"Stories as urgent and uncomfortable and ultimately transcendent as they were when they were written." – Nina Allan, author of The Dollmaker "A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant." – Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual‘This was the area where he and I belonged, in transition between the city centre and the suburbs. It was an area made up of derelict buildings, factories, car parks, railway bridges, subways, canals. An area given back to whatever of nature could improvise a living there. An area whose chief landmarks were half-concealed places that had the feel of the past, but were too anonymous to count as history.’ Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction. 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