Good grief, every time I post here it's about writer's block, and the bastard thing doesn't change. Year on year, that's what's keeping me down, my own inability to write something worth writing. And I don't think it's the lack of ideas, because I'm an ideas machine, but it's the fact that the ideas come but the follow through isn't there. I wonder how I can finally nip this in the bud? Maybe I should stop aspiring, stop struggling, and just settle on the fact that I'll never be a writer of any worth. Maybe I did get all my potential, possible words out in the world with the three-ish Richard Faraday books I wrote. I'll think on this some more and let you know if I come up with an answer.

Coldheart

I had one of those perfect dreams where you wake up and every detail is so crystal clear to you, so much so that you can write down every bit and then sit back and reflect on what a messed up subconscious you must have. I had a dream, and the dream had a name, and the name was Coldheart. I dreamt an entire Landsdale-esque short story, or a film, and it was glorious.

But the thing is, I wrote every detail down and now the actual content eludes me. I remember it so well, the one-handed assassin with a heart of gold, the disgraced-police-officer-turned-long haul-trucker, and the new sheriff in town whose medical affliction is the undercurrent for not only the name of the story, but also the mystery he must solve.

I wish I could write my own god damn ideas. Everything seems to be done before, every genre sucked dry of anything you could hope to bring to the game. I guess I'm frustrated with nowhere to really vent, so that's why I'm doing it here, for posterity's sake.

I really like this story, but getting it down on paper is going to be an uphill battle, which makes me feel like it won't be a good story. Anything forced will read as forced, and that's not what I want to do with my time. But then maybe I have to kick myself up the arse to get these things done, power through, and get something that I think could be great to a place where it can be great.

I'll have a tinker and see what I come up with. Frustrating though, isn't it?

When help isn't requested but given

I'm still in some kind of a rut, and it's an infuriating space to be in. It's more... an absence of space, maybe an actual void, where nothing of worth can grow. I'm stuck. In this void. And ideas flow freely (in my head) but fail to deliver (on paper). I stalled on Scarlett Faraday (I wish I hadn't) and I'm not producing anything of what I would credit 'worth' to, so I'm back here, frustrated, and not just at the outlined situation, but by other things.

Right. Okay, okay, so here's the thing, and anybody who knows me will know that it's by no stretch of the imagination for me to be labelled overweight. Now, that's fine, that's fine, because it's true, I'm not at the weight I should be to be healthy but I'm aware of this, and I try, through all my faults, to do something about it. I have good days and I have bad days and when the bad days come I eat because I'm depressed and that's something that makes me think I feel better but we all know that's not true.

So I'm overweight. I don't the label 'fat' because there's a connotation there that hurts and I don't want to hurt myself. Never have, never will. You call me fat and there's venom there. Poison behind the words. I don't need that in my life, and you shouldn't want to inflict it upon me. I could own the term. "Yeah, I'm fat, what of it?" but I don't have the character for it. It's not in me to accept that kind of hurt, and in accepting it, I feel like I'd be encouraging, accepting, cultivating the poison that damages me internally. Mentally.

I also know that I'm depressed. And that I don't do anything about that. And again I take the good days and the bad, but the drugs fogged me up, made things happen to me I didn't like, and I don't have as many bad days as I used to, which is okay, which is fine, accepting, learning, moving on.

I went to an outlet store today. 70% discount on everything, the sign read, and I thought "I can afford to make some mistakes here", and went in to look for a shirt or two that I can wear to work. I'm overweight, I have a gut, so while most of the clothes I wear are XL (standard, accepted, moving on), if I buy collared shirts (for work), I go 2XL because I do a lot of reaching up and I don't want said gut to show. You understand, I'm sure. I could do without any weight-based observations because they kill me.

I'm perusing the rack, see a blue shirt in XL and I think "this could work" and keep looking. I'm not paying attention to anything but this rack, but someone is paying attention to me. One of the people who work there. Big guy, tape measure around his neck, and he says to me: "just to help, that rail only goes up to XL and you know look like you'll need at least a 2XL, sorry."

I have a predicament now. Because I'm angry. I know what I'm looking for, and he's clarified that I won't find what I'm looking for. Okay, that's... helpful? But I don't need comments about my weight. Quantifiable comments. I don't need observations or 'help'. I didn't ask for it and therefore didn't want it or expect it. Unsolicited assistance is aggravating when I'm not doing my 'I-need-help-head-bob-for-attention', and the 'help' here... broke me. I just... it broke me. I don't like talking about my weight and I don't want him talking about my weight because my self-image is fragile and hard to maintain.

I put the shirt down-- which I was going to buy even if it was too small because it was cheap enough to make a mistake on-- and walk out without saying a word, and he shouts after me "sorry" but he's not sorry, is he? Fat boy came into the shop and deluded himself into thinking he could fit into something he couldn't and I had to put him straight so that's fine, is probably what he's thinking.

And I'm angry and I want to scream and I wanted to say something but what's the point of being cutting-- and I could have cut like a motherfucker right then, said something with spite and bile and venom that I don't like to think I'm capable of generating-- so I just left.

I'm upset. And that's a fuel I try to use, I try to rant and shout and I try to funnel it into something, but if I maintain the anger then it eats away at my inside and makes me even sadder at the end of the day.

I came home.

I came here.

And now I'm sat in my front room feeling like a fat dickhead.

At least I had strong hair game today.

On "Words and their Meaning"

I've not been able to write a story for over two years. Nothing of substance, nothing of worth, blah blah blah, bitch and moan, bitch and moan.

Whatever. The best way to get back on the horse is to throw yourself on said horse and hope it doesn't buck so wildly that you fall back off and crack your school open, therefore leaving you worse off than before. ENOUGH WITH THE HORSE METAPHORS.

I wrote a story, and I'm going to tinker with it, make it tight and punchy, because the first draft feels like... well, it feels like I've forgotten how to structure a story, or that that muscle, the one where story structure lives, is weak. Atrophied. Again, whatever, I have to make this work.

I take these things quite seriously, and I always think what I want to do with a story while I write it. Sometimes I have an agenda going in, but other times these agendas form as I go. I thought I'd write... not a commentary... not a thesis statement... nothing like that... but I thought I'd write about my mindset, my intention, my approach to this story, and what I wanted to prove with it. This is the first chunk of that, because I only have one story to work with right now. I'll write a part one about the second story I'm working on in a bit, or maybe as part of this, because I have an agenda with my second story that ties into what I've done with the first.

Right.

On "Words and their Meaning", a Scarlett Faraday adventure

I haven't been able to really put a Faraday story together since I finished the third book. The third book is currently requiring heavy edits, then maybe I'll be able to self publish it. The maybe is mostly based around the fact I might have forgotten how to self publish. Another muscle I need to work on.

The thing is, the story ideas haven't really stopped coming. They're always there, big epics that I need to work toward, big stories that will pay off on things that were referenced in the first novel. But the big problem I have is that I need to earn those big epics, or write the connective tissue, the gammy threads that can link what came before and what's coming.

For example, I know I haven't mentioned once vampires in the mythos I've built. This means that they're either there, lurking in the shadows with the greatest occult investigator completely ignorant to their existence because they're that damn scary, or, they don't exist yet. Yet being a great story prompt and foundation to do stuff that hasn't been seen before. Maybe. At this point, you're either Dracula or you're not, and I think I'm way past the marker for Vlad the Impaler.

