C.M. Saunders's Blog

X7 is the latest collection of short fiction from the author of Sker House, The Wretched Bones, No Man’s Land: Horror in the Trenches, Tethered, and the Dylan Decker series of horror westerns, featuring ten terrifying tales from the pages of Phantasmagoria, Daikaijuzine, SFS Stories, The Splatter Club, Shelter of Daylight, and several landmark anthologies including No Anesthetic and the acclaimed Night Terrors series.

Meet the drug addict who wakes up with something lurking in his bathroom, the new resident at a care home where there is more going on than meets the eye, the English teacher in China who falls in love with a murder victim, the gambler who finds a lost phone that provides glimpses into the future, the couple puttinga whole new meaning to ‘Netflix and chill,’ and many more.

Also includes extensive author’s notes and exclusive cover art by Bram Stoker Award-nominated artist Greg Chapman.

X7 is available now on Amazon

I am excited to reveal the cover art for the next volume in my series of short story collections, X7, designed and produced by Greg Chapman.

X7 is available for pre-order now.

My short story The Screaming Man, first featured in the Horrific Scribes periodical, has been reprinted in the anthology Rulemakers and Rulebreakers: 26 Works of Order and Chaos.

“Which is more terrifying, the imposition of order that might involve stifling limitations and repugnant values, or spiraling into chaos as order splinters or disappears?”

The 26 authors in Horrific Scribes Presents: Rulemakers and Rulebreakers have 26 answers, each with the potential to shatter you.

Horrific Scribes Presents: Rulemakers and Rulebreakers (26 Works of Order and Chaos) is out now on Godless.

As New Found Glory approach their 30th anniversary, and amid Chad Gilbert’s ongoing health issues, they come out swinging and hit us with their first album of new material in almost six years, Listen Up! The title alone reads like a manifesto, cutting through the crap and focusing the listener’s attention. You know exactly what you are getting into before you even press play, and any lingering doubt is eliminated seconds into opener Boom Roasted. And just like that, it may as well be 2001 again. The relentless energy and positivity, even after all this time, is endearing. As Chad explains: “We called the album Listen Up! because we’re trying to offer an album to fans that’s a little bit deeper, that asks them to listen to the words and the world around them. I think this is the most honest and universally relatable record we’ve made in years – maybe ever. We’ve all gone through serious stuff in our lives, and I think the lyrics on this record are more meaningful and purposeful than ever. It’s a positive outlet that hopefully keeps people going. The album is non-stop riffs you can sing along to and air guitar with.”

Lead single 100%, released back last April, is a furious adrenaline-fuelled romp which calls to mind All Downhill from Here, while follow-up Laugh it Off easily falls into ‘instant classic’ territory. Check out the ingenious AI-bashing video. Other highlights include Beer and Bloodstains, which charts the band’s early years playing in clubs. With its thumping rhythm section and nostalgic lyrics, on first listen it sounds like a song you’ve heard before. In a good way. The breakdown at the mid-way point with it’s “Good to be alive” refrain was an unexpected but welcome diversion. Another banger is new single A Love Song which, far from being a ballad is another throwback driven by a riff the size of an iceberg. Dream Born Again actually is a song you may have heard before, given the full-band treatment here having appeared in stripped down form on 2023’s Make the Most of it EP. Medicine is more of a laid back mid-tempo pop anthem, while closer Frankenstein’s Monster reflects on Gilbert’s cancer journey over the last few years.

“I just want to feel alive again
Like those 80s’ songs where they party till morning
I just want to feel alive again
To get up, get out, be free, be who I am.”

Fresh off a successful tour to mark the 20th anniversary of Catalyst then signing with Pure Noise, the band sound re-energised and reinvigorated. Almost as if they have made a renewed commitment not only to each other, but also the fans who have been firmly behind them since it all began. They are joined in the studio for the first time by touring guitarist and Four Year Strong member Dan O’Connor, which takes some of the pressure of Gilbert and helps fill out the sound. With ten tracks and a running time of just over 36 minutes, Listen Up! Is lean and mean, representing everything that was ever good about NFG and pop punk in general. As the press release says, at this stage in their career, New Found Glory’s goals are straightforward: keep inspiring the next generation of artists and continue writing songs that help their audience, and themselves, find strength, courage, and joy.

