Happy to announce the publication of Shadows on the Water from Flame Tree Publishing, which features my short story To Take the Water Down and Go to Sleep.
This gorgeous book is stacked with so many amazing authors and stories, both classic and contemporary, and is a must for Gothic Fantasy & Horror readers.
Don’t delay, order your copy today!
https://mybook.to/shadowsonthewater
Cheers for reading,
Frazer x
Thanks to Happy Goat Horror for including my novel Greyfriars Reformatory in their Top 10 Horror Novels of 2023! Some amazing authors & books on this list, it’s a great honour.
https://happygoathorror.com/2024/01/05/my-top-10-horror-novels-of-2023/
As i sat beside the fire last night, nursing a Guinness & burning the Yule Log & last year’s Xmas tree offcut, i got to thinking about the importance of rituals in daily life.
And, as is customary on this blog, it’s time once more to ritualistically take a quick look back at events of last year before stepping into the unfolding mystery of the new.
(I know these year-in-review posts can be the last thing you might wish to read if you’re struggling right now. If that’s the case, I’d just like to send you my love & all best wishes for the year ahead.)
2023 was a year of highs & lows for sure, as I’m sure was the case for many of you. The terrible loss of so many luminaries hit hard each and every time. Personally speaking, losing both Chris Fowler & Benjamin Zephaniah in 2023 was nothing short of savage. Both had such an impact on anyone who knew them, and their work, and both left us far too soon.
The highs kept me going some. 2023 was The Year of The Doctor, and not only because it was the 60th anniversary of the much beloved franchise. After 5 years of research, which flew by, I completed my PhD and can now call myself a Doctor of horror. And I finally got to achieve a lifetime ambition to write something officially within the Whoniverse, in the form of Gobbledegook, a 5th Doctor audio adventure for Big Finish Productions.
I was also lucky enough to publish Planet of the Dead, a short story in the Blake’s 7 universe, as part of Cult Edge’s charity annual project — another ambition fulfilled.
My novella series The Daniel Gates Adventures was collected in paperback for the first time by Crossroad Press — just in time for my only live event of 2023, the brilliant Haunted Landscapes Conference in Falmouth, where I presented a short paper (snappily entitled The Jackboot in the Green: Writing Corporate Horrors in Folkloresque Landscapes).
Post-Covid lockdowns, the indie film industry finally kicked into gear again, with my folk horror short The Stay picking up its 30th award on the film festival circuit. I signed a shopping agreement with Play House Studios for my psychological horror feature screenplay Knock Three Times, and launched my next directorial project, Death By PowerPoint with my partners at Reel Fearz, Ash Verma Consulting & Brunel University, and which will hopefully shoot in 2024.
Early 2024 will see the publication of my horror story To Take the Water Down and Go to Sleep, and… beyond that? Well, to be honest it’s all a bit of a mystery right now, and hopefully in a good way! (I won’t even mention the possibility of that ever elusive new The Cure album… oops!)
So, I hope I’ll see you here again this time next year to take stock, count blessings, and to commiserate if necessary. In the meantime, here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, imaginative 2024.
Take care out there and, as always, thanks for reading.
Love, Frazer x
Hard to believe it’s already nine(!?) years since The Cure played their festive run of gigs at the Hammersmith Apollo, a venue that keeps changing its name but which to me will always be, well… Hammersmith Apollo.
There was a lot of speculation from fans online about the gigs. Would they be like the Trilogy shows? Would they play the Top, The Head on the Door, and Kiss Me albums over the three nights? Would there be new songs?
The announcement of the support act was a big hint. And Also the Trees would join our heroes just as they did for the 1984 shows at the same venue. The Top album formed the backbone (or Bananafishbones?) of the set, which also included some rareties and plenty of crowd pleasers. (Tantalisingly, The Cure also soundchecked Stop Dead, but it didn’t appear in the set…)
The first night was a brilliant timewarp of the band’s back catalogue, and reminded me that a Cure gig really is like time travel through past, present (and sometimes into the future). Like Cockatoos was a feathery flurry of nostalgia (a favourite of mine, which The Cure played at my first ever Cureshow). Many of The Top tracks were performed for the first time in 30 years, and the unhinged brilliance that is A Man Inside My Mouth made its live debut.
Another rare outing (Hey You!!!) brought festivities to a joyous close, with the crowd singing & dancing along in the aisles. But the at-close-quarters party atmosphere inside the packed and sweaty venue also meant that I got ill and couldn’t attend the third and final night. But two out of three ain’t bad when you’re seeing the best band in the (empty) world.
See what The Cure played here.
Check out some video footage, while it’s still available.
and Happy Winter Solstice x
Frazer x
Seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating the 50th & yet somehow today is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who’s first appearance on our tellybox screens!
I remember an excitable & (much) younger me dragging my poor Grandmother around the Dr Who Exhibition in Blackpool like it was yesterday too…
And as a grown up (or perhaps because I refused to become one!?) I feel very blessed indeed to have been allowed to make my own small contribution to the Whoniverse during the show’s 60th year.
So, from one Doctor to another — Happy birthday! And here’s to many more x
Happy #DoctorWhoDay
Love from Dr Lee x
Grateful to Happy Goat Horror for this thoughtful review of Greyfriars Reformatory. Here’s a snippet.
“Lee’s character work is great. We have five young women thrust together in this old girls’ reformatory, and Principal Quick who is in charge […] I had no trouble distinguishing between them as their personalities were all so strong and fully-formed. I love a writer who can just drop individuals into a story like that.”
