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One Book Interview #53 – Richard Writhen (Author)

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After a short hiatus needed because of the blood-fuelled poetry and prose of the last author to grace these pages, the One Book Interview is back.

This week we have a writer who has been published in various online magazines, has published several novellas and is currently working on his first novel.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Rhode Island – Richard Writhen

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The best book that I’ve read in recent years is Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. It’s a very dark and realistic mystery and deftly manages many plot threads at once. I had seen the film awhile after it came out on video and was really blown away, so when I later saw the novel at The Strand, I picked it up and read it in full at least thrice. The tone, the characterization, but above all the way the characters’ actions ring true to real human behavior all make this book something special for me. Plus, without giving any spoilers, the way it accurately reflects the true human lack of control over chaos makes for the perfect ending.

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

I would say The Martian, but I haven’t read it. Maybe Call of the Wild, which is one of my favorite books. It’s about a dog who starts out as a pet but is dognapped and forced to become a hard-working sled dog. But it’s really about surviving at all costs and finding the alpha within yourself. He fights and fights and at one point is on the verge of death but he never surrenders. And eventually, he finds satisfaction, not in a perfect life like he once had, but in the fulfillment of his destiny.

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

The Lovely Bones. Every once in a while I will read something from a genre or sub-genre that I have little interest in based on the title alone. I knew I had to check this one out so I picked it up used and was pretty taken with it. A quaint story about a girl who is murdered but winds up in the afterlife a la Beetlejuice or whatever and she tries to communicate with her surviving friends and family and point them towards her killer. It had a grimdark feel to the deaths and the repercussions for the characters. Another thing I would liken it to is What Dreams May Come.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

The Hiss Of The Blade. I think that by my third novella, I had gotten a bit better and the style is a bit more mature than the first two. Plus, it’s a bloodbath, which is optimal for me. I’m a big fan of French extreme cinema like Haute Tension and Inside.  It’s also more grimdark, with an evil king and armored guards and castles and gauntlets and all that jazz. And a bunch of blades too, of course.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Well, aside from Call of the Wild, it’d probably be Watership Down. There’s so much happening in that one novel that it’d take a college philosophy course to cover it all, but some of the standout points for me are the accurate portrayal of spirituality, again the survival against all odds motif, the deception between members of the same species, the betrayals, the almost god-like power that humankind and even cats have over the small animals like the rabbits.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

The most influential book that I’ve read in the past few years would have to be A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Aside from being astonishingly well-written, its grasp of subtext and meta is unparalleled. The only novel that I would really liken it to is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; both of them are basically experiences like real life, and while you are reading them, the point of it all is not immediately evident. It’s entertaining, but the real brilliance in such a book is after it ends, when you are (hopefully) blindsided by the real message as the pieces fall into place like so many puzzle pieces in your mind, as you sort it out. That’s really the approach that I have now; it’s not a thousand pages that you need to throw at the reader, but rather a level of veracity and internal continuity that makes the contents of the book literally live in the reader’s mind. And few authors can really do it.

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

It stands to reason that my shortest, simplest novella is my first, A Kicked Cur. It took much longer to write because I worked on it as an amateur, only once or twice a month, before I became more serious about my writing. The process took about two years and four months, but I’m happy with it, though no work wrought by human hands is ever finished. The second and third novellas were much faster, taking about eight months apiece once I had adopted the “nulla dies sine linear” approach. The fourth is at about that same mark now, but is going to take a bit longer to complete,  so about a year.

You can find Richard here.

Originally from Rhode Island, Richard Writhen also lived in NYC for about ten years. He has been e-published on several notable sites such as the Dark Mondays Blog, the Mighty Thor JRS Blog, Michael R Fletcher.com, Rob J Hayes.co.uk, Grimdarkmagazine.com and Ragnarokpub.com and is the author of three novellas on Amazon KDP: A Kicked Cur, A Host of Ills and The Hiss Of The Blade. Richard also writes short form stories in the styles of Gothdark, Grimdark, GDSF and Psychological Horror, and will eventually be exploring the weird west.

