Andy Graham Author

Author of dark fiction and fantasy, dystopia, horror.

horror

One Book Interview #55 – Allan Batchelder (Author)

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#55 is here.

Actor. Comedian. Teacher. Writer. Author. Curmudgeon.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Seattle – Allan Batchelder

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Everyone? Huh. Everyone. Okay, I’m just gonna pull something outta my…past: Watership Down. Or The Little Prince. Okay, that’s two books. Hey, I’m a writer, not a mathematician.

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

The Complete Works of Shakespeare. You’ve got History, Tragedy, Comedy and Romance (Fantasy, sorta). And sonnets and epic poems. Enough to keep you busy for a looooooong time.

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

The Elfin Ship, by James Blaylock.  It’s his first book, and I read it when it came out, so I don’t know if it still holds up. But I loved his sense of adventure and humor. Now, he’s a leading figure in Steampunk.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite


I often think the second book in my series – the one that gets the least love – is my favorite. As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) As one of my colleagues noted, it sort of combines fantasy with a detective mystery.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Conan, by Robert E. Howard. I think I read this when I was 12 or thirteen (filched from my dad’s reading pile).

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Man, that is a tough one. It’s either The Black Company by Glen Cook or Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.

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 be Immortal Treachery Book 1: Steel, Blood & Fire

You can find Allan here.

Allan is a professional actor, educator, writer and former stand-up comedian. During his years on stage, he’s gotten to participate in countless battles – some even with other people – involving longswords, rapiers, daggers, staves, pistols, bottles, loaves of French bread and, of course, his grimy little fists. Allan is a lifelong fan of epic fantasy and horror, so you can just imagine how much he loves Grimdark. He’s currently working on the fifth and final book in his series, Immortal Treachery, before he tries his hand at a) steampunk and b) horror. His books are available in paperback and kindle formats on Amazon. Allan lives in Seattle, within a few miles of the two richest men on Earth and can thereby assure you that there’s no such thing as financial osmosis

 

 

 

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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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One Book Interview #45 – Ty Arthur (Author)

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Metalhead.

Gamer.

Author.

And now winner of the best answer to question one to date!

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Great Falls, Montana – Ty Arthur.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

This is a really subjective issue, since obviously not all readers are going to love the same style of writing or be interested in the same subject matter. I could say start off The Song Of Ice and Fire saga with first entry A Game Of Thrones, but not everyone wants to read about royal incest and the good guy getting his head chopped off because he wasn’t conniving enough (although those people would, of course, be wrong). I could recommend trying out Malazan or Wheel Of Time, but not everyone wants to get dragged through a never-ending mammoth fantasy series that becomes a marathon to finish. I could say that people should see where cosmic horror got its legs with Lovecraft or Chambers, but the dense style and off hand racism from another era would be off-putting to many modern readers. No matter what book I think is perfect, someone out there would be able to discover flaws or find it just doesn’t suit their tastes.

Rather than giving a specific title, I’d say the one book everyone needs to read is an indie book from a self-published author or someone on a small time publisher. While there are literary disasters out there to be avoided (that were rejected by all the publishers for very good reasons), I absolutely guarantee if you dive into the indie world you will find a book that’s leagues ahead of anything published by King, Jordan, Sanderson, and so on. Spend some time joining online groups of readers and writers in whatever genre you prefer, whether that’s urban fantasy, grimdark, sci-fi romance, or whatever, and you will find a book that you didn’t know you couldn’t live without.

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

When it comes to re-reading books, I find I usually only devour a fiction novel once or at most twice, but I really like diving back into RPG manuals again and again, especially if they are heavy on the story fluff (as opposed to the mechanics crunch) and marry their substance with a distinctive style. If I could only read one book over and over again while stuck on Mars, it would have to be something that was visually interesting and had themes I wanted to keep going back to, so I’d probably pick something like Earthdawn, Warhammer 40: Dark Heresy, or perhaps one of the many Call Of Cthulhu tabletop RPG iterations.

