For my non-facebooking friends...

Time - Friday, October 29 · 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location

The Black Box
Hill Street

Belfast

From Martin McSharry @ The Black Box

Following on from last month's excellent 'For Want of the Call', Lunchtime Theatre @ The Blackbox presents a brand new play this Friday!


Jim O'Neill is possessed and it looks like all his mother's love and valiums are powerless to save him. Can he put his faith and hope in Belfast's last Exorcist? Enter the mighty Father Silver of Clonnard Chapel. Things are about to get mental!

The perfect play to get you in the Halloween state of mind.

'An Irish Possession' was written by Gerard Brennan, and has been adapted for stage by Conor Maguire.

Gerard will make his stage debut in this one man show, and Conor directs.

Please pass this event on to as many of your friends as possible!

Tickets available at the door: £3

Food served in the front Cafe so get there early and make a meal of it.

An Interview - Brendan Garner

Brendan Garner is the author of Possession, Obsession and a Diesel Compression Engine, a chapbook of Belfast-set horror tales with a smattering of black humour. He’ll get around to the website thing some day, but in the meantime, you can catch the odd Garner tweet here. Yeah, yeah, there isn't much there. He'll get around to that some day too.

Q1. What are you writing at the minute?

Very little. I blame writer’s block. Or getting blocked. I have plans to work on a sequel to my unpublished novel, FIREPROOF, but have a lot of thinking to do before I commit myself to it. Mostly around whether or not FIREPROOF will actually be published in this lifetime.

Q2. Can you give us an idea of your typical up-to-the-armpits-in-ideas-and-time writing day?

I turn off the TV and stare at a computer screen. Sometimes words come out. Most times they don’t.

Q3. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Drink. Read. Watch horror movies. The order varies.

Q4. Any advice for a greenhorn trying to break into the comic-horror fiction scene?

I still haven’t figured out that trick myself. Considering contacting somebody about a soul trade off...

Q5. Which horror writers have impressed you this year?

I reckon The Twelve by Stuart Neville has horror elements and that rocked my socks off.

Q6. What are you reading right now?

The Gates by John Connolly. Loving it.

Q7. Plans for the future?

Break into the comic-horror fiction scene.

Q8. With regards to your writing career to date, would you do anything differently?

I’d have been more successful.

Q9. Do you fancy sharing your worst writing experience?

The day I figured out that I can’t write when I’m drunk was a pretty bad one. I’d heard Stephen King doesn’t even remember writing Cujo because he was profoundly blitzed the entire time. Thought I could emulate that. I really couldn’t.

Q10. Anything you want to say that I haven’t asked you about?

No. Stop being lazy and come up with a decent tenth question, will you?

Thank you, Brendan Garner!

A Bastard Evil Twin Stole My Chapbook!

As I normally do before reviewing a book, I've been ignoring (as much as possible) the internet activity promoting Sam Millar's The Dark Place. Which is why I missed this extract from his interview with Critical Mick:

CM: Have you read Gerard Brennan's short story collection, Possession, Obsession and a Diesel Compression Engine?

SM: Not yet, because he keeps saying he's going to send me a signed copy, but never does. Too tight, the tight-arsed git. He had a great run of 'short stories' in the AndyTown News, a while back. Everyone was talking about it, saying how great it was. I have to admit, he scares me sometimes, what's going on in his head...

Read the rest of that very funny interview here.

Thanks to Mick raising the question in the first place, and Sam reminding me that I did very little to push it, I've been thinking. Maybe I should have promoted that wee short story collection a lot harder. But its publication just happened along at the wrong time. I'd just finished writing a book that had taken me well away from the black-humoured horror I'd been working on in the years before. I wasn't sure if the collection was really representative of the kind of writer I wanted to be.

But now I've found this rather alarming news report on the Baysgarth Publications website telling me that some pup, who claims to be my evil twin, has swiped the chapbook and taken control of it. According to a tweet I came across, Garner claims that he's 'always been sicker' than me. It's a weird situation, and I'm not sure how I'm meant to deal with it just now... I'm just going to ignore Brendan Garner and hope he goes away.