Regardless, I've really been struggling to get my head together, and there are loads of reasons for that, lots of personal stuff that's gone on these past few years, but that's by-the-by.

I know the way I left the board in Richard Faraday At The End Of The World meant that I couldn't just tell low key stories. I couldn't write a little story about an exorcism, or a monster, or any of the stuff I set the board up for in Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective. But the thing was... I wanted to.

!! SPOILERS for the end of Richard Faraday At The End Of The World !!

So, my main protagonist is dead, having saved the life of his wife and then dissipating into nothingness. I know how he's coming back*, and it's a topsy turvy mind fuck of a story that I've planted the seeds for throughout the books. But this means that Scarlett is back in the world, she's been missing for nearly three decades, and she's just lost her soul mate. She has a daughter she never knew she had! That daughter has so much baggage that it's crazy to even think about. There are so many story threads that need to be picked up, and yet, because I'm not ready to start writing the big epics, I need to earn my place back to them.

But how?

Firstly, I needed to relearn how to write these stories and who these characters were. That meant a soft reset on what I had done before, simply because it was such a long time ago that I wrote about them, now I'm in a position where that distance means I'm a different person. Scarlett was always there, sometimes more of an emotion than a character, more of a plot device for Richard than she deserved to be**, and while I think I did quite well with her in the chapters she appeared in (there was an early chapter in the second book which is her running around a haunted house that ends badly for her, but I think she comes off looking quite good, along with the entirety of the third book which only features Richard in the final act, the rest of the story featuring Scarlett being the main protagonist).

Relearning the characters meant… writing them. Just seeing if I could find their voice and go from there. Scarlett was the fun-loving one, the one who got excited about things while Richard was more withdrawn. To me, that set a tone for these stories that was somewhat different to Richard’s. In my head, Richard is a Ghost Detective. A paranormal investigator. Scarlett is an adventurer. An archaeologist. While Richard was wandering around haunted houses, she was on digs, discovering lost civilisations, doing things that were more action packed than the more dour mysteries Richard would be looking into.

So, there it was, the first thing that came into mind. Before the title fell into place, was the sub-title.

A Scarlett Faraday Adventure

To her, life is an adventure. But at the same time, does the world stop turning because she’s in mourning? When the phone rings and someone asks for the Ghost Detective, does she just apologies and hang up? No. She pulls herself out of her loss and does what needs doing.

Originally, I wanted to do something darker with Scarlett, something questionable. It didn’t happen, so it’s not really a spoiler, but I wanted her to know what was haunting the school before she even started unpicking the mystery she had been thrust into. Either she knew because it was an artefact from Richard’s youth, or because she’s that damn good. That meant she was going to do something to one of the other protagonists that left the latter changed for the worst. It didn’t happen and I had to unpick the teases and hints of it from inside the second act, because it just felt… wrong.

I don’t want to hate my protagonist, and even if it ends up with her being ‘interesting’, is that worth her being unlikeable?

So, anyway. Scarlett is the kind of woman who respects old debts. Who will do anything she can to help innocents. She’s also not judgemental. I found that out in the third act. She was going to be righteous in her indignation, but then her voice became very clear… if someone hurts someone else, then the former deserves to be punished by the latter. If you abuse that power, then yes, she’ll come back and put a stop to it, but if you didn’t throw the first punch, and you have moral righteousness on your side? Who is she to get in the way?

The story rolled out as they usually do. Characters talking, and then something horrible happening. I’m very much a fan of the television structure of narratives. A pre-credits sequence, and then BAM, something awful happens and you hit the main credits. It’s something I’ve done since my fan fiction days, and I do it with the Faraday stories too.

As I wrote the character, traits I had almost forgotten from her previous appearances materialized. Scarlett is flirty, she’s sultry. She’s American, so she’s a bit more brusque, which rubs up against the rural English setting the supporting cast exist within. When it comes to writing original characters, my ultimate fear is accusations of writing Marty or Mary Sue characters. The first fan fiction story I did involved an original character, and I didn’t even know I messed up so bad, but it was pointed out to me by the readers how badly I'd fallen into that trap. So, when I write Richard or Scarlett, they can't be this perfect example of altruism. They can't be cool for no other sake than cool's. They have to breathe, and I think I achieved that.

It’s through Scarlett that I rediscovered Richard Faraday too. It wasn’t just who he was, it was who she thought he was. That comes out more in the second book, which I found out, pretty quickly, was going to be about the two of them. He’s not back, that’s got to come later, that’s going to be an entire novel, which is going to be so continuity-heavy, I’ve resisted fully committing to it yet. If you write a story, and you self publish, can you expect readers to appreciate the massive web of threads you need to pull together and reference to deliver that final scene? I don’t know. We’ll see.

I also decided, in the final scene of the first story, that I had to put a post-credit scene in. Something that would act as an overarching story for all the little stories I’m planning on writing. You see, in the third book I wrote (Safehaven), I introduced a thread I wanted to pick up somewhere down the line, and because it had no place in the main narrative arc, why not here?

The other main aspect of my writing was the consideration of the internal voice. During Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective, you never knew Richard’s internal monologue. The world was relayed by an audience surrogate, and I did the same thing in the second book. I think I’ll always keep him as a closed book, but Scarlett.. I wanted her to be more open, I wanted you to know what was going on in her head. She’s been through so much, just having her stand there doing nothing, when internally there’s a war going on as to what she should do next, that can’t be a flat narrative. You need to see inside her, and hear her voice.

When Richard comes back (no spoiler there, he was always going to come back) I think he’ll remain a closed book. And maybe Scarlett will become the audience surrogate? I haven’t thought that far ahead. What I do know is that when Richard comes back, you will feel every single ounce of pain Scarlett does in that moment.

I’m still not sure what the story will be, but I know who the main players are. I know the stuff I’m avoiding (I’m writing the stories in real time, so it’s been two years since the events of the second book) and what I’ll need to pick up at some point, e.g:

- What does the world think happened to Japan?
- What about the rain of demons that hit England?
- What about the multi-dimensional prison that fell into the ocean near Norway?
- What about all the dragons?
- What about Marie-Ann, Richard and Scarlett’s daughter, who also happens to be the Anti-Christ?
- What about EVERYTHING?

I know how I’m going to address some of the above, but I also have no idea how I’m going to address the rest. Who knows, we’ll see, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.

I best go now, because I just realised I forgot to jot down notes for the penultimate story of this new collection I’m planning (The Old Bones Society). I’ll get on that, and then see what’s next.

I hope this is the beginning of something brilliant for me and my stories.

* Energy doesn’t just dissipate! But what energy does is change...

** I don’t know if I actually believe that. I think I did quite well with her, and I also think I need to re-read the second book to get a feel for her, but that would go against the whole point of what I’m doing with these stories

The heat these last few days has been unbearable. Real, non-British, bullshit heat. My general problem is that this isn't that hot, because I've been in Georgetown during a heatwave, and the only refuge I had during that holiday was the hotel, where air con ruled supreme. Over there it was horrifying, you'd step outside thinking that the hotel's temperature was representative of the rest of the world, but you'd leave the threshold of the hotel and then your skin would set alight.

