Vincent likes nothing more than rootling round second-hand shops in search of the interesting and unusual. Items that are lost and forgotten. Why not? He needs the diversion. Time on his hands and money to burn. His life is affluent and empty. Little on the horizon and memories tinged bittersweet. That’s all about to change. He’s about to find something that is perhaps better left unfound. Call Drops, a horror story from the Dead Boxes Archive.

“Excellent short story
An unusual and creepy tale cleverly told with some blood-curdling twists and turns. I love the concept, and certain scenes will definitely stay with me forever. A great read I highly recommend!”

Call Drops · A Horror Story

Call Drops is a darkly swirling mix of horror and mystery that will stay with you long after the reading is done. It’ll maybe make you think twice about impulse buying, those moments when you simply must have something, even though you don’t need it. It might cause you to look again at the apparently mundane and everyday …and possibly, just possibly, wonder at what twisted marvels lurk within your mobile phone

This book is a shortish horror story, the first in a series of sinister tales from the Dead Boxes Archive. Some objects are scary things. Dead Boxes definitely fall into that category. They can be easily overlooked. They’re ordinary on the surface. At first glance anyway.

If you look a little closer, you’ll see something unique. You could have one and not know it. Be careful. They hold miracle and mystery. Horror and salvation. None are the same. Except in one regard. You don’t need one. You might think you do, but you really don’t. Believe me.

Vincent has no idea that he’s come across something that will change his life. The past is passed, that’s what he believes and it’s always proved to be the truth. He’s about to discover that the past may not always let you have the last word.

Call Drops is a horror story in the old school style. Imagine the Twilight Zone with darker shades of the occult and quietly cosmic horror and you’re in the right ballpark.

Writing Call Drops

After publishing Bad Pennies, a supernatural horror novel, I immediately moved on to writing Call Drops. Bad Pennies is the first book in the Scaeth Mythos, but it also introduces the Dead Boxes concept. Those two things, the Scaeth Mythos and Dead Boxes were linked and, at the same time, had to be separate.

To my mind, it seemed important to quickly publish another story that was more purely Dead Boxes in order to establish the relationship. Which makes it sound like a chore. That was in no way the case.

Call Drops was an absolute joy to write. I’d just finished my horror novel, Bad Pennies, and switching to a shorter project felt weird and wonderful. I started Call Drops and could instantly see the finish line. Most of the book was written longhand during a seventeen day holiday. Sitting by a swimming pool with friends and family. Pure bliss.

I have incredibly fond memories of that time and the feeling spills over into how I view the book. I gave it away free for a while. Partly a marketing exercise and mostly because I wanted folk to read it.

Call Drops got very good reviews in general and that defined something else for me about writing fiction. The really good stuff happens when you write for yourself. But there is an undeniable satisfaction when others, by that I mean readers, join you in the endeavour.