Andy Graham Author

Political thrillers, dystopian fiction, creepy reads, and dark humour.

Main navigation

andygraham

One Book Interview #42 – Rob Hayes (Author)

by Leave a Comment

After a collection of posts by dark fiction and horror writers, we move sideways, via steampunk, into fantasy and grimdark.

Author #42 also gives us the most authentic profile picture to date.

(And a stunning book cover for question 7.)

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Derbyshire, UK – Rob Hayes

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Retribution Falls (1st in the Tales of the Ketty Jay series) by Chris Wooding. Followed quickly by the Black Lung Captain, because you really need to read the 1st book first, but the 2nd book is better. Honestly, I just love the entire Ketty Jay series so very much. They have it all: gun fights, sword fights, dog fights, thrilling chases, epic swashbuckling action, demons, warlocks, golems, a fist fight with a cat, devious religions, ancient secrets, and so very much more, all wrapped up in Chris Wooding’s explosive style.

I first read the book one day when I came down with the flu and it might well be the fastest I’ve ever read a book. I zipped through it and couldn’t put it down. So yeah, everyone should read Retribution Falls so I can have endless conversations about it, and maybe one day we can all convince Chris to write more stories in that world.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

How about I answer by pointing out that I was once marooned on an island in Fiji for 3 months… Well it wasn’t so much marooned as stationed there while researching coral reefs, but that’s beside the point. I actually took 2 books with me during my maroonment and they were Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton because I figured if I was going to live on a desert island for a bit I should probably dream of dinosaurs. And the other book I took was Game of Thrones by the GRRM Reaper himself. Actually that was the very first time I read anything by George and it was so very painful not having access to any of the later books. Of course now I realise that 3 months waiting in GRRM time is nothing.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

I’d go with Damoren (book 1 of the Valducan series) by Seth Skorkowsky. It’s an urban fantasy series where demons are hunted by templar knights who wield semi-sentient holy weapons. The hunters form bonds with their weapons which gives it a sort of dual peril aspect. It’s bloody and nail biting and gruesome and again it only gets better as the series goes on.

Now I’m not usually fan of urban fantasy, in fact I have never read another urban fantasy that I liked, but Seth’s stuff is brilliant. It reminds me of the Hellsing anime and has that same dark feel to it.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

I could cheat a little here and say City of Kings (coming 2018), but I’ll stick to the books I’ve already published. I’d go with The Fifth Empire of Man (Best Laid Plans Book 2). It’s actually my most recent release and continues the piratical story I started in Where Loyalties Lie.

I had an absolute blast writing about my pirates and the vulgar, dangerous world they inhabit. But for me I would say the 2nd book in the series is my favourite because it has so much more going on in it with crazy treasure hunts, massive naval battles, and a race to see who will get to sit on the pirate throne.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

I think I’d say The Dark Portal (book 1 of The Deptford Mice) by Robin Jarvis. I’m a lifelong fan of the fantasy genre and I’m fairly certain it was this book that kicked it all off for me back when I was still but a child. I was a fairly sickly child and my mother and father both worked, so I often found myself alone during those sick days. Sometimes my mother would rent a video from Blockbuster for me, and sometimes she nip to the library to borrow a book or two. One such time she borrowed The Dark Portal and I devoured it as quickly as I was able. I may even have claimed I was ill for a little longer than I actually was just to finish the book. It was the very first fantasy book I can remember reading, and it set me down the path I’m on today

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

On a professional level. I’d go with Aurian (book 1 of The Artefacts of Power) by Maggie Furey. This was the book, and the series, that made me want to give the whole writing thing a go. I’d always made up stories here and there in my head, but it wasn’t until reading Aurian that I started sitting down at a keyboard and trying to turn those dreams into coherent stories. I failed. Back then I failed so very hard. But it was a starting point for me. Twenty years (or so) later and here I am, a professional author. So I’d say Aurian was pretty influential.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

I would start with The Heresy Within (The Ties that Bind Book 1). It’s the book that started my career and the first in the much longer First Earth Saga, which will eventually encompass multiple series. It’s a sort of fantasy spaghetti western where the Bad, the Worse, and the Ugly have to put aside trying to kill each other to face a common enemy. You can expect magic wielding witch hunters, legendary swordswomen, and a world that is trying its very best to kill them all. And you can find it on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble

You can find Rob at www.robjhayes.co.uk

Rob J. Hayes is a UK based fantasy author of both Grimdark and Steampunk. His love of pirates, witch hunters, vikings, and cowboys has influenced his work far and wide and they can all be found in the pages of The Ties that Bind and Best Laid Plans.