And what’s wrong with that?

Thanks to Pure Noise Records for the promo.

Less Than Jake are one of the ‘bucket list’ bands I promised myself I would go and see if I ever had the chance. It took long enough, but the stars finally aligned and I snagged tickets for the opening night of their 2026 UK trek at Bristol Prospect Building, one of the newest venues in a city awash with venues. It’s getting increasingly common, especially with US bands, to tour as part of stacked line-ups. In the age of spiralling costs, it’s probably the only sure-fire way to get some bums on seats. The UK Winter Circus is a perfect example, and beneath LTJ in the headline slot we have The Bouncing Souls, The Aquabats, and Bar Stool Preachers, four bands that despite representing different sub-genres complement each other perfectly.

Brighton punks-with-a-conscience Bar Stool Preachers kicked things off, and did so superbly albeit with a heavily truncated set (the downside of playing first on a 4-band bill with a strict curfew). Since 2016 they have steadily built up an impressive catalogue, and though in the modern age it’s difficult to gauge how popular they are their last album (Above the Static) made a small dent in the charts and the track Choose My Friends has surpassed 1.5 million streams. That must have earned them at least a quid. With all the infectious energy and enthusiasm of Massive Wagons or peak Wildhearts, and you can’t help but develop a soft spot for the Bar Stool Preachers. They do things the right way, seem like a solid bunch of guys, and have some good tunes in the bank with the biggest cheer of the night (to that point) reserved for their namesake anthem.

The Aquabats have always been an enigma to me. They’ve popped up on a few bills I have seen over the years, and though I appreciate their self-deprecating shtick I just don’t get the superhero alter ego thing. I will forever be mentally scarred by the image of a drunk mostly naked Aquadet squirming around on a toilet floor. Apparently, he hadn’t accounted for his superhero costume not having a zip in the front. He had to take the whole shebang off to go pee pee, and then fell over and couldn’t get up. I bet he was glad of the goggles. I’d love to tell you more about their set, but the truth is I swerved most of it in favour of the bar. But I will say they were much better than I previously gave them credit for, even accounting for the wholly unreasonable amount of inflatable sharks (they might have been dolphins).

I am a massive Bouncing Souls fan, and have been since I first heard Gone in around 2004. I have navigated a lot since then, and BS have been with me every step of the way so they are as big a draw for me as LTJ. They are one of those bands who I just connect with, and I can’t even explain why. As with most cult bands, you find that BS fans are real fans. There may not be many of them, but they sing every line in every song and I haven’t seen a pit go off like that since, well, ever. They played a mammoth 17-song set, unusual for a support band, heavily weighted toward their older material and kicking off with Manthem from 2001’s How I Spent my Summer Vacation album. The Gold Song, Kate is Great, Lean on Sheena, and That Something Special followed before Greg Attonito even paused for breath. The set was missing a few of my personal faves (Apartment 5F, Serenity, So Jersey, Ghosts on the Boardwalk, Coin Toss Girl) but you can’t have everything. Rumour has it a new album is imminent, their first new music since 2023, and it was (probably) represented here with a new song, the name of which eluded me. After hitting a peak with Hopeless Romantic and True Believers, two stone cold classics, the last song was Gone, of course it was. And then they were. BS, we love you. Headline tour, please. And we will sing along forever. Oi!

All this, three bands, three hours, and thirty-odd songs, was to prepare us for the ska skate pop punk royalty that is Less Than Jake. I must admit I swooned a little bit upon seeing Roger Lima in the flesh. What a ledge. The high-octane set kicked off with a couple of cuts from 1998’s Hello Rockview (Nervous in the Alley and History of a Boring Town) before being brought (mostly) up to date with High Cost of Low Living, a standout track from their most recent full album Silver Linings. The classics kept on coming; All my Friends are Metalheads, Johnny Quest Thinks we’re Sellouts, Walking Pipebomb, as the night moved toward a crescendo. The set mined so many old standards that they seemed almost apologetic when they played a new(er) song. The one they chose, though, Sunny Side Up from the Uncharted EP, is an absolute banger. Special mention should go to to Buddy Goldfinger. When he put his trombone down, which was often, he would just frolic and pogo about fulfilling a kind of Bez from the Happy Mondays role, minus the maracas. Wales got a shout out, which was unusual considering the gig was in England, but it made more sense when Chris DeMakes told the story of how, on their first visit to the UK, they strode out in Cardiff and said “Hello, England!”