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

Back in high school years ago, I picked up The Gathering Dark by Jeff Grubb, which is a tale of a magician’s apprentice trying to stay alive during Dominaria’s Ice Age when a powerful religious group is busy persecuting wizards. To be blunt, novels based on game franchises like Magic The Gathering or Forgotten Realms are often terrible, so that was a gamble. The book has always stuck with me over the years though, both for its interesting commentary on real world groups, and for its usage of game mechanics to bring scenes to life. A segment where wizards of various colors are trying to vex each other in entertaining ways at a fest hall – like reanimating the chicken through necromancy – has always stayed with me as a great example of how to use a setting’s quirks to your advantage.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

My fiction, whether short stories for anthologies or stand alone novels, is always based on a personal experience that gets translated into a fictional medium like horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. Almost universally, its the negative experiences that provide the most drive to write, so honestly I couldn’t say that any of the books I’ve written are my “favorite” in the sense that I actually enjoyed them.

If I had to pick one of these vile, misbegotten bastards though, I’d probably have to go with my short story A Church Full Of Lovers, which features an atheist, an agnostic, and a true believer all experiencing a terrible apocalypse together. It was the first short I actually put serious effort into and intended other people to read, and it has a revolving perspective mechanic that makes it quite different from many of my other releases.

The anthology that A Church Full Of Lovers eventually landed in is no longer available, but a revamped version of the story will be making an appearance in an upcoming release that goes a direction readers may not be expecting.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

There are a lot of books I could list here that had big impacts on me, from Seyonne’s tale of being relentlessly downtrodden in Carl Berg’s Transformation, to the surprising revelations and genre mixing in C.S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising, to the unforgettable portrayal of the devil and his motivations in Anne Rice’s Memnoch The Devil. The collision of punny humor with fantasy storytelling in the Xanth series also played a big role in crafting my early years.

Going back the farthest though, I’d have to say the book that influenced me most as a person was Redwall, as that was probably the book that most ignited my imagination and made me fall in love with fiction in general and fantasy in particular as a kid. I think its safe to say I wouldn’t be a roleplayer, an author, or an all around geek today if it weren’t for those books. That love really got a surprise re-ignition with the Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 graphic novel when I discovered it out of the blue at my local library years ago, and I highly recommend it to anyone of any age.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Although I don’t try to emulate his writing style at all, a book that strongly influenced me as an author would have to be Clive Barker’s Weaveworld. The mashup of fantasy with horror in a modern day setting showed me that you don’t always have to color within the genre lines, and there’s plenty of room for characters and themes from one genre to land in another.

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 place to start with me is definitely my grimdark fantasy / cosmic horror mashup Light Dawning that released back in May. Its a story that turns the standard fantasy tropes on their heads, so don’t go in expecting to meet any chosen one farm boys, brash rogues that evade the authorities and get the girl, or wise old wizards who will help the underdogs save the world.

Most of my other work is currently unavailable or about to become unavailable as contracts with publishers end and I re-launch as an indie self-published author. Those stories are all getting ready to be released again with new covers in the near future.

You can find Ty at www.tyarthur.wordpress.com

Ty Arthur has the good fortune to meld his passions and hobbies with his work while freelancing for the likes of Metalunderground, GameSkinny, and WorldStart.

He’s been busy writing a variety of gaming, heavy metal, and tech-themed columns since 2008.

Following a string of anthology appearances, Arthur’s debut standalone sci-fi / horror novella “Empty” was released in early 2016, with many more dark tales still to come.

 

Arthur writes to exorcise his demons and lives in the cold, dark north with his amazing wife Megan and infant son Gannicus Picard.

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One Book Interview #44 – JR Rice (Author)

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I read Dracula when I was about fourteen years old. I did it in one sitting because I wanted to know how it ended before I tried to sleep.