I exaggerate.

So that was highs of late 40s, I think? Something stupid. Over here we're currently on 26 and in the grand scheme of things that's pathetic, but still.

Douse me in ice water.

I've always struggled with writer's block. I can go swathes of time without being able to put pen to paper (or finger to key, as the case may be in the world of laptops and tablets that we live in) but other times I'm a machine, churning out content relentlessly until I burn out after a productive period the likes of which I've never experienced before.

But that time fades and I'm no longer productive, and a cycle begins of lack of productivity, then lack of time, then lack of anything. Then I'll be productive for a while, because that's the nature of the thing we do, but then the cycle starts again. Lack of productivity then productivity, then lack of productivity. The thing is, the timeframes began to lean more toward the former than the latter and I'm stuck with an inability to come up with anything worth putting down to keep.

I've heard people say that writers write and that if they're not writing then they're not writers, but I hope that's not the case because that means that for lengths of time I'm nowhere near what I want to be. I don't think it's fair to dismiss someone's 'passion' because they're in a low spot, it's patronising, it's debilitating, and it's deflating. I want to write, I really do, I want to write narratives that draw you in and make you care, but I'm in a position where ideas don't mean that stories get written.

Now, I'm trying a few bits and pieces to get back on top of it. I'm writing this, which is the first, proper, long form piece of writing I've done in ages. It's four paragraphs (so far) and that means something (I think) but it's the same old shit written in the same old way but written at a different time. What's so good about that? At least I'm able to get to grips with writing proper sentences again.

I've started so many little projects, jotted so many notes, so many ideas, in the lucid moments, but those lucid moments are few and far between. That means I have a dozen or so stories percolating, ready to be rummaged around in when I have the time, but the time doesn't come. What can be done about that? I should write when I can write, I should make sure I note down every idea I have, and then I should keep powering forward.

Work keeps me busy, so much so that my life outside of work is pretty lacking. I work and I work and then I sleep. Sometimes I go to the gym. Sometimes I sleep. Not recently, though. That's a pain.   The weather over here has become suffocating, which is brutal when you have asthma. Waking up unable to breathe is not the best way to ensure you get back to sleep.

I could try and blog every single day but that would mean that I have to force myself to do something that might not bring rewards, and I tried before and failed. I guess I'll just have to do everything I said is difficult and make it easy.

Which isn't impossible, right?

Safe Haven - Prologue

What follows is the prologue to my next novel. It's all written, all edited and formatted, and all I'm waiting for is the cover, which should be coming together at the tail end of the month. Exciting to get another book out. This one was written in November, part of National Novel Writing Month, and I'm pleased I was able to get another bastard book done in a month. Means that January 2012 wasn't a fluke. It does mean that the entirety of 2013 has been a fuck of a time, writing-wise, as I've not been able to get anything out of any worth. Damn frustrating. But I'm hoping that I'm going to start churning the third major novel of the Richard / Scarlett Faraday series again before the year is out. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway...

The following events took place over one hot Summer night in 1968

Truman MacMullan was running as fast as he could, but he had nowhere to go.

He’d only pulled up in the drive ten minutes ago, but then things had gone to pot faster than even he could have imagined.

His mother had asked him to check in on his Uncle Larry. Now, Larry had never been the nicest of his uncles. He’d been a complete ass to Truman on a number of occasions but if there was one thing that overrode all common sense in the world it was family, so he got into his car and drove three hundred miles, all at the request of his mother, just to knock on a door. He’d arrived in the town fifteen minutes ago, and had actually been quite surprised to find that there was no one around. He’d driven through the town square, popped his head into the bars, but no, there was nobody about.

“Weird,” he had mumbled to himself.

Now all he was doing was cursing. “Fuck, fucking, fuck!”

He’d finally made it to his uncle’s new house, knocked on his door, but received no response. He wandered around the back of the house but couldn’t get anyone’s attention. He couldn’t see anyone, but the television was on and showing some blank wall somewhere. The kitchen light was on. A glass of half-drunk water on the side.

Reluctantly, Truman had taken the spare key his mother had given him and began to unlock the front door. He didn’t want to go in unannounced. But his mother had asked, so he had no choice in the matter. He entered, and immediately began to call out.

“Uncle Lar? Uncle Lar?”

Nothing.

He looked around downstairs and saw that the glass on the counter was full of tiny, stale bubbles. How long had it been there? He poured it down the sink and turned off the television.

“Uncle Larry, are you up there?”

Truman looked up the stairs and wondered if he should go up.

He was utterly exhausted. The drive down had taken most of the life out of him, and the beers he’d downed since that last truck stop did him no favours.

He had bought two six packs, drank them one every few miles.

His friends had told him that he shouldn’t drink and drive, but apart from his eyes playing a trick on him when he found the right road that led to Safehaven, he’d been fine.

A light had blinded him for a second. He thought about the dirt that peppered his glasses and the way that headlights could sometime spiral into a kaleidoscope of discomfort, but he had blinked the light away and all was well.

But oddly, there had been no cars.

There had been no visible causes of the light.

But it had come and gone and he was fine.

Wasn’t he?

Truman had no luck upstairs. His uncle was nowhere to be found. Maybe he’d taken the boat down to the marina, maybe he was night fishing on the lake.

Night fishing for his family meant an icebox and beef jerky, and obscene amounts of littering in whichever lake they chose to float out on.

Truman then descended the stairs and looked around. He thought that he might as well collapse on the sofa and turn in for the night. If his uncle came in, he would hear him, and everything would be fine.

Sure, maybe Larry would get cranky at an uninvited guest, but he should have called or picked up the phone when Truman’s mother had tried him.

“Simple enough,” Truman thought to himself.

He had removed his boots when he saw the man in the window.

He swore loudly, put his glasses back on, but then saw nothing.

“God,” he whispered, catching his chest. His heart was pounding. “God.”

He stood, looked outside and then jumped out of his skin when the back door exploded with glass, a rogue fist smashing itself through the panes. The hand that reached through from the back garden was unlocking the door, Uncle Larry having handily left the key in the lock. There was a loud clunking sound and the door finally opened, and a man dressed in black and white stepped through. His face was a twisted expression of aggravation and rage. His hair was neatly parted, he had a mole under his bottom lip and his mouth was twisted into a sneer. The weirdest thing was the way he was framed by the sterile light of the kitchen. Light seemed to blur around the edges of the man. He looked like he was super-heated, like the air couldn’t stand the touch of him. Truman thought of summer barbecues, he thought of beef burgers on the griddle, and he thought of running straight out of the house.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the man hissed.

When Truman scrambled out of his uncle’s house and into the front garden the first thing he had tried was his car.

After that initial eternity-long struggle to get the key into the door, and then the key into the ignition, he found that the engine wouldn’t start. He twisted and screamed and bucked against his seat, but the car made no sound at all, it was simply dead, like he would soon be if he couldn’t get out of this place. The man who had broken through the back door was now standing on his porch, breathing in and out deeply, his funeral attire covered in glass.

Truman threw open the driver’s side door and headed down the street, looking for help. His head darted from house to house, but he couldn’t see any movement at all. No sign of life. He ran, faster than he thought his legs could carry him, and during all of this he realised he was still drunk, that his perceptions were still blurry. He was hyper aware of the weight of his feet and how every footfall was silent because his boots were still on his uncle’s living room floor. He was struggling to breathe. He couldn’t think to scream, all he could do was run, completely absorbed in the action.

