MARK MORRIS

It's official! Horror is back! Well, if all the great vibes and positive comments emanating from the World Horror Convention in Brighton a couple of weeks ago are to be believed, that is.

Certainly the future of horror fiction seems brighter than it has been for some years. The evidence is there in the fact that major book releases which actually carry the 'horror' label are now starting to emerge from mass-market publishers once more.

I'm not talking about the seemingly unending torrent of paranormal romance novels, or the increasingly dreary literary/monster mash-ups, or even the recent glut of (often excellent) zombie fiction. No, I'm talking about stand-alone, franchise-free, non-cash-in horror novels. The kind of novels which defy convention and don't require sequels. The kind of novels whose freshness of approach and originality of ideas disturb and challenge and startle the reader.



One such novel is The Leaping by Tom Fletcher. Tom is 24, a Manchester-based writer 'discovered' and mentored by established novelist, Nicholas Royle. Nick was so impressed after reading The Leaping that he became committed to finding a publisher for it, so much so that he offered to act as Tom's agent and subsequently secured him a two-book deal with Quercus.

Having now read the book myself, I can fully understand Nick's enthusiasm. The Leaping is quite frankly brilliant. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I haven't been so blown away by a horror debut since I first read Clive Barker's Books of Blood twenty-five years ago. The Leaping is everything that good fiction should be - it is compelling, relevant and original. It's a werewolf novel, yes, but it's totally unlike any werewolf novel I have ever read before. It's more like a dark, corrupt fairytale, oozing with dread and ancient menace. And as the book races towards its climax, so the language itself undergoes an awe-inspiring and utterly appropriate transformation, becoming a kind of raw, wild poetry, full of incredible energy and invention.

Tom's second novel, The Thing On The Shore is out next year, and already I can't wait. If his subsequent work lives up to his astonishing debut, then I can say without any hesitation that The Leaping marks the emergence of a major new voice in horror.

But as I have already said, The Leaping does not stand alone. Within the first few months of 2010 we have seen, or are about to see, a whole batch of major new horror releases. There is Joe Hill's Horns, for example:



And from the same publisher, we have Sarah Pinborough's supernatural crime novel, A Matter of Blood, the first in her The Dog-Faced Gods trilogy:



Both these books are currently receiving excellent reviews. And in a month or so they'll be joined by Adam Nevill's Apartment 16, the long-awaited follow-up to his superb debut novel, Banquet For The Damned, first published by PS Publishing back in 2004:



And it doesn't stop there. Later in the year we'll see the release of Coldbrook, a major new horror novel from Tim Lebbon, which will be the biggest thing he's ever done in terms of size and scale, Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon, an incredibly hard-working writer who has finally and deservedly broken out of the small press and into mass-market publication, and Loss of Separation by Conrad Williams, a critically-acclaimed writer whose commercial sales, in my humble opinion, deserve to be up there with the likes of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. With the likes of Gollancz, Quercus and Pan leading the way, and dedicated genre imprints like Solaris and Angry Robot becoming ever more visible within the market place, things are finally, genuinely looking up. Who knows? Perhaps in ten years time, we'll be talking about WHC 2010 as the catalyst for horror's new boom period. I certainly hope so.