I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for The Salt Marsh by Clare Carson. The Salt Marsh was published by Head of Zeus on 16th June 2016 and is available for purchase in e-book, hardback and paperback from Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smith and directly from the publisher as well as to order from all good bookshops.

Today Clare has kindly provided Linda’s Book Bag with a guest post all about the inspiration of birds and her protagonist Sam.

The Salt Marsh

A haunting thriller set in the windswept marshes of Kent and Norfolk, from the author of Orkney Twilight

It is a year since Sam’s father died, but she cannot lay his ghost to rest. Jim was an undercover agent living a double life, and Sam has quit university to find out the truth about his work. Her journey will take her from the nightclubs of 80s Soho to the salt marshes and shingle spits of Norfolk and Kent. Here, in a bleak windswept landscape dotted with smugglers’ huts and

buried bones, Jim’s secret past calls to her like never before. Now Sam must decide. Will she walk away and pick up her own life? Or become an undercover operative herself and continue her father’s work in the shadows…

Sam And Her Barn Owl

A Guest Post by Clare Carson

Birds feature in both the novels I have written – Orkney Twilight and The Salt Marsh. These are stories about Sam, the daughter of a police spy. The links between birdwatching and spying are numerous. Many spies have been keen birdwatchers. The quiet skills of observation and identification are common to both. In spying slang, a birdwatcher is a spy. But the main reason birds appear in my books is because a sense of place is part of all thrillers and, as far as I’m concerned, birds are part of every place.

I love watching birds, but I’m no twitcher – I don’t always have a pair of binoculars to hand and I wouldn’t go out of my way to spot a rare species. I prefer the serendipity of finding birds in unexpected places. I came across an off-course whimbrel in London’s Saint James’ Park when I was taking a breather from the office because I was fed up with my job. I was eyeballed by a kestrel which had landed on the balcony of my south London flat one morning when I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was doing there. A head-banging pileated woodpecker cheered me up when it appeared in the garden of the unfurnished Washington D.C. house I’d just moved to, after travelling across the Atlantic with two toddlers in tow.

In The Salt Marsh, Sam feels a particular kinship with barn owls. I’ve had three close encounters with a barn owl. The first was on holiday in Corsica with my husband, tipsily swaying back late one night from a restaurant along a dark mountain road, we almost tripped over a pair of round eyes staring up from the tarmac. A barn owl chick had fallen from its nest, Disneyesque in its white, fluffy cuteness. We stood guard, flagging down approaching cars and asking them to wait as it took its bearings, hopped away and disappeared in the maquis.  The second barn owl was in Norfolk. We had been to visit an old friend who had bought a house in the middle of nowhere. Driving back in the dark we lost our way, pulled over to look at the map and caught the wise bird in the headlights, sitting on a gate post. It couldn’t be bothered to budge and watched with disdain as we argued about which C road we were on.

The third barn owl was in Norfolk again – out on the north coast. The first evening of a summer holiday after a tetchy day stuck in traffic, I dragged my family with me for a walk. As we reached the path across the marsh, the ghostly bird swept by our heads, its blunt face glowing in the dusk. It stopped and hovered a few feet further on, wings flittering like a moth, before it gave up on whatever creature it had been tracking, swooped away and vanished in the dark. When I was searching for a bird which would provide Sam with solace in The Salt Marsh, this was the one that appeared in my mind.

About Clare Carson

Clare Carson is an anthropologist and works in international development, specialising in human rights. Her father was an undercover policeman in the 1970s. She drew on her own experiences to create the character of Sam, a rebellious eighteen year old who is nevertheless determined to make her father proud.

You can follow Clare on Twitter and find out more with these other bloggers:

Although it doesn’t feel like it, I’ve only been blogging just over a year which means that I have missed several great books and today I’m featuring one of those that slipped past without me noticing it last year. Valerie-Anne Balietto’s Four Sides to Every Story was published by Novelistas Ink on 24th June 2015 and I’m delighted to have a slightly belated guest blog from Valerie-Anne to celebrate that birthday.

Four Sides to Every Story is available for purchase here.

Four Sides to Every Story

If you found ‘the one’ would you know it straight away, or would you need a little push in the right direction?

What if there was someone like Lily Rose Whyte in your life, whose sole aim was to help you? Someone who could jiggle fate and fortune in your favour, without you even realising.