 

 

 

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A Review of Fitful Head by CJ Harter

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We’re going to take time out from the One Book Interview this week for another review.

I’ve done a couple of these in the past (Turner, The Rest Will Come, Hell Cat of the Holt and A Life Removed) and there are a few more books that I’m hoping to get reviews up for soon.

Before we get to the book, what’s it about?

Imagine you lose your mind… and something’s waiting to take its place.
Isobel Hickey’s husband, Richard, was intense, exciting and crazy, and she wants him back. The problem is she can’t have him: he died two years ago in circumstances too painful to remember. Now, she must keep going on for teenage children, Ben and Melissa, and her dog, Brodie. But how can she when nothing makes sense anymore? When she’s haunted by ghostly footprints in the snow, and a sinister stranger who knows too much about her?
When a mute old woman speaks from her death-bed, she plunges Isobel into terrifying danger, a nightmare chain of frightening events where Richard’s secrets lurk and threaten Isobel’s sanity. Now she has to fight to save her children from an insidious evil she doesn’t understand. She must uncover who, or what, is haunting her. But is she strong enough or will she succumb to its malevolent desire?

My thoughts about Fitful Head?

There are a lot of things to like about this book, but I struggled in places.

The things that stood out for me.

  • The opening section is great. The short punchy sentences work really well and are used to great effect here and in other similar passages throughout the book.
  • The prose is well written.
  • The cover suits the book perfectly.
  • The emotional fragility of the main character is nicely explored as the book progresses.
  • I liked not knowing what happened to the husband until the end. That added to the unease and suspense.

There were some things I wasn’t so keen on.

  • The timeline jumps around a lot. This was confusing at times and disrupted the flow of the text. Some of the flashbacks are preceded by a reference to set the scene up but I didn’t always catch them and had to keep checking back to work out what was going on.
  • Despite the main character’s emotional fragility being handled well, there were moments that I didn’t really understand why or what she was doing. The out of character behaviour may have been the point, but it didn’t always work well for me.
  • I wasn’t sure why some of the scenes were there – such as the events happening in the dog walking scenes. They make a little more sense towards the end of the book but while reading them they seemed unnecessary.
  • I would have preferred one POV throughout. As it is, there are only a few chapters which deviate from the main character and that change of perspective jarred.
  • The book is formatted as one long chapter, which makes flicking forwards and backwards hard.

All in all, Fitful Head is a slow read, a mix of a psychological thriller and a ghost story. It has a lot to recommend it  but I think it could have been so much better if it had been tightened up in places.

Three Stars.

If you want to read about the words behind the words, you can read an interview with the author here.

One Book Interview #26 – CJ Harter (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 #50 – David Hambling (Author)

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The One Book Interview hits its half-century this week and we have a great set of answers to celebrate.

(There may be a moderate amount of alcohol consumed sensibly later too.)

Author #50 is an author of both fiction and non-fiction.

His technology journalism has appeared in New Scientist magazine, Aviation Week, Popular Mechanics, WIRED, The Economist, The Guardian newspaper and others.

His novels have their roots in the myths and legends that stalk the streets and fields of South London.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Norwood, London – David Hambling

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a rip-roaring adventure – and arguably the first superhero story. The protagonist has multiple secret identities and the best technology money can buy, including ultra-accurate pistols and concealed body armor. But there’s more to it than simple adventure; it works on other levels as well, and as a study of the art of vengeance and its effect on the revenger it has never been bettered. It’s a real swashbuckler, but it is also a lot more, with some striking characters rather than just placeholders and truly memorable scenes.

Reading a work like this, you start to appreciate how the standard of popular fiction has declined over the last 170 years, and how much we can learn from earlier writers. Dickens and Shakespeare may not be to everyone’s taste, but Dumas is a joy. The phrase ‘entertainment for all ages’ fits perfectly.

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

You mean as well as the Bible and the complete Shakespeare?  (The traditional literary gifts on Desert Island Discs).

