The Other Room [Kindle Edition]

James Everington (Author)

Book Description

The Other Room is a collection of weird horror fiction, containing twelve stories of the uncanny and the surreal.

A naive student finds that his crumbling bedsit can be as haunted as any Gothic mansion.
A man stumbles across another world which is the mirror image of his own.
A young woman who everyone thinks is beautiful wonders why, given what she sees in the mirror each morning.

Influenced by writers such as Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson, and Robert Aickman these tales, like all good horror stories, are as much about the psychology of the protagonist as the fate that awaits them.

The Other Room contains both new and previously published stories that will challenge your conceptions of horror and literary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Other Room was featured in the 2011 Red Adept Indie Awards short story category.

"The horror angle in the stories is almost always a metaphor for other things - loneliness, fear, isolation, regret. The word 'haunting' really does double duty here... Beautifully written, evocative, masterful...what shines through these stories is the author's love of language."

Red Adept Reviews

About the Author

I'm a writer from Nottingham, England and I mainly write short stories. Most of what I write is dark, supernatural fiction, although not necessarily 'horror' in the blood and guts sense. My main influences are writers like Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson, and Robert Aickman. I've had stories published in magazines like Dark Moon Digest and Morpheus Tales, and the anthologies Pulp Ink 2 and Off The Record 2. I enjoy the unexplained, the psychological, and the ambiguous in my weird fiction, and this is the kind of story I try and write. I drink Guinness, if anyone's offering.

Product Details

• File Size: 284 KB
• Print Length: 181 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1482608731
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004Z1CUN0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,829 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Quality writing with a killer title story June 20, 2011

By Tim C. Taylor

Format:Kindle Edition

I came across James Everington's blog and thought I'd take a chance on his writing. I was a little nervous because for each self-published Kindle jewel I've discovered, there's been extensive tailings of mediocrity and worse.

The Other Room does what it says on the tin: a single-author collection of short stories featuring the fantastic, the surreal, and occasionally the plain weird. I would call the collection 'slipstream', except I've never really understood what slipstream meant, which I suppose is the point.

There is great variety here in subject matter, story length, and the degree to which stories diverge from what you and I might laughingly call 'reality'. What doesn't vary is the high quality of the author's prose. There is a 'literary' feel to Everington's writing and yet he never loses sight of the idea that the purpose of his words is to tell a story, that they are a means to an end and not an end in themselves.

Literary is not my preferred style. If I understood what slipstream was, it probably wouldn't be my style either. But it's a week now since I finished The Other Room and I still feel a glow of pleasure from reading the collection. Several stories still stick in my mind and that's an excellent strike rate.

The title story is simply outstanding. Exactly what goes on there is on the cusp of my understanding and yet the experience of the protagonist is damningly familiar. That's slipstream at its best, I think.

FIRST TIME BUYERS tells the terrifying fate for those who can't keep up the mortgage payments -- that was another standout story and possibly my fate!

THE WATCHERS is about a girl who is attractive to everyone, but isn't sure she even exists. Deeply disturbing and riveting. So what exactly is the explanation behind her state? As with the title story, I couldn't quite pin it down. Like the proverbially slippery bar of soap I nearly had it, but the explanation kept slipping from my grasp. Normally that kind of writing irritates me but here the writer gets it right and turns what could be annoying into something enticing.

Like I said, this isn't my normal reading matter but I read all the way through and felt my time was well rewarded. Chalk another success to e-book self-publishing! I didn't find any of the stories to be dull though some grabbed me more than others. But then that's the way of most collections, and you may find you enjoyed the stories I felt were less successful. So I've decided to give this four stars rather than five. At 99 cents, you could afford to give The Other Room a try and prove me wrong. You may well conclude that I'm a grumpy old miser and give Everington the full five stars.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting collection May 22, 2011

By Iain Rowan

Format:Kindle Edition

The best weird fiction (horror, dark fantasy, whatever) stays with you. The stories lurk in your mind, unsettling, disturbing, like a flicker of movement in the corner of your eye. It's tribute to the excellence of the stories collected in The Other Room that a number of them will do just that.

I'm not a fan of stories that focus on shock or gore to try and provoke an emotional response; the thoughtful, literate and disturbing stories in this collection take a subtler approach, creating an atmosphere of unsettling unease in the same way Robert Aickman's stories do, creating a world just like this one, but evoking a dawning realisation that in some way that world is profoundly, terribly, wrong.

The stories are rooted in the mundane horrors of contemporary society, which both makes them more unsettling and introduces a thoughtful element of commentary. Highlights are the title story, where a character who thinks that he has little in life finds out how much he has to lose, the excellent First Time Buyers, a disturbing story which has the feel of Ramsey Campbell's best stories without ever being pastiche, and The Watchers which starts with the notion of the male gaze and takes it somewhere else entirely. The pale and faceless creations of this collection are haunting, and haunted.

Highly recommended.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars High Strangeness May 16, 2011

By Steven Jensen

Format:Kindle Edition

A varied and interesting work from a highly talented author - James Everington is a name to look out for. Thoroughly recommended, and fully deserving of five stars.

More About the Author

I'm a writer from Nottingham, England and I mainly write short stories. Most of what I write is dark, supernatural fiction, although not necessarily 'horror' in the blood and guts sense. My main influences are writers like Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson, and Robert Aickman.

I've had stories published in magazines like Dark Moon Digest and Morpheus Tales, and the anthologies Pulp Ink 2 and Off The Record 2.

I enjoy the unexplained, the psychological, and the ambiguous in my weird fiction, and this is the kind of story I try and write.

I drink Guinness, if anyone's offering.