Read the full review here, and then buy the book – it’s perfect reading for spooky season!
Thanks for reading,
Frazer x
Thrilled to have my short story ‘To Take the Water Down and Go to Sleep’ in this gorgeous anthology from Flame Tree Press (publishers of my novels Hearthstone Cottage & Greyfriars Reformatory).
Never in a million years would I have dreamt that my work would be in a book with Bram Stoker & so many luminaries.
Can’t wait to read them all!
The book is out January 2024 (February 2024 in North America).
Full Table of Contents and further details here.
Thanks for reading,
Frazer x
This time 33 years ago(!) I was aboard a coach & stuck in traffic en route from sunny Staffordshire to an even sunnier Crystal Palace for the event of the year — The Garden Party.
For their South London Pleasure Trips show The Cure had put together a dream lineup with All About Eve, James & Lush providing sonic support.
I remember packing 2 cassette tapes in my bag (Scarlet & Other Stories by the Eves and the B52s Cosmic Thing) and persuaded the coach driver to play them, which was great… until we hit motorway traffic and the tape just kept auto playing until we’d all heard Loveshack far too many times!
Legging it off the bus to catch the last bit of Lush’s set (bloody traffic) there was time to grab a t-shirt…
…before a bit of a Sit Down for James (geddit?), a fair bit of goth hand dancing for AAE (joined by Wayne Hussey on guitar to riotous applause), and then the lake in front of the stage became a dry ice mood swamp as The Cure hit the stage and launched into Shake Dog Shake. Amazing.
There was this ramp thingy with barriers keeping people away from the lake (and several metres from the stage, Robert quipping about needing boats), which made for a piss poor view even down the front. I remember moving back as night fell for some deep cuts including The Same Deep Water As You (aka ‘no, YOU’RE crying’) and (OMG!) Lament. So brilliant to hear those songs under a starlit sky.
Fireworks fizzed and crackled across the lake as The Cure told us whatever they do it’s Never Enough.
Honestly, I could have died happy just having heard Lament played live, and so beautifully, but there were more legendary Cure shows in store…
See what The Cure played here.
Instafollow: The Cure, Julianne Regan (AAE), James, Miki Berenyi from Lush.
Thirty years(!) ago today I was in a London park in the sunshine, rocking my socks (and my paratrooper boots) off.
Great X-pectations was a special one-day gig in support of indie radio station XFM. Around this time, The Cure had taken to the airwaves and hosted Cure FM a weekend of choons (and by all accounts also a weekend of debauched, erm, XS) on the station, which was pitching for a London-wide license so it could bring the magic to the masses. Rather like XFM itself, the event attracted an exciting mix of artists and an eclectic audience.
Belly and Catherine Wheel were ace (from what I recall all these years later), as were Senseless Things and Sugar. Carter USM went down an absolute storm, but I remember feeling frustrated with the lacklustre audience response to the headliners. I’m far too old to dance nowadays, but 30 years ago it seemed criminal to leave a single blade of Finsbury Park grass uncut by tapping feet!
The Cure‘s set began aggressively with the triple salvo of Shiver and Shake (from 1987’s Kiss Me… album, and the first time they had played it since then), Shake Dog Shake, both containing more expletives than, well, you shake a stick at, capped off by the incendiary One Hundred Years. Around this time, The Cure was subject to acrimonious legal action from former band member Lol Tolhurst (thankfully those wounds have now healed over and if you fancy reading Lol’s account of his side of things, I can recommend his memoir Cured), and I think that maybe set the tone a bit. Maybe the crowd were expecting a ‘greatest hits’ set on such a picnic-in-the-park type of Sunday – hence the lack of movement – but they weren’t gonna get that… not for while yet anyway.
It’s Not You was a lovely surprise during the encores (I had seen them play it a couple of times on the Wish Tour the year before), which, praise be, saw the gathered throng finally cutting some parkland rug en masse.
Pure bliss, as always. A fresh air cocktail of misery and joy. But over too soon.
Looking back, I realise just how unique this line-up of bands and Cure songs really was, a day that reflected the spirit of what XFM was trying to do on air.
This was 1993’s only outing for the band and we were in for a little bit of a wait until the next Cure album and tour, but that’s another story…
F x
Check out The Cure’s Great Xpectations setlist!
And see archival footage/interview here (The Beat)
Leave your own Cure memories in the comments, i love to read them!
Celebrating the publication of my occult horror novella series The Daniel Gates Adventures in paperback by baking a batch of banana and chocolate mini muffins (with a fresh pot of coffee as standard).
Previously available in ebook or very limited hardcover only, this paperback release means all of my books are now in print!
I hope you’ll pick up a copy and let me know what you think of the stories.
Contained within the pages of this handsome paperback are four novellas: The Lucifer Glass, The Leper Window, The Lilyth Mirror, The Lucifer Gate, which take Daniel (and you the reader) on a hellish journey from the lochs of Scotland to the ancient castles and churches of Wales, from the occult secrets of Turin and maybe even into the depths of Hell itself. Bring coffee! And a muffin!
Content warning: Green-eyed demons, timey wimey weirdness, cursed grimoires, alcohol induced hallucinations, and (sp)lashings of blood n’ gore.
My thanks to the awesome two Davids at Crossroad Press/Macabre Ink for putting together another lovely book!
Buy your copy now!
And rate/review on Goodreads!
Thanks for reading,
Frazer x
FrazerLee.com 