Neon Shocks & Nic Parker Interview

Neon Shocks 

Nic Parker (https://www.facebook.com/nic.parker007)

Reviewed by Matt (@Cleric20) Adcock

This book is less a collection and more a grab-bag of nightmares, an eclectic run of horror shorts that refuse to sit neatly in one coffin, if you will.

This isn’t about one flavour of fear. Parker skips between supernatural chillers, grotesque body horror, strange little reality fractures and straight-up unsettling weirdness with the confidence of someone who knows the genre inside out. The result is unpredictable in the best way, you’re never quite sure what kind of darkness you’re about to step into next.

What holds it together is tone, Nic writes with heart and style. There’s a consistent undercurrent of unease, like the world itself is slightly out of joint. Some stories hit fast and hard, others linger, but there’s always that sense that something isn’t right, much like those classic Pan horror anthologies I grew up reading. 

Parker is a twisted, sick bunny and some of her very personal likes and fears flow through the stories which bite with sharp, nasty, and often lingering imagery...

Short, strange, and enjoyably unhinged, Neon Shocks feels like flipping through a stack of cursed horror anthologies where every few pages something genuinely disturbing slips through and punches you in the face!

Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:

ööööö

(5 - Nobody Trusts Anybody Now, And We're All Very Tired.)

'The Return of the Living Nic Parker' 

I got to ask Nic some questions - so read on if you want a bit of an insight into her dark mind…

Matt: Neon Shocks feels like a mixtape of nightmares, what kind of mental jukebox are you pulling from when you decide what goes in?

Nic: Hah, good question. Probably my lifetime of nightmares read and watched since childhood. I started with horror comics as a kid, watched movies like Bava's Black Sunday and Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another Planet, then moved on to hunt down the infamous video nasties of the 80s (which were still cut over here in Germany when you managed to track a fifth copy down) in my teens. Add a lot of Stephen King and Clive Barker and the fabulous horror films I managed to catch at genre festivals during the decades. So Neon Shocks is the amalgamation of the horror that dwells inside of me ;-)

Matt: If one story in the collection is secretly “the most you,” which one is it and should we be worried?

Nic: With me you should alway be worried - only thing that keeps me behaving: I'm too cute for jail! I can't actually pick one story I like most as they're all me - that's why I don't have a favourite sub genre in horror. Slasher, ghost story, sci-fi horror, psychological - I adore all aspects of the genre and that love spawns all the stories.

Matt: Your horror swings between the grotesque and the quietly unsettling which scares you more as a writer?

Nic: I don't scare easily at all. I think you can have an absolute ball with the grotesque and - like we say in German - really hit the shit. You can be insidious and let the fear fester inside the reader going the quieter way until the 'whack across the head' revelation.

Matt: There’s a real love of old-school horror DNA in here, what are your top 3 horror films?

Nic: Ever since I first saw it as a kid my favourite film is and will always be Carpenter's The Thing. And I will always love Re-Animator and Fulci's The Beyond.

Matt: You’re in a strange town and someone is out to kill you - who is it most likely to be?

Nic: Ha - whoever it is; I hope he brought the bazooka!

Matt: Be honest: have you ever had to stop writing one of these stories because it got under your own skin?

Nic: Not really. Whatever I can come up with - more terrible things are probably happening somewhere in the real world without anyone knowing.

Matt: Horror often says something sideways about the real world, are we doomed?

Nic: Seeing the incredible amount of creativity and originality in the genre during the last years and the new wave of passionate horror directors that emerged in the genre I'd say there's enough hope for all of us. And speaking of a new hope - as a Star Wars Fan I'd have never thought I'd be so excited about a Star Wars film again as I'm for The Mandalorian And Grogu, John Favreau put his fan heart and soul into this. Also, I firmly believe everything comes in waves. Having lived through the iron curtain age and the fear of nukes and the Chernobyl catastrophe I know things usually become better again after a while. I'm a horrible optimist.

Matt: If one of your stories escaped into the real world, which would cause the most chaos… and which would you secretly want to witness?

Nic: Most surely Careful What You Wish For, the Devil himself doing wages with people would be cool but also wreak a lot of havoc! And this story becoming real would mean Freddie Mercury being alive and back on stage again. So win win for all of us.

Matt: What’s the line you won’t cross or is that line basically a suggestion at this point?

