Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome: Dreamweaver, Doomsage, Sunday Times bestseller

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Welcome to This Is Horror, a podcast for readers writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson and every episode I interview masters of horror, about writing, life lessons, creativity, and much more. Now, today's guest is Matthew Holness. He is a comedian, writer, director and actor, and he is probably best known for Garth Marenghi's dark place. He also wrote and directed a fantastic film possum and has done a number of other great things including a gun for George and bruiser. But today for this very special Halloween episode. We are here primarily to celebrate the forthcoming release of Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome, the brand new Garth Marenghi book. And I absolutely love Garth Marenghi and Garth Marenghi's dark place I have oft quoted it with my friends. And so it was a tremendous pleasure and an honor to be able to sit down and chat to Matthew wholeness. And even though we only had about an hour we really did get into so much stuff. So of course there's a lot of Garth Marenghi chat. There's a little bit of Possum conversation, but we also delved into a little bit on the editing process on what it was like growing up in Whitstable, and a lot lot more. But before any of that, a little bit of an advert break. Nighthaunt gain four grand strategies and six battle tactics, which can generally be described in the immortal words “not great, not terrible”. Grand Strategies It initially stung to read that no longer could we deep strike half our army, but when you consider everything in this book now has base 8″ movement it’s not nearly as big a deal as it seems, and getting to decide what goes into reserves after deployment is a really nice touch that can really mess with your opponent’s options turn one. Wave of Terror After making a charge roll with a Nighthaunt unit, look up the unmodified value you rolled on the Wave of Terror table and apply that effect to an enemy unit within 1”. Despite the preposterous plotlines, from Steen ending up liquidised in a mug (he recovers) to a lunatic making a ‘bone bride’, the richness of the prose is hilarious. The humourless pretension of his alter-ego is at odds with the absurdity of his work in which no metaphor is ever ambiguous and no subtext knowingly deployed.

Speed Kills – With an universal movement of 8” or more, army wide fly and army wide retreat and charge, Nighthaunt are fast , and you’re never going to pin them down in combat. This is an army that goes wherever it wants, whenever it wants, and Nagash help you if you’re in their way. Let it never be said that we here at Goonhammer are afraid to change our minds or admit mistakes. A unit of contention in our Arena of Shades review, Myrmourn Banshees are looking like some of the real big winners in this book. With all the benefits of running a tonne of small units, a unit or two of these ladies can put out some serious hurt (rend -3 on a good Wave of Terror charge!) while also helping shut down an enemy magic phase that is likely already struggling with the plethora of excellent wizards you’re likely already taking. Spell-eaters lets you roll 2D6 every time an enemy spell is cast, not unbound and targets a unit within 12”, and if you beat the casting value (adding +1 if your banshees have three or more models) the spell is unbound or dispelled. This is superb , as it really doesn’t matter how many bonuses the enemy has. Nagash and Teclis can both cast with some absurdly high numbers, but these ladies don’t care – your casting value six spell stays at six, doesn’t matter if you rolled a 16 to cast it. A unit or two of these is our third near auto-include unit. List building and competitive thoughts Marenghi modestly presents the live show as a masterclass in how to write the perfect horror book, with each extract an exemplar of building tension, advancing action or titillating with erotic promise. If we laugh at his words – which we very often do – it is merely the safety valve of our unconscious releasing the intense fear his prose has instilled. Yes. Which we, which we did actually watch for research. Actually, we watched that. And, and that was, that was a big key thing for us a thing or what that would be a great sort of show to do something that's set in a hospital that's, you know, built upon some horrific hellhole. And so yeah, that was a big influence that show and Richard was a huge last voluntaries fan. So that that sort of came through. And weirdly enough, we didn't realize this at the time, but Stephen King was doing the kingdom hospital adaptation of the same show at the same time, but there was no you know, we had no idea that that was the case. We were very fortunate that ours came out just before Kingdom hospital. So like we were, we were doing too much of a copy but but yeah, but I think that that particular show was definitely an influence but as with lots of other shows of different types, you know, TJ hooker was was a big influence as well. Right? This this terrible William Shatner cop show. These are much more exciting to us than the Grand Strategies, offering a range of tactical choices. We’re expecting at least one of these to be achievable every turn of the game, so all that’s left now is practice how to get the most out of them! Credit: PierreTheMime UnitsAll the warscrolls for Nighthaunt, including the new heroes Awlrach the Drowner and the Scriptor Mortis, and the new unit of Craventhrone Guard. Nagash is in here too! Chainghasts are pretty much as we saw them in Arena of Shades, functioning largely as a +1 to hit aura to Nighthaunt units while a Spirit Torment is on the battlefield. This is… nice, but because it’s dependent on a Spirit Torment floating around, killing that off means the Chainghasts are almost useless. At least you get them for free in the box with your Spirit Torment? Glaivewraith Stalkers Matthew Holness is an English comedian, writer, director, plus actor. He is best known for creating and playing the fictional horror author Garth Marenghi. His brand new book Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome is out early November and his film Possum is out right now. Show notes In this podcast, Matthew Holness talks about Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome, Darkplace, Possum, and much more. About Matthew Holness

