by Primrose Coulter, Nicola Apps, Ribs Norman and Michele Sheldon.
Read by actors Ryan Hills, Nicola Howard and Louise Burgess.
The event is PWYW – Pay What You Want. Bar, mince pies and hot food available on the night.
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Following the first year of Read Paper Republic weekly stories, we present a new mini-series of six stories, “Afterlives”, in which death is merely the beginning of the story.
On 27.10.16, we posted Dragon Boat, about ghost sex! The protagonist, Yuye, wanders around coastal areas of Hong Kong at Dragon Boat Festival, encounters a ghostly girl, and meets an unfortunate end when he sleeps with her.
On 3.11.16, the story was Dragonworld, in which video games addict Zhaishao finds his town has been infested with concrete-guzzling dragons – but is unsure whether they actually exist, or are figments of digitally-stimulated imagination.
Next Thursday, 10.11.16, our story will be Where Did I Lose You? Wang You reflects on how that ubiquitous item of social intercourse, the name card, can take on a weird life of its own. He is contacted by an old lady who says that her deceased husband often talked about him. Wang has no memory of him whatsoever, but he invents some stories to satisfy her….Go online to read what happens next.
We at Paper Republic are a collective of literary translators, promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Read Paper Republic is a free online publication initiative for readers who wonder what new Chinese fiction in English translation has to offer and would like to dip a toe in the water. The first run of 53 stories, posted June 2015 to June 2016, are still available to read. You can download a full table of contents as a PDF here.
Dare to be scared?
Hand of Doom presents a night of strange and ghostly tales in Folkestone’s historic Grand Hotel on Friday, October 28 at 8pm.
Gather around the fireplace and prepare to be scared as our expert readers regale you with tales of horror, supernatural sightings, ghostly goings-on and the downright peculiar.
Stories by award-winning writers Jo Tiddy, Kate van der Borgh, Truda Thurai, Matt Hodgkinson, Primrose Coulter, Ribs Norman and Michele Sheldon.
Just £3 on the door. Bar available.
Short Story Sunday published our first story in November launching with hugely popular ‘The True Color of the Sky’ by published author Chrysler Szarlan (read it here).
We subsequently published a quartet of original stories from talented authors including:
– ‘The Opening’ by Johanna Skibsrud
– ‘Bluebirds’ by Jamie Ryder
– ‘Dark Disneyland’ by Patrick Sagaram
– ‘Clay’ by Lauren Bell
What’s Next? Don’t miss our Festive Special!
We have now confirmed the line-up for our inaugural Short Story Sunday ‘5 Days of Christmas Festive Special’ which will feature a new festive story published each day in the run-up to Christmas starting Sunday 20th December.
We have five crackers which we are looking forward to sharing with you (it wouldn’t be Christmas without a cliché!). Here are the highlights:
Day 1: Sunday 21st December – An exquisitely-written classic festive ghost tale with a modern twist and a spine-tingling ending.
Day 2: Monday 22nd December – A darkly festive Victorian tale for those feeling a little macabre.
Day 3: Tuesday 23rd December – A beautifully haunting piece of flash fiction about a mysterious Christmas card.
Day 4: Christmas Eve – A lightly humorous tale for those who enjoy a delightful ‘Christmas Cat’ story
Day 5: Christmas Day – The main event and a truly show-stopping olde tale about a housemaid’s changing relationship with her annual Christmas Pudding preparations and the upper-class family she labours for; this is a real treat for those who love the dark side of Downton Abbey as well as those looking for a traditional festive tale…
In Other News:
Short Story Sunday Club hits 100 Members
At the start of December the Short Story Sunday Club signed up our 100th member – quite a feat considering the Club hasn’t launched yet!
The Club will feature exclusive stories and member prizes and is scheduled for launch in early 2015 and you can sign up for free here.
Have a lovely Christmas from Short Story Sunday…
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