And what if you live in a sleepy Cheshire village where nothing much seems to happen, except suddenly one summer, everything does. Your life is turned upside down and inside out. As we all know, love has a habit of doing that.

But hold on. Slow down. Because what if – for once – Lily’s got it wrong? About as wrong as she can get. What would you do then?

Don’t worry, though. Life isn’t a fairy tale, and magic doesn’t exist. So, as long as you don’t read this book, and you never meet Lily Rose Whyte, you’re perfectly safe.

Aren’t you…?

In Praise of the Fairy Story

A Guest Post by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

I’ve always had a fascination for fairy tales, which isn’t surprising really, as they’re the first stories we usually hear as children. They’ve beguiled their way into many a wannabe writer’s head, and even when, as adults, the trappings of the stories are shrugged away, the basic plotlines will always remain. Writers use them without realising most of the time. As a child, before Enid Blyton came into my life, my shelves groaned with Ladybird books, bought as little treats and rewards by my parents. But one of the most influential books of my childhood came from a family friend. To this day it’s a firm favourite, and one I’ll always have out on display. A compilation of fairy tales sensitively retold by Bridget Hadaway, with the most beautiful illustrations – just look at that fairy godmother’s hat!

I think most of us are aware of the long evolution of folk tales and fables over the centuries, so for the purpose of this post, I’m focussing on the versions in living memory. I’m also not going to drone on about feminism, because I think these stories have been analysed to death on this score. I read them as a child, and I didn’t grow up waiting for some man to save me. I’m in favour of the sexes helping each other equally – or is that too radical an opinion?

I also don’t think watching Disney Princess movies is warping my daughter in any way, although there’s a philosophy that opines differently. The girls are the main characters, aren’t they? They do things that I admire. Walk into parties on their own without flinching. Stand up to beastly men and even more beastly older women. Read a lot to expand their minds. Sing loudly in public places, often to wildlife, unfazed by the fact someone might hear them. They fall in love, and are loved in return, and they make sacrifices for those they love, be they lovers or family members. For pity’s sake, let’s not get nitpicky. Let’s just have fun and enjoy them.

Love and sacrifice go very much hand in hand in my books, too, with the sacrifice usually securing some sort of redemption and the happy ending we’ve come to expect. I think that’s one of the reasons we need fairy tales in our lives. Even the simplest of them carry a moral, a message. Of course, the morals used to be depicted in a much darker way in the earlier tales, and the cautionary messages have evolved to keep up with the times.

My readers want the enchantment I try to inject into my books, and I know this because they often tell me so, but at the same time I like to give them something to chew on. The idea for a novel entitled Four Sides to Every Story came to me early in 2012, and as the concept snowballed over the next few months, I began to think of who the four narrators would be. It was always going to be embedded in the real world but with recognisable fairy tale elements, although not all the narrators would necessarily be reliable. A fashionable trend nowadays, as any bookworm will know, yet why should they be the prerogative of psychological thrillers? I decided I wanted to have a castle in the book, and set it in a picturesque village called Fools Castle (fictional, but located in Cheshire). There would be a ‘wicked’ stepmother. A cottage with wisteria curled around the door. An overgrown garden. A girl with ridiculously long hair. A lonely widower and an independent, dauntless heroine… Ideas from my childhood storybooks, basically. But once I’d set it all up, I wanted to divert the reader down a different path from the one they might have been expecting.

I think the notion of a fairy godmother being one of the main characters came from sitting around munching popcorn and devouring Disney movies with my daughter (terrible mother that I am). Movies like Enchanted, Tangled, Frozen, and especially Maleficent – which is Sleeping Beauty retold from the ‘evil’ fairy’s point of view. We also went to see the musical Wicked last year, which portrays the story of the Wizard of Oz from a different perspective. Although I’d finished writing Four Sides to Every Story by then, watching Wicked struck a chord. I had tried to do the same thing with my own story: subvert the plot, mess around with the old expectations, show how a familiar storyline can be turned on its head when narrated from a different character’s perspective.

While Four Sides to Every Story isn’t a retelling of an actual fairy tale, it probably references Cinderella the most, although it’s definitely not another in a long line of ‘Cinderella stories’. I think it’s safe to say we all know the recognisable thread of a fairy tale, and the way the story ought to unfold. But this time, it doesn’t. It starts going very wrong. The path to true love becomes treacherously rocky. And, oh, the fun I had once I got into my stride writing it!

