One of the things I’m proudest of this year is breaking into audiobook narration, and that’s entirely thanks to Ghostwoods Books. Ghostwoods do great work, including a genuinely brilliant anthology of Lovecraftian fiction called Cthulhu Lives! Edited with huge care and attention by Salomé Jones, it’s a collection of stories that explore the exact sort of horror Lovecraft is known for but with a very modern twist.
It’s a great book, made even more so by Salomé’s brilliant idea to get an American narrator for the American stories and a British one for the British pieces. The magnificent Leeman Kessler does amazing work on the American pieces and the British ones? All me.
I work with horror fiction a lot (Oddly) and I can honestly say I’ve not seen an anthology this strong in a long, long time. I genuinely can’t pick a favourite, although the politely desolate steampunk of ‘1884’ by Michael Grey, the twisted domestic knife of ‘Visiting Rights’ by Joff Brown, the student sitcom hell of ‘Hobstone’ by GK Lomax and the extraordinary ‘On the Banks of the River Jordan’ by John Reppion are vying for that spot today. Tomorrow, who knows?
Cthulhu Lives! was an honour and a pleasure to work on and if you’re a horror fan, you should pick it up. It’s on Bandcamp now.