Nic: Well, let me put it this way, I always loved graphic effects and violence in movies, nothing like a flying head and a good disembowelment. But I have a bit of a blockage when it comes to torture porn that's gone way beyond Hostel. Violence should always support the story and I'm not a fan of exaggerated rape/torture scenes just to serve certain tastes.

Matt: What would you like written on your grave?

Nic: It was one hell of a fun ride - and there were cats!

GET YOUR COPY OF NEON SHOCKS: HERE

>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope...

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...

Let The Right One In — National Youth Theatre Review

Let The Right One In — National Youth Theatre, Underbelly Boulevard

Matt (@Cleric20) Adcock

Let The Right One In captured my heart the second I saw the 2008 film (read my review).

I immediately sought out John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel which didn’t just reinvent vampire lore, but reframed it as something painfully human: loneliness, bullying, longing, and the dangerous, intoxicating pull of being truly seen. Even the title itself feels like a whispered warning — lifted from a Let the Right One Slip In lyric — a plea for connection that carries the faintest suggestion you might be inviting in the wrong thing entirely.

So yes, walking into the National Youth Theatre’s take on it at the cool Underbelly Boulevard Soho, there was a flicker of dread. This is sacred ground. Get it wrong and you don’t just miss, you diminish something profound and iconic.

They don’t get it wrong.

This is the right one, a five-star, blood-pumping triumph.

Eli and Oskar (photo credit Johan Persson)

Jack ‘Adolescence’ Thorne’s adaptation, under the direction of James Dacre, wisely avoids trying to recreate the film’s still, snowbound realism. Instead, it leans into something more theatrical, more unstable… A kind of waking nightmare built from movement, shadow, sound and sudden ruptures of violence. It feels less like a retelling and more like being dropped inside Oskar’s anxious inner world.

Which is exactly where this story belongs.

At the centre, Nicky Dune’s Oskar is superb. Bringing brittle awkwardness and suppressed fury. He isn’t just a victim. There’s something simmering underneath, something that makes you understand why Eli doesn’t just find him… she recognises him.

And Rachael Dowsett’s Eli is the real dark miracle here. She avoids every obvious trap, no gothic cliché, no quirky vampire affectations,  instead giving us something unsettlingly other. Childlike, yes. Fragile, maybe. But also ancient, watchful, and quietly predatory. Her stillness is as powerful as her movement; when she does move, it’s with intent.

Together, they create that strange, queasy alchemy at the heart of the story. It’s a relationship that feels like salvation and damnation intertwined. A love story, if you like… provided you’re comfortable with the occasional arterial spray.

The ensemble work is sharp too. The NYT company move like a collective consciousness, bullying, circling, closing in. Scenes bleed into one another with dream-logic fluidity. Underbelly’s space becomes a kind of concrete purgatory: dim light, hard edges, nowhere to hide.

And when the violence lands, it lands hard.

underwater love (photo credit Johan Persson)

There’s excellent support too. Michelle Asante brings a grounded warmth to Oskar’s mum who channels a fragile normality in a story rapidly losing its grip on the everyday. Meanwhile Colin Tierney’s Hakan is deeply unsettling, not monstrous in the obvious sense, but tragic, obsessive, and quietly decaying from the inside out. 

What this production really understands, that the TV series version missed, is that Let The Right One In is fundamentally about sadness. Not misery for its own sake or even horror for the sake of it, but the deep, hollow ache of being unseen. The horror works because the emotional truth is so sharp.

There’s a moment towards the end when I witnessed the audience falling into a kind of collective silence — not fear exactly, but recognition. The sense that what’s unfolding isn’t just genre storytelling, but something uncomfortably close to real emotional need.

That’s rare but it’s earned.

time isn't kind (photo credit Johan Persson)

The shadow of the original film still looms large, those performances, that tone, but this production doesn’t try to imitate it. It finds its own pulse. Something rawer. More immediate. More theatrical in the best sense.

Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:

ööööö

(5 - A bloody valentine to outsiders. Let this one in.)

>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope...

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...

Ranking Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting Book Universe

 

Ranking Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting Book Universe

Matt (@cleric20) Adcock 

There’s something gloriously dangerous about returning to the world of Trainspotting. 

Over the decades, Irvine Welsh has built a sprawling chemical-stained saga around Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie; a literary universe fuelled by heroin, cheap lager, catastrophic choices and the occasional stab of aching humanity. He certainly likes the Trainspotting spin-off dollar but when the characters are this good, I’m game for it!

