December of Darkness: Unnerving, Year 1 Giveaway

We’re offering all kinds of goodies in December, but the best of all might just be the super fantastic horror lover’s colossal giveaway awesome prize package Eddie Generous, from Unnerving Magazine, has generously offered to one lucky reader.

This prize pack includes:

Unnerving Magazine Issues 1 – 4

ALLIGATORS IN THE SEWERS

BREATHE, BREATHE by Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi

BONESPIN SLIPSPACE by Leo X. Robertson

CHURCH by Renee Miller

DARKEST HOURS by Mike Thorn

FESTIVAL by Aaron French

That’s 10 e-books for one very lucky reader.

Readers will have a chance to enter to win from December 1st to 24th.  Entries (comments/shares) made BEFORE December 1st will NOT be counted.

What do you have to do to be entered to win? Just two steps. First, share this post via the Twitter and/or Facebook buttons on this page. Second, comment on this post with your email OR your Twitter handle. (So we can let you know if you’ve won) That’s it!

Winners will be selected randomly on the afternoon of December 24th. (EST) We’ll announce the winner on Twitter and our Facebook page on December 24th.

Good luck and happy holidays!

December of Darkness

It’s almost December, kittens, and that means the Christmas season is upon us. The Deviant Dolls will use any reason to toss some deals and freebies at our readers, so here we go.

Buckle in. Ready?

From December 1^st to December 25^th, we’ll be offering weekly sales, free promotions AND giveaways.

The first week of December, we have these fine titles for just 99 cents.

LA FEMME FATALE by Renee Miller

SKER HOUSE by C.M. Saunders

SEX, PEANUTS, FANGS AND FUR by Renee Miller

SCENT by Liam McNalley

THE LADY IN BLUE by Kimberly G. Giarratano

You can also get these titles absolutely free! (That’s all four books in Renee’s gods series)

FOR THE LOVE OF GODS SERIES (4 BOOKS) by Renee Miller

But we’re just getting started. Check out the fine titles we’ll have for just 99 cents during the second week of December.

SEX, TRANSVESTITES, ANGELS AND ASSHOLES by Renee Miller

HUMAN WASTE by C.M. Saunders

DRAGONS, DICKS, SINS AND SCRIBES by Renee Miller

And these nifty books will be absolutely free from the 7^th to 11^th.

THE RAINBOW by Liam McNalley

THE LEGEND OF JACKSON MURPHY by Renee Miller

Oh, and we almost forgot; we’ll be giving away one copy of each of these titles,

DARKEST HOURS by Mike Thorn

X: A COLLECTION OF HORROR by C.M. Saunders

HARDENED HEARTS via Unnerving Magazine (brand new release!!)

**E-Books only for this giveaway

How are you all doing? All right? Cool. Let’s keep going. (Don’t worry, we’ll let you know how to get in on the giveaways at the end of this post)

The THIRD week has even more sales.

THE TOTALLY LEGEND OF BRANDON THIGHMASTER by Steve Wetherell

A TALE DU MORT by Katrina Monroe

ECHOES AND BONES: A DEVIANT DOLLS ANTHOLOGY

MAD by Renee Miller

SMALLS’ SOLDIERS by Renee Miller

And don’t forget the freebies!

 

FAR INTO THE DARK by Steve Wetherell

STOP CRYING by Renee Miller

Plus, you can enter to win these fine titles:

ALL DARLING CHILDREN by Katrina Monroe (paperback)

CHURCH by Renee Miller (E-Book)

ECHOES AND BONES: A DEVIANT DOLLS ANTHOLOGY (paperback)

But if you don’t win, don’t worry. You can still get these dark lovelies absolutely free!

IN THE BONES by Renee Miller

NO MAN’S LAND: HORROR IN THE TRENCHES, by C.M. Saunders (free from Dec. 22nd – 25th)

BAYOU BABY  by Renee Miller

And the super fantastic, best deal of all? Well, just look at the awesome prize package Eddie Generous, from Unnerving Magazine, has generously offered to one lucky reader.