 

 

 

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

 

One Book Interview #41 – Matt Hickman (Author)

by Leave a Comment

The hangover has cleared after last week’s 40th birthday  celebrations, and The One Book Interview is back with what counts – the authors.

This week, I’m very happy to have with us a British author who is rapidly carving out a name for himself in the UK horror scene.

Not literally, you understand.

(I hope.)

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Tipton*, UK – Matt Hickman

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Since a young age, I’ve been a massive fan of the work by Roald Dahl. The man had an imagination that was out of this world, I can still picture him scribbling his crazy ideas in his notebooks in the hut where he wrote at the bottom of his garden. His writing manages to cross any boundaries of age or sex; they’re as much loved today as they were when I was a boy, and the joy between those pages has been passed down to my two children. I would find it difficult to pick a certain title as a favourite, so as a book that everyone should read, I would choose Tales of the Unexpected, his eclectic short story collection which really showcases his diverse literary talents.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Damn, I knew there would be one of these types of questions. If you were stranded on Mars, aside from playing volleyball against little green men, you would need something fairly substantial to keep the boredom at bay, a book where you could get immersed into its pages again and again. For my choice, it would be The Stand by Stephen King. Weighing in at over 1000 pages, it’s a massive read, and also one of the best takes on an apocalyptic pandemic, threatening to wipe out humanity that you’ll find.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Back when I was living at home, my dad was studying for an Open University course in the classics, and I picked up a battered, dog eared copy of The Iliad (a poem) by Homer that he had left on the kitchen table. Oblivious to the theme of the book, and it being a modern version of the translated text, I started to browse the contents and found myself blown away. I’d never seen such a cocktail of sex, violence, deceit and revenge. Those Greeks really knew how to do a number on each other.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

That would be one of two, but I think I’ll go with my novel, Amnesia. I awoke suddenly one morning in a hotel while working away in Crawley, with an intensely violent and disturbing scene running through my mind. I’m not sure whether I dreamt it, and it etched itself into my psyche. That scene was the only thing I knew I wanted to write. Without any other ideas for plot or the story, I went to work, blind. A few months later, the novel was complete. A slow burn and build in tension until it erupts into hell. I have recently received the digital rights back from the original publisher, so I will be writing the prequel, Flashbacks, and releasing them together. The paperback is still available.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

I think that would have to be Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. I read a copy of the book when I was about fourteen years old and it scared the living shit out of me. It was the first time I’d really looked at any depth into the depravity of humanity, and the way that realism can, in some ways be more horrific than monsters or the supernatural. In addition, the book introduced me to a character that was to become a lifelong obsession, Hannibal Lecter.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

That’s a really difficult one to answer, as I don’t really consider myself anything like professional. I’ve certainly never studied any books on writing techniques or taken any creative writing classes. I kinda just fell into this after years of being an avid reader with an astute eye. I haven’t dodged around the question properly have I? Okay, I’ll pick a book from a writer that I would say is one of the biggest influences on my style of storytelling, Endless Night by Richard Laymon. When I first read this book, I knew immediately that I would be pursuing more of his work. The story is an intense, harrowing, and adrenaline fueled piece of fiction. For me, it was all about the characters, good and bad, an equation that ultimately works for me.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

As with most authors, my work varies in content and style. I think the best place to start would be with my short story collection, Sinister Scribblings. There are thirteen of my own stories ranging from seasonal horror, to extreme, nasty shorts, to tales underpinned with dark humour. The book also contains additional stories from other emerging authors within the indie market.