And finding true love isn’t the end of the adventure. It’s really just a beginning. I hadn’t intended to write a sequel, but when my initial batch of readers came back to me to say they wanted more, my characters seemed to concur. The more I was asked, the more ideas that developed to take my story forward. So now I have a notebook full of fresh plot strands, and a prologue and an epilogue that have already made me cry. When I’m ready, and finished with my current project, I will be sitting down and filling in all the space in between.

To be honest, part of me is impatient to get back to Fools Castle. In a way, it’s a kind of homesickness. The book I’m working on now is more issue driven, and being written under a pen-name, and while it’s stretching me as a writer (always a good thing) I’m beginning to yearn to get lost in a good old fairy tale again. We all need to get lost in them sometimes. To be transported back to the thrill we felt when we were discovering the joy of reading for the first time. As adult bookworms, I think we get a unique kick from the memory of curling up in our comfiest childhood nook, learning to navigate a world of books, of imagination, of hope. I love being reminded of that. Sometimes, all it takes is a modern story to mention a glass slipper or an enchanted mirror, in passing, and I’m whisked back to that cosy childhood nook again.

Almost as if, by magic…

About Valerie-Anne Baglietto

Valerie-Anne Baglietto wrote her first ‘book’ aged four. A story about a boy whose mother’s nose was incredibly long and spiral-shaped. Over twenty years later, her first published novel The Wrong Sort of Girl won the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writer’s Award. Recently she was shortlisted in the 2105 Love Stories Awards.

Valerie-Anne contributes to the Novelistas Ink blog and lives in a very full house in North Wales. By day, she can be found hunched over her desk, where, like most writers, she consumes too much coffee. By night, she clears up after her husband, three children, a Pomeranian with delusions of grandeur and a perpetually ravenous guinea pig.

Occasionally she sleeps.

Find out more by visiting Valerie-Anne’s website, reading the Novelistas blog and following her on Twitter.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Daisy James at an author and blogger get together and she’s absolutely lovely, so it gives me enormous pleasure to be part of the paperback launch celebrations for her latest novel If The Dress Fits. If The Dress Fits is published by Carina and is available in e-book now and in paperback from 14th July 2016. If The Dress Fits can be bought here.

Today Daisy is explaining all about the inspiration for If The Dress Fits in a very personal guest blog.

If The Dress Fits

She might be the most famous person in the country, but no one even knows her name…

Callie’s exquisite, glittering silk gown has been shortlisted for the celebrity wedding of the year. But just as all her dreams are coming true, disaster strikes!

Leaving behind the bright lights of London, Callie is forced to return home to sleepy Althorpe. And there’s one man she hopes to avoid – the childhood sweetheart who turned her life upside down. But now she’s back, is it finally time to stop running?

Yet, as Callie faces her past, a Cinderella-like hunt begins for that perfect, pearl-embroidered dress, mysteriously submitted without a name…

The Magical Emporium

A Guest Post from Daisy James

“You can take a girl out of Yorkshire, but you can’t take Yorkshire out of a girl”

I’m proud of being ‘a Yorkshire lass’ as my father used to call me, so I just had to set one of my stories in my home county. I grew up in a tiny village near Knaresborough in North Yorkshire very similar to Allthrope in my new novel, If The Dress Fits. The village had a few shops; a baker’s, a hardware store, a florist’s, but the magical emporium that drew me to its window every day on my way home from school was not the sweet shop, but the haberdashery shop.

Perhaps this particular fascination with becoming an all-round seed pearl Princess was inevitable – hardwired into my genes, you might say – as my mother, before she was married, worked in the haberdashery department of a large department store. She too loved nothing better than to immerse herself in a pile of fluffy fabrics or a pyramid of yarn. One of my most abiding memories is of my mother laughing as she related  her favourite story about the diverse questions, posed mostly by men, that would send her, and her young colleagues, off into fits of inappropriate giggles:

Is this the department where I can get felt?

Or  

Can I get felt here?

So, I would stare through the dusty window – sometimes it would have a sheet of yellow cellophane draped over it to protect the display from harsh sunlight which was an event in itself – and dream of the weekend when my Mum would take me to the little haberdashery shop to spend my pocket money on a length of ribbon or a card of pearly buttons. My sister thought I was crazy, her pocket money was reserved only for the very best mix-up the sweet shop had to offer!