Yeah, yeah. And I guess, too, I mean, when you're directing, as well as writing that affords you a lot more freedom. And I know that you've said before, that you think writers get far more respect when they're the writer and director? Hey everyone, this is author Jeff strand and I cannot wait to see you at Haoran main remember attendance is mandatory. Don't make me hunt you down.

Thanks for Listening!

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, of course, we're screenwriting as well. I mean, there can be instances where you sell a script, and then they kind of bring their own right as in and pretty much rewrite the entire thing. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nor does The Terror live up to the beauty and period detailing of the set design, as it alternates between the claustrophobic interiors of the two vessels and the bright, desolate expanse outside. Maybe it is trying to do too much, or maybe 10 episodes is simply too long to keep sufficient suspense going. It’s also worth noting that the March 2022 The Hunt update, which introduced the priority targets and prime hunters rules, won’t apply to this book – the writers of that update cleverly included a caveat that if a battletome or battletome update has a more recent publication date than March 2022, units from that publication may not be designated as either priority targets or prime hunters. Which is… honestly fine! Nighthaunt are in a much, much better spot than they were at the time. Must Read Horror Articles 23 October 2023 Welcome to Must Read Horror, where we search the internet… Lingering Spirits gives you a 4+ ward save against mortal wounds, which is nice but you probably have better things to be doing than probably still failing to keep your general alive against Lumineth Sentinels.

Grieving Legion: Enemy units cannot retreat while they are within 3” of any Grieving Legion units with 10 or more models. This ties in well with the many rules that tie in to the terrified function of Aura of Dread, but given this army’s fragility we can’t see this being taken as a mainstay – it would have been amazing as a command trait or unit ability, but the other Processions seem much nastier on face value.Yeah. Yeah. And I was happy to see the dark third homage to King's the dark half. I mean, it's a criminally underrated King novel and Romero films, so it's good to see Yeah, it gets a little bit I love Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome (Exclusive Signed Hardcover) by Garth Marenghi published by Coronet @ ForbiddenPlanet.com - UK and Worldwide Cult Entertainment Megastore Yes. And I think I think there was one story in particular, where I used my teacher, I think, an alien ship comes down. And, and I think they, they, they they took her hair so that she was bald, and I think she was absolutely furious about that. And I think that was the final straw. I was actually reading mostly Fighting Fantasy gamebooks the subjects in Livingston books and those those Really my entry into book reading, I absolutely adored them and collected them right up until I think number 50. And then I realized I had to sort of stop. But I wish I hadn't. Now I'm collecting them again, I wish I wish I'd carried on. But, but yeah, those were those were mainly the books. I mean, I also had, I had a lot of annuals, and I had the Dracula spine chiller annual, which had the really good house of hammer magazine, graphic novel adaptation of the horror of Dracula. And also, I think twins of evil was another one that's in that particular annual. So I was I was reading a lot of that stuff. But there was definitely, you know, I don't think I was on to horror novels at that point. But I was definitely absorbing as much horror content as I could.