You can find Matt at : www.matthickman.co.uk

Matt is an avid fan of horror fiction. He spends a majority of his free time reading books from both established and independent authors. With a diverse knowledge of the genre, and an astute mind for the macabre, he has taken to writing his own brand of horror – dark, relentlessly violent and blood-soaked, and often peppered with dark humour. With the support of his peers, some of which are established writers themselves, he has taken on a new career, one that has seen him take the genre by storm. He currently resides in Tipton, a small town in the West Midlands with his partner and two children. He travels the width breadth of the UK on a regular basis as a Sales Manager for a construction company.

 

Since his debut eighteen months ago, he has been featured in numerous short story collections, including anthologies for charity, as well as releasing numerous novels and novella’s and collaborations with Stuart Keane, Andrew Lennon, and Matt Shaw including his first solo collection of short stories – Sinister Scribblings.

 

*Not to be confused with this place. (Sorry, Matt. It’s lame, but I couldn’t resist.)

 

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

 

One Book Interview #40 – A Birthday

by Leave a Comment

The One Book Interview reaches forty this week. It has a few more aches and pains in the morning than it did when  it turned eighteen, but it’s still going strong.

To celebrate its 40th birthday, here’s a look back through the last few months – words seen through numbers.

We’ve had:

39 interviews, of which 38 are authors and 1 is an editor;

3 book reviews;

7 questions to each person;

a total of 270 different books mentioned (39 people picking 1 book for 7 questions should be 270, so we’re almost exactly right).

Which books?

Classics, indies, short stories, epic fantasy series, and even a photographic book of sharecroppers in Alabama in the early-mid 20th century.


Some books have appeared more than once (I’ve excluded multiple mentions of people’s own books).

Before we get to the answers, most of the participating authors write dystopia, horror and dark fiction so their book choices may not be a complete surprise. If you fancy, have a guess at what the top choices could be.

I’ll wait.

Done?

In reverse order, and starting with the new entries, these are the top choices:

(All book covers link to Amazon UK)

The Wheel of Time – 2x

The Shining – 2x

Ready Player One – 2x

1984 – 2x

Neuromancer – 2x

Imajica – 2x

The Dice Man – 2x

Animal Farm – 2x

The following books appeared in the 18th Birthday post.

The number of times they have appeared in total is given first; the number of times they appeared in the 18th Birthday is given in brackets.

Death Becomes Her – 2x (2x)

Little Bee – 2x (2x)

Pride & Prejudice – 2x (2x)

Think & Grow Rich – 2x (2x)

The Name of the Wind – 2x (2x)

Harry Potter – 3x (Did not appear in the 18th Birthday)


To Kill a Mockingbird – 3x (3x)


The Lord of the Rings – 4x (4x)

A song of Ice and Fire – 6x (2x)

The Martian – 6x (3x)

The Bible – 7x (6x)

The Bible still has reviews on Amazon! GOD hasn’t struck down the non-believers since I pointed it out last time.

The Stand – 8x (2x)

On Writing – 8x (3x)

The fact that there have been some additions since the eighteenth birthday edition is not surprising given there have been 38 interviews rather than 18. What is interesting is that most of the book choices remain unchanged. ASOIAF and The Martian have gone up a few places. LOTR is a non-mover. Stephen King, however, has knocked The Bible off the top spot with not one, but two books.

Mr King deserves a special mention, in that his books have cropped up more than anyone else’s:

The Talisman

The Running Man

Roadwork

Rage

The Long Walk

It

Gerald’s Game

Different Seasons

Carrie

On Writing

The Stand

Once more, a huge thank you to all the authors that have taken part up to this point.

 

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

 

A review of Turner by Karl Drinkwater

by Leave a Comment

Following on from the review of The Rest Will Come earlier this week, here’s one of Turner by Karl Drinkwater.

Why two reviews in one week?

Purely because I can. 🙂

The One Book Interview will be back next week with, I hope, something special.

So, before we get to the review, what’s it about?

Some Islands Don’t Welcome Visitors.

An isolated Welsh island seemed like the perfect escape for a convict on the run, a jilted woman, and a policeman seeking a quiet life. When the surly locals turn to murderous violence the three visitors are forced to flee together, trying to stay one step ahead of their increasingly insane pursuers.

