A wonderful anthology that not only presents us with 15 unique and compelling short tales but also answers the eternal question asked of authors – where do you get your ideas from? At the start of each story Storm Constantine tells us what inspired her to write it, often including some personal history or anecdotes.

All the stories are enjoyable and I found myself reading two each night, but my favourites in the collection were “Kiss Booties Night Night”, “Colin’s Cough”, and “The Fool’s Path”. Part horror, plenty of fantasy and a generous dash of Goth culture, it makes me want to revisit Constantine’s novels.

Christina Escamilla writes great horror. If you haven’t encountered it before “64 Deaths” is a superlative read.

I was looking forward to this short guide book and read it with enthusiasm. However, my two main problems with it are that it is poorly edited, some sentences simply do not make any sense, and the lack of quoted examples. Escamilla does use examples to illustrate her points but because she can only comment on rather than reproducing the cited work, it loses its power. I understand that permission to quote current works might be difficult and expensive to obtain, but then why not use out of copyright horror and her own work to quote?

Apart from these two niggles there are some gems of good advice and I am sure it would be very useful to someone starting out. Certainly the publishing section is something I’m likely to refer back to. In summary it isn’t written for established writers, but it’s likely to be of use to new writers planning to write horror.

I am a fan of both Gaiman and Pratchett and Good Omens was an enjoyable read. My favourite parts were the end notes where the authors discuss working with each other. They inspired me to search for synergy with another. I have to admit though, and this may be unpopular, I found little synergy in the story. If anything it was less funny than books by Pratchett and less weird than books by Gaiman as if they had succeeded in toning each other down, rounding off the edges, until what was produced was more commercial but less uniquely theirs. Reading it, I imagined Aziraphale as Terry Pratchett and Crowley as Gaiman, and those images worked well for me.

Accessible and fun. An enjoyable read and perhaps a good entry point for both authors for a new generation.

There were things I really liked about this book - the journey through a house full of bookcases, where many of the books Hill owns evoke memories of when and where she read them, or meeting the authors themselves. At times it feels like a who's who, but is enjoyable in spite of that. I have ordered three books on Hill's recommendations and I look forward to reading those soon. I appreciated her thoughts on reading and rereading books to get the most from them - slow reading as a skill to be relearned has much value and appeal.

There were things I liked less - Hill can be somewhat dismissive and derisive of certain writers, politics, social movements, people, books and technology. Many of her arguments seem somewhat circular or vague, and "the authors who I have met" parts got tiresome after a while. Some of the quotes used seemed to add little to the book and the section on "Reading for the Soul" just wasn't compelling, but perhaps that's me being equally dismissive.

Published at eighteen, invited to all the right parties, and mentored by very talented people it sounds as though Susan Hill's life has been rich and full. It was fascinating to get a glimpse of that. All in all I did enjoy the book. It took me years to take it off my shelf and it was worth the wait. 3.5/5*