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Showing posts with label Guy N Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guy N Smith. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 February 2025

The GNS 1 Update Continues

 Continuing work on the updated first issue of my Guy N Smith zine...


Tuesday, 4 February 2025

GNS Zine Update

I will be start work compiling the second issue of the Guy N Smith zine in a couple of weeks. First though, I need to update this zine with a typo clear up, additional content from last year GNS convention and a matt cover to give the book more of a zine look. Watch this space, as I am hoping to get this title back on sale in the very near future...


Monday, 3 February 2025

Familar End.

 Well, I finally competed my 9th and final horror novel, Familiar yesterday. I just have some grafting to do on the typesetting, writing the book's blurb etc. to do now, but I am hoping to get the beast published before the dawning of next week.

Making the most of what spare time I have before heading home for the evening to work on the aforementioned, I manage to progress my Guy N Smith ghost story a little after I finished at the office for the day:

Thursday, 30 January 2025

A loooong January nears a close


Here is a pic of me, tired after a day at the office but still plugging away at my short story for the upcoming second edition of the GuyN Smith zine, which this year will be called 51 Years of Pulp Horror...

Saturday, 25 January 2025

Starting work on GNS2

I completed the final edit Part 2 of my next novel early and so I got to start work on the second issue of the Guy N. Smith zine a little before its scheduled time:


🙂

Tuesday, 21 January 2025

Conjuring ghosts from the page

 Sometimes all I want to do during these cold, dark and miserable winter months is to hibernate until the clocks go forward an hour and the warm of spring awakens the countryside. For now, my best escape from the harsh inconviences of earning a crust and battling the afflictions and ailments of increasing age and ill health as to sit in a quiet place, away from the bustle of every life and create places, people and circumstances of my own. Let an imagined protagonist face a happenstance far more worthy of anxiety than my own petty concerns and lose myself in his actions and thoughts for awhile. And so I take a second sojourn to a andventure I'd hope never to endure in the real world.

Continuing my ghost story for GNS Zine 2

Saturday, 18 January 2025

Knock Knock

I had a couple of hours spare today and taking advantage of a creative urge, I opened up my Scribe 2 and turned my mind to the next Guy N Smith zine. Unlike the 1st issue, which was a solo effort, my work on the 2nd issue is going to be more of a compiler and design role. That said, I had promised to add something of my own to the project, and a promise is a promise.

I had thought of getting out my box of Lego and recreating a few more GNS Lego book cover recreations. But I haven't been in the mood to work with them for many a moon now. However, over the last few weeks a single scene of a ghost story has been running through my mind. And as I sat there today, ready to kill a couple of hours, I realised I could deal with two birds at the same time if I wrote up this story.

As regular followers of my socials, currently confined to this blog and Bluesky, I plan on writing a series of ghost stories - a genre I particularly favour but have never attempted before. I also need to produce content for the next GNS zine. The ghostly scene that had been haunting my mind of late ia based on a door. Whilst this door was an ordinary front door in my musings, I suddenly realised I could easily change it to a particular door owned by my favourite author, the great scribbler himself. I had seen pictures of it on a GNS forum, and had read a short story Guy himself had written about it. And then, as if by some alchemical mind-magic, my fingers began to scratch the surface of my Scribe 2, and before I knew it I had a good few pages of the short story written. I am rather pleased with it too. 🙂
 

Saturday, 14 December 2024

GNS Receipt

One of Guy's old receipts. Kindly donated to me by Craig Kinsey. Thank you kindly, sir.


Thursday, 14 November 2024

Friday, 1 November 2024

Guy N. Smith - Night of the Werewolf

Fantastic re-release 🙂 I am a big fan of Guy's werewolf books and this is a thing of beauty:

Thursday, 31 October 2024

The Quiet Before the Storm

The quiet before the storm of activity. Nanowrimo, or write a novel in a month, commences tomorrow...

Monday, 28 October 2024

Reading Again...

Billie Quick's blood has just streaked the pale vampire's faces, meking them appear "like clowns from an unholy circus." Love it!

Sunday, 20 October 2024

Pre Halloween Reading

I've been so busy of late, with two important new jobs to learn, training courses  to complete and getting my latest Explore Gower book written and published. Hopefully the next two weeks will be a little quieter so I can crack on with some much needed reading...


Sunday, 22 September 2024

Plans Update

I am not really enjoying working on my Gower Beaches. It has been a bit of a grind, to be honest. I think the reason is because I haven't needed to go out and take photographs for it as I already had the imagery needed for the book in my portfolio. I do need one trip out in Gower though as  I lost a lot of my stored files in the housefire earlier in the year and havent got photograpgs of the caves down Fall Bay. We are holding out on heading down for the moment as Mrs E is hoping that there will be another northern lights display in the next couple of weeks so we might be able to put two projects to bed in one outing.  Whatever happens, the Explore Gower Guide to Gower Beaches will be available from Amazon on November 1, 2024.

After that, I will be spending November working on my next horror novel, Familiar. I hope to get a full first draft of the book completed by Christmas.


My research on familiar folklore continues...

2025 should be a quieter year for my writing. Famiar should be out sometime in the first half of the year, and my only other blook planned for next year is Issue 2 of my Avalon guidebook series exploring the town of Glastonbury. 

Other than that, the only other publication I have planned for next year is another Guy N Smith zine. This one will see me more in the role of editor, designer and publisher, however, as this issue will feature the creative work of  varied creatives who fans of GNS. At the time of writing this, this new GNS zine has the promise of being something very special...
 

Thursday, 12 September 2024

Heading Home

I do enjoy my down time to catch up on things before heading home.


