SOMETHING BEYOND- Our New Project

 Something Beyond

 My film-maker buddy Darren Douglas has done it again.

 

Fresh on the success of "The CoRaven", Darren decided he wanted to animate one of my short stories, "Hilltop Meeting".

But that wasn't all... he decided to start a project of making a series of films in the vein of those old TV classics like "The Twilight Zone", "The Outer Limits" and "Night Gallery".

Of course, to do that, we needed our own presenter, like our own Rod Serling. Cue "Young Vincent":

 

Now check out the finished result

 

My dissertation is published

 

Life gets a bit more animated

 During the lockdown summer, I began playing around with parodies of Poe-try, yep, Edgar Allan Poe.

The first thing that struck me was people going on about "Corvid 19", instead of "Covid". Well, that got me pondering the word "Corvid". Turns out it has links to the Scots word "Corbie" (crow/raven) and the name of the once Labour leader of UK, Jeremy Corbyn (but he had nothing to crow about in the end).

Of course, it all eventually came down to Poe. I ended up knocking up a short parody called "The CoRaven". I threw it about Facebook and had all but forgotten about it, when my friend Darren Douglas declared he was making it into an animated film (Darren's a film maker).

Of course, I recorded the poem and the next thing, Darren has made the most amazing short film and entered it into a film festival in San Diego.

Then the film gets a rather nice review from a chap at Over the Moon Pictures 

 

So, in a flash, I am now a script writer, voice-over artist, listed on IMDB AND part of an award winning team!

For more details, check out the FB page:  https://www.facebook.com/TheCoRaven/

To top it all, Darren has got the bug again and is hard at work doing a second of my works... Watch this space!

    

 

New short stories

 Well, the experiment of writing "flash fiction" gae me a bit of a boost and I knocked out a couple more. They are under consideration with a couple of publsihers, so watch this space...

"Take the Next Turn" - New Story published on Deadman's Tome

 Our old friends at Deadman's Tome decided to run a Creepypasta submission, limited to 1000 words.

Well, always one for a new challenge (some of my "short" stories average 6000), I submitted one.

Here, for your delectation is "Take the Next Turn":  https://deadmanstome.net/2020/10/12/take-the-next-turn-by-trev-hill/?fbclid=IwAR05VNtE-9nvuBwRF46xwg9E5wcyOxCqlGonmoIio6z3Z-kYtF5yEhjgyLE

And while you're there, check out some of the other stories too.

 I'm getting more and more into Slavic folklore, having recently started writing stories based on Central/East European supernatural beings. 

I started last week by receiving this book in the post:

 "The Witches of Kyiv" by Orest Somov: a collection of short stories from Ukraine.

Somov was a Ukrainian author writing in the 19thc. He had a strong interest in folklore and folk-tales. These are recent translations but of 19thc works, so they might come across as a bit stiff but they are actually very enchanting tales of witches, rusalki and other supernatural delights. The book is rather slim but well worth getting. Published by Sova Press, who specialise in translation of old Ukrainian works.

 https://sovabooks.com.au/product/the-witches-of-kyiv-and-other-gothic-tales/

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orest_Somov

My next adventure was the amazing film by Sergei Parajanov "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" (1965) set in the Ukrainian Carpathians. The imagery is absolutely unreal and the eerie singing of the Hutsul people, masked carolling traditions and almost folk-horror aspect of the film have won me over big time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb6GMSG2cEY&t=117s

This is a fascinating article about the Polish "upior" (a kind of vampire) and its presence in some classic literature.

https://culture.pl/en/article/polish-vampires-bloody-truth-behind-dark-myth

Overdue Update

 Well, it has a long time since I updated this blog, isn't it? 

So, what's been happening? 

Well, I managed to get a lot of my stories published in a periodical called Nebula Tales. Unfortunately it only lasted a year and then, for reasons I won't go into yet, the entire back catalogue got removed from Amazon (so you'll have to believe me). Still, I made some new friends along the way, so it wasn't a total loss. 

Here's a pic of the final edition (number 5) with a cover illustration by my friend Weronika Slążak who also drew illustrations for several of the tales.

Yeah, the title kind of wrecks the picture, but the less said about that the better!

Following the decline of Nebula Tales I decided to self-publish all my stories into several volumes. So, ladies, gentlemen and those otherwise assigned, I present you: When the Last candle Dies, a collection of some of my earliest stories.

As I mentioned above, Weronika also contributed several pictures, one of which is featured below.

Another artist friend of mine, Dave Fletcher (from Shropshire) painted an amazing picture for the second book, The Belted Man, which contains several of my longer tales.

I must say that neither of the books would have made it without the super-human efforts of my friend Darren Douglas, himself an author (of detective fiction) and an award winning filmmaker (more of that at a later time).

Both books are available from Amazon and are in Kindle and paperback form.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Last-Candle-Dies-Trev-ebook/dp/B08CMPK688

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Belted-Man-Mr-Trev-Hill/dp/B08CJSK5BJ/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=B63EEJYB1222H8P3KMFH