Ramsey Campbell – författare

Hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste: Our impressions of the world are formed by our five senses, and so too are our fears, our imaginations, and our captivation in reading fiction stories that embrace these senses.

Whether hearing the song of infernal caverns, tasting the erotic kiss of treachery, or smelling the lush fragrance of a fiend, enclosed within this anthology are fifteen horror and dark fantasy tales that will quicken the beat of fear, sweeten the flavor of wonder, sharpen the spike of thrills, and otherwise brighten the marvel of storytelling that is found resonant!

Editor Eric J. Guignard and psychologist Jessica Bayliss, PhD also include companion discourse throughout, offering academic and literary insight as well as psychological commentary examining the physiology of our senses, why each of our senses are engaged by dark fiction stories, and how it all inspires writers to continually churn out ideas in uncommon and invigorating ways.

Featuring stunning interior illustrations by Nils Bross, and including fiction short stories by such world-renowned authors as John Farris, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Darrell Schweitzer, and Richard Christian Matheson, amongst others.

Intended for readers, writers, and students alike, explore THE FIVE SENSES OF HORROR!

The Pier - Thana Niveau"The pier exists," explains Thana Niveau, "and yes, it is decorated with strange plaques and cryptic memorials, although none are quite as morbid as I''ve invented."It''s mostly Clevedon Pier, which is where the story was born. I was reading the plaques one day and a couple of the quirkier ones made me wonder. What if they weren''t written by the living to remember the dead at all, but were instead a channel for voices from somewhere else?"Somerset is the original Wicker Man country, after all. It''s a place rich in pagan tradition and many of its strange rituals are lost to time. Or are they?"Fallen Boys - Mark Morris"Porthellion Quay, which features in this story, is a real place - only the name is different," says Morris. "My family and I spent a lovely, sunny day there one summer a few years ago during a Cornish holiday."I love Cornwall not only because it''s breathtakingly beautiful, but also because it is wild and rugged and desolate, and because past echoes and ancient legends seem to seep out of the very rock. It''s a landscape which lends itself perfectly to the kinds of ghost stories I love, of which it seems there are far too few these days - stories which are not cosy and comforting and familiar, but which are dark and insidious, and evoke a crawling sense of dread."Lavender and Lychgates - Angela Slatter"''Lavender and Lychgates'' is the second last story in Sourdough and Other Stories," recalls Slatter. "I had ideas I wanted to continue to explore - consequences of actions in an earlier story in the collection - and I had a picture in my head of a young girl in a graveyard."Many years ago, a friend had told me a garbled tale of lilacs and lychgates, the details of which I cannot remember. I managed to garble it even more, and I couldn''t get the words ''lavender and lychgates'' out of my head, nor the image of shadows swirling in the apex of a lychgate roof above the heads of people passing out underneath. I also wondered what happens when you hang onto a memory too tightly."With the Angels - Ramsey Campbell"My fellow clansman Paul Campbell will remember the birth of this tale," he reveals. "At the Dead Dog party after the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, someone was throwing a delighted toddler into the air. I was ambushed by an idea and had to apologise to Paul for rushing away to my room to scribble notes. The result is here."

What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night - Michael Marshall SmithFor Michael Marshall Smith, this was one of those stories that dropped straight into his head, but the problem was that he didn''t want it: "It wasn''t an idea I liked. It was clearly some part of my brain serving up a notion simply because it could, and because it knew it could frighten me with it."It did frighten me, and so I did what I always do when that happens - which is write it down, in the hope it will go away."Respects - Ramsey Campbell"''Respects'' was suggested by a local incident in which a car thief in his early teens killed himself while fleeing the police," recalls Campbell. "A lamp standard at the site of his demise is still decorated with flowers years after the incident, and the tributes on the obituaries page of one Wallasey newspaper were at least as grotesque as the ones I''ve invented - the romanticisation of a petty criminal.Cold to Touch - Simon Strantzas"Stories often find their origins in unexpected ways," Strantzas reveals. "I was inspired in this case by a photograph of a Zen garden I once used as my computer''s desktop background."There was something there in the coldness of the photograph, something that brought to mind the barren vistas of the Canadian Arctic, which ended up being the perfect setting for my tale of tested faith."The Reunion - Nicholas Royle"''The Reunion'' is based on actual events," reveals the author, "but the story only really came into focus for me when I was invited to contribute to Ellen Datlow''s Poe anthology."Poe is brilliant. I was at a conference recently where a teacher revealed that she had read Poe''s ''The Black Cat'' to a lecture theatre full of schoolchildren. She switched off all the lights and used a torch to read by. A number of parents lodged complaints, which she took as a measure of the event''s success. My tale is inspired by a different Poe story."Granny''s Grinning - Robert Shearman"I love Christmas," says Shearman. "Always have done, and always a bit too passionately. The intensity with which I loved Christmas was delightful when I was eight years old, slightly unusual by the time I was eighteen, and increasingly disturbing thereafter."I was the last one to grow up. It suddenly dawned on me one year, looking into the faces of my parents, and of my sister, that they were all older, and fatter, and less and less festive. And that they were trying so hard to keep me happy each Christmas, pretending they wanted all those presents I''d bought, all those sausage rolls and Quality Street chocs. That what I was trying to do, each December, was somehow reach back into the past and resurrect a time that was dead, that was long dead."I still love Christmas. But now I recognize - as I still make them perform party games, as I still make them open their gifts and smile and say thank you - that they''re zombies now. All of them, zombies. I''ll never get my childhood back again, not really, or the innocence of that family get-together. So I''ll make do with the dead, and pretend."This is a story all about that."In The Garden - Rosalie Parker"''In the Garden'' was written after I challenged myself to write a horror story about gardening," explains the author. "It emerged more quickly and easily than anything I''ve ever written. I think of it more as a prose poem than a story."

Best New Horror has established itself as the world''s most admired annual collection, showcasing the very best in contemporary horror fiction. For this latest bloodcurdling feast of terror, the multi-award winning editors have chosen such modern masterpieces as the first book publication of a new ghost story by Clive Barker; Peter Straub''s stunning novella set in a fear-haunted Vietnam; John Lennon''s alternate history by Ian R. MacLeod, and Kim Newman''s acclaimed novella about Victorian vampires.Plus razor sharp stories on the cutting edge of horror by some of the greatest contemporary masters of fear, including Peter Atkins, Poppy Z. Brite, John Brunner, Christopher Fowler, Thomas Ligotti, M. John Harrison, Lisa Tuttle, Karl Edward Wagner, Kate Wilhelm, Douglas E. Winter and many more.