Some of the stage banter was hilarious. Lima and DeMakes should start a comedy podcast together (“It’s good to see so many people here! In America we couldn’t sell out a phone booth”). The set was closed out with The Brightest Bulb has Burned Out, Look What Happened, and Gainsville Rock City. The band, collectively and as individuals were bang on point. What a fantastic gig this was.

The tour continues.

A new anthology entitled Cthulhu Cymraeg The Night Country: Lovecraftian Tales from Wales, edited by Mark Howard Jones and featuring my story Strzyga, is out now on Crossroad Press.

Here’s a helpful blurb:

Before the American master of cosmic horror H.P. Lovecraft came the Welsh genius of the weird Arthur Machen, who filled his pages with tales of ancient evil. Now comes this collection of seven NEW stories from the ancient land of Machen, following in the footsteps of Lovecraft and his uncanny creations. Featuring original stories by: J. L. George, Mark Howard Jones, Paul Lewis, John Llewellyn Probert, C. M. Saunders & Charles Wilkinson

I wrote the first draft of Strzyga, named after a female Polish/Slavic demon similar to a vampire, a few years ago. It’s a pretty grisly story about a nightshift worker who finds something unnatural in his warehouse, the general concept focusing on what happens when the mundane collides with the extraordinary. At just under 10,000 words it wasn’t quite long enough to stand up on its own, but too long for most short story markets.

Until now.

Cthulhu Cymraeg The Night Country: Lovecraftian Tales from Wales, is available on eBook and paperback.

Is that a cricket reference? I think I just made my first cricket reference. Anyway, my 100th short story, Midnight at Deadwood Station, was recently published in the anthology Horror on the Range (available via Undertaker Books).

I must admit, I never thought I would ever reach this landmark. Granted, it took me almost thirty years, but that’s still a solid 3.3 shorts published each year on average. My strike rate probably would have been a lot higher had I not drifted away from fiction for a few years in the middle there. I had given up my factory job which provided a steady but low income, and had to earn a living. Fiction just didn’t pay enough (still doesn’t), so I started writing features for magazines and did bar work on the side to pay my way through university. After that, I moved to China and started writing fiction again during the long, lonely Spring Festival of 2009, while snowed in my apartment in Tianjin.

By some weird twist of fate the first story I ever submitted also became the first story I ever had published. Monkeyman came out in a Welsh fiction magazine called Cambrensis in 1997. It was inspired by a quirky story I read in The Sun newspaper about an area of northern England being terrorised by a someone in a gorilla suit often spotted climbing up people’s drainpipes. He was probably either a peeping Tom or a burglar wearing a disguise, but might have been something worse, which is where my imagination went. Cambrensis was run single-handedly by a dear old chap called Arthur Smith. I think that early success had more to do with him feeling sorry for me than any real skill on my part, especially as I submitted the manuscript in BLOCK CAPITALS and the poor bloke had to re-type it all. Cambrensis was a labour of love for Arthur. I doubt he ever made any money out of it, especially because in lieu of monetary payment, the reward for publication was a lifetime subscription. As it turned out, the ‘lifetime’ in question was his. He died a few years later, and Cambrensis died with him.

This was the era of the small press. Genre magazines printed in small batches, which were kind of like fanzines for horror writers. Some were quite prestigious. Not many paid, but I was still cutting my teeth and just seeing my name in print was payment enough. Credits in Raw Nerve, The Asphalt Jungle, Roadworks, and others followed. But within a few years, the Internet would come marching in and give the industry a massive kick up the arse. The small press disappeared virtually overnight to be replaced by websites and the submitting process became cheaper and more efficient. Back in the day you had to type out a story on a typewriter, send it off to a magazine, (not forgetting to enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope so they could send it back) and wait several months for a reply. Sometimes the reply never came. Other times they wouldn’t send your story back, or they would but it would be all coffee-stained or crumpled and you’d have to type out another one. These days, you just end an email.

