My first showreel of completed, in-development and available projects has been hatched. Check it out here.
If you’d like to know more about the available screenplays are here, or there’s one of those contact forms here.
Many thanks to Magnus Wake of Encaptivate! for the edit.
Further thanks to the copyright holders for permission to use their material.
Are you in Scotland and looking for a speaker during Halloween week? In the last week of October I’ll be knocking the French mud off my boots and venturing back to Scotland for a series of talks, and there are a few gaps in the
schedule, so I’m looking for some other opportunities.
Here’s the skinny:
On the evening of Tuesday 28th October I’m talking about ‘Supernatural Scotland’ at the Breadalbane Library in
Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross.
On Wed 29th (evening) I’m presenting my crowd-pleasing ‘Zombies from History’ to the Edinburgh Skeptics at the Banshee Labyrinth. Warning: may contain corpses.
Thurs 30th (evening) I’m in Perth with the Filmmakers Club.
And in the afternoon of Friday 31st, Halloween itself, I’m at the (drum-roll) Scottish Paranormal Festival in Stirling,
giving a talk entitled ‘Sex, Lies & Poltergeists’: expect scenes of destruction, pointless violence and icky fluids from the very beginning.
So, if you are looking for a Halloween speaker on all matters ghoul and ghast anytime between Monday 27th
October and Saturday 1st November, please get in touch.
There’s a genial review of my book ‘Zombies From History’ on The Spooky Isles site. “Holder’s humour and writing style is very engaging,” apparently. The book serves as “an excellent and entertaining introduction to famous
historical figures” as “he hammers home facts which you may not forget in a hurry.” Oh, and “The illustrations are also rather amusing and really well done.”
And the reviewer, a former sociology student, appreciated the joke about a resurrected Karl Marx leading the
Living Dead faction of the anti-capitalism movement with the slogan “Zombies of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your brains”.
The full review is here. And ‘Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide’, the definitive work on what do do when the
historic dead return during the zombie apocalypse, can be purchased on that there Amazon for ready money here.
My thanks to MJ Steel Collins.
Bloody British History is my next non-fiction book for The History Press. It deals exclusively with the sanguinary
moments in British history, from prehistoric cannibals and the reality of Iron Age warfare to First World War
Zeppelin raids and the Gestapo’s detailed plans for ‘rationalising’ an occupied Britain in 1940.
Along the way you will encounter bloody massacres, revolting peasants, battles at sea and on land, foul murders,
royal executions, piracy in the English Channel, and a multitude of inventive punishments. There are also
explorations of the tactics of Roman Special Forces, how to boil people to death, and a medieval case of sex, lies and witchcraft.
William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart, Mary, Queen of Scots and the seven putative assassins of Queen
Victoria all get a look-in as well. Other episodes instruct you how to use medieval chemical weapons to blind your opponents, why the Wars of the Roses were like the longest football match ever, and the use of cheese as an
instrument of torture.
Yes, cheese.
One of the key moments between an author delivering the manuscript and the book actually being published is the revising of the proofs. These are the pages of the book printed out on double-sided A3 pages. The author combs
through the proofs, correcting any typos, formatting errors, incorrect image captions and so on. I’ve just completed this stage, and it’s a pleasure to see my prose matched with full-colour images on every page – not to mention
liberal splashes of graphic designer gore.
Here’s a preview of the cover, which may change a little between now and publication. Bloody British History will
be published in September. 
And so: there shall be blood.
After writing dozens of non-fiction books on mysteries, witchcraft, zombies, ghosts, poltergeists, murders,
bodysnatching and other gleeful subjects, I’ve finally finished my first novel.
It’s a vampire novel, which will perhaps surprise no one given my genre tastes, but in addition to featuring serial
killers, explosions, bodily naughtiness, and jokes about Jimi Hendrix, it is also an alternative history.
Basically, I’m attempting to do nothing less than replace the current standard vampire mythology with an entirely
new one based around evolutionary biology and cutting-edge archaeological thinking.
I know, modesty has always been one of my greater faults.
Now that the novel is finished, the real hard work begins: trying to find a publisher or agent. Despite having written 31 non-fiction books, when it comes to getting a first novel published I’m back on the starting block.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
That fine institution the Spooky Isles website has just upped a nice review of my book
Scottish Bodysnatchers: A Gazetteer, scribed by Fortean writer Mandy Jane Steel Collins. You can indulge your
eyeballs at the Spooky Isles site here, while the book can be reached here, and I’ve a video trailer here.
Scottish Bodysnatchers came out a couple of years ago so perhaps it’s worth a brief recap. It aims to provide a
comprehensive guide to every physical remnant of the bodysnatching era in Scotland, from mortsafes and
morthouses to watch towers and other protection devices. It tells you where to find these relics (whether in
graveyards, churches or museums), and what to look for. Many of the sites are obscure, hidden, long-forgotten or have not previously been written about. Yes, the fieldwork research was fun…
In addition, there are anecdotes and news stories from the bodysnatching era, some of which may be early
versions of urban legends. Burke and Hare of course make an appearance, but bear in mind that they were serial killers, not bodysnatchers, their murders being driven by greed for the cash being offered for fresh corpses.
The book covers not only the well-trodden bodysnatching paths of Edinburgh and Glasgow, but sites across the
country, from Aberdeenshire and the Highlands to the Scottish Borders, Ayrshire, Perthshire, Fife, Dundee and
Stirling. Given that there really isn’t any similar book out there, a number of readers have written to me describing how useful the book is for those interested in hunting out bodysnatching sites in their area – “well-thumbed” is a
typical comment. “An invaluable reference work” was another.
Happy to be of service, fellow bodysnatching fans. And remember to wash the dirt from your hands before
handling food…