Hand Me Downs

"HAND-ME-DOWNS was planned as a themed collection almost from the start. I'd written a story, "Thirty-Two Tumbling Teeth", only in retrospect, realising that what I'd been writing about was a sort of reversed inheritance. It was a neat notion and I wanted to explore it more. How ideas get passed on along with objects bequeathed by the dead to the living. The transference of personality traits and emotional baggage between parents and children, spouses, siblings and friends along with the tangibles of inheritance. I found myself taking a particular interest in the traits of toxic masculinity. And, like I say, found that horror was exactly the right medium to be telling those sorts of tales. The right kind of light to shine to expose those sorts of truths." —Neil Williamson