If I was marooned on Mars I probably wouldn’t survive long enough to do any reading, and if I did survive I would probably be concentrating on staying alive and getting home rather than poring over literary works…

…but if I had to pick a stunning, long book to re-read, I’d pick Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s an epic trans-European WWII sci-fi adventure with bizarre Nazi goings-on centered around the V-2 rocket attacks on London. It also manages to pack in esoteric lore, Pavlovian psychology, plenty of sex, and a great cast of characters. While the central story features a mission to discover the secret of a mystery device fitted to a V-2, subplots spin off in all directions. It’s a book that bears a lot of re-reading, and Mars – reached by rockets directly descended from the V-2 – might be a good place for it.

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

Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles may not look promising – you’ll find it in the literary fiction section. It’s a surreal horror story which starts with a missing cat and gets steadily darker and weirder as the protagonist’s wife vanishes, and he gradually learns more about the forces working against him. It all centers on an ancient well, now dry, which he descends and starts to dream strange dreams.

The evil is subtler and menacing than in in genre horror (though there is a certain amount of gore), and there’s an amazing flashback as one character recounts his experiences during the Japanese campaign in Manchuria during the 1930s. (Spoiler: it was not a happy time for any of those involved).  There is philosophy, but there are also surprising dashes of humour… one character’s impassioned diatribe about microwaved rice pudding reads like a stand-up comedy routine.

Murakami’s work also bears distinct traces of HP Lovecraft and his notion of Cosmic Horror, and for me that it very much a bonus.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Never ask a parent to choose between their children!

As an author you’re always going to be most excited about the one you’re writing now. I’m just in the final edit stages of Master of Chaos, the fourth of the Harry Stubbs series. This is a sci-fi adventure set in 1920’s London involving Cthulhu-mythos mischief, with the lead character going undercover to work in a mental institution. Madness and mayhem abound…as usual there was a mountain of research to be boiled down and distilled, and some complex plot mechanics going on, plus this time I tried to do something more ambitious with the writing itself.  Overall, I feel I’m getting better.

Hence, of the books that are in already in print the one to recommend is the third Harry Stubbs, Alien Stars, in which our hero is searching for what his employer believes to be the Holy Grail – and which turns out to be something far more alien, and far more dangerous to our world.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

“Godel Escher Bach: an eternal golden braid.” by Douglas Hofstader is perhaps the most mind-expanding book I have ever read. It takes some intriguing mathematical ideas, in particular self-reference and paradox and shows how they apply to everything from music to the way that DNA replicates, and of course Escher’s amazing ‘impossible’ images, taking in Zen, human (and artificial) intelligence, meaning and meaninglessness.

It’s a far more whimsical book than this bare summary makes it sound, with the subtitle “a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll,” and it is, to coin a phrase, a book that makes you think.

It even inspired some of the core ideas in my latest work, Master of Chaos.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Professionally, the most inspiring books are the bad ones. Reading a good book makes me think I should just give up; reading a terrible one makes me think, “dammit, I can writer better than this!” and inspires me to try.

For me, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a truly great bad book. It’s tautly written and the plot has you on the edge of your seat. It’s a real page turner…but the contrived plotting, cardboard characters and clunky dialogue had me howling with disbelief. (And don’t get me started on his legal but questionable misappropriation of the historical research by Baigent, Leigh and others).

I’m never going to write The Count of Monte Cristo, but I hope that any writer worth their salt who encounters Dan Brown will think “maybe I can do something in this vein, but not quite so terribly.”

To be fair, I have not read any of EL James ‘Fifty Shades’ series, so there may be even more stupendously great bad books out there, and I’m sure every reader will have their own favourite. I have enough inspiration for the meantime though, thanks.

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

That would have to be The Elder Ice. It’s short – barely a hundred pages – and introduces Harry Stubbs, a former heavyweight boxer and sometime debt collector in 1920s South London. Now trying to make it working for a legal firm. Harry is tasked with tracking down a legacy left by a polar explorer – real life Antarctic legend Ernest Shackleton, who lived in this area.

Shackleton left behind a pile a of debts and hints that he has discovered something valuable, and much of the story centers on the question of what he could have brought back which was worth more than its weight in gold…which also kills people…

You can find David here.