I would take my time deciding what to choose, marvelling at the spools of ribbons, intricate lace and trimmings neatly displayed in a kaleidoscope of colours, at the zips dangling from the carousels like lizard’s tongues alongside the elastic and press-studs. I’d run my fingers over the various yarns – mostly natural wools, cottons or mohairs – none of that modern acrylic my grandmother would swear could give you an electric shock. I was truly in my personal version of paradise as I flicked through the pattern books to select a cardigan that maybe one day, in the distant future, I might be able to attempt myself.

Many of these little jewels of the high street have disappeared now – I know my childhood Aladdin’s Cave has – to be replaced by trendy wine bars and the ubiquitous coffee shops. But maybe, just maybe, there is an upsurge of interest in all types of crafting, not just of the knitting and sewing variety, but of embroidering, cross-stitching, card-making, not to mention the current obsession with all thinks culinary. I, for one, celebrate that renewed passion for hand-made items, for there is nothing better than spending a quiet half hour clicking the needles to disperse the stresses of a busy day at the computer screen.

Want to know what I’m knitting now?

What do you think?

I’d love to hear about your own projects.

About Daisy James

Daisy James is a Yorkshire girl transplanted to the north east of England. She loves writing stories with strong heroines and swift-flowing plotlines. When not scribbling away in her peppermint-and-green summerhouse (garden shed), she spends her time sifting flour and sprinkling sugar and edible glitter. Her husband and young son were willing samplers of her baking creations which were triple-tested for her debut novel, The Runaway Bridesmaid. She loves gossiping with friends over a glass of something pink and fizzy or indulging in a spot of afternoon tea – china plates and teacups are a must.

You can find all Daisy’s books here and you can find Daisy on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

There’s more about, and from, Daisy with these other bloggers:

With such a personal backround to the story, it gives me great pleasure to be part of the launch celebrations for The Eden Tree by Peter Worthington. The Eden Tree is published by Clink Street Publishing on 19th July 2016 in e-book and paperback and is available to purchase from online retailers including Amazon and to order from all good bookstores.

Today, Peter is telling Linda’s Book Bag readers all about why he prefers to write from a hero’s perspective.

The Eden Tree

Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” John James Morgan knew the day he was born. Two days before his sixty-first birthday he found out why.

John is a happily married businessman, father and grandfather, living in Cheshire, in the heart of England. Happy, that is, until his family face a crisis. A terminal one. At the local market, a flower-seller tells John a story that changes his life. Assured his destiny is in his own hands, John crosses the globe in pursuit of a religious artefact which has remained hidden for two thousand years. Presented with an antique box containing maps, parchments and a bag of leaves, John returns to the UK and witnesses a miracle. With the box in his possession, John and his family find new friends and enemies; lives are threatened and people die, although some will be healed. With the help of many different people, from all walks of life, John’s journey will finally lead him to the discovery of an extraordinary and mysterious tree. But what will this Eden tree mean to John, his family, their faith and their future?

The Eden Tree is author Peter Worthington’s first novel; a fictional account based on his own experiences with his son, John Wesley, who underwent treatment for cancer but sadly passed away shortly after his seventh birthday. The Eden Tree has allowed Peter to give his much-loved son “a happier ending.”

Heroes or Villains? Which is easier to write and why?

A Guest Post from Peter Worthington

The question appears easy to answer but actually isn’t. Even with a central hero in a storyline an author needs to make a backdrop for that heroism. In that backdrop there is often the murky world of the villain. For a writer I find it a bit like cleaning the drain. We know it’s unpleasant but the job has to be done. Once the depraved character has spoken and behaved wickedly I can leave the stench and debris behind. Preferably on the page and not in my life!

An author has to write with authenticity from several points of view. I prefer to write as a main character as a hero, a protagonist who may have several villains hindering his quest. Their villainy becomes part of the plot. Will our hero foil them? Or will he become like them?

It forms easier in my mind to imagine my character as a good guy as that is how I see myself! Often as an author I need to explore “the dark side” but don’t like to remain in that mind-set. Does it taint an author when he or she steps into the villain’s shoes? Can a writer imagine evil deplorable deeds and behave in print as villainous and then easily switch to the hero? I suppose since childhood we have developed play-acting skills and can disassociate ourselves from the hateful villain.

