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I've been fortunate to gain a lot of new followers recently. I thought that scanning along my bookshelves would be a good way of bringing new readers up to speed. And yes, there is a cat at the end of this video.
I've been unable to resist sharing this on my socials this week...
On 16 January, my incredible wife Lisa and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. That doesn’t seem at all possible, because it only feels like five minutes since we tied the knot. Our wedding back in 1999 was, for various reasons, a very small and low-fi affair, and we promised ourselves that when we reached 25 years, we’d celebrate in style. And we did.
Four of our daughters, three of their partners, one of our granddaughters, and a close family friend who’s also a minister accompanied us to the ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, Northern Sweden. If you’ve never heard of the IceHotel, it’s exactly as you’d imagine. Blocks of ice are harvested from the Torne River, and a new hotel is built every November. It’s a magical, almost dreamlike place, with each version of the hotel only lasting for a matter of months before it melts and disappears back into the river. Each room is individually designed by artists from around the world, and there’s also a glorious ceremony room, where Lisa and I renewed our vows in front of our family. It’s like nowhere else on earth. The closest comparison I can come up with, is that it’s like Doctor Who's regenerating TARDIS in the way the building almost entirely changes from year to year, and yet it also remains the exact same place.
Anyway, if you get chance to visit, I really do recommend it. You can find out more at . The food and accommodation is superb, and there’s no shortage of activities to keep you occupied. My lot spent the week husky sledding, searching for the Northern Lights on snowmobiles (at -35 degrees centigrade!), and undertaking a ten-stage sauna ritual that included a dunk in the ice-cold river. It’s an unforgettable experience.
Thank you, Lisa, for 25 incredible years. Here’s to (at least) 25 more!
Daddy's Boy by Michael David Wilson (@wilsonthewriter ) of @thisishorrorpodcast fame is a crazy, crazy book, and it's about to get a limited edition release from @thunderstormbooks .
/2026/05/18/daddys-boy-limited-edition/
SFX legend Phil Tippett began work on MAD GOD, in 1990 but it was never completed. He returned to the project 30 years later and used Kickstarter to raise enough of a budget. Stop-motion animation takes a notoriously long time to complete, but it was another decade or so later before the film finally hit the screen. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It's a bizarre and uncomfortable, yet visually stunning nightmare trip.
Let me say at the outset, if you're looking for a movie with a well-defined story and a hero you can root for, you need to look elsewhere. There's barely any narrative at all, and characters appear fleetingly before (frequently) being dissected or destroyed. If, however, you're after a bizarre, fluid, organic, dream-like experience akin to DAVID LYNCH'S ERASERHEAD, then look no further.
It works best if you sit back and let MAD GOD flow over you. Don't look for hidden meanings or buried subplots, just enjoy the unique visuals and the exploration of the increasingly dark and dirty corners of the world the film inhabits. It's a magnificent mix of animation styles that combine to produce an enthralling, yet inexplicable whole. I mentioned ERASERHEAD just now, because that's my only real touchpoint. Lynch's seminal film has (at times) a narrative you can follow, an anti-hero you can almost root for. MAD GOD has neither of those things (though it's great to see MOVIEDROME host and REPOMAN director ALEX COX featuring prominently in the movie). What ERASERHEAD and MAD GOD have in common for me, though, is an ability to plunge the viewer into a bewildering and unfriendly alien world that you can't look away from, to take you on a journey to nowhere via some of the darkest places imaginable.
There's something beautifully poetic about the length of time it took for MAD GOD to reach the viewing public. Its sprawling, interminable development appears to have added to the nightmarish madness that finally hit the screens a couple of years back. It's one of those films you experience rather than watch, and I definitely recommend you put yourself through it if you're a fan of the horrific and surreal. You can watch it on SHUDDER.
If, like me, you’re completely p*ssed off with the state of UK (and for that matter, global) politics, I have something that might help. Why not read an apocalyptic book series set in London where one of the main characters is a w*nker of a politician whose ineptness and sheer uselessness is exposed when he tries to lead the fight back against several million aggressive zombies?* It’s far more exciting (and only marginally less plausible) than the news!
*spoiler – it doesn’t end well for him.
Autumn: The London Trilogy is available in print, audio, and as an eBook. The special omnibus edition – containing all three novels and seven additional short stories – is only £3.99/$3.99 from Amazon.
IF YOU’RE IN THE UK, THE AUDIO EDITION IS CURRENTLY ONLY £5.99 FROM AUDIBLE UK!
I had a great conversation recently with Allison Broder for her excellent podcast WHO'S THERE? (@whostherepc ) You can listen to our chat in today's episode of the pod. Allison talks with a wide range of folks who love horror and the podcast is always entertaining.
Please listen, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
/gb/podcast/whos-there-a-podcast-about-horror-fans/id1529675211?i=1000767160600
This week’s episode with horror writer David Moody is now live wherever you listen to your podcasts! Based in the UK, David told me how he got into writing horror fiction and self publishing, he explains what does and doesn’t scare him in horror movies, and how he sold the movie rights to his first book to Guillermo del Toro without an agent! All this and more on this week’s episode!
#davidmoody #horrorliterature #horrorbooks #horrorwriter #horrormovies