Truman found himself in the town square, and just up ahead there was a group of people who were, as he watched, wandering from one building to another. He stopped in his tracks, waved his arms, started to breathe in readiness to scream for help, but before he could draw their attention he was struck in the chest by an almighty force that drove the air from his lungs. His tired, aching legs were pulled out from under him, and he realised that he was being carried, lightning fast, from the middle of the street to one of the alleys.

Hidden from view, Truman was pinned down, one icy cold hand covering his mouth, the other driven deep into his side and against his kidneys, spreading agonising pain throughout his extremities.

Urine trickled down his inner trouser leg. He knew he was going to die any moment now, but he still felt shame at the action. The man on top of him laughed, and then moved very slowly toward his ear.

“Listen,” he said, menacingly. “Listen.”

“Layla?”

A woman’s voice, far away but still audible under the silent conditions of the town.

“I thought I saw.” This was another woman’s voice. A girl, more like. They were both girls. They sounded so young. This one especially sounded so very scared.

You saw me, thought Truman. You saw me. Help. Help me.

“What?” pressed the first woman.

Yes, make her say. Make her get you to come find me.

The stink of urine filled Truman’s nostrils. He struggled to breathe. Vomit gagged up at the back of his throat.

Save me.

“A shape, something, I don’t know, something moving.”

There was a long moment of silence.

The man pinning Truman down laughed to himself.

“HELLO?” bellowed a voice. Strong. Male.

Oh thank God oh thank God. Come on. Find me.

Truman struggled under the grip of the man but his attacker drove his fist deeper into his side, causing Truman to wince and swallow the vomit, a thick, acidic tang filling his throat.

There was a fluttering of conversation. Truman couldn’t make it out under the sound of his own heartbeat hammering away between his ears.

“LITTLE PIG, LITTLE PIG,” shouted another, the words filled with laughter. “LET ME COME IN!”

“They will never save you,” said the man, the lack of oxygen finally beginning to drag Truman into the darkest recesses of his own body. His heart beat was a frantic percussion of loud bangs, until finally it wasn’t, and he was finally gone, no hope left for him in the land of the living.

Richard Faraday At The End Of The World - NOW AVAILABLE

After a long slog of things, I have finally made my new novel available from Lulu. This has been a long time coming, and I think it's worth what went into it. It's twice as big, ten times as epic, and with a whole host of new characters joining the existing-- and surviving (and not so surviving!)-- characters from the first.

And God DAMN am I proud of it.

(Click the cover to buy)

This one wouldn't be here without the help of all the people who purchased the first, that's the most important thing. If no one wanted to see more from the characters then why would I even bother? It's all well and good writing for yourself but at the same time... fuck it! Who cares about what I want? A big thank you to Kate Hannon and Jon Wilkins for editing the bad boy, but also the continuing support of Sam Miller, who, whilst unable to edit it, was a guiding light during the earlier stages and also in shaping the first book. Ramon Villalobos created the cover, and it's a beauty of a thing. I love it so.

And what's next?

Well, I think I've finalised the title of the third book in the series... Scarlett Faraday Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea. If that sticks around, awesome, but the only way you won't see it is if I come up with something better! Not only that, but there will be a CHRISTMAS surprise, fingers crossed.

Having an ultimate brain ache with the formatting of the second novel these last few days. The first proof had a few chapters formatted wrong, the chapter layouts were off, so I fixed it, sent off for another proof. That's fine, that's why you order a proof. Then, after discussing alignment with someone, I went back and intended to change the paragraph alignment again (I had time, everything else was okay, format-wise) but then found that I had somehow fucked up the chapters again, so I fixed it but now I've got a few days to my deadline and no hope of hitting my target of Halloween release (with proof in hand) unless I take a chance and trust that I haven't fucked it up even further...

Balls.

Richard Faraday At The End Of The World - Cover Update

Me (Thu 16th October): "Holy shit, that's amazing. What was the thought process behind it?"

Ramon (Sat 20th October): "My thought process was you had kind of asked for the eyes and the trees as elements so I figured as long as I incorporated both of those we'd be set so after that I just played around with different images of trees that I distorted and different mask faces that I mostly disembodied so that it is kind of graphic. I'm a huge fan of Chip Kidd's design work for covers so I looked at his book a ton and tried to add some of that class. I wanted to use red and green because those colors feel kind of like dangerous and acidic in most contexts other than Christmas so yeah I did that and just rolled with it. At first I had the features of the face way more obscured but then I was like nah, this thing is really creepy, I'm going to just... put it out there on the front. It draws the viewers attention in heavy and adds a lot more visual interest to what otherwise was looking too simple, you know? haha, so when I wrote this, I thought I still had the green color on the cover but it was a last minute decision to change it to gray because I thought the green made it too... not christmassy but I thought I was using red and green too much lately and this felt a little more washed out and creepy."

NaNoWriMo Update #1: The Non-Writing Update Update

Today was the first NaNoWriMo* meeting I have ever attended and I was surprised by how much I got out of it! The fact of the matter is I didn't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't disappointed. Right now, I'm stuck in a purgatory of not meeting new people who share my interests but being surrounded by people who write fiction and get the same buzz out of it that I do was so inspiring. I'm just disappointed I'm not allowed to start writing until November. Surely there has to be some pre-NaNoWriMo writing allowance**?

I have two weeks before it begins. I know what I'm going to write so I might start plotting. I think this will be difficult, because I don't normally plot so heavily. I have A and C sorted out, but B is up in the air, usually dictated by characters than the story itself, which I think is the right direction to go in. So I'll try plotting, but I can't let myself get too heavily pulled into it else all hell will break loose.

We'll see, eh?

*National Novel Writing Month, obviously.
**I know there isn't, sob.

I think I lost sight of what I wanted to do with my life this past year or so.

Not to say that I've had some massive misstep or not fulfilled some ultimate destiny I set out for myself, but I think that I've become distracted, more focused on my job for instance, not made any headway on other projects.

I fucking wrote a novel though. Two novels. Three novels if you count The Chain (and I do!), so that's fucking something, isn't it?

But I didn't make those short films I wanted to make (working on rectifying that now).

Being dedicated to my job isn't a bad thing. What's concerning is when it overtakes my entire life to the point that it's the only thing I concentrate on. Writing time is hard to come by, I'm run down to all hell by whatever this bug is that I've got, and I've not got any time to go see a doctor.

But if I can finally make some headway on putting myself out there some more creatively... then I should... should... be okay...