It is heart-warming when a reader tells me that they appreciate a character. In my writing I try to reveal the caring hero. One who feels he serves a higher good. But I am aware that some characters in my novel are repulsive and I hope readers don’t believe that I admire those evildoers. Soap opera stars who play the villain are vilified in real life. That is scary!

In case anyone thinks I am becoming a monk, I have written short stories with my main character as a villain. For example, “The cell was eight feet wide” was about a man escaping from jail. Despite his unsavoury character I had one reader tell me she admired him and wanted another episode! In another flash fiction: “Insanity: my family says I am” a teenager escapes from an asylum and creates chaos. The surprise ending shocked many readers.

Often in writing an author will have his protagonist make choices. A hero will make the brave, praiseworthy and altruistic choices. I believe that readers feel better when they see that despite some flaws their hero is one that embodies trust. One that they admire and seek to copy. It is easier to write from a hero’s perspective as we all need noble embodiments to imitate.

In my novel The Eden Tree I have created some heroes and villains and have tried to talk and think the way that portrays them. Greed, selfishness, prejudice and criminality all are evidenced in my villains. They are traits I recognise and seek to avoid. It is interesting that no one who has read my novel so far finds the actions of James and his friends as wrong, and yet they are hackers. When I wrote the novel I considered the hackers as heroes in the story. Heroes can have weaknesses.

With all his roughness I also enjoy writing about Sean, one of my main characters, who is tough but vulnerable. A hero. It is easier to write about a military type who won medals than a lowlife who fled the battlefield. It is also easier to write about my hero John who chases his destiny and brings benefits to all.

So in the main I find it easier and I prefer to write about a hero as I identify with the desires, beliefs and actions of a hero. I don’t think an author places themselves or their characters in the role of villain easily. At least I don’t. I prefer my readers to feel that they can associate with my protagonist and cheer him on. Most of us like the ‘bad guys’ to get what is coming to him, and as an author I am the same. It heartened me when my editor wrote “YES!” in the margin when editing my novel. She found empathy with one of my characters’ actions and that pleases any writer.

About Peter Worthington

Today Peter Worthington lives in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire with his wife Margaret. Peter has enjoyed a bright and varied career as a church minister, financial adviser and internet consultant. Now retired he is busier than ever thanks to his three grandchildren, studying for an Open University Degree in Creative Writing, voluntary work, playing World of Warcraft, serving on the board of a housing association and writing. He has previously published short stories in a number of Christian magazines.

For more information you can follow Peter on Twitter or visit his website. There’s is more about and from Peter with these other bloggers:

I recently featured Mel (M A) Comley on Linda’s Book Bag with a guest post and review of her jointly authored crime thriller The Caller with Tara Lyons. You can read that post here.

Today I’m reviewing Mortal Justice, a crime novella that is part of Mel’s Justice series and which will be released on 15th July 2016. Mortal Justice is available for purchase here.

Mortal Justice

A 12,000 word Justice short novella to be read between Cruel Justice and Impending Justice from NY Times and USA Today bestselling author M A Comley.

What would you do if you saw a stranger’s life in danger?

DI Lorne Simpkins and her partner, DS Pete Childs investigate a violent attack. Lorne becomes increasingly concerned when her star witness, Donna Moran, goes missing. She knew Donna was petrified, but has Donna just gone into hiding, or has she been taken by the offenders?

My Review of Mortal Justice

When Donna sees a man being beaten up in an alleyway whilst on her way to work, little does she realise how her own life will be in danger.

Not having read the other books in the Justice series I wasn’t sure if reading a novella that fits between two other books would work, but I enjoyed this fast paced and exciting story. It didn’t make any difference to me that I hadn’t encountered the main characters Lorne and Pete before, as I instantly got a good impression of their working relationship and enough of Lorne’s private life to feel an interest in them as people straight away. I’m now interested to go back and read the other books in the series to find out more, which I think shows how skilful a writer M A Comley is.

