Thank Goodness You're Here! is an adventure video game released on August 1, 2024, for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. I’ll tell you what, I’ve not played owt quite like Thank Goodness You’re Here! in years. It’s one of them games where you sit down, thinking you’ll just have a quick go … Continue reading Barnsworth Bliss: A Daft, Brilliant Slice of Northern Comedy Gaming (Review)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Lamb by Lucy Rose is one of those books that creeps under your skin almost from the first page, and once it’s there, it refuses to leave. It’s hard to believe this is a debut because the voice is so assured, the world so fully realised, and the atmosphere so thick with tension … Continue reading A Feast of Darkness, Beauty, and Motherhood
Every writer has a graveyard. It might be a drawer, a folder, or a hard drive, stuffed with stories that didn’t make it. Some sputtered out after a promising start, full of energy but unable to sustain themselves. Others ballooned into sprawling, unmanageable forms, leaving me tangled in their ambitions. And a few simply refused … Continue reading What It Feels Like to Kill a Story That Wasn’t Working – The Graveyard of Drafts
The pod drifted in orbit around the dead star, a shard of black ice against the infinite black. Its light was fractured, reflecting in jagged shards across the pod’s surface. I stared out the viewport, waiting for relief, for a sense of safety. There was none. Only the hum. It was subtle at first, a … Continue reading The Archive – Chapter One: Juno
Horror is a genre I cannot seem to leave behind. I might stray into other territories—comedy, science fiction, even the odd experimental piece—but horror always remains the gravitational centre of my writing. It pulls me back, again and again, in a way that feels almost inevitable, as though some invisible force constantly tugs at my … Continue reading Why I Keep Coming Back to Horror – A Personal Essay on Horror and What Draws Me to Unsettling Stories
The Shivers Collection is a compilation of five short stories, each penned by a prominent name in contemporary horror: Joe Hill, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, Catriona Ward, and Owen King. Each story runs around 40–50 pages, so they’re substantial enough to feel like more than just a glimpse into the author’s world, but still … Continue reading A Mixed Bag of Short Stories
⭐️⭐️ Incidents Around the House was my first Josh Malerman book. I’ve heard good things about his writing, so I went in with fairly high expectations, thinking this would be a great introduction. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work for me, and I came away feeling pretty underwhelmed. The premise itself has a lot of potential—a … Continue reading A Disappointing First Encounter with Malerman
Mona Higgins lived on Willow Crescent, in one of those neat little post-war houses where the hedges were clipped straight and the curtains were drawn at half-past six sharp. It was 1963, and her world moved to a clockwork rhythm: Her husband, George, left for work at the insurance office each morning at seven; she … Continue reading The Dial Tone
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Don’t Let the Forest In is one of those books that sneaks up on you. At first, it feels like a quiet story about grief, family, and the lingering ache of loss, but before long, it grows into something much darker, stranger, and more unsettling. C.G. Drews has a real talent for weaving emotion … Continue reading Haunting, Lyrical, But Just a Little Uneven
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This book floored me. I went in expecting a fun slice of horror and came out the other side completely obsessed. The Haar has everything I want in a read: eerie atmosphere, creeping dread, sudden bursts of nastiness, and at the same time, a real emotional core that caught me off guard. Sodergren has … Continue reading Creepy, Atmospheric, and Surprisingly Emotional
Gareth Ellis - Author 