When I returned to the fiction fold after my exile, I had to adjust to the new landscape. But adjust we do. The world would be a very boring place if everything stayed the same. Looking back at my body of work, it’s possible to pick out trends and little threads tying them together which, with the benefit of hindsight, I can relate to where I was in my life when I wrote them. Some of my early stories, like A Thin Disguise, Another False Dawn, and A Hell of my Own Creation, are essentially about a young person struggling to find their place in the world, something I was doing a lot of at the time. A lot of my older stories are written from the POV of a lone male protagonist. That’s not me being misogynist. It’s just a reflection of a life lived mostly as a lone male protagonist. There is often sense of displacement, and not fitting in. Another observation I can make given some distance is that much (probably too much) of my short fiction is set in pubs or clubs. Painted Nails, Club Culture, The Cunning Linguist, and others fall into that category.

Naturally, geography has also had a massive impact on my work. I tend to write about my where I am living at the time. You can’t help but be influenced by your environment. Most of my earlier stories had a ‘small town’ setting, which I later gave the name ‘Wood Forge’. The Old Tip Road, What Happened to Huw Silverthorne, What Happened Next, Never Go Back, Hero of the Day, Where a Town Once Stood, and the Widow of Wood Forge, were all set there, along with many others. When I lived in China, that became my preferred setting. God knows the place is so weird it provided a lot of inspiration and led to stories like The Others, Roach, Surzhai, Little Dead Girl, The Wailing, Siki’s Story, and If You’ve Ever eaten Toad. Then there was the four years I spent in London, which comes with it’s own special kind of terror. Vicar on the Underground, Scary Mary, #Subject 270374, Gush, Sleepless, Holiday of a Lifetime, and Harberry Close were written, directly or indirectly, about my time there.

Finally, there are personal circumstances. Life is hard, and we all go through some shit. Some might disagree, but I have grown a lot in the past 30 years. Different places, relationships, jobs, experiences. Writing helps me deal, and a lot of the associated frustrations are filtered through my fiction. I doubt I’ll manage a hundred more short stories. There comes a time when we all have to stop what we are doing and do something else instead. But like I said I never thought I’d be able to write the first hundred, so we’ll see.

If you’re interested, you can find a full list of my published work HERE.

I periodically collect short stories into compilations called the X books. You can find the latest edition HERE.

Greetings! And Happy New Year. Dang, 2025 was gone in the blink of an eye. It’s so weird how the older I get, the quicker the time seems to go. With that in mind, let’s get down to business with a quick recap. In the name of promotion, in the past I’ve tried to limit any magazine or blog interviews I do to around release dates. I have since come to realise that this probably isn’t the best strategy. Best case scenario, your name is everywhere, all the time, for a couple of weeks or so, and then it’s nowhere for a year. Or until you release another book. Your audience either gets tired of you or they forget all about you. So my new strategy is to try to toe the line by doing a couple of interviews a year when the opportunities arise, and spreading them out. Here’s one I did with Andrew Cooper about my novella Silent Mine.

2025 was a good year for short stories. Cutter was included in Big Smoke Pulp (Volume 1), the sci-fi chiller The Incomplete Sneeze was included in a time travel-themed collection on Smoking pen Press, and the drabble Girl’s Night appeared in Flash Phantoms. Later in the year, Horrific Scribblings published The Screaming Man, describing it as ‘quiet horror sci-fi’, a very fitting description, and Collection in Person was included in Clubhouse 3 on Crystal Cook’s 13 Days publishing.

Also, my stab (sorry) at erotic horror, The Cunning Linguist was reprinted in the Blood Lust anthology on Black Hare Press, and I sold Revenge of the Toothfish as a reprint to an antho called Murderfish, the title being a massive clue as to the theme. I probably take more satisfaction in selling reprints than original stories, because it means getting paid for the same thing twice.

