Tuesday, December 21, 2021

The Dead of Winter: Christmas video anthology

 

I'm absolutely thrilled to announce a new video anthology of Christmas ghost stories: The Dead of Winter. It features four ghost story writers: myself, Sean Hogan, David Longhorn and Lynda E. Rucker, and you can find it on YouTube:


The Dead of Winter came about as a result of a Hallowe'en event at Strathearn Arts in Crieff. I was involved in organising authors to read that evening: we had myself, Lisa Tuttle, David Longhorn (remotely) and Alex Nye, as well as music from folk duo Plaidsong. It was a fabulous evening, and there have even been some hints that we might do that again! 

Time did not permit for more than four readers, but there were other writers I would like to have asked. Additionally, as the event was in person it was naturally limited to whoever could get to Crieff. So I started to think about organising a Christmas event but doing it online. The Dead of Winter is the result. 

It's actually been a bigger labour of love than I expected (ain't that always the way?!), partly because a video file of four different readings is so big that my poor daughter, who did the editing, had to acquire an external hard drive for the extra memory. It took an hour to render, and over three hours to load to YouTube! I should imagine that put a bit of strain on our rural broadband. At any rate, I forbade anyone to do online gaming etc while it was uploading...

Here's a bit about the four featured authors. 

David Longhorn is the editor of long-running scary mag Supernatural Tales. He also writes horror for Scare Street publishing. David has acquired a considerable amount of experience in producing audio material for his day job, and I think you can tell this from his very accomplished reading of Midnight Movie.

Lynda E.Rucker is the writer of many ghostly short stories, essays and even a play. She also edited one of Swan River Press's Uncertainties anthologies. Her ghostly tale This Hollow Thing begins quietly and leads with gathering ominousness to a truly chilling ending. 

Sean Hogan is a writer and director - amongst other things, the creator of the superb The Devil's Business, one of my favourite horror films. I was absolutely thrilled to get him on board with this project. His story My True Love Gave To Me made me laugh out loud in places, as well as shudder. 

Me, you know about, right?

The video editing and creation of the hideous ghostly face were by Iona Grant, who has been incredibly long suffering throughout the process! Without her, this would never have got off the ground. 

The title The Dead of Winter was suggested by Steve Duffy, himself the writer of many spine-chilling short stories. 

The music at the end is by Dar Golan, and was obtained from a royalty free site, for which we were very grateful. 

I hope you will enjoy The Dead of Winter!





 



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