Diaries of the Damned Has Found a Home!

The news is now slightly old, but I wanted to allow myself to take the weekend and allow everything to settle.

However, I can now draw a deep breath and bellow at the top of my lungs that I have signed a book deal with J. Ellington Ashton Press. for the publication of my zombie series Diaries of the Damned.

It all happened so fast, that was why I needed to take a moment to allow my thoughts to clear. It was all a matter of perfect timing. Everything just seemed to fall into place at the right moment. One thing led to another and well…

…two weeks ago I started chatting with a friend of mine – Paul Flewitt – a fellow horror writer and (mild) Clive Barker fan. We checked around on Facebook and to our disdain there were no groups for British Horror Writers, or British Horror Fiction. We took it upon ourselves therefore to set one up.

It took a few days but we decided on the name and how we would operate and then I set to work. Creating the group was easy, as I am sure you all know, and adding people to it was also rather simple, especially as we had a short list of initial members already organized.

What happened next was just insane. Both Paul and I found a link to a company accepting submissions for horror shorts. She shared it with the group, and both started chatting with the lady who posted said link in the first instance. Less than two days later we had both submitted and been accepted. One day later our contracts were signed and in the space of the last weekend, two other members of our small group have signed book deals with the same company. a staggering 20% of the group we created got book deals. Now, I am not saying it was because of our group, or that they wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise, but there is a chance they would not have seen the submission link, nor the ensuring conversations that were had in said group.

Paul and I were just staggered at how something so small, a niche market group on Facebook, set up for fun, could result in something so positive for so many others.

If you want to come and join our group you can find us here at British Horror Writers. Being British is advised, having something British in your writing works too, and if that fails we accept Commonwealth nationalities, and anybody who drinks tea, had eaten a fry-up, knows were England is on the map, or at least knows somebody who knows somebody that maybe did something vaguely British once before.

So yes, my Zombie series, Diaries of the Damned has found a home. The publishing turnaround time is pretty quick, and I will keep you all posted. In the meantime I need to get back to writing my next novel… I mean work. Writing comes tonight. First the day job must be taken care of. Excuse me while I lace up my armor and pick up today’s weapon of choice.