#BlogTour-‘The Hungry Moon’ by Ramsey Campbell

About the book…

Hugest of thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things for having me on another Flametree Press blog tour!

In the town of Moonwell, old rituals are still alive. Right-wing evangelist
Godwin Mann isn’t about to let that continue, so he descends into the pit
where the being who’s been worshipped by the Druids for centuries is said
to dwell.

What emerges is a demon in Mann’s shape,and only the town’s
outcasts can see that something is horribly wrong.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing.
Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners,and exciting, original voices.

What I love most about FlameTree is the little interviews at the start of each book which give an insight into the writer’s process, and for someone who is as established as Ramsey Campbell is, it’s always interesting to see his take on the face of horror fiction.

‘The Hungry Moon’, is, according to Campbell, a folk horror and tale about religious intolerance which has as much resonance today as it did when it was first published in 1987,if not more so given the current state of the world.

Old ways meet new in the form of Nick, an investigative journalist, and the woman who he met in the village of Moonwell which is unavailable to phonecalls, is not on any maps, but Nick is not about to let that stop him as he tracks down a town where something is terribly, terribly wrong.

There are wonderful touches throughout including the awesomely named Mrs Scragg, schoolteacher and guarder of puritanical values,the bookshop which has happened to open in an unused church (the spreading of ideas through books and magazines? Oh the horror!)and preacher Godwin Mann who believes he is an emissary of a higher being but needs to look far, far deeper to find his calling…as in hell deep.

The motif of insider versus outsider, the old ways versus the new are all superbly reflected in the Hungry Moon which is hungry for one thing only…blood sacrifice.

I found the start of it quite tricky to navigate, but the tale soon gets going and although it is very much of its time in terms of technology, and terms used, it still has an echoing power that firmly establishes Ramsey as an author at the top of his game even more than 30 years after this novel was originally published.

Huge thanks to Nick at FlameTree Press and Anne Cater, as always. for having me on the blogtour.

About the author…

Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and still
lives on Merseyside. The Oxford Companion to English
Literature describes him as “Britain’s most respected living
horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any
other writer in the field, including-

The Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention,

The Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association,

The Living Legend Award of the International Horror
Guild

and

The World FantasyLifetime Achievement Award.

In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores
University for outstanding services to literature.

His novels ‘The Nameless’ and ‘Pact of the Fathers’ have been filmed in Spain, where a film of ‘The Influence’ is in production. He is the President of the Society of Fantastic Films.

AWARDS:
The Hungry Moon, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel,1988
Grand Master Award, World Horror Convention, Atlanta, Georgia,1999
Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association,1999
Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild,2007
A Life Achievement Award, World Fantasy Awards,2015

Links-http://randomthingsthroughmyletterbox.blogspot.com/p/services-to-publishers-authors-blog.html

Twitter @ramseycampbell1

@flametreepress

@annecater