I'm very pleased to be able to let you know that Steam Flashes, a new publication from Tenebrous Texts, will launch next week.  Steam Flashes, which is a collection of steampunk flash fiction stories and articles, features one of my flash fiction stories and also some photographs by me (a few of me, too!).  All profits from sales of the book will go to the charity New Futures Nepal (NFN), supporting disadvantaged children and adults in Nepal.

The book is the brainchild of Steven C. Davis, long-time supporter of NFN.  Steven has visited Nepal with the group, and has raised funds for them with various long distance walking treks as well as through the musical compilation Raising Steam (Raising Steam II is also on the horizon).

Last year's earthquakes in Nepal inspired Steven, who is a writer and host of the GASP radio show, to take action again.  This time he was able to persuade his publisher Tenebrous Texts to produce the book - and to agree to donate all profits to NFN.  A number of writers, photographers and steampunks generously offered to contribute their work free of charge. Scott and Amy from the bookshop Southcart Books in Walsall kindly hosted a steampunk event to tie-in with the book - and the rest is history, all neatly compiled within the pages of Steam Flashes!

Steam Flashes will be priced at £10 (plus postage if applicable).  It launches officially at the New Futures Nepal annual event over the weekend of 1-3 April 2016, and thereafter will be available from Tenebrous Texts and other sources.  An easy way for anyone to get involved in both good reads and good causes!

 Last week I took a brief constitutional to Snowdonia and surrounding areas in Wales. Luckily the sun shone, but even so, in mid-March, the landscape can look a little unsettling. It conjures images of another world beyond this one, a shadow place, peeking through in areas where civilisation starts to stretch a little too thin...

...which nicely sets the tone for this week's blog topic: Folk Horror. Which, coincidentally enough, is the subject of this week's #GASP radio show (That's Gothic, Alternative, Steampunk and Progressive), Thursday 8-11pmUK on BLAST1386, with a live facebook event and twitter streaming running concurrently.

Our guest on this week's GASP show is Andy Paciorek, artist and creator and project coordinator of the Folk Horror Revival group. Andy created the group both to celebrate existing films, literature, arts and more relating to folk horror and also to provide a platform for new collaborations around the subject.  Which is all very well, but what exactly is folk horror anyway?

Andy addresses this in his introduction to Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies (the first of several planned books from the Folk horror Revival project, and donating 100% of profit to charity). For Andy, Folk Horror is as much a feeling or an atmosphere as anything else - thereby rather defying description. It has no universal boundaries, nothing that can specfically delineate it. Nevertheless, we are people, and we like our descriptions, and Andy cites a paper by Adam Scovell, in which Scovell advanced the idea of a folk horror chain - a linked series of elements that, added together, can become folk horror:
 - Landscape
 - Isolation
 - Skewed moral beliefs
 - Happening/ summoning.

From this, a whole host of things might fall into this theme.  Obvious candidates are films like The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General. Music can be involved (listen to the Hare and the Moon or the Owl Service - more on Thursday's GASP show); art obviously plays a large part. In each case, the end product is unsettling, discomforting; and at the same time, uniquely fascinating, just as the bleakness of the wilds never fails to fascinate. Sometimes stepping off the path is the only way to refresh yourself - or to save yourself from whatever comes towards you along it.

You can hear the interview with Andy on Thursday night, along with a selection of folk horror music on the GASP show. We hope you'll join us to see what gets summoned...

  - The GASP Radio show broadcasts every Thursday 8-11pmUK via BLAST1386, available via mediumwave in the local Reading area; and globally via the internet.  Look for the BLAST1386 app, or listen via the tune-in link.

 - Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies
Featuring essays and interviews by many great cinematic, musical, artistic and literary talents, Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies is the most comprehensive and engaging exploration to date of the sub genre of Folk Horror and associated fields in cinema, television, music, art, culture and folklore. Includes contributions by Kim Newman, Robin Hardy, Thomas Ligotti, Philip Pullman, Gary Lachman and many many more. 100% of all profits from sales of the book will be charitably donated to environmental, wildlife and community projects undertaken by The Wildlife Trusts
Available now priced $20.28

​It has been quite a long time since my last blog-fession. During that time, seasons have turned, rivers have flowed, leaves have fallen and are now starting to get back up again, though in a new growth rather than zombie-leaf kind of way.  And, of course, the Walking Dead has returned from its mid-season break...
 
Zombies are big news these days, and there are no immediate indications that we have reached zombie saturation point.  All around, zombies continue to burst from the ground like slightly rotting crocuses and daffodils.  But the end must surely be nigh.  Sooner or later, the zombies will have had their day (of the dead).  If they want to survive, they’re going to have to evolve.
 