David Hambling aims to bring authentic 1920s Lovecraftian horror to Norwood, his corner of South London, a little-known and haunted place where taxis dare not go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Book Interview #49 – Jesse Teller (Author)

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A lover of dark fantasy. A rule-breaker. A writer.

But who better to introduce Author #49 than Author #49 himself.

“All my work is about hope. There are virtues in this world worth fighting for, things we can’t do without. I hope to inspire honor and vigilance. I hope to raise an awareness of innocence and its worth.”

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Missouri, the US – Jesse Teller.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

I’m gonna alter this question. I’m gonna say one book everyone should read if they like fantasy or plan on writing fantasy, and that is The Bloody Crown of Conan by Robert E. Howard. I just, I strongly believe that if you’re writing high fantasy you have to have a working knowledge of this book. Howard was the best. He wrote in the 1920s, and he was the original creator of Conan the Cimmerian. I learned about him in a literature class I took in college where we studied the story The Tower of the Elephant. All people who are thinking about getting into the fantasy genre should start there

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

We’ve already displayed that I’m a rulebreaker, so I’m gonna alter this question, too. I’m gonna go with the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. He was dark and twisted and insane and beautiful. He wrote some of the most horrifying stories that have ever been written by anyone, yet his work is so pristine that it is still studied in public high schools. State school curriculum is willing to say, “Yes, we know he married his 14-year-old cousin. Yes, we know he wrote a story about rats eating a person alive, but look at this prose.”

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

First I need to extend an apology. I’m sorry if you’re reading this, Mrs. Learmann. Please forgive me. My answer to this would be Wuthering Heights. English classic, dense prose, but it hits all the markers. Revenge, tragic love, innocence and darkness, it hits all the markers. I read it in high school. In doing that, I did just enough to pass, barely seeing the book for what it was. But I came back to it years later, as an adult. And if you haven’t read this book, it crosses genres. Writing does this thing where it likes to classify genres. So, it says, “This book is fantasy. This book is sci-fi. This book is romance.” But the one that pisses me off the most is, “This book is classic literature.” It’s like saying, “This book is good. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash.” High forms of art and low forms of art, classic literature being above everything else, in such a way that it makes us rebel against anything called classic literature. This book Wuthering Heights is a thriller. To call it anything else is to force a top hat on it. If you have not read this book, run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Favorite book that I’ve ever written is called Legends of the Exiles. It’s a complicated book. You have to really want it. It’s the story of four women. It’s a romance, it’s a tragedy, it’s high fantasy and action. Each story of each woman is a novella of its own. Their ages are designated by a timeline that runs through the whole book. Each novella could be read on its own, but when you read them all together, one will answer questions brought up by the others. One will expand the telling of a scene shared by a different novella. It’s a complicated book. It’s a book written for an advanced reader. I have to publish the rest of the trilogy I started in October. Those are my publications for 2018. But, when that trilogy is done I will be publishing Legends of the Exiles. So look for it April 15, 2019.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Paradise Lost. It’s not a book, it’s actually an epic poem. For this one, I have to thank Mrs. Learmann. There’s a scene where the angels rebelling against God have lost the war and have been tossed into Hell. They built a castle for themselves called Pandemonium, and in the throne room they have a huge meeting, all the demons and devils. They start planning out their next move. Moloch is a massive warrior and he wants to charge Heaven again, wants to lead all the demons back into war. Belial, another arch devil, wants to go apologize to God and beg and scrape. Satan is whispering in Beelzebub’s ear, and gets him to speak for him. Beelzebub speaks of revenge. He speaks of corrupting God’s favorite child, Adam, destroying the thing God loves most. When I was reading this, I was thinking about destiny. I was thinking about freedom of choice, or whether our lives are handed down by mandate. Here are a collection of demons, damned and imprisoned, and yet they still have freedom of choice to plot out their next move. It gave me an understanding that we can’t blame the choices we make on the people in our lives, or the gods or demons we choose to worship. And at any point, we can turn it all around, or we could burn it all to the ground.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

I’m gonna say George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. When I was first learning how to write a book, I was all over the place, swinging wild, one point of view for two or three paragraphs, then switch to another, then yet another, then back to the sixth. It was a disaster. So, my first book had over 15 point of view characters. It was unreadable. Then Martin came in, showed me precision point of view, and showed me that there was no topic too tragic, no scene too horrible to be included in dark fantasy. He anointed me a dark fantasy writer, and gave his blessing for all the most diabolical acts and horrible scenes I could imagine.

