‘Budden’s writing is sparse, terse even, but perfectly suited to the landscapes of dislocation and alienation that are his natural milieu’.
– Nina Allan, The Race
‘These stories, these words, represent an honest, scalpel-sharp, and unafraid dissection of the collective British psyche, from its Scandinavian/Celtic origins and their expressions through contemporary England, Wales, the Nordic countries, and the occult waterways of a hidden London, the city’s damp arterial crannies and the subcultures that inhabit them. Here are punks, ghosts, vampire-hunters, ancient gods that hate to be neglected. Here is a country and a world teetering on the lip of apocalyptic void. And here are, too, insanities, desperate longings, great loves and rages and beauties. Completely absorbing.’
– Niall Griffiths, Runt
Breakdown, from this book, featured in Year’s Best Weird Fiction.
Greenteeth, from this book, shortlisted for Best Short Fiction in The British Fantasy Awards.
Budden’s debut collection blends the traditions of weird fiction and landscape writing in an interlinked set of stories from the emotional geographies of London, Kent, Finland and a place known as the Hollow Shore.
The Hollow Shore is both fictional and real. It is a place where flowers undermine railway tracks, relationships decay and monsters lurk. It is the shoreline of a receeding, retreating England. This is where things fall apart, waste away and fade from memory.
Finding horror and ecstasy in the mundane, Hollow Shores follows characters on the cusp of change in broken-down environments and the landscapes of the mind.
Gary Budden’s debut collection, Hollow Shores, was published by Dead Ink Books in October 2017. He was shortlisted for the 2015 London Short Story Award and the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award and his story ‘Greenteeth’ was nominated for a 2017 British Fantasy Award. His latest novel, London Incognita, is published by Dead Ink Books in October 2020.
