"I think it's true to say," says horror wunderkind Stephen Volk, "that many of us horror writers of a certain generation have treasured memories of Hammer Films, Amicus Productions and their ilk. In fact, their output of genre classics is so important that some of us have secretly longed for a way to relive and recapture the excitement we had when we first experienced them.

"That was my exact impulse when I first talked to Mark Morris about a book proposal entitled The Blythewood Horror Film Omnibus-an unashamed homage to John Burke's Hammer Horror Film Omnibus, a fat paperback that came out in the sixties, comprising four novellas based on upcoming horror films. The difference being that our "Blythewood" would be a studio that never existed. Our four films would be movies that we'd invent from scratch. Movies we wished we could have seen as feature films when we were growing up. And now we can - in book form - thanks to PS."