Abandon All Hope / unedited chapter one

With a look on his face that verged toward the inappropriately erotic, Ryan Norman polished his silver badge. He loved the way it glinted in the moonlight. He loved the way it made him look. So why wouldn’t he take pride in its appearance? Why not, when the rest of the night going to be stuck in the same, plodding rut as the night before?
It was another boring night shift at the dock, looking after the hundreds of shipping crates that came and went on a daily basis from the city port. He wasn’t a police officer, nor was he a security guard. What did his bosses back at head office call him? A security guarantor. Some new age bull shit to make the companies he was hired out to feel more comfortable in their decisions. A security guarantor. That wouldn’t last too long, he thought. People like heavy handed names, titles that struck awe and terror in any prospective thieves. Something like ‘security bastard’. Security guarantor was a fad and it wouldn’t be around much longer.
He held his flashlight like it was a gun, strolling worry free through the looming corridors that were created by the crates that had been placed strategically across the area. The only thing he’d ever had to do here was scare of some homeless guys who had made an empty crate their home. That was it. No smugglers-- boo--, no thieves-- yawn--, just hobos trying to keep warm in the night. But he had chased them off, reported their appearance to the authority, and that was that.
Ryan had tried to become a police officer but they had failed him on psychiatric grounds. He couldn’t remember the exact reasoning. Whatever. All that mattered was the task at hand. The job. He continued his patrol, his flashlight poking into the nooks and crannies of the crates just in case there was something waiting there for him. Not that there ever was. He sighed, resigned to another boring night at the--
There was a sound.
A bottle being kicked?
Something being moved when it shouldn’t have been?
Someone being where they shouldn’t.
“Fucking homeless bastards,” mumbled Ryan. He turned on his radio and called in the minor disturbance. Investigating, he said. Could be a rat. A cat. It could be Sinbad the fucking Sailor, but he had to call it in regardless. With that done, he began his approach.
“Hello?” The shadows didn’t answer. He rolled his eyes. “Fucking…”
Ryan followed the source of the sound. He had heard it once and he knew where to look. He kept his cool, just like he had been trained to, and pushed on. “I’m warning--”
Another sound.
The sound of the containers being struck? Like someone was being thrown against them?
Ryan pushed on, determined. This could be something. This could be his something. The trigger for him to finally become a police officer. Then? A detective! Then… he could become the chief of police for the whole city. These were just some of the ideas he had. Some of the ideas he shared with the interviewers when he had applied to the police force. They gave him looks. Jealousy? He shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. Now wasn’t the time.
Ryan turned a corner and as he raised the flashlight the bulb began to flicker and fail. He cursed furiously under his breath but to no avail. The light died unremarkably, leaving Ryan alone with a shape slumped against one of the containers. He holstered the flashlight and approached the slumped figure. “Hello?”
The man-- Ryan was convinced it was a man now-- remained still.
“Hello…” He couldn’t see a thing. He realised he had stumbled into one of the poorest lit areas of the lot-- typical. He moved slowly toward the shadowed shape ahead of him, arms outstretched just in case. In the distance he could see lights flickering on and off, but there was nothing nearby to rely on to guide him through.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. He knew the man was dead. The man had to be dead. That was the only option now. This was not a night for drunken layabouts slumping over in port authority storage lot. He knelt down next to the figure ready to check for a pulse, but then--
His flashlight turned on in its hilt. He looked down at it in surprise, scrambling to turn it off, and when he looked back up at the man’s face he screamed as loud as his lungs would allow.
Every opening on the naked man’s face was stitched closed. His ears, his eyes, his nostrils and his mouth, all sealed shut with tightly wound strands of black string. The man’s skin was pale and thin, wrapped tightly around his frame. He looked how Ryan imagined mummies to look like in real life, not CGI-effected or made up all Karloff like. His flesh was torn in places, like it had grown so tight that it had began to split. Blackening ulcers oozed what must have been blood but Ryan couldn’t be sure. The viscous fluid was paste-like and oil-like in colour…. Ryan couldn’t help his next reaction--
“Oh, G--”
--Ryan vomited over himself in shock. He’d never seen anything as horrible as this in all his time on the dockyard. He’d seen homeless men and women covered in shit and god knows what else, but this? He wiped his lips of the vomit, and looked down at his shirt.
“Fuh… fuh… fuck--!”
“Mmmfffffff!”
The man grabbed him-- Ryan screamed again as the desperate hands groped at his vomit drenched jacket and pushed the man back against the container, making the same sound that had drawn him to this location. “nnnmmm!”
The man made stifled, suffocated sounds and scratched at his face, not knowing what was going on. He was pale and dehydrated and his every movement was making his situation even worse, spreading the black discharge all over his face He knew what he had to do, even in his terror. He grabbed the man’s hands.
“It’s okay!” he shouted, trying to get through to the man, “ okay, help is here! Help is here! Calm down!”
The man struggled pathetically, but his actions fizzled out. He settled, but still shook, still looked a horrifying mess of a human being. His paper-like skin was now peeling off his body, and Ryan was horrified by the smell coming from the wounds a rotten dead smell he knew he would never be able to forget.
Ryan took his pen knife from his pocket and fiddled with all the attachments. He pulled out the fork and cursed, pushing it back into its slot. Finally, after some struggling-- his own fingers numb and senseless-- he was able to pry out the scissor attachment.
“Stay perfectly still!” he shouted, and the man nodded.
Ryan went to work.
He began to snip at the strands that bound the man’s eyelids closed. The man seized up for a split second, but settled when he realised what was happening. Ryan assumed he was caught in the moment when his eyes were initially sealed, that horror must overcome you at such a time. Ryan was horrified at what he was having to do. He was trying desperately not to touch the man’s skin, but he had to, and when he did so he felt the man’s skin shift and peel under his grip. The man continued to make pained noises as he went to work, but was trying his best to stay calm now.
With one eye done, the man blinked furiously, trying to adjust to his new predicament.
Ryan smiled in an attempt to comfort him, but the man began to scream through sealed lips, grabbing at Ryan’s shoulders as he tried to settle him.
“It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s--”
Someone took a hold of Ryan’s hand and shoved the scissors into the man’s eye, causing blood to spurt into Ryan’s mouth and send the man into convulsions.
Ryan turned and saw a man wearing what he thought was a gas mask, but before he could react he was struck so hard that his nose split open and his world faded to black--

One thing I always struggle with is naming characters. It's such a mundane thing yet I struggle with it immensely!

Any ideas on how to make the process easier?

I'm treating the opening of the third novel as an American spin on the first. Very procedural, Law & Order with a dash of The X-Files. It's coming along well, just the right amount of punchy, I think.

Fan Fetishisation

My novel started as fan fiction. I wanted to write horror stories and I was seventeen and I didn't want to do the leg work to actively create my own character from scratch. But I knew of a character, quite low profile, not as well defined to modern audiences that I thought I could make "mine". What were originally going to be the adventures of John Constantine, Hellblazer became Doctor Occult due to a scheduling error at the fan fiction website I posted at. I was told I couldn't use Constantine-- even after having a cover done up!-- so I had to come up with a last minute replacement.

And Doctor Occult would do.

So yeah, I, like many before me, started writing in the creative favela of fan fiction. I wrote 35,000 words, and I loved it. This was me writing what I wanted to write: Horror. I hadn't been fully able to do so before but I thought this was pure and unadulterated. I did things I always wanted to do with the genre. And sure, I was influenced by Supernatural and, of course, DC Comics-- so there were cameos from The Shade, The Spectre, Madame Xanadu-- but it was mine. I did things with the character that hadn't been done with him before. I told a whole new story in the context of him.

... Which isn't exactly right, is it?

