Short stories and flash fiction from writer Simon John Cox.
I recently published a horror story called Greenteeth, which was inspired and heavily influenced by the folklore of Jenny Greenteeth. Jenny Greenteeth is a monstrous creature from the English folklore of Lancashire, Cheshire and Shropshire, though she also appears in other parts of the British Isles under different names such as Peg Powler, Kelpie or Grindylow.
Writing my sci-fi story Fool's Gambit got me wondering: what is science fiction? What is the definition? Where do the boundaries lie? What are the rules? I'm sure there are a lot of well-researched and philosophical articles out there that Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein* their way towards a perfectly serviceable definition, but frankly I can't… Continue reading Something something something aliens
Without realising it, and without really trying to, last month I sold my 1,000th copy of my horror novella The Slender Man. That means that I've sold more copies than Line Of Fire, the autobiography of Brian Paddick, formerly the UK's most senior openly gay police officer. I know! I understand that selling 1,000 copies… Continue reading Beating the UK’s former most senior openly gay police officer
As you'll no doubt be painfully aware due to my tedious blahing about it on Facebook and Twitter, I recently wrote and self-published a horror ebook called The Slender Man. This isn't a plug, by the way. I did something of a launch campaign for it, centred mostly on Twitter and Facebook, and I promoted… Continue reading Self-publishing: don’t write what you know, write what people are looking for
I'm not a huge reader of horror, and I think that's largely because I generally don't find conventional horror fiction scary. I'm not sure why. I find horror films scary, in a way; not in the sense that I'm genuinely scared, but in the sense that I experience the cheap shocks and I appreciate the… Continue reading Dracula is only scary if you are scared by sex
Simon John Cox 