Blood and Grit 21

'Why is it called Skinner Lane? Why ... because that's where something called the Skinner lives.'

Internationally renowned horror novelist Simon Clark returns to his roots with a new edition of Blood and Grit, the short story collection that launched his career twenty-one years ago. Together with all six original tales, Blood and Grit 21 features the haunting '... Beside the Seaside... ', Simon's first professional sale, while a brand new story takes us back to the iconic 'Skinner Lane'. In a new illustrated afterword, Simon recounts how the original book came about and reveals the locations that inspired its stories. Last but not least, this new edition includes the original foreword by Andrew Darlington, who also provides a brand new introduction that's a rousing celebration of Simon's career to date.

Let Simon himself guide you through the contents:

The original Blood and Grit contained the following stories:

~ SKINNER LANE: This is dedicated to anyone who has wondered what it would be like to be skinned alive. Come to think of it, I wonder if it was inspired by watching a woman on a beach enthusiastically peeling the sunburnt skin from her husband's back. "On one branch peeled faces hung like tatty masks... "

~ OUT FROM UNDER: When city populations grew at an explosive rate there wasn't enough space to bury the dead. I imagined a world where the late-lamented were hygienically shrink-wrapped then handed back to the next-of-kin for storage at home. "Like those vacuum packed trout you buy, he could feel the shape of the body beneath the tight plastic - the head, the limbs, the lumps and ridges."

~ OVER RUN: Here the dead refuse to lie down and play dead. They aren't mindless zombies, however: they rise from their graves for a purpose, because someone harbours a secret. "Two hundred sat on a burial mound where the voices of the five-thousand-year-old dead vibrated faintly through the clay to tickle the two hundred shriveled rumps."

~ BITE BACK: An entity of total destructive evil pursues a man across Yorkshire. Featuring explosive - even implosive - action in Wakefield, Sheffield and Doncaster. This is a road-movie style thriller of mayhem and redemption. "The boy's face jerked up as the glass roof exploded into crystals and the stone pillars burst under the impact."

~ REVELLING IN BRICK: Someone once said that the universe is not only as strange as we can imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. Here I imagined what would happen to a character if reality became stranger and more bizarre, and more disquieting, with every passing day. "The blade travelled smoothly. It was sharp and the dwarf was strong."

~ SEX, SAVAGERY AND BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD: The title says it all... well, almost. Hold on tight, you're in for a hell of ride. "Oh, the love in the place. The love and the hate, and the fear and the pain, and the agony and the ecstasy... "

Blood and Grit 21 fiction extras:

~ ... BESIDE THE SEASIDE, BESIDE THE SEA... : This story, which first appeared in BBR, was reprinted in a paperback anthology by the name of The Year's Best Horror, edited by Karl Edward Wagner. Karl was a living legend - the legend continues long after he's gone. Cheers, Karl.

~ 21 SKINNER LANE: An all-new story to celebrate the collection's reissue. Here, Kenny, the hero of Skinner Lane is once more confronted with an evil that he thought he'd laid to rest twenty-one years ago. "His eyes locked onto the figure that was a grim totem of bones and dried-out guts."


Genre: Horror