Whitstable

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have written this story without the precious local knowledge given me by Gordon Larkin, Brian Hadler, and Whitstable Museum.

It was also a rare gift to have the encouragement of Jonathan Rigby, Simon Kurt Unsworth and David Pirie (as well as their rigorous notes). Wayne Kinsey, Uwe Sommerlad and Tony Earnshaw all pointed me to crucial improvements, Charles Prepolec and Anne Billson drew my attention to some outstanding interviews, and John L. Probert and Thana Niveau shared a classic film I hadn’t seen before. Thanks are also due to Tim Lebbon, Helen Marshall, Mark West, and especially to Mark Morris for providing a fitting Afterword, as I knew he would. I’m also indebted to Simon Marshall-Jones and Ben Baldwin for helping this project along its way.

Needless to say, Cushing’s two volumes of memoir, An Autobiography and Past Forgetting were invaluable, as was a re-watching of the AIP/Hammer Films Production The Vampire Lovers (1970), directed by Roy Ward Baker from a screenplay by Harry Fine, Tudor Gates and Michael Style from the story “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu.

It is, of course, to “The Gentle Man of Horror”, Saint Peter, this small volume of fiction is inadequately – but respectfully – dedicated.

Stephen Volk

Bradford on Avon,

February 2013

www.stephenvolk.net