5 Stories High cover imageThis one’s been in the pipeline for a while, but now that Solaris have revealed the full line-up and cover art I can officially announce that I am one-fifth of Five Stories High, a new anthology project dreamed up by editor Jonathan Oliver and comprising five individual novellas, linked together by the idea of a house, the mysterious and sometimes dangerous Irongrove Lodge:

“Five Stories High explores one of the classic tropes of horror – the haunted house, but does so with five extraordinary writers who know how to stretch the bounds of genre to startling and terrifying effect. Irongrove Lodge welcomes you in, bids you stay a while, while secretly hoping you’ll never leave.”

Each writer’s vision of Irongrove Lodge will be unique to them, and with writers as distinctive as K. J. Parker, Sarah Lotz, Robert Shearman and Tade Thompson on the table of contents, the five journeys into the house’s shadowy interior are bound to be disturbingly different. My own novella, Maggots, is about Willy Randle, a character who was originally going to appear in The Rift, but who got squeezed out when the narrative took a different turn. I was fond of Willy though, and the story of what happened to him during his first term at university felt so compelling to me that I was reluctant to let go of him. When Jonathan Oliver invited me to come on board with Five Stories High I leapt at the chance, quickly realising that here was the perfect opportunity to give Willy a story all to himself.

After reading the completed novella, Jon had this to say:

“Magnificent. It has the feel of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle in places, and the darkness is tense as fuck.”

Which has to be my favourite cover blurb of all time!

Five Stories High is due for release later this year. You have been warned.