I don’t much like reading about physical violence but I thought the level of violence portrayed in Mortal Justice was perfectly handled. There’s a realism without gratuity that I really appreciated. I’d have liked more detail about the settings but understand that this is a bridging novella so space is short. I liked the variety of structure with lengthier paragraphs to provide sufficient plot and character detail to give depth to this well-written novella, and found the snappy briefer sentences really added to the tension and pace. M A Comley knows just how to keep the reader’s attention in a plot that doesn’t let up for a moment.

Alongside the crime thriller plot I thought the themes were an excellent, if sad, reflection of many aspects of today’s society. So often crimes are witnessed but not reported and the reasons the gang commit murder at the beginning are frequently those we read about in the press (though I don’t want to say more for fear of spoiling the story). There’s quite a lot to reflect on in this quick read and I think it’s impressive that M A Comley has been able to incorporate so much thought provoking material so subtly.

Readers who still expect a pacy and exciting read from their novellas will be delighted with Mortal Justice. I’d recommend it.

About M A Comley

Find out more about Mel on her website, find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You’ll find Mel’s books for purchase on Amazon UK and on Amazon US.

 

 

TA Williams is absolutely lovely, and so are his books which is why he’s the most featured author on Linda’s Book Bag. Today I’m delighted to be sharing the details of his latest What Happens in… book, What Happens at the Beach which is another standalone from the series. Released today by Carina UK, an imprint of Harper Collins, What Happens at the Beach is available for purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

What Happens At The Beach

For the perfect summer romance…

It’s finally time for Natalie Dryden to decide what she really wants! After ditching her sparkling engagement ring, and her ghastly fiancé, she jets off for the sun-kissed shores of Southern France – the only place that has ever truly felt like home. For the first time ever, Natalie is determined to forget all about men and follow her dreams!

…head to the French coast!

Only, avoiding the male population isn’t quite so easy, especially when she meets smooth-talking Philippe and gorgeous fisherman, Remy! But then Natalie, quite literally, bumps into brooding millionaire Mark whilst swimming in the glittering azure-blue bay – and her life is turned upside-down.

Love might be off the cards for Natalie, yet suddenly she finds herself in her dream job and working with her dream man! But is it all too good to be true…?

About TA Williams

Firstly, my name isn’t T A. It’s Trevor. I write under the androgynous name T A Williams because 65% of books are read by women. In my first book, Dirty Minds one of the (female) characters suggests the imbalance is due to the fact that men spend too much time getting drunk and watching football. I couldn’t possibly comment. Ask my wife…

I’ve written all sorts: thrillers, historical novels, short stories and now I’m enjoying myself hugely writing humour and romance. Romantic comedies are what we all need from time to time. Life isn’t always very fair. It isn’t always a lot of fun, but when it is, we need to embrace it. If my books can put a smile on your face and maybe give your heartstrings a tug, then I know I’ve done my job.

I‘ve lived all over Europe, but now I live in a little village in sleepy Devon, tucked away in south west England. I love the place. That’s why you’ll find leafy lanes and thatched cottages in most of my books. Oh, yes, and a black Labrador.

I’ve been writing since I was 14 and that is half a century ago. However, underneath this bald, wrinkly exterior, there beats the heart of a youngster. My wife is convinced I will never grow up. I hope she’s right.

Find out more about Trevor on his website, on Facebook, Goodreads and Amazon. You can also follow him on Twitter.

 

I’ve set myself a challenge in Linda’s Book Bag to consider a wider range of genres and to feature books I don’t normally read. Today I’m pleased to welcome Chloe Hammond to try to persuade me why vampire fiction is a genre for me! Chloe’s book Darkly Dreaming, the first in the Darkly Vampire Trilogy is available for purchase in e-book and paperback on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Mineeye.

Darkly Dreaming

Rae and best friend Layla are in France, escaping the wreckage Rae created when she left her unhappy marriage. She’s escaping the misery she created for herself by dreaming her life away.

At a street festival they are infected with the Vampire virus by a rebellious vampire and Rae finds herself living a new and terrifying existence. She struggles to retain her essential self, which she has only just re-discovered, but she is struggling against new and powerful drives and desires. She and Layla are taken to join the vampire Pride by Guillaume, the Pride Leader. He explains their new evolution into stronger, faster, more intelligent beings, which heal quickly, and only feed on blood, but they are not the vampires of legend.

They are not undead, and they are not immortal…

Decide On Something Darkly Different?