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

Start with Legends of Perilisc. It’s short, 170 pages. It’s a short story collection that will acquaint the reader with the creation of the world, the creation of the races, and the rise from the darkest ages. It’ll also show my writing style and ability. It’s a short commitment that will prepare you to read more.

You can find Jesse here.

Jesse Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between man and woman, to studying the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller uses his stories and settings to study real-world themes and issues.

 

 

 

 

One Book Interview #46 – Frank Dorrian (Author)

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Other than a love for reading (and a bloody-minded persistence*), there isn’t a particular type of person that writes, no easy pigeon hole for, or set of ingredients that go into making an author.

Author #46 is no different.

Describing himself as ‘a veteran observer of the world,’ #46 has competed internationally as a Muay Thai fighter, worked as a mental health nurse, and now works for a specialist unit for those with financial problems.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Liverpool, UK – Frank Dorrian.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The most recent one that springs to mind would be Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. It’s an awesome book that I think will strike a note with fans of all branches of fantasy. It’s not overly complex story-wise, in fact I’d say its astoundingly simple, but it gives plenty of room for the characters to shine, which is where the book’s strengths lie.

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

Something fat. Like, p h a t. Probably something from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, as I should probably read beyond the first book at some point.

I actually took three huge tomes with me to Thailand in 2015 when I was training for a fight there for a month – Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan, The Shadow Throne by Django Wexler and The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence. I finished ‘em all in about three and a half weeks, fought, lost, and spent the rest of my free time nursing bruises and drinking cheap beer in 40 degree heat.

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

The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. I’m not into imperialist/colonialist era stuff, reminds me way too much of Sharpe-style stuff which I’m just not a fan of, but The Thousand Names was awesome. Very different book, and after reading about swords and shields and spears and bows for years on end, reading about muskets was actually pretty refreshing.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

I would say my first book, The Shadow of the High King, which I published in August 2016. It took 14 months to write and another 10 to edit and redraft, as it’s a t h i c k  book, but I had a beast of a time writing it in a way that I’ve never had since.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

More than likely The Hobbit, if I’m honest. It was the first real fantasy book I chose to read when I was about 12, way before The Lord of the Rings films were kicking about. I picked it up from the school library after my dad said I should read it and finished it in about 2 days, after that I picked up his old copies of The Lord of the Rings and fantasy just sort of became my thing, even if Tolkienesque fantasy no longer is.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Definitely Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. It wasn’t my introduction to grimdark, but it was certainly my introduction to a poetic, philosophical form of grimy fantasy, one with emotional depth. It was enough to inspire me to start writing again after 10 years away from the keyboard.

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’m not sure how my readers’ opinions would fall upon this, but personally I’d actually say my most recent book, Scars of the Sand. It’s book 2 of my series of shorter standalones, Tales of the Blackshield Dogs, and something of a prelude to the central story arc in The Shadow of the High King.

You can find Frank at www.frankdorrian.wordpress.com

Frank Dorrian was born in 1987 in Liverpool – his hometown, a post-industrial cityscape, served as poignant inspiration for his creative efforts. He would commence writing in earnest during his teenage years, composing stories to sate desires of both expression and introspection.

Formerly a qualified mental health nurse working with people suffering severe psychiatric and psychological disorders, today Frank works in a specialist role supporting and educating vulnerable people through financial difficulty.

When not writing, Frank spends his spare time reading, playing computer games and attending a martial arts gym. He has previously competed as a fighter domestically in the UK and abroad in Thailand.

 

 

*Don’t believe me? Try writing a book.

 

 

 

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)

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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.)

 

 

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