Look Out For… The Eye That Blinds by B.E. Scully

“An original and exciting thriller that’s as cutting-edge as they come.” 

The Internet—it’s everywhere and nowhere, full of everybody and nobody. And sometimes, it’s downright deadly.

When three college friends graduate with plans to conquer the world, they find out that the world has its own plans to conquer them. As their supposed “real” lives spiral further out of control, they retreat into the one place where they still reign—the online kingdom of fantasy and masquerade.

But after a seemingly random accident puts a pair of old-school detectives on their trail, the trio’s tangled web of lies and deception threatens to unravel into consequences more real than any of them could have imagined.

Why We’re Excited About This Book: If the horror genre feeds off our contemporary anxieties and unease, it’s strange that there have been so few horror stories dealing with the internet. Increasingly the people in our lives who make us feel angry, or guilty, or threatened are people online. Every internet encounter involves an element of trust that the person you’re interacting with is who they say they are… Coupled with this is the fact that the personality we project via social media is only partially under our control, a digital doppelgänger edited and quoted and out of context, without us always being aware.

It’s just such fears that B.E. Scully’s intriguing new book from DarkFuse taps into; The Eye That Blinds tells of three college friends, estranged from the ‘real’ world but at home on the web. But not everything they do online is innocent, and the digital worlds they inhabit are not as disconnected from real-life consequences as they believe…

A story about our search for control over our lives and our inability to find it, The Eye The Blinds is an original and exciting thriller that’s as cutting-edge as they come.

The Eye That Blinds is out now from DarkFuse.

Look Out For … Black Wings Of Cthulhu III

“The stories within the covers of Black Wings III are no tired re-treads of Lovecraftian tropes, but contemporary, imaginative pieces of weird fiction in their own right.”

This third instalment of S. T. Joshi’s critically acclaimed Black Wings series contains seventeen stories by some of the foremost writers in contemporary weird fiction, using the ideas, imagery, and atmosphere of H. P. Lovecraft’s tales as springboards. Black Wings III demonstrates how H. P. Lovecraft’s work continues to inspire some of the best in contemporary weird writing.

Why We’re Excited About This Book: The Black Wings books edited by S. T. Joshi are perhaps the most interesting contemporary anthologies of Lovecraftian fiction. This third volume contains seventeen stories by writers such as Simon Strantzas, Caitlin R Kiernan and Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

In his introduction, Joshi states how malleable he believes Lovecraftian fiction to be, how it can be twisted and shaped to explore our contemporary concerns. In particular, he stresses that just because Lovecraft was deficient when it came to characterisation and exploring his character’s inner life and relationship with society, it doesn’t mean that his literary descendants have to be. As such, the stories within the covers of Black Wings III are no tired re-treads of Lovecraft’s tropes, but instead use his themes as springboards for tales that are contemporary, imaginative pieces of weird fiction in their own right.

The series has been rebranded Black Wings Of Cthulhu (“absurdly” so, according to the editor himself) but don’t let that put you off. Whatever this third volume is called, it’s worthy of a place on any neo-Lovecraftian’s bookshelf.

Black Wings Of Cthulhu III is out now from Titan Books.

JAMES EVERINGTON