A Guest Post from Chloe Hammond

Don’t like vampire books? Well, no neither do I, in the main. So why on earth did I write one then? I wrote Darkly Dreaming because I remember when I was a teenager and books by Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite completely absorbed me. Then I out grew them. I read Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood and Faye Weldon instead. Occasionally I would try something paranormal, but most of the time I found them trite. Most of the vampire books seemed to be Mills and Boons with fangs, and I often couldn’t even finish them. I’m a slow reader, which makes me a fussy reader, if I can’t engage quickly with the characters, or the writing makes me flinch I stop reading. A book takes me three or four days to read, at least, and there are so many good ones I’m not wasting my hard won leisure time on bad writing, overly perfect characters, or predictable stories. I want special, every single time.

Toni Morrisette said that if there’s a book you want to read, and you can’t find it, then you need to write it, or words to that effect. I read Deborah Harkness, and enjoyed her writing, I wanted more. I wanted older, fatter, uglier, life weary heroines. I wanted them clumsy, funny, and friends with black people, white people, gay people, straight people. I wanted imperfect heroines I could actually relate to.  You see, Darkly Dreaming isn’t just a book I thought of, it came to me as terrifying nightmares.

The sort of nightmares where you are too scared to poke your foot over the end of the bed, or even reach your hand out of the duvet to turn your lamp on. So I wrote out these scenes, and I took people I know, and I used their personalities as templates. It is true what they say about your characters developing a life of their own, Rae and Layla put their own twist on what I wanted them to say and do, so flaws developed, small cracks in their characters that were in place ready for something that happens in book two or three.

Initially I wrote in secret, but as my confidence grew, I told people. My mother wanted to read it. Oh lord. There’s lots of rude bits. I told her this, and she pointed out that without rude bits I wouldn’t have been born. Urgh. So I gave her an early draft to read, one without the prologue, and was so worried about the sexy bits I completely forgot to tell her it was a vampire story. My mother doesn’t read horror, or fantasy, or any sort of dark fiction, never has. She loved it, even though it gave her nightmares. She said she actually enjoyed the vampire nightmares, because it was more exciting than her normal dreams about trying to catch the correct train on time.

She told me she was completely absorbed in the woman’s contemporary literature novel of two women reaching forty and reassessing their lives, and then all of a sudden, wham, there’s vampires. She said the story was so well characterised and believable that she found the vampire viral infection and the character’s reactions to their new existence completely conceivable. She explained, that it isn’t a story about vampires, it’s a story about two women, with very distinct personalities, who stumble into a terrifying adventure, which could only happen to them, because it is created by their reactions to their circumstances.

If you read the reviews of Darkly Dreaming on Amazon you’ll see that several of my readers are people who normally avoid the genre all together, or are completely jaded by the surplus of cloned stories available. Yet these are the readers who seem to have enjoyed my book the most, who have the deepest emotional reactions to it. I was told I have written vampire literature, but I felt that sounded arrogant until I read the definition of literature that described it as being character driven: often the biggest plot development being a change in the characters interior world, rather than exterior. The definition of dark fantasy is difficult to pin down, but is consistently referred to as being the place where the reader has sympathy with the monster.

So, I like to class Darkly Dreaming, Book 1 of The Darkly Vampire trilogy as Dark Literature; and if you fancy investing 99p to see if I’m right, to see if I’ve managed to write a vampire book that appeals most to people who don’t like vampire books, I’ll be very grateful. And if you could drop me a little review, letting me know what you thought, I’ll be the happiest author in town.

About Chloe Hammond

Born in Liverpool, Chloe Hammond grew up in West Wales. The family didn’t have a television, so she was forced to overcome her difficulties with the written word, and books became her escape of choice. She quickly became addicted. Chloe studied Behavioural Sciences at the University of Glamorgan, but pestered her lecturers to be allowed some modules of Creative Writing.

After university she embarked on an all-encompassing vocation in support work. For twenty years Chloe worked with the homeless, refugees, vulnerable women, and disadvantaged teenagers.

She always planned to write- life just got in the way. Then Chloe found herself losing her joie de vivre, she was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She needed to completely change her life, and she needed to be open about her diagnosis. Usually very self-sufficient, she refused to give the depression the isolation it craves. She feared judgement, but instead she discovered gentle compassion and support. Chloe finally made time to write again. Writing soothes and grounds her; exhilarates and stimulates her.