You might remember a fella called Dylan Decker, star of the aforementioned Silent Mine. DL Winchester, head honcho at Undertaker Books, let slip that they were putting together a Western horror anthology and asked if Dylan Decker would like to be involved. Of course he would. Decker doesn’t turn down many assignments. The result was Midnight at Deadwood Station, and it is probably the Decker story I am most proud of to date. All writers know that feeling when you don’t have to dig around for the words, they just appear in your head and you write them down. That’s when we do our best work. The story came out about 8,000 words, which is pretty long for a short story, but it works, and Horror on the Range is out now. Fittingly, it was also my hundredth published short story, not including reprints. There will be a blog post about that particular landmark coming shortly.

In the longer form, Dylan Decker saddled up for another adventure, this time at Blood Lake where, right after an encounter with an angry grizzly, he gets yanked into a duel with a flying cryptid. There was quite a complex back-story surrounding Blood Lake, which I wrote about in depth here. Decker’s near-legendary encounter with the group of murderous Germans, A Christmas Cannibal, was also re-released as a stand-alone, and you might be happy to know that book three (or four, if you count A Christmas Cannibal) is already in the publisher’s hands.

2025 also saw the re-issue of a revamped and remixed version of Tethered, my novella inspired by internet rituals, the Cecil Hotel, and the death of Elisa Lam, by 13 days Publishing. I did a deep dive into the history behind it here.

On the non-fiction front, I wrote about creating multiple revenue streams, making the switch to full-time writing, celebrating the little wins, pantsing, how to write about unfamiliar topics, and when to grant copy approval and when not to for Writer’s Digest, and cuckoos for Fortean Times. FYI, all my WD articles are archived here. Weirdly, the most popular post on this here blog with 1019 views perhaps indicates that I may not be the only person haunted by the number 27.

Lots planned for 2026, so onwards and upwards.

You can check out see last year’s annual review here.

A couple of years ago, I made a conscious effort to broaden my reading. Until then I had read almost exclusively about zombies, ghosts, and serial killers and it was all getting a bit samey. There are only so many ways you can rip someone’s head off. That said, I loved the Drift by CJ Tudor. Perfect winter reading. And one of the most memorable experiences of the year was hiring a mini-cinema with my book club to watch the movie adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin after we’d read the novel. We did a similar thing before with Silence of the Lambs, and it adds a completely new dimension.

The experiment to read more widely is ongoing, and has provided mixed results so far. I still can’t stomach romance or erotica, read into that what you will, but I enjoy books by writers who aren’t from the US or UK. In a lot of cases, it offers an alternative perspective, or at least a slightly skewed one. Life is all about growth. Probably the best book I read in 2025 was the Shadow of the Wind by Spanish writer Carlos Ruis Zafon about a young boy, a hidden library, and the secrets of his favourite writer. A modern classic. As always, my TBR list is growing quicker than my R list, but that’s nothing new.

Anyway, without further a-do, this is a list of every book I read cover-to-cover in 2025. For 2024’s list, go HERE.

The Drift by C.J. Tudor (2023)

Winter Horrorland by Various Authors (2024)

Welsh History: Strange but True by Geoff Brookes (2017)

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003)

Last Night of Freedom by Dan Howarth (2024)

A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang (2025)

The Club House by Various Authors (2025)

Devil’s Fork by DL Winchester (2025)

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon (2001, English translation 2004)

Night Birds by Christopher Golden (2025)

The Haunted Forest Tour by James A Moore & Jeff Strand (2007)

A Twist on Time by Various Authors (2025)

Holly by Stephen King (2023)

Mountain of the Dead by Jeremy Bates (2018)

The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (2009, English translation 2012)

Headhunter by Tom Curran (2013)

Odd Jobs by Various Authors (2024)

When Dylan Decker is robbed and thrown off a moving train, he thinks his night can’t get any worse. Or weirder. But then he finds himself at an outpost called Deadwood Station, a place where the dead don’t stay dead, and the weirdness level goes through the roof.

Midnight at Deadwood Station, my hundredth published short story (not including reprints) is set in the same universe as the novellas Silent Mine, Blood Lake, and A Christmas Cannibal, and included in Horror on the Range, a new Western-themed anthology on Undertaker Books.

Horror on the Range is out now