It has been five months since my last blog-fession. Five. Long. Sunny(ish). Months. I probably deserve a jolly good talking to. Or something similar.
So I'm going to start with a quick update-ry blog, and hopefully stay on top of things a bit better from now on (so to speak).

• Writing-wise, I have finished a second full edit of the Volume 3 of The Automata Wars - but it ain't all over yet. This is a monstrous beast of a book, and could do with some more clipping down to size yet. I am confident that next year will finally see the beast delivered...
• In the meantime, my short story, 'Tommy's Game' - a tale of gambling and vice - was published in the new anthology Airships and Automata.  This is now available from Cogsmith Publishing, via Amazon or via the Publisher's Etsy site.
• In radio news, the #GASP radio show moved to Midlands Metalheads radio station, and now broadcasts every Saturday, 8-11pmUK. You can listen in via the radio station's own webpage, or via tune-in, and don't forget you can interact with us live via the facebook event each week. - This week's event is here.
• Musically, we had the return of Mediaeval Biaetches. Following our first performance at Exeter Phoenix last December, we re-took the stage at the Phoenix Alternative Festival in August. Any rumours that we can only appear if a phoenix is involved are untrue...
• And finally, I launched my first solo musical choon since the demise of Crimson Clocks on Saturday 1 October. Entitled Poor Jenny, the song tells of a legendary ship lost and frozen in the ice... available for free* download from my new bandcamp page now! And if you like the track, please do pop over to my new facebook music page and like the page to be kept up to date with new musical endeavours...

*when it asks you to name a price, say zero!

Phew! Lots more things coming in October which promises to be a folk horror filled month, so I shall try to do better at updating this blog thinger. Time will tell...

 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