 

This prize pack includes:

Unnerving Magazine Issues 1 – 4

ALLIGATORS IN THE SEWERS

BREATHE, BREATHE by Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi

BONESPIN SLIPSPACE by Leo X. Robertson

CHURCH by Renee Miller

DARKEST HOURS by Mike Thorn

FESTIVAL by Aaron French

That’s 10 e-books for one very lucky reader.

Readers will have a chance to enter to win from December 1st to 24th HERE.  We’ll announce the winner on Twitter and our Facebook page on December 24th.

That’s all, kids. Keep an eye on our sale page, where we’ll post all of these promotions, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.

 

 

 

Peter Cheyney and I

by Michael Keyton

(originally published May, 2016 by Mystery File)

I came across Peter Cheyney when I was somewhere between twelve and thirteen. A church bazaar or second hand bookshop, the memory is blurred. What remains clear is that being basically stupid and already with the propensity to read what I wanted to read, I assumed at first the book was a western ‘Peter Cheyenne’ being some kind of cowboy. When it became clear that it wasn’t a western, I put the book down convinced Peter Cheyenne was an American thriller writer.

I forgot all about him (well almost, the name having some kind of magic) for almost forty years. And this ‘forgetting’ is key to the whole story. Peter Cheyney was the most popular and prolific British author of his day. He was also the most highly paid. His curse perhaps is that he undoubtedly influenced Ian Fleming, for Bond is nothing more than a glamorous composite of the Cheyney ‘hero’. Cheyney created the template that Fleming developed, and the rest is history. Bond got Chubby Broccoli and celluloid fame, Peter Cheyney obscurity and critical censure.

John le Carre, when asked about spy books that might have influenced him as a child, gave the following response. He duly bowed his head to Kipling, Conrad, Buchan and Greene, and then referred to the: ‘…awful, mercifully-forgotten chauvinistic writers like Peter Cheyney and Co.’

John Sutherland made a similar point, referring to Cheyney’s Dark Series as the ‘high point of a resolutely low flying career.’ These two, wonderfully pithy, assessments are true to a point. They are also skewed by the cultural background and literary talent of both men.

Cheyney was chauvinistic, and no great shakes in terms of vocabulary and style, but he shouldn’t be forgotten ‘mercifully’ or otherwise. Cheyney’s success as the most highly paid writer of his time does not necessarily qualify him as a literary giant, but it does show that his work reflected the attitudes and mood of a huge swathe of the population, amplified it and played it back to them. Cheyney talked to the popular mood rather than the concerns of an educated elite. It was ‘everyman’ who bought his work in droves.

During the dark years of World War II and the austerity that followed, Cheyney’s novels were taken into battlefields, were exchanged for ten cigarettes in POW camps, and at a time when fabric was rationed, women fantasised about the glamorous Cheyney femme fatales in their satin and silks, sheer stockings, ruffles and bows. Read Cheyney and you’re reading violence and brutality set in a fashion catalogue.

For those jaded by pilgrimages to Baker Street, Cheyney provides a welcome alternative. Most of his many heroes, villains and victims live in a very small area of London. Some are unwitting neighbours, and all jostle each other on the same roads and streets, ghosts in parallel worlds. These are mapped, allowing the reader to go on his or her own ‘Cheyney walk.’

Cheyney, Behave recaptures a lost world and provides an eye-opening analysis of a popular culture we might prefer to forget. The book examines the importance of cigarettes and alcohol in Cheyney’s world, his attitude to ‘pansies’, racism, women, and the unconscious but jaw-dropping sexism of his age. It analyses the significance of Cheyney’s ‘Dark’ series in terms of war propaganda and how Cheyney accurately captured the effects of war on prevailing morality.

In his books you will find misogyny, homophobia, racism, sexism and chauvinism and, at their core, idealism and a deep vulnerability. In terms of market forces they reflect a world long past, one far different from ours but fascinating and worth understanding. Read Cheyney, Behaveand judge for yourself.