Saturday, 7 September 2024

Stormy Reading

Whilst the  South Wales thunder raged in the skies overhead and the rain belted down, I read this grim short story by Guy N Smith.

Thursday, 5 September 2024

Reading

Catching up on some reading before heading home.

Monday, 2 September 2024

Guy N Smith - The Knighton Vampires

I really should have read this book before this past weekend. But its fascinating to read a story set in a place you have literally just read... I've just got to persuade little fudjcake to let me get back into reading again.




Sunday, 1 September 2024

A Gathering for Guy (part 3)

Up bright and early as we had to be out of the airbnb by 10am. With two ours to kill before the GNS fancon began, we had a quick stop-off in Knighton town to collect some seeds from a beautiful Honestly plant we'd seen growing wild there the day before.


That done, we took a little drive to Kinsley Woods to pass some time. The place was very quiet and was a lovely way to while away an hour or so. 


I even happened upon a small pond, which appeared exactly like I expected Guy N Smith's Sucking Pit to appear in real life.



I will admit to it being a nerve-wracking experience walking into a building of people I hardly knew in real life, or didn't know at all in many instances. It had been made easier by having bumped into a few people I knew from the GNS fb Group both the day before and that morning whilst collecting the wild seeds though. 🙂


The Raffle Table

The Auction Table

Before the event had even got started, I swapped a couple of items with Shane Agnew, receiving in exchange for a copy of my GNS zine and the model I used for its cover shot, these two signed Polish editions of Guy's book:

 


He was also kind enough to sign my copy of his GNS Bible:


It was great to finally meet Paul Evans, the man resposible for kick-starting my GNS collecting habit with his sale of hand-written manuscripts of Guy's short stories. I didn't know whether to thank him or admonish him lol. He proved to be the professional gentleman I expected him to be.

Paul

Except for a group of 5 or so regular forum faces I'd engaged with online over the last couple of years, I was swamped in a sea of unfamiliar visages. My, and maybe their introvert characters, keeping me from spotting online folk I admired even their were sat just a few metres from me!

Tara, Guy N Smith's daughter, kicked off proceeding with some readings from the newly republished Crabs books that brought her father fame in the 1970s. Long out of print, its's great to see these titles back in print and with modern cover art work.

Tara




The authors Paul Lewis & Steve Lockley (far right in the above pic) were sat next to and kindly signed a couple of my books :)



Fresh, off-theprint copies, signed by both Tara and Guy's wife, were up for sale at a ludicrously cheap price and sold like hot-cakes once the merchandise tables opened for business. Mark Morris wrote the new introduction to Origin of the Crabs and, being a later speaker at the event, was happy to add a personalised autograph to my copy of the book :)
 
 



I chilled with the friendly Nick Caton during lunch, discussing, amongst other things, the heart-breaking loss of poor Soosh-cat ealier this year.




Lunch ended with a fascinating film of Guy showing us his prized book collection. It was fascinating to see his signed Enid Blyton and Rupert the Bear books - works that have had a greater influence on my wanting to be a horror writer than might be imagined.

Mark Morris

After Mark Morris' reading from his new novel, the event closed the raffle drawer (I won nowt) and the eagerly awaited GNS auction.
Shane Agnew with his raffle prize

Nick Caton with his raffle prize

There were a few items I wanted from the auction table - the first being Guy's crab tie. Bids started low and I got a few bids in before it reached £30. Now I was in a quandry. I really wanted the tie but I had a limited budget and if I overspent on this item, then I might not be able to afford the Graveyard Rendezvous titles I wanted for my collection. And so I stopped bidding and the prized crab tie went into someone else's hands. The winner, who I spoke to later, was chuffed with his purchase and said he would be framing the prized tie. And, honestly, seeing the delight at his acquisition, I was pleased he had won. The tie would be better served framed on a wall in someone's home than pushed into my attic chest with my other GNS stash.

I hadn't intended to bid for anything else on the auction table until the last two GR zines came under the hammer, but with a signed London Mystery Selection book stalling at £10, I stuck in a bid for £15 and was genuinely surprised when I won!


I won 3 other auctions following that first win.

The transcript of the new Night of the Crabs reprint - complete with the editor's markings, some of which were ignored from the published book. Mine for £30:


A signed GR - mine for a tenner:


And a grail penultimate  GR, signed by Guy and also kindly signed by Tara at the event. Mine for £35:


I missed out on the last auction of the day - the very last issue of Graveyard Rendezvous. Like the issue I had previously won, this issue was fought over by both myself and Nick Caton. We had discussed over lunch that we would be bidding on the last two GR items and our bids on this last issue rose from £5 to £40 rapidly. I really wanted this issue but Nick wanted it more, and acquired the rarity for £45. I did mull over adding one extra bid, but I already had one of the two issues I was after, I'd kept my planned spending to under £100 to please Mrs E and Nicks GR collection was closer to completion than mine so his need was greater. So, reluctantly, I let the item slip from my fingers. Hopefully, another will come my way one day - fingers rossed.

And with that the event came to a clsoe. I said my goodbyes, signed Nick's copy of my Guy N Smith zine (I was shocked how many people came up to me during the Con for me to sign theirs too) and, just as I was about to vacate the Community Centre hired for the event, I bumped into someone I recognisedinstantly from his Youtube channel. He had a proposition, one that I could hardly refuse. More of which soon...

More merch purchased at the fancon:




We got back home a little after six in the evening, where I found a magazine waiting for - the new edition of The Dark Side magazine, featuring 6 pages of Guy N Smith material :)


And with that, my Gathering for Guy weekend came to a close.