Although it’s been available to buy for almost a week, my new horror novella The Noctuary, has now been officially released by Damnation Books!
The e-book can be purchased direct from the publisher’s website HERE in various formats (the very first e-book sale is FREE and each thereafter goes up by 25 cents for 24 hours or until it reaches full price), while the paperback is on sale from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
The Noctuary synopsis:
Simon Ryan is Hell’s new scribe…the safety of our souls will depend on his every word.
Struggling writer Simon Ryan’s life has gone to Hell.
Shadows are pouring into his reality and his words are not his own anymore. He has been chosen to become a scribe for some of the worst creatures of the Underworld–the ones whose sole purpose is to torment human souls–The Dark Muses.
As Simon writes he falls deeper into the abyss and before long he has no sense of what is real. With the help of another scribe, old and mutilated, Simon comes to discover that his writing can mould people and places–that he can write things out of existence.
To become a scribe he has to pass a test and the Muses offer him a chance to rewrite his horrible past. All Simon has to decide is how the story ends.
Peer reviews –
“Both elegant and visceral, violent and darkly witty, Greg Chapman’s THE NOCTUARY is an insightful look at the processes of creation and the birth of horror. His sinister muse, Meknok, is one of the most intriguing new horror characters since Clive Barker unleashed Pinhead, and indeed THE NOCTUARY is occasionally reminiscent of Barker’s grim beauty, while being very distinctly its own beast. THE NOCTUARY is rich, compelling, and unsettling, and Greg Chapman is obviously a writer in complete possession of his own sinister muse.”
Lisa Morton, four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and author of The Halloween Encyclopedia
“Greg Chapman’s THE NOCTUARY is straight from the depths of Hell. Here the past is a very difficult geography. Fresh and original it takes the reader on a frantic ride to regret; and may well provide the nightmares horror fiction often promises, but rarely delivers.”
Rocky Wood, Bram Stoker nominated author of Horrors! Great Stories of Fear and Their Creators and Stephen King: A Literary Companion
And here’s a NEW excerpt to entice you:
Schiller’s apartment, and more importantly his study, is an unruly mess. Books in ragged stacks cover the floor and more volumes fill every available shelf. As I stare at all of them, Schiller runs around wildly lighting candles, but their yellow glow barely penetrates the darkness.
“I bet you have a million questions,” Schiller suddenly asks as he uses the last matchstick to light another cigarette. He’d smoked two on the way to his apartment. “You’re wondering about the darkness, about Meknok—if he’s real. You’re wondering if it’s all in your head.”
I nod, but I have many more questions than just those. I ask Schiller how he knows so much about me.
“I had those same questions when Meknok came knocking on my door—really screws with your head,” he replies, tapping his left temple. I glance around at all the books again and this time I see the name of the author on all the spines—Henry Schiller.
There must be thousands of them, all bearing his name.
“Yep, they’re all mine. Every goddamned one of them.”
It’s impossible. Schiller would have to have started writing them before he was even a twinkle in his father’s eye for there to be so many. I randomly pick one off the shelf, a thick tome of about one thousand pages. The cover is made of red leather.
“Uncanny that you should pick that one,” Schiller says.
I read the title: Damn Nation.
“That book, as far as the critics are concerned, is my magnum opus. Took me ten years to write—‘an outpouring of protestation worthy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Dante’, the critics said. But it’s all shit really.”
“I know the book,” I tell Schiller, but I can’t tell him from where.
“Few people could. They weren’t published here. This is just my collection. Some of them made it out, but they’re very rare.”
I open the cover of Damn Nation, skip the title page and head straight for the first chapter:
The flames licked at Edgar Gale’s flesh, saturating the air with the sound of bubbling, bursting and spitting fat. The sickly-sweet smoke seeped into his nostrils, but he refused to succumb to the pull of suffocation; no, hell wouldn’t take him so easily.
Schiller is by my side, taking the book from my hands. He tosses it to the floor with the rest of them.
“As I said—it’s shit. Nowhere near as good as what you are apparently capable of.”
“You wrote those for Meknok?” I ask him.
He drags the tobacco smoke into his lungs and a vision of Schiller’s fictional ‘Edgar Gale’ breathing in his own burning flesh comes to mind.
“Yep, he loved that crap. He thought I had a lot of promise too, but over time he tired of me and started making my work harder to write.” Schiller held up his clawed appendage. “He said it would inspire me to further greatness, but it cost me an arm and…”
Schiller bends down and lifts his trousers to reveal a prosthetic right leg.
I’m horrified; if Meknok had tortured Schiller to get him to write thousands of books, what horrors does he have in store for me?
Keep an eye out on my Facebook-Author page for announcements about my Blog Tour for The Noctuary between December 5 and 16!
And don’t forget to download “Invocation” the FREE prelude to The Noctuary from Smashwords!
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