The bad news keeps coming. There are too many to fight. There is no escape from the island. And the worst storm in years has just begun. They can only run and hide as they face a night of horror and madness. If they don’t work together then none of them will live to see the light of day.

This tense survival horror novel is a homage to decades of nasty villains, scary predicaments, and bloody books and films.

My thoughts?

Turner is a good book which has the potential to be great.

The things that stood out for me:

The opening section was genuinely chilling – a great example of the main character’s environment being just slightly off at first and then building to a climax.

The prose is evocative – fantastic descriptions of the Welsh countryside.

The sentence structure is superb – a very clever use of long vs. short to build and ease tension.

The lighthouse scene was a classic case of one more chapter before I turn the light out (and skipping forwards a few chapters to get a sneak peak of what happens).

There are some clever twists and a few gruesome moments.

I love the cover!

There are a few things I wasn’t so keen on.

After the opening section, a few chapters were a little confusing in that there was too much jumping from one character/ place to another.

The main villain is bordering on cartoon-like. I would have preferred him to be more rounded. Similarly, I’d have liked some of the violence to be a bit more subtle. I have no problems with people writing about violence, but the truly scary stuff in the book was the anticipation of the terror and the moments when the author left me floundering in my own imagination.

A few sections made me feel I was being spoon fed info.

The use of Welsh for some of the characters conversations got in the way of the flow of the text. I like the idea of using Welsh to add to the flavour of the book, but I found it lessened the tension when I wanted things to be going quicker.

All in all, Turner is well worth a read, but I feel it could have been so much more harrowing in places.

Four stars.

Turner appears in this collection of all three of Karl’s books. I’ve also read Harvest Festival (review coming soon), which I highly recommend.

The collection is currently priced at 2.95 GBP, which is scandalously cheap for three books.

If you’re interested in reading the words behind the words, i.e. what Karl reads when he’s not writing, you can check out his interview below. (From a million years ago.)

One Book Interview #2 – Karl Drinkwater (Author)

 

 

A Review of The Rest Will Come by Christina Bergling

by Leave a Comment

Yesterday you had the interview; today you get the book review – Christina Bergling’s novel The Rest Will Come

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way:

1 – I received a free copy of the book. Since finishing it, I’ve bought a copy. (As I’ve mentioned before, we need to support the arts – musicians, authors, artists and so on. If you don’t, they won’t be many of us left before long.)

2 – Confessions of a Reviewer who are organising this for Christina have represented me in the past.

None of those have influenced my review and what follows is an honest opinion.

So, before we get to the review, what’s it about?

Murder can be risky…and not just for the douchebags on the business end of Emma’s power
saw.
Men only let Emma down. They cheat, and they lie. They send unsolicited pictures of their
genitals. Ready to give up hope, Emma decides to go on one last date. Then it finally happens—
she finds the thing she loves most of all.
Killing clueless jerks she finds on the internet.
Lost in a happy haze of hunting her victims, devising increasingly-clever killings, and
streamlining her dismemberment process, Emma gets careless.
As her need for her murderous outlet grows, she runs an increasing risk of getting caught…or
worse—falling for one of her victims.

The verdict?

I’m afraid to say I wasn’t too keen on this book. It had a lot of potential but failed to live up to it.

(I’m going to try and avoid any spoilers in the review so please excuse any vague statements.)

Let’s start with the good stuff.

Great cover and tagline: murder might be her one true love.

The overall premise is good: a woman who is utterly frustrated by her repeated failures with men (some do sound like ‘douchebags’ to be fair) so comes up with an extreme solution.

The opening is strong.

There are some nice lines in the text (‘roommates with rings’ & ‘wrapped around a digital finger’ spring to mind) and a few choice descriptions.

I like the ‘life reversal’ of the protagonist and her best friend and the feelings that brought up.

The humour is world-weary and realistic.

The passages about running were great. (The author runs and this shows.)

No typos! (Shouldn’t even need to be said…)

However, there were some issues that got in the way of these positives.

The timeline jumped around too much at the beginning. The narrative caught up nicely with the opening paragraphs later in the book, but the initial time changes threw me.