I mean, I wanted to become-- and I still do!-- a serious writer. A writer on the up and up. And I always thought that fan fiction was something to look down on, and yes, I think it still is, but E.L. James is a millionaire for her Twilight fan-fiction trilogy Fifty Shades..., and all she did was replace vampires with bondage. I mean come on, honestly? Honestly? So my roots in fan fiction aren't the stigma I always thought they were. Yes, they're a bit embarrassing, but so what? My closest friends know I did it, and they were just "yeah, okay, moving on," about it, so I can't fault that reaction.

I tried getting back into it at the tail end of 2011. It was what actually energised me  into writing original content. I wanted to wrap up some stories from a few years ago (I took a massive hiatus after starting my new job) but the excitement petered out. I started strong, wrote like a beast... but then the enthusiasm died. I didn't want to write about Green Lantern. I wanted to write about... something for me.

When I was in America, travelling via trains from Point A to Point Z to all Points in-between I had a journal I was scribbling furiously in. This was... 2010. 2010, a year that was both horrifically unkind to me but also the start of a lot of new, too. I was building a world in my notebook, and a name occurs again and again in my notes. Richard Faraday. And there weren't mentions of his wife Scarlett, she was a later addition, but this was the man I could write stories around. He was a mix of the Winchesters and The Doctor, horror and science fiction rolled up, all my favourite kind of adventures just waiting for him to experience. I wrote about all the characters you find in Books One and Two, you find everything out. He's there. He was whole. And all I had to do was write him. Come 2012, I did just that.

So anyway, if you've read my blog this year you know I just committed to writing. I did what I wanted, and I did it well, I think. 

The stories started out as horror, pure and simple. But as I wrote I found things changing. It became a homage, perhaps a pastiche, to my childhood, and maybe to yours. There were no capes or superpowers. There were spectral private detectives. Odd, numerically inclined mystery men. Every other character was based on the shows of the sixties that had a short revival during the mid-nineties during reruns and have now found a home on ITV4. I'm talking, as you well know, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Prisoner, The Professionals and so much more. Book Two is full of it. Department S, Jason King, Captain Scarlet... it's insane. And you probably won't see them like I do. You'll maybe recognise a name. You might feel fleeting familiarity with one character. But everyone has their origins somewhere. And I've taken them and I've twisted them and placed them within the context of my mythology, and I love it. Book Three is going to be even worse. My novel has become a place for my influences to come out and play. Supernatural, Night Stalker, Doctor Who, Angel, The Wire, The Man from UNCLE, Fringe, Moonlight, True Blood, et al, just dancing wildly to the beat of my drum. Their stories become something new, and then the question is asked... what next? Where did Illya Kuryakin go? What next for Patrick McGoohan's Number Six? Whatever happened to Jason King? And things get bigger and bigger until what can really threaten them other than the end of reality?


I have a plan now. I know where the novels are going, loosely. Getting Book Two out there is the most important thing at the moment, but I want to think beyond that. So, the plan. Three novels-- potentially four-- published by Summer 2013. A pitch in the hands of Image Comics by the same time, based on my novel series. I'm already talking to an artist. I want this stuff to be in the hands of people who come from the same place as me, that's always been the goal.

Wish me luck.

Ahora contare hasta doce y tu te callas y me voy.

I love poetry. I love using someone else's language and soul to convey your own emotions. And it's big and it's scary and it's intimidating but you know what? Okay. Okay, this is fine. This is right. I love songs for the same reason, because I could send you a song and you would know, within a few lines, how I'm feeling. I fall back on using music and words-that-aren't-my-own to communicate because sometimes the world is so overwhelming that you can't verbalise how you feel. I know that sometimes I can't.

Por una vez sobre la tierra
no hablemos en ningun idioma,
por un segundo detengamonos,
no movamos tanto los brazos.


I also love the work of Pablo Neruda and I am such a cliché to do so. His words just... sing to me... and I want to use them to describe how I feel and how to... haha... oh, I don't even know what I'm saying.


This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

But what they could not see, scuttling across the ceiling and vanishing down into the darkest recesses of the house, was the oily black thing, with leather-like skin glistening in the fluctuating candle light that illuminated their way. If they had only looked up at the right moment, been able to see the thing for what it was, they would have left the house then and there, vowing never to return. But their curiosity had them in a vice grip, their spatial awareness had them doomed, and they journeyed further into the corridors, further into the shadows, closer and closer towards the nest…

On Horror

I finished the second novel, tentatively titled In My Time Of Dying (after the song, of course) This one took just over two months, it's nearly a third longer, and it's the longest thing I've ever written-- including The Chain-- so, wow. I was surprised to end to learn that. It just kind of happened. I work toward a 75,000 word goal because everything else seems rubbish, and this one just got away from itself... and I think I've missed out a load of necessary stuff too. So I've sent it to Sam for a story-check, then he'll say-- fingers crossed-- "this, this, this and this don't work. The rest is awful" and I'll go back and hack. So it may very well be 119,462 words at this point, but it might be necessary to hack a lot away. Which would be a shame after all the work went into it, but it has to work, doesn't it? So if it doesn't work now then I'll make it work. That's the only way.

I want to get some ideas and thoughts down about what I've written so far, just for posterities sake, just so I'm not pulling bullshit, or what looks to be bullshit, out of my arse down the line. People say that you should write to evoke a reaction, you should write toward a theme, you should have deeper meaning to your work than just... LOOK AT THIS! LOOK! LOOK HERE!... and I'm not sure that's entirely true. But as I went, I started thinking about how I wanted to tell a love story, this epic love story that's taken place over a century, and about two lovers who have been separated for decades. How love conquers all, perhaps? I know it's a cliché, but I wanted to tell a scary story, one that might stay with you, and one that also subverts expectation. Did I achieve that? I'm not sure. But here's me rationalising a few things:

Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective (click here to buy!) was about building a world. Building some foundations, constructing a world on a framework, and telling a story within that framework. Things made sense (I hope? I think?) and there were rules. You know the kind of things I'm talking about... old chestnuts like "vampires can't be exposed to sunlight, vampires can only be killed by a stake or a beheading, vampires are repulsed by garlic and crucifixes", those kinds of things. This Is The Way The World Works. So for me it meant... ghosts wear white and only a few people can see them. Which is a over-generalisation and steals a few tricks from Dennis Spooner's Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), *wink wink*.

So the world was established as... I don't know. The idea was that magic exists. That much is obvious. It exists just under the surface of ours. There are places where magic and the real world can interact. Place of power. There are places where the magical communities come together, "Under Worlds", as they're called. Everything you've ever heard about or read about exists. A quote that I love, and have slipped into a lot of my works, is this ditty from John Lennon: "I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?" If you've read the novel you know that a character says it because it's true. I think so, anyway. Every god, every demon, every devil and every monster, every fairy and black dog and thing you ever dreamt up is real. Just because you haven't seen them yet doesn't mean they're not real in this world.

So anyway, the first novel was building the world, invest time in the characters, make the reader care. Again, else what's the point? I also made a point of not letting the reader into Richard Faraday's head until the end few chapters. I wanted his character to be quite ambiguous because there are some actions of his that are really questionable. Is he good or is he bad? What lengths will he go to get what he needs? You never know because he's being filtered through the other characters, mainly Marie Ann Tarrant, the POV character. At the end of the Part Two the POV character shifts to someone else and the ambiguity, I hope, increases, because of what takes place. But with the new POV character comes some reveals about Richard, who he is and why he does what he does, so you're rewarded (fingers crossed!) for sticking with the change. So the first novel is this brand new world, through the eyes of someone who has no idea what's waiting for her. You're coming into this world with this woman, you're learning as she does. There are characters in the world who know more than you, but as a reader you're never at a disadvantage to the characters. You know as much as Marie, she won't get things and not share. You might figure it out before her, but that's because you're smart. So there was a plan, there was a structure.

