Exit Wounds began life a few years ago and, as mentioned in the introduction to the book itself, came out of our love of crime fiction in general. We’d edited anthologies, both together and separately, with certain themes – for example Hellbound Hearts, which contained stories based on Clive Barker’s famous mythology, The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, or Beyond Rue Morgue featuring tales revolving around Poe’s detective, Dupin. But neither of us had ever tackled a straight crime anthology and we thought it was high time we did.
We started off by approaching a few of our favourite authors in this field, just finding out who’d be interested. We’re lucky in that we’ve met such a lot of writers at conventions and count many of them as friends, so felt comfortable simply approaching and asking “would you like to be involved?” Because we didn’t want to hamper any creativity, we kept the theme pretty open – and in fact this was the inspiration for the book’s title.
When you think about it, all crime stories contain an exit of some kind. It could be the most obvious one, that of a death or murder, but not necessarily. Sometimes it’s the loss of an object, or even a character going missing or just leaving town. And where there’s an exit, a loss, there’s usually a wound – actual or emotional. That was more or less the jumping off point and with a few names on board, we began pitching it to publishers.
We were fortunate to find incredibly supportive editors at Titan who really got behind the project and were patient enough to give us time to put the rest of the line-up together. The usual ups and downs followed that you expect when putting an anthology together – like securing some of the rarer tales to go along with the majority of new stories, or having to deal with last minute changes. We won’t go into details but there were a couple of nail-biting moments when we were trying to put the whole book to bed that would make good inspirations for a thriller themselves.
But, of course, when you see the finished book as we’ve just done, you realise that all the hard work, from everyone involved, was totally worth it. At time of writing we’re in the process of organising events to promote the title, and are hoping that readers will enjoy it just as much as we do. And if you love the genre as much as us, we think it would be a crime for you to miss this one…
Paul B. Kane & Marie O’Regan
Exit Wounds is published by Titan
Paul B. Kane is an award-winning author and editor, who has worked in the fields of SF and Dark Fantasy (most notably the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy, a post-apocalyptic reworking of Robin Hood – as Paul Kane – gathered together in the sell-out Hooded Man omnibus) and the Y.A. market (The Rainbow Man, as P.B. Kane). He penned the well received Sherlock Holmes stories “The Greatest Mystery” and “The Case of the Lost Soul”, and the critically acclaimed full-length mass market novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell (which appeared on several “Best of 2016” listings and won a Skadi Award). Paul is also the author of the serial killer chiller, The Gemini Factor, the #1 Amazon bestseller Pain Cages, The PI’s Tale and he has a collection of crime/psychological stories out now called Nailbiters. His other co-edited anthologies include Beyond Rue Morgue – all new stories revolving around Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin – Hellbound Hearts and A Carnivàle of Horror, while others in the past have featured the likes of Michael Marshall (Intruders), Richard Matheson (Duel) and Robert Bloch (Psycho). He has been a guest at many events and conventions, and his work has been optioned for film and television (including Lions Gate/NBC, who adapted one of his stories for US primetime network TV). Several of his stories have been turned into short films, he is currently adapting his novel Lunar into a movie for a UK production company, and Loose Canon Films are turning his story “Men of the Cloth” into a feature. His website www.shadow-writer.co.uk has featured Guest Writers such as Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder, Stuart MacBride, Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs and Stephen King.
Marie O’Regan is a three-time British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor, based in Derbyshire. She is the author of three collections of short stories: Mirror Mere, In Times of Want, and The Last Ghost and Other Stories, as well as the novellas Bury Them Deep and Resurrection Blues. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of genre magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany, including Best British Horror 2014, Great British Horror: Dark Satanic Mills (2017), and The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories (2018). She was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Short Story in 2006, and Best Anthology in 2010 (Hellbound Hearts) and 2012 (Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women). Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines like The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book with prominent figures from the horror genre, Voices in the Dark, was released in 2011. An essay on “The Changeling” was published in PS Publishing’s Cinema Macabre, edited by Mark Morris and introduced by Jonathan Ross. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror and A Carnivàle of Horror – Dark Tales from the Fairground, plus editor of bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. She is Co-Chair of the UK Chapter of the Horror Writers’ Association, and is currently organising StokerCon UK, which will take place in Scarborough in April 2020. Marie is represented by Jamie Cowen of The Ampersand Agency. Visit her website at www.marieoregan.net