There were some sudden scene shifts throughout the story which weren’t immediately obvious.

I think the prose would have been more effective had the descriptions been sparser. As it is, it slows the pace down too much. There were also a few expressions which left me scratching my head and wondering what the author meant.

A large chunk felt like backstory: why the protagonist does what she does and a blow-by-blow account of how she got where she was. This, again, slowed the book down.

Similarly, I found the action scenes lacking tension. With one exception, everything happened too easily for the protagonist: what she did, how she did it, and how she got away with it. Maybe this was the point, but it made the whole experience too flat.

I think the contrast between who the protagonist becomes and her relationship with her best friend could have been expanded on. It was touched upon near the end, (the relationship between these two people was one of the book’s highlights)  but I think there was so much more potential there.

As for the end, I was hoping for a climax of some sorts. I saw part of the end coming a long way back in the text, but the exact resolution was a surprise. It’s a quirky way of doing ‘a happily ever after’ that is very clever in some respects but left me feeling high and dry.

All in all, there was enough I liked in the story to consider reading another book by the author, but I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy this one too much.

Three stars.

If you’re interested in reading the words behind the words, i.e. what Christina reads when she’s not writing, you can check out her interview below.

One Book Interview #39 – Christina Bergling (Author)

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

One Book Interview #39 – Christina Bergling (Author)

by Leave a Comment

In association with Confessions of  a Reviewer, I’m very happy to be able to bring you another interview/ review post-pairing. (Is that even a word?)

You can find out what I thought of Author 39’s most recent book tomorrow, but today, here’s a taste of her favourite books.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Colorado Springs – Christina Bergling

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman. The multiple narrations in this book blew me away. All seven circle around a central event to become a brilliant examination of perspective and distortion. It is one thing to understand that everyone sees things differently, it is more impactful to experience that seven times.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Different Seasons by Stephen King. “The Shawshank Redemption” is one of my favorite novellas ever. It is simply intoxicating. Yet all four novellas in the collection contain an entire and fascinating world. If I was stuck reading the same book over and over, I would want one with multiple stories.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. I knew I always wanted to read the book because it spawned the concept of BDSM. However, I had my reservations because it is so old. I worried it would be as neutered and unemotional as all the British literature I studied in college. Instead, it is brilliant, racy, and raw.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

It is a solid tie between Savages and The Rest Will Come. Savages was the world I could keep living in. When I was writing, I thought about it all day, dreamed about it. The story just poured out of me. However, The Rest Will Come was the most fun to write. I was able to include people in my real life in the process.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. I went to Iraq as a contractor in 2009, and nothing there made sense to me. This book explained some of the irrational and upsetting paradigms and procedures I encountered. It did not make the things acceptable, but it at least established cause and effect.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Gerald’s Game by Stephen King. I read a lot of Stephen King’s work in my youth; however, this is my favorite novel of his. This book taught me about crafting horror in a restricted setting with very few characters, showing me the horror in the mind. I found that restrained horror far more terrifying than his more fantastical works.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

The Rest Will Come offers a good taste of horror with some levity. It is available on Amazon and through other online book retailers.

You can find Christina here.

Colorado‐bred writer, Christina Bergling knew she wanted to be an author in fourth grade.

In college, she pursued a professional writing degree and started publishing small scale. It all began with “How to Kill Yourself Slowly.”

With the realities of paying bills, she started working as a technical writer and document manager, traveling to Iraq as a contractor and eventually becoming a trainer and software developer.

She avidly hosted multiple blogs on Iraq, bipolar, pregnancy, running. She continues to write on Fiery Pen: The Horror Writing of Christina Bergling and Z0mbie Turtle.

In 2015, she published two novellas. She is also featured in the horror collections Collected Christmas Horror Shorts, Collected Easter Horror Shorts, Collected Halloween Horror Shorts, and Demonic Wildlife. Her latest novel, The Rest Will Come, was released by Limitless Publishing in August 2017.

Bergling is a mother of two young children and lives with her family in Colorado Springs. She spends her non‐writing time running, doing yoga and barre, belly dancing, taking pictures, traveling, and sucking all the marrow out of life.

 

 

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.