The second novel, In My Time Of Dying, is still going through the revision stages. This book is about taking the world you're used to and breaking it down into pieces. That's the plan, anyway. The world is opened up, you're shown more and more of the magical realm, but the rulebook is thrown out of the window. Sam [Miller, one of the editors] said that the best thing for sequels is to expand upon the world and we're doing just that. We're going to entirely new places, we're introducing brand new characters. The core casts doubles-- perhaps triples-- and characters you've met in Ghost Detective get more of the spotlight, and now we're viewing the world through Richard's eyes. He knows a lot but because the rules have changed he's at a disadvantage. I wanted the story to be filtered through characters. The first novel does that with a laser focus, it's always on Marie, it's always her until it's not possible to be her. The second book has a lot of characters, a lot of balls in the air, and I hope they're all served well. We'll see soon enough.

-----------------

The original idea with the sequel was to write it a pastiche of styles, a homage to horror through the years. Each Part was going to be in the style of a horror decade. I'll briefly go over each and give you an idea of what was coming, and who knows, maybe this will happen, but In My Time Of Dying took on an epic tone that I didn't want to scupper with an inappropriate writing style. These posts are inevitably going to get longer the later I go, because the later I go the more the films resonate me, as I am the generation they were made for. Those were the films I stayed up late watching every Halloween at Karl's as we had our annual Halloween horror film marathon... these were what made me afraid of the dark again and again and again. So let's get on with this.

I wanted to keep quite focused but you'll have to excuse me for breaking my own rules straight away. For me, from the 1920s right through to the 1940s, horror was all about Universal; those classy, gothic stories that re-established the genre as something that is profitable and has a potential more so than ever before.  I could have started earlier with the silent horrors of earlier decades but I thought this was the best place to start. Film-makers were feeling out the genre, thinking were could they start. And where best but the literary classics? We got Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Wolfman... I know that Universal started their horror dominance in the late 20s, but for the sake of my own sanity, I think their heyday was with these films, so bear with me. Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi... and one of the greatest horror directors of all time, James Whale? You can't go wrong, can you? They set the trend, and they're to blame-- for better or for worse!-- for horror as we know it today. Greatness.

1950s were all about the b-movie, zany, massive scale stories about invasion and change and a fear of the unknown. Of course, horror is all about the fear of the unknown, but never has a decade captured an atmosphere as well as the Red Scare that started in the late forties and ended, kind of, in the late fifties. Damned Commies! Better dead than red! I don't have much to say about this era. It feels like, from the films I've seen with Lugosi and Karloff really coasting, that it was more of the same, and more of the same doesn't make for good writing, but the 1950s were about discomfort at the norm, and science fiction encapsulated that amazingly. Plus, we got Steve McQueen fighting The Blob in 1958, so who are we to complain?

Of course the 1960s were all about Hammer Horror. Any horror fan worth tier salt knows that Dracula with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing was a 1958 affair but for succinctness' sake I'm going with the 1960s as a whole. Lee/Cushing was a partnership to be reckoned with and they took their dynamite chemistry and took it to the next level with a twist on their original formula with Hammer's Frankenstein with Lee as the monster and Cushing as something even worse, the creator of the monster, so how can you hate on that? Hammer was the youth revolution, the beautiful counter-culture horror that instilled in me an almighty fear when I started watching as a child. They introduced sex and death in equal measure, and if Universal showed the potential, Hammer took it to the next level. You couldn't get enough of Lee's Dracula, dripping with sexuality and suaveness. And Cushing was so damned British that if you don't enjoy these films you're not a patriot. During the 50s Universal retired their line of 'classics' and introduced a glut of Abbott and Costello films, so Hammer had a coup on their hands, and what a coup. Hammer became one of the greatest franchises-- British or otherwise-- to rule cinema. Of course, as the films went on sensationalism took over... blood and gore and breasts and sex and all that was rife, but the beginning... those classics... you can't go wrong. And sure, if you're in the mood for it, go watch The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), and Twins of Evil (1971). Lesbiansss!

In the 1970s the first of the 'gory' horrors started happening. After having parallel success to the Hammer productions in the 1960s Vincent Price took it to the next level with almost farcical levels of blood and gore, and I love him for it. His Thibes two parter and then a year or so later, Theatre of Blood was a later effort for the horror dynamo but it was golden, dramatic and camp, the 1960s spirit with 1970s production value. A theme throughout this piece is the fact that each decade builds on what came before, and I'll go deeper into that later. But Price was debonair, suave, just like his predecessors in the genre... His Roger Corman collaborations introduced the work of Edgar Allan Poe to the general public, and we also had the first hint of the slasher flick with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the late seventies. Again, I have to reiterate that the distinctions I'm making are naturally going to be flawed, that great films fall on the either side of the chunks I'm dividing them up into, but I don't care. The seventies took everything that came before, the  tension, the horror, the fear, and turned it up to eleven. Brilliant. This was also the start of the "masked killer" era, that really took off in the 1980s, but had a massive resurgence in the 1990s. But before we can get to the 90s we have to discuss the 1980s, once of my favourite, absolute favourite decades of horror.

The 1980s sophistication was the key, I think. Taking ideas and evolving them to the next level. Alien (1979!), An American Werewolf In Paris, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Gremlims, Henry: Potrait of a Serial Killer, My Bloody Valentine, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Shining-- all films that captured the imaginations of those who watched them and shaped a generation of film makers and creative folk. This was the era of the monster as commodity, as pop culture icon. Sure, we had Lugosi from the 40s making a career off Universal's Dracula, the same could be said for every iconic actor in a role like that. Cushing was Van Helsing from the first Hammer Dracula. And don't get me started on Christopher Lee! But this was the era of sophistication, of more than just what's come before. The genre was subverted by exuberant film makers like Raimi with Evil Dead, we had more experimental fare with the likes of Henry... people were now taking risks and tearing audiences a new one with their work. But not only were we getting truly scary, experimental films, we were also being drowned in the slasher flick, with every serial killer having a gimmick and every serial killer having... a sequel. Yes, this was also the decade of the sequel. the decade that led to the downfall of horror as a franchise. The law of diminishing returns meant that sure, people would still go see Jason and Freddy slaughter their victims, but less of them every time, and with each film that came, the closer we came to the Direct-To-DVD era, the deluge that drowned the 90s until...

