‘Powerfully realised visions of decay.’
– Time Out

Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, in the tradition of Robert Aickman and M John Harrison. With a tight focus on the specifics of place – namely the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham – he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction, with a powerful eye for the darkness at the edge of our of cities.

His debut collection, The Earth Wire was first published in 1994 by Egerton Press and is reissued in paperback by Influx Press for the first time in over twenty-five years.

Love and death. Sex and despair. The Earth Wire is a thrilling, disturbing examination of the means and the cost of survival.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NINA ALLAN