Who is Trevor K Grant?

Intrigue and a degree of hilarity have been ensuing in certain online circles at the emergence into the blogosphere of science-horror writer Trevor K. Grant -- author of pulp classics Hell Lords of the Ninth Oval and The Day the Earth Frazzled. Grant's name has become proverbial in the British horror genre as a master of the ill-chosen cliché; of the awkward, shambling and lurid phrase chosen when a straightforward descriptive adjective would have sufficed, or preferably no words at all.

Despite this folkloric status, however, very few people have ever actually read (or even seen) a Grant book, due to what appears to be a complicated print history encompassing self- (or possibly vanity) publishing, bickering over copyright and (if some of Grant's more febrile outpourings are to be believed) out-and-out industrial espionage. Certainly Amazon refuses to stock them, presumably due to these and associated legal considerations.

This has led certain irresponsible commentators to speculate that Grant's blog -- some zealots have even suggested his entire existence -- may in fact be a hoax, a cynically irresponsible attempt to dupe the readers, and pillory the authors, of a genre whose mainstream respectability should surely now be considered beyond reproach. This despite the existence of a well-developed fansite for Grant's work, and the fact that at least one established S.F. author attests to having known Trevor personally for years.

For my own part, while I have never had any direct personal contact with the Grant juggernaut, I have fond memories (recently recovered under therapy) of breathlessly reading In Which We Scream under the bedclothes with a torch, at the rather strict ecumenical community in Oxford at which I boarded during my postgraduate years.

I, for one, would like to welcome Trevor into our online confederacy of web-journalising auteurs, and look forward to absorbing more of his purple emissions during the weeks and months to come.