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TWO GHOST STORIES
AN OFFICE IN THE GRAYS INN ROAD and AT THE END OF THE PIER -
In `At the End of the Pier' a young playwright and a disenchanted theatre producer find their fates linked in a well-balanced tale of melancholy and horror. The gloomy atmosphere of a summer resort at the end of the season is vividly described with remarkable skill. `An Office in the Grays Inn Road' is also an excellent story, in which a husband's sudden death leads his shocked widow to discover secrets of which she was totally unaware. Mario Guslandi, All Hallows.
In "An Office In The Grays Inn Road," a wonderfully chilling tale of hatred
and attempted redemption beyond the grave, the authors make satisfying a
much used theme that would have flopped in less capable hands. In Joanna
Philips is reflected the grief, doubt, and lethargy that accompanies the
death of a loved one. A recent widow, Joanna is assaulted by an
increasingly venomous spirit, as well as by the terrible knowledge of her
husband’s betrayal. Like many of the other stories, the supernatural
danger is sensed at a distance, hinted at by smell and sound and touch.
The final confrontation ensues with terrible finality. At the end, we see
Joanna still haunted, not by traditional ghost, but by memories.
Transformed by the painful emotional scar of her husbands infidelity,
Joanna has become something of a ghost herself.
"At The End Of The Pier," whisper with unpleasant sureness the unfair and un-predictable nature of both natural life and supernatural possibility. The reader is left wondering if we're not all calling out to a deadly, formless darkness. Yes, victims of jealous ghostly lovers and mythic demons tell us, we call out to the dark. We throw into undefined night our fears and hopes and pain. We call to the dark. And Sometimes, the darkness answers.
William P Simmons
In `At the End of the Pier' a young playwright and a disenchanted theatre producer find their fates linked in a well-balanced tale of melancholy and horror. The gloomy atmosphere of a summer resort at the end of the season is vividly described with remarkable skill. `An Office in the Grays Inn Road' is also an excellent story, in which a husband's sudden death leads his shocked widow to discover secrets of which she was totally unaware. Mario Guslandi, All Hallows.
In "An Office In The Grays Inn Road," a wonderfully chilling tale of hatred
and attempted redemption beyond the grave, the authors make satisfying a
much used theme that would have flopped in less capable hands. In Joanna
Philips is reflected the grief, doubt, and lethargy that accompanies the
death of a loved one. A recent widow, Joanna is assaulted by an
increasingly venomous spirit, as well as by the terrible knowledge of her
husband’s betrayal. Like many of the other stories, the supernatural
danger is sensed at a distance, hinted at by smell and sound and touch.
The final confrontation ensues with terrible finality. At the end, we see
Joanna still haunted, not by traditional ghost, but by memories.
Transformed by the painful emotional scar of her husbands infidelity,
Joanna has become something of a ghost herself.
"At The End Of The Pier," whisper with unpleasant sureness the unfair and un-predictable nature of both natural life and supernatural possibility. The reader is left wondering if we're not all calling out to a deadly, formless darkness. Yes, victims of jealous ghostly lovers and mythic demons tell us, we call out to the dark. We throw into undefined night our fears and hopes and pain. We call to the dark. And Sometimes, the darkness answers.
William P Simmons
44 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
1 person want to read
About the author
Maynard Sims
65 books36 followersMAYNARD SIMS www.maynard-sims.com
The DCI Jack Callum series of crime novels - No Evil,Prime Evil and For Her Sins with The Detective Jack Callum Trilogy. The Bahamas series of thriller novels - Touching The Sun, Calling Down The Lightning, and Raging Against The Storm. The Department 18 series of supernatural crime novels - Black Cathedral, Night Souls, The Eighth Witch, A Plague Of Echoes, and Mother Of Demons. The crime novels Let Death Begin, Through The Sad Heart, and Falling Apart At The Edges. The supernatural novels, Shelter, Demon Eyes, Nightmare City, Stronghold, and Stillwater. The erotic romance novels, under a pseudonym, - The Love Project and The Romance Project.
One screenplay, based on the first two Department 18 books, won the 2013 British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay.
Numerous stories have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines. Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and 1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, Falling Into Heaven 2004, The Odd Ghosts, 2011, and Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales, and A Haunting Of Ghosts, both 2012. Their tenth collection of ghost stories and strange tales – Death’s Sweet Echo – which includes all their recent and new stories, many of them previously unpublished, is 2016.
Novellas, The Hidden Language Of Demons, The Seminar, His Other Son, and Convalescence have been published in 2002, 2003, 2013 and 2015 respectively. All their stories and novellas have been reprinted in eight uniform volumes through The Maynard Sims Library in 2014. An erotic romance novella, First Time Love, 2015 and First Time Arousal, 2016. Devil is a 2016 crime novella..
They worked as editors on the nine volumes of Darkness Rising anthologies. They co-edited and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They have written essays. They still do commissioned editing projects, most recently Dead Water, and the Capital Crimes anthology for the ITW. They do ghost writing commissions.
Email contact can be made at ms@micksims.f9.co.uk
Find Maynard Sims on most social media - links are on the website
The DCI Jack Callum series of crime novels - No Evil,Prime Evil and For Her Sins with The Detective Jack Callum Trilogy. The Bahamas series of thriller novels - Touching The Sun, Calling Down The Lightning, and Raging Against The Storm. The Department 18 series of supernatural crime novels - Black Cathedral, Night Souls, The Eighth Witch, A Plague Of Echoes, and Mother Of Demons. The crime novels Let Death Begin, Through The Sad Heart, and Falling Apart At The Edges. The supernatural novels, Shelter, Demon Eyes, Nightmare City, Stronghold, and Stillwater. The erotic romance novels, under a pseudonym, - The Love Project and The Romance Project.
One screenplay, based on the first two Department 18 books, won the 2013 British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay.
Numerous stories have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines. Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and 1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, Falling Into Heaven 2004, The Odd Ghosts, 2011, and Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales, and A Haunting Of Ghosts, both 2012. Their tenth collection of ghost stories and strange tales – Death’s Sweet Echo – which includes all their recent and new stories, many of them previously unpublished, is 2016.
Novellas, The Hidden Language Of Demons, The Seminar, His Other Son, and Convalescence have been published in 2002, 2003, 2013 and 2015 respectively. All their stories and novellas have been reprinted in eight uniform volumes through The Maynard Sims Library in 2014. An erotic romance novella, First Time Love, 2015 and First Time Arousal, 2016. Devil is a 2016 crime novella..
They worked as editors on the nine volumes of Darkness Rising anthologies. They co-edited and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They have written essays. They still do commissioned editing projects, most recently Dead Water, and the Capital Crimes anthology for the ITW. They do ghost writing commissions.
Email contact can be made at ms@micksims.f9.co.uk
Find Maynard Sims on most social media - links are on the website
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