Reading them chronologically gives the whole thing the feel of a doomed gangster epic, average lads trying to outrun themselves while Scotland mutates around them.

Here’s my Darkmatters ranking…

6. Dead Men’s Trousers — ★★★☆☆

Welsh attempts the big “one last ride” reunion novel, bringing the old crew back together for another orbit of grudges, scams and existential rot.

There are flashes of brilliance here — especially when the book slows down long enough to let age and regret seep through the cracks — but it often feels like the characters are becoming self-aware legacy acts. Begbie still terrifies, Renton still intellectualises his selfishness, Sick Boy still slithers around like a narcotic given human form… but the electricity has understandably ebbed a little.

Like meeting old rave mates at midday in a pub: warm, funny, faintly tragic.

5. The Blade Artist — ★★★½☆

A bold swing (of the knife)…

Welsh takes Francis Begbie — one of modern fiction’s purest engines of chaos — and asks the unthinkable: what if he actually changed?

Set largely in America, this feels less like a Trainspotting novel and more like a grim psychological thriller wearing Begbie’s face. The violence still erupts like arterial spray across white walls, but underneath is a surprisingly mournful meditation on masculinity, repression and whether monsters can ever really retire.

Not everyomne bought the reinvention, but there’s something admirable about Welsh refusing to simply replay the hits.

4. Skagboys — ★★★★☆

The heroin origin story nobody really needed… until Welsh absolutely nailed it.

Skagboys transforms the gang from already-broken legends into painfully recognisable young men drifting through Thatcher-era collapse, boredom and hopelessness. The tragedy is that we know exactly where all this is heading, yet Welsh somehow makes the descent feel fresh and horrifying anyway.

Some of the funniest writing in the series sits right beside moments of absolute soul-crushing bleakness. Watching Renton slide toward addiction feels like seeing a warning light slowly flicker on but get ignored.

A prequel with actual purpose, which is as rare as a clean toilet in Leith.

3. Porno (or T2) — ★★★★½

Meaner. Sadder. More mature. Lost loves and regrets.

Set years after Trainspotting, this sequel finds the characters older but not remotely wiser, dragged into a gloriously grubby attempt to break into the adult film industry. Underneath the sleaze and scams sits a savage portrait of people trapped by nostalgia, ego and the lies they tell themselves.

Begbie becomes genuinely frightening here, less cartoon psychopath, more walking human grenade. Meanwhile Sick Boy reaches peak reptilian charisma (I have to confess to a man crush on him!).

The book also quietly predicts influencer culture, fame addiction and performative identity years before social media was even a big thing.

Darkmatters T2 film review: https://darkmatt.blogspot.com/2025/02/irvine-welsh-on-screen.html 

2. Men in Love — ★★★★★

The unexpected masterpiece.

Where the earlier books often run on speed, rage and chemical desperation, Men in Love is surprisingly tender beneath all the sex, violence and self-destruction. Welsh digs into relationships, vulnerability and the terrifying possibility that these idiots might actually want happiness.

It’s still riotously funny and filthy — obviously — but there’s a melancholy maturity running through it that gives the characters unexpected emotional weight. Renton gets a bit sidelined but that allows Sick Boy to be the star of the show as he gets married!!

Spud, who just can’t catch a break, emerges as the bruised moral heart of the whole rotten enterprise and Begbie is the hand grenade of a Best Man!?

1. Trainspotting — ★★★★★

Still untouchable. Choose life…

Not just the best book in the series but one of the great British novels full stop.

Raw, hilarious, fragmented and horrifying, Trainspotting hits like a pint glass to the face. Welsh captures addiction, poverty, male friendship and urban decay with a voice so authentic it practically sweats cigarette smoke off the page.

The genius is in the contradictions: it’s disgustingly funny one moment, emotionally annihilating the next. Beneath the swagger and chaos lies a howl of rage at a generation abandoned by politics, purpose and opportunity.

And whilst Begbie remains one of fiction’s greatest nightmare creations: a pub psycho lurking somewhere between folk horror and social realism. All the cast get decent engagement, in a way that’s deeper than the film…

Speaking of the excellent film - my review: https://darkmatt.blogspot.com/2025/02/irvine-welsh-on-screen.html

>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope...

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...