I have a feeling that if I read author 44’s books, I’d need to do the same thing.

(Or at least read them in a country where the sun never sets.)

Good people of the Internet, writing on an island, near a dark forest, by moonlight – J.R. Rice.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

First published in 1954, it was a novel ahead of its time. I consider it the patriarch of all vampire/zombie/end-of-the-world apocalyptic novels. Famed writer/director George A. Romero claimed Matheson’s novel was his primary inspiration for his 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead.”

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

Spacecraft Repair for Dummies by Jerry Rigg.

Alternatively, if that doesn’t work out:

Zen and the Art of Whiskey Making by Glen Livet

All lame attempts at humor aside, I would have to go with Stephen King’s “It” for content, length, and re-readability factor.

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

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.

It was first published in 1968 by the Berkley: University of California Press as a work of anthropology, and submitted as the author’s Master’s thesis, although many people—including myself—contend that it is mostly a work of fiction.

The story documents the events that took place during an apprenticeship—by the author—with a self-proclaimed Yaqui Indian Sorcerer, don Juan Matus from Sonora, Mexico between 1960 and 1965.

It’s a fascinating and moving blend of fact and fiction with regard for Nagualism, and other Native American/Mesoamerican folklore.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

I’m a new writer, so I’ve only written two novels. The second book in my Bane County Series “Bane County: Returning Moon” is my favorite, so far.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

It would be a toss-up between Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

I would say that the writing style of Michael Crichton in novels such as “Jurassic Park” influenced me most. Crichton’s seamless blend of science fact and science fiction make your “suspension of disbelief” almost unnecessary.

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 first book in my Bane County Series is “Bane County: Forgotten Moon.” Readers should start there.

You can find JR here.

J R Rice is the author and creator of Bane County: a horror/suspense/thriller series.

Book One and Two of the Series are available now:

Bane County: Forgotten Moon (Book 1)

Bane County: Returning Moon (Book 2)

Book Three is currently underway:

Bane County: First Moon (Book 3)

 

An Active Member of the Horror Writers Association, he lives on a large island, near the edge of a dark forest, with his beautiful wife, unruly children, dogs that he loves and cats that he tolerates, and one very nasty monster who lives under his bed and never shuts up.

He enjoys interacting with readers, so please feel free to join him at:

www.Facebook.com/JRRiceAuthor

(Fan page) Facebook.com/jrricefanpage

Twitter.com/jrriceauthor

Amazon.com/author/jrrice

Plus.google.com/+JRRiceAuthor

Instagram.com/JRRiceAuthor

Goodreads.com/JRRICE

Youtube.com/c/JRRiceAuthor

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One Book Interview #43 – Brian Barr (Author)

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The One Book Interview train rumbles relentlessly on, and this week we have . . .

A speculative fiction author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

A lover of dystopian, Orwell, weird sci fi and the occult.

An artist and author.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of somewhere in the US (I have no idea where!) – Brian Barr

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Otherland by Tad Williams. I am a writer who loves to mix genre and I love epic writing as well. Tad’s Otherland mixes genre on an expert level- it’s a science-fiction book, but there are fantasy elements, and fantastic world building. The characterization is believable and intriguing. His chapter cliffhangers are exciting, and each chapter just makes you want to read more. His series wrapped up perfectly and it seemed he took the time to comb through his series as expertly as possible, to tie up all ends and make such a complex story complete.

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

Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams. It’s a great space opera and probably the first sci-fi novel I read. I’d have to read something science-fiction based while leaving the planet.