...Scream. Which I know was from 1996 but come on, can you name any good horror films from the early/mid-nineties? I'll give it a shot in a bit but the 1990s took everything-- and I know I keep saying this, but the great thing about horror is that it kept building and building and building on what came before, until the eventual deconstruction--and repackaged it to bring the audiences back into theatres. The Faculty. I Know What You Did Last Summer. Scream. Urban Legend. The teenager-as-only-hope. The-authority-figure-as-the-last-person-you-can-trust. We've all seen these films. I know that you might think that 1997 is a bit late in the decade  to really count as a great trend of films, but I've done my research, and I swear to go... have you seen the films that came out during this decade? Basket Case 2, Bride of Re-Animator, Child's Play 2, The Exorcist III, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, House 5, Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss, Psycho IV: The Beginning, Slumber Party Massacre III, Sorority House Massacre II, Witchcraft II and Witchcraft III-- and that was just in 1990 itself! The 90s were the decade of the sequel, and that's not good for anyone. I mean honestly, House 5?! Has anyone even seen the first four? (Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh came out in 1996 by the way... have you seen the first one? I thought not. Me neither. And that's not even the last sequel!!) There were some exceptions to the rule. We got Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), but that's taking a cultural touch point and reintroducing it to the general populace. I don't think you can define a decade off one film, either. I guess you could say the 1990s were the decade of the adaptation. Stephen King's work was glutting the market, we had a few Frankensteins, some HP Lovecraft bits and pieces here and there, but nothing truly new. 1997 was the year the 90s needed. We had Anaconda, Devil's Advocate, Event Horizon, Mimic, Nightwatch, The Relic... and sure we still had the proliferation of sequels, but I think the fact that we're getting fare less based on an established property and more-- cough-- original-- cough-- storytelling, is the most important thing. We also got Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in 1998-- an attempt at taking an established property and "reboot" it with a modern twist. Sure, it didn't exactly work, but I think this was the first film that showed film companies that there was still hope  for old properties. A proliferation of sequels and also a reboot...then soon after in 1999 came The Faculty, Ring, Audition, Deep Blue Sea, End of Days, The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, Lake Placid, The Mummy, Ravenous, Sleepy Hollow... a mix of remakes and revamps, and the start of a new trend... the dread remake.

But for me, that's not what the 2000s is for me. It's a horrible mess of trends in this decade. We have the torture porn invasion. The Asian Invasion that was first started in the late 90s and then twisted into a neutered direction with the dreaded continuance of the remake trend (so we are still seeing it there) as bastardised versions of The Ring came out, then The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, One Missed Call... American production companies took these modern classics and made them into hollow versions of themselves, and that's why I have a massive problem, most of the time, with remakes. That said, we had Halloween from the mind of Rob Zombie, we had another Texas Chainsaw Massacre-- which is a mess of gore and takes away from the fact that the original had next to no gore and was all about suggestion-- we had Freddy Kruger re-imagined as a paedophile (he wasn't in the original films! He just killed kids, he didn't fiddle them. A very sound distinction!). Rob Zombie got his foot in the door via House of a 1000 Corpses, which was just... horrible. Then The Devils Rejects, which was less good. But Rob Zombie's Halloween was a psychological mind screw of a film, taking everything we knew about Michael Myers and making even more sense of it, sapping away the supernatural and making him a tour de force of murder. I loved what he did with that film. I had originally thought that the 2000s was the decade of sophistication but I don't think that's the case any more. I thought they broke down tropes and reinvented them, but no. I realise now that the 2000s was the decade of torture and I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. Films were horrible. They were scary-- at times-- but they were also horrible. Suddenly people didn't have a hope of escaping. They were locked in abandoned toilets with their ankles chained to pipes (Hello, Saw I-VII!) Characters didn't have a chance at winning and for me that's breaking the golden rule of horror. There have to be rules and if you stick to the rules you can survive. But then characters start getting raped and beaten and tortured and locked up and buried and cremated and it's just... not fair. Even if you escape you don't have a hope. Saw, Cabin Fever, the remake of Texas Chainsaw. You're broken inside,. That never was the case before! Sure, you survived, but you got on with your life. I guess this trend of the horror taking over your life started with Laurie in Halloween or Nancy in Elm Street, then taken to its logical next step with Sidney in Scream (Scream 2 genuinely still creeps me out more so than any sequel, and you know she's not the same person any more, not after what happened to her)...

But anyway. I wanted to tell a section of my second novel in the above styles... which I don't think I've clearly outlined, but you understand where I'm coming from, right? I wanted to pay homage to everything that ever inspired me, and I think I would have done a good job too, but as mentioned previously I think that the story wouldn't have worked within those parameters. Which is a shame, but it gives me a chance down the line to tell those stories at a later date, I just need to find the right project. Looking forward to it!

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After I finished Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective, around early February, I asked my friends what I thought to be a very simple question. 

"In three sentences or less (and some took liberties with that), what defines the Horror genre for you?" 

For me personally, it's a story that takes the everyday and makes it Not Quite Right. Slowly at first, the everyday begins to shift, and you're there, in the middle, and the world around you is changing, really slowly, building to this... reveal of the cause of the change. I think if you apply that template to a horror story you'll have a success, and it's the mindset I'm in when I write the genre. I wanted to see if people shared this thought process, and also I wanted to make sure that when I wrote in future, I wrote with what terrified others in mind.


"It's only truly horrifying when something convinces you it could happen, no matter how unrealistic it is. Even ghosts or vampires can be scary when the story's grounded in realism." - Elizabeth Kinports

"Quite literally the first thing that I think of when someone mentions 'horror' is you...!" - Naomi Hannon (I think this is the best response to the question, to be honest)

"Psychology is what makes the horror genre. There is nothing more frightening than helplessly watching a character unravel through their own eyes. Vampires and zombies become silly when pit against the exposure of every day fear we all experience." - Adam Messinger (creator/writer of The Amazing Fist)

"Anything that scares the shit out of me." - Hannah Tadd

"I'm not going to tell you outright. Instead I am going to enter your home, the very rooms where you feel most safe, and make subtle changes that put you on edge. Once you have searched around thoroughly and convinced yourself that there is no reason to worry, I will wait in the shadows until you have begun to drift off to sleep, and in hoarse whispers an inch away from your ear I'll tell you what defines THE HORROR GENRE for me. Before your panicking mind manages to rally you from slumber, I'll have left, stealing your favourite snack food from the cupboard on the way out. (That last bit is less to do with THE HORROR GENRE and more to do with me being a dick)" - Dave Billington

"I guess the horror genre for me would be something that pulls me so far in it starts to take over my life, where I will always have the feeling that it is happening or could happen at any time. Something that will continue feeding my paranoia even when I am not provoked by the original source, would make me second guess every move I make in case the worst would happen." - Karl Stevens

"One word, six letters, begins with a H, ends with an R. It usually starts with the familiar, luring you in, but then  your imagination takes over, the suspense increases as you try to guess what will happen next, and then the unexpected happens, some twist, some surprise, subverting your beliefs - sometimes an anti-climax, but sometimes something  that latches onto the fears in your mind, transmuting them into a different form, enabling you to face them. How effective it all is depends on the storyteller, the content, the rhythms, the timing; sometimes it sticks in your mind and will never go away. That's my definition of horror and yet also my definition of humour. Is it any wonder people find clowns so scary?" - Mark Bowers

"Horror is more than blood and guts; it’s a genre that is supposed to unsettle you, leaving a last impression on you. It’s supposed to be everything that terrified you as a child personified in fiction, not just an excuse to decapitate and deform individuals in some pornographic manner." - Adam Gibson

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I think that's enough for today. It's good to get the ideas down for future reference, and I hope you got something out of it. Thanks for reading!