Actually, zombies have been evolving for many years. Back in the days of classic monsters, the zombie was a poor, decaying relation indeed. Dracula, of course, is probably the most famous of the undead, but Dracula was no zombie.  Dracula was suave, sophisticated, slicked of hair.  He quite probably smelled a bit – Bram Stoker recorded the particularly 'rank' odour of his breath in the original novel – but he was not rotting.  When he deteriorated a bit, blood could restore him.  When defeated, he disappeared in a sanitary heap of dust.  And cleanliness aside, Dracula had mind, motive and volition. It was that volition that characterised all the old-style monsters. Frankenstein’s monster just wanted to be a real boy.  The werewolf, only a part-time monster, wasn't even dead - talk about not keeping up with the Jones' - while The Mummy was not unlike a bandage-wrapped Dracula...
 
All of those old-school monsters were fairly solitary.  They had purpose of sorts.  And generally speaking, they weren't necessarily all that hung up on brain-munching.  Though to be fair, there was a point when neither were zombies.
 
Zombies did appear in early films, but most usually as mindless and often under the spell of a more powerful other.  The idea of zombification originated from the Haitian tradition that a magician could make someone into a zombie - effectively a mindless slave, who remains entirely under the will of the sorcerer who has enslaved them.  There were also suggestions that psychotropic drugs could have a similar effect, as illustrated by the film, The Serpent and the Rainbow illustrated this quite graphically.  In many ways the zombie was a victim rather than a typical villain.

Back in the 60s, though, George Romero had started to change things.  The original Night of the Living Dead film didn't actually mention zombies, but it was clear from that point on that zombies were diverging from their original backstory...
 
Firstly, zombies could be zombified through means other than voodoo and drugs.  Disease was a popular zombification process; sometimes deliberately infected as part of a military application or other. Gas might be another vector. Once infected, the zombie could infect others.  How long they had been dead was not a problem - in some cases, the dead literally became reanimated rising from their graves as George Romero so graphically portrayed.
 
The other thing George helped with was their attitude.  Zombies turned nasty.
 
Let’s qualify this slightly. One retained factor from the Mummy through to the voodoo zombie, through to present day (mostly) is that the zombie is basically mindless.  They are driven either by some external factor (eg, the mind of their controller, the curse they are under), or by their own internal instinct. They aren’t demons, trying to summon you to hell a la The Evil Dead.  A zombie doesn’t mean to be bad – he’s just drawn that way, like a somewhat pungent Jessica Rabbit.  In many ways the modern-day zombie appears to have less reasoning power than an animal.  They do not look after themselves in any way. They do not reason. They do not try to keep themselves alive. The only response they have is to feed.  *BRAINS*
 
When a modern-day zombie attacks you, it’s not personal.  They’re aren’t trying to take over the world, or to summon a demon. They are simply following their instincts.  And that instinct is to consume.
 
That’s right folks.  Back in the day, our prototype zombies were under the control of others – a reflection of the fear that weak minds might be overshadowed by evil, perhaps; possibly even reflecting concerns that people had about cultists or communists and their influence on society.  But zombies are not evil in themselves.  Today, zombies are simply the ultimate consumers.  They exist only to consume.  Even when they’re not hungry, they consume.  Even when the attempt will damage them in some way, still they attempt to consume.  As a reflection of today’s modern consumerist and self-damaging society, zombies aren’t subtle (and see Shaun of the Dead if you want the ultimate in unsubtle representations).
 
As a by-product, zombies can often infect you with their bite. You too can become one with the consuming horde, in a parallel to the original ‘weak minds’ trope of original zombie lines. Interestingly many zombie stories take this line – that there is no stopping the rampant consumerism, that it will just grow and grow until there is simply nothing left to consume. Given today’s warnings about resource shortages, this is perhaps not surprising.
 
Of course, given the zombie-lution we’ve been looking at, the question becomes what next? Is there anywhere else for the zombie, or will they consume themselves out? There is, of course, a bit of a zombie market saturation these days. We’ve had fast zombies in the 2008 remake of Dawn of the Dead, even picky zombies who won’t eat diseased flesh in World War Z.  We’ve even had Martian ghost zombies (sort of). In some cases zombies are developing minds or even love interests. And sometimes, super-zombies of various types have emerged, including those in Resident Evil and more recently (and with a certain sense of style), Z Nation’s Murphy. Murphy, with his ability to manipulate the minds of lesser zombies, is taking us almost back full circle.  He’s also injecting some sympathy for the afflicted.  Perhaps zombies can learn.  Perhaps they can change.  Perhaps they too can aspire to rule the earth.

And what do we do to this new breed, this ever growing horde of hapless innocents, entirely undeserving of their fate? We destroy their brains!  If they looked like kittens, there'd be outrage!
 
Maybe the next set of zombie films will depict a happy mindless family shambling about and looking for brains when they are set upon by a gang of armed, fast moving villains.  Villains who are in full possession of their wits and their volition, and use it to attack our mindless innocents.  Villains, who, although living, are most definitely evil.
 
History, they say, is written by the victors.  Maybe the new zombie films will be, too.
 
Til next time, BRRRAAAAIIINNNSSSS...