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

A Clockwork Orange. I found it in my uncle’s old room at my grandparent’s house when I was about 15 or so. It became one of my favorite books. Just the way Anthony Burgess plays with language is incredible.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

That would be a mix between Serpent King: Shadow and Light, which is my latest novel, and Carolina Daemonic Book II: Rebel Hell, which is currently being edited by Leza Cantoral. Serpent King was my chance to play with science-fantasy and tell an epic tale in a standalone novel that may or may not have future books to follow it. Book II: Rebel Hell is the second book of my Carolina Daemonic series, and hits on a lot of dark themes with the world building already established from the first book, so I’m able to dive into a lot of action and wild scenes in the second book while continuing a through, complex story with difficult politics.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Wow. That’s a hard one. Maybe The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky because it looked at a variety of personalities and gave a deep analysis of where all the characters were coming from, why they thought the way they did, why they chose certain actions. That book helped me understand that everyone’s different, and what may work for one person may not work for another.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

So many books. I think the main book that hit on the what I wanted to write was The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker, which I read in high school. I knew I liked horror, and although I hadn’t gotten heavy into epic fantasy, I knew I liked fantasy. Clive Barker was the first author who showed me the main way I like to write- horror and dark fiction mixed with fantasy and occult themes, with a flair for philosophical probing and interest in art, the act of creating itself. Clive just seemed like a natural influence on me. I grew up with Stephen King in the house, and though I love King, it was Clive who showed me horror that was “my” horror.

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 have three novels out, and a variety of short stories out at the moment. I would like people to read my latest novel, Serpent King: Shadow and Light, to get familiar with my genre mixing, characterization, and world-building. You can get it on Amazon.

Then, I would ask that people check out Carolina Daemonic: Confederate Shadows, which was my debut novel and the first of my Carolina Daemonic series. This book tackles heavy social and political issues. It has a prosier start than my following novels; I like that about it, since I had to discuss and cover a lot of ground to build a dystopian world that is not that different from our own. As an Orwell fan and a lover of alternative timelines, I was drawn towards making my own dystopian fiction. Carolina Daemonic mixes steampunk, the occult, and weird science in an urban horror-fantasy hybrid. Like Serpent-King, it’s multigenre. I also have a lot of short stories in this series as well.

 

You can find Brian at: www.brianbarrbooks.com

Sunlight hits the tapestry of ovular golden designs stretched across the outside of opulent dome-shaped ruins on my home world, possessed by Reptilian poltergeists. I revisit this planet often, the cradle of my origins, and the remaining puzzle piece of the people responsible for half of my ancestry. I am reckless and ashamed inside whenever I sojourn to this wretched ball, so I mustn’t stay long. If I do, then I’ll smash down more walls, cause damage to a few more palaces, and continue to endanger the preservation of this place’s essential yet painful history.

My tortured, tragic beginnings were composed upon Naga, the planet’s interlaced lands and oceans ruled by the greatest civilization of the Draco constellation. My Reptilian people taught me how to hunt, strike, and kill. They showed me how to conquer. In return, I killed them all. Vengeance was the reason behind their demise, for they did more to me and my parents than they did for us, but I often wonder if the annihilation of my people was truly worth it.

Possibly not, if the visions of my mother and father are to be trusted. Their ghosts seem to be lost within the ghostly soup of this possessed planet, contaminated with the shared suffering and agony of serpentine spirits trapped on the once grand world of Naga. My vengeance was in their honor more than my own. If they are truly underworld slaves here, then this planet has every right to shame me.

Truly, I am the greatest subjugator ever spawned from the Reptilians. Naga should be a trophy on my cosmic mantelpiece, a triumphant reminder of my first success as a solitary conquistador. Instead, it is a contaminated burden, adulterated with memories that, akin to the birth world in my collection, I can never let go of, ultimately. My blood and past will always bond me to Naga, for I am Zian Axakil Din’amu Ur, born a commander general’s son, reborn as the Serpent King

Cosmic colonialism, extremist planetary nationalism, and alien genocide are abound in the Dracos Constellation, where the Reptilians rule without mercy. Enter Serpent King, a dark occult science-fantasy novel following the origins of Zian Ur, the last of the Nagans and a cosmic conquistador with a unique destiny.

 

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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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