Pete Ward

Excerpt from A Named Storm: Breaking glasses is nothing new at Harve’s. Funny touch, if you haven’t noticed: those are brooms lined up against the walls, not pool cues. You can break whatever you want as long as you sweep it up and tip good. If our women saw the cleaning we did here compared to home—paying for the privilege, to boot—they’d fairly shit on the floor. We’d have to sweep it up after, too.

A chorus of barflies describes the aftermath of a murder in a town where almost everyone has a secret. Dark, violent and funny, A Named Storm is a gothic Noir and a real good time. Thanks to Macabre Magazine for selecting!

macabremagazine.com/a-named-storm/

Excerpt from A Named Storm: Breaking glasses is nothing new at Harve’s. Funny touch, if you haven’t noticed: those are brooms lined up against the walls, not pool cues. You can break whatever you want as long as you sweep it up and tip good. If our women saw the cleaning we did here compared to home—paying for the privilege, to boot—they’d fairly shit on the floor. We’d have to sweep it up after, too.

A chorus of barflies describes the aftermath of a murder in a town where almost everyone has a secret. Dark, violent and funny, A Named Storm is a gothic Noir and a real good time. Thanks to Macabre Magazine for selecting!

macabremagazine.com/a-named-storm/

Part of how this Gruffalo reading revealed itself was the extreme familiarity (bordering on contempt) with a text that every parent can recognise. It's about 700 words long and I've read it about 700 times. Under these conditions, new patterns assert themselves.

Excerpt from A Named Storm: We were tired of our families, so we thought we’d come home. Waiting out a storm at Harve’s is usually as much fun as you can have in the dark. He gets those hurricane lanterns up around the place—mostly electric, of course, but a couple of old-timers—gives it a festive atmosphere. Damn near romantic. We’re Old Town, here, set up the hill a bit, away from those disastrous new developments on the floodplain, which nevertheless became the commercial heart, at least for a while. We’d watch the waters stream past toward those nicer establishments and their fruitless, faithless sandbags. “It’s God’s will, gentlemen,” Harve would say. “He’s an Old Town God, and he defends his chosen,” and we’d get a little raucous and rival the storm outside. Wanted to be a preacher, once, old Harve, but you’d never know outside meteorological extremes.

Slightly buggy formatting for this but persist for a grimly funny story about a small town, an act of violence, and a chorus of barflies revealing more than they realise in the telling. Thanks to Macabre Magazine for selecting!

macabremagazine.com/a-named-storm/

I've found it also leads to a self-defeating completist persistence with novels that declared their unworthiness with underwhelming starts and muddling middles.

Part of how this Gruffalo reading revealed itself was the extreme familiarity (bordering on contempt) with a text that every parent can recognise. It's about 700 words long and I've read it about 700 times. Under these conditions, new patterns assert themselves.

It's so good. I had an real-life actual horrified shiver watching it.

Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach? by Francis Wheen The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson

One of my favorite things: randomly chosen successive books that are absolutely in conversation.

Got strong Frederick Rolfe vibes from the Bach bio, only to see in the Skipton preface PHJ name-checking Rolfe as a source for her study of 'artist's paranoia'.

If anyone is in the market for an essay entitled 'Of Mice and Monsters: Masculinity, Violence and The Gruffalo'...

That's very kind. I've come to think of close reading as cover-versions: sometimes transcending the original, often better the less respectful of the source material. So pleased that the work you guys are doing is giving this approach its moment. Congratulations on it all!

If anyone is in the market for an essay entitled 'Of Mice and Monsters: Masculinity, Violence and The Gruffalo'...

Really enjoying these episodes as an advocate for close reading, which get across some of the fun and faith of the practice. This is reading and writing with risk. I've got a radical reinterpretation of The Gruffalo and I felt I needed to make the case for why the apparent fragility is the strength:

Trying to remember who came up with this philosophical model.
2 prisoners are locked up. 1st imagines the perfect prison, identifies the differences between the perfect prison and the one he is in, then uses that knowledge to escape. The 2nd digs random tunnels until he escapes. Anyone know?

Michael Shannon. Just watched Take Shelter and he's a generational weirdo

Special stuff

We're looking for the last installments for this triptych! Throw your hat in the ring if you have a piece that might work for it! #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #WriterSky

Watched this 5-star 3-star film last night for the first time in thirty years. Amazing which parts haunted me for decades and which were clearly censored by (probably) ITV. Its got solid politics, resonant symbolism and is crying out for a @horrorvanguard.bsky.social treatment.

My God, that's real. I had no idea and will get this film immediately.

I always thought the classy Bierce ref would be a Predator set around 1900 where someone says "These animal attacks... Hear what happened to Hugh Morgan? Though my cousin was at the inquest and he said..." before fading out.

Watched this 5-star 3-star film last night for the first time in thirty years. Amazing which parts haunted me for decades and which were clearly censored by (probably) ITV. Its got solid politics, resonant symbolism and is crying out for a @horrorvanguard.bsky.social treatment.

Bierce's "That Damned Thing" is absolutely part of the Predator universe.

Yeah, absolutely brutal. Bierce could only walk it off by including it in a brilliant story still read 130 years later...

Ambrose Bierce:

Skipton is an enjoyable entry into an under-appreciated sub-genre: the desperate schemes of a real piece of shit. This edition, however, has more typos than I've ever seen from a major publisher (Hodder), clearly just an unproofed scan of an earlier copy.

Revisited the Bach bio with trepidation after nearly twenty years, but - and there are better authorities to judge than me - found its trans politics to be fairly sound. Wheen, writing 25 years ago, concludes that of all the deceit in a con artist's life, the truth was their Charlotte-ness:

Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach? by Francis Wheen The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson

One of my favorite things: randomly chosen successive books that are absolutely in conversation.

Got strong Frederick Rolfe vibes from the Bach bio, only to see in the Skipton preface PHJ name-checking Rolfe as a source for her study of 'artist's paranoia'.

I had no idea about this - thanks. Amnesty notes really helpful.

Another weird tale of work, ‘Macaroni Men’, an Editor's Pick at @gavagai.com . Originally written and published on a podcast about twenty years ago, it features creepy pasta before creepypasta was a thing. gavagai.com/posts/801

The Appraisal — Thin Veil Press Work sucks, I know. But so does that blackhole in your chest, and the indescribable feeling of knowing one of your eyelashes doesn't belong to you...

Next, ‘The Appraisal’, a weird tale of the workplace and the way it changes us. Remember, all you need is to be agile, pro-active, reactive, resilient retrained, restrained, and that dream career could be yours: thinveilpress.co.uk/the-appraisal

The Crow's Portion by Pete Ward » Bristol Noir Single track, shuttle service, two changes from the nearest city. The train terminates on a hill overlooking the bay. Beyond, the land falls away steadily towards a promontory that kids jump off every...

‘The Crow's Portion’ is a Brexit Gothic, set in the rural edgelands feasting on hate. Started off as a straight 'bad town' noir, but Poe kept creeping in, making it a kind of ‘Masque of the Red Harvest’. Published by @bristolnoir.bsky.social: www.bristolnoir.co.uk/the-crows-po...

First up, a quick one. ‘The Suffering Tree' is about how we're not only all going to die, but it's probably going to hurt, too. Terminal illness, child murder and eco-gothic all in a thousand words: www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2025/12/fict...