She is happily married and has been for eleven years. She lives with her husband in little house in the Welsh seaside town of Barry, with great views over the fair and out to sea. They have two rescue dogs, Bonnie and Bella and a fat and fluffy cat called Coco. Chloe apologises for her poor quality author photo, but she utterly hates having her photo taken, and looked slightly less deranged in this one than all the others.

You can follow Chloe on Twitter, find her on Facebook and on the Darkly Dreaming Facebook page. There’s also more on Goodreads and Tumblr.

It is my pleasure to welcome Lynda Young Spiro to Linda’s Book Bag today to tell us all about how colour can enhance our creativity. Lynda has harnessed that creativity into her debut novel There Is Always More To Say. There Is Always More To Say was published by New Generation on 21st April 2016 and is available from Amazon and via Lynda’s website.

I am also reviewing There Is Always More To Say.

There Is Always More To Say

Soho 1984: Two people meet and their worlds are changed forever. An unexpected meeting – a look that means their lives will never be the same again. In “There Is Always More To Say”, Lynda Young Spiro chronicles the lives of the couple through friendships, marriage, fleeting moments and snatched time. It is a passionate account about a connection between two people that never dies even when tested by distance and when life throws the unexpected at their feet. “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction both are transformed.” C G Jung

Colour and Creativity

A Guest Post from Lynda Young Spiro

I’m a mixed media artist who mainly works with fabrics, colours and recyclable bits and pieces which are all incorporated into my work. My passion for colour, my fascination with texture and my love of recycling have all found expression in a large body of work that includes textile design, latch-hooked rugs, needlepoint cushions, mosaics, painting and sculpture.

Over the last eighteen months I have been channelling my creative energies into writing and I have recently published my first novel which is called There Is Always More To Say. Because as we know, there is always more to say.

I’m a colour evangelist. The colours I wear can affect my mood. Wear a bright colour and my mood lifts. From my socks upwards. And my shoes. Colour makes me feel happy. I am always astounded by the number of people I see wearing black. Why envelope yourself in such darkness? Wearing black can influence my mood and make me feel sad. I’m not suggesting that everyone wears as much colour as I do, because it could be said that I take it to an extreme but I am influenced by the colours that bedeck me. The only time that I am happy to wear black is when I am painting. So that my paintings are not influenced by the bright colours that I prefer to wear.

Colour expresses emotions and stimulates the senses. It surrounds us. My morning mood determines the visual cacophony of multi-colours that I will wear on any particular day. Wearing colour when I am writing appears to feed my creativity. I like to wear many differently multi-coloured layers of clothing when I write. Wearing colour allows me to express myself and I have at times been told that I am indeed as colourful as the clothes I wear!

I am inspired by and draw on both my own experiences and those of other people.

My Review of There Is Always More To Say

I approached reading There Is Always More To Say with the thought that it’s a short book and I could help reduce my TBR pile quite quickly. This was a mistake. There Is Always More To Say captivated me from the very beginning and, whilst it is indeed a short and quick read, it is also a moving and thought-provoking one that should not be rushed.

Lynda Young Spiro has the uncanny ability to express perfectly what many of us feel but cannot articulate. She cleverly explores the emotions and experiences that make us who we are so that I would defy any reader not to find an echo of themselves within the pages of There Is Always More To Say.

I am completely not a religious person, but I loved the spiritual elements to the writing too. There are appropriate and inspiring quotations that serve to underpin aspects of the narrative so that at the most basic level this beautiful book could simply be read as a self-help text.

The narrative is presented as a first person internal monologue but simultaneously addressing the ‘you’ of the story who is never fully identified or named. So clever too is the ambiguity over names that are androgynous so that the reader can almost impose their own understanding onto the text. Alex, Sam and Ashley could be male or female and there is a wonderful undercurrent of homosexuality and sensuality.

There is such an intensity of emotion presented so that anyone who has lost a loved one through death, distance, time or another’s intervention will find much that resonates with their own feelings. There Is Always More To Say is a study in grief and love, joy and despair.

The structure of the book is inspired. There are repetitions of phrases and events that weave like texture as memories are constructed. I try not to quote from books I read for fear of spoiling the plot but Lynda Young Spiro’s writing frequently reads like poetry so that it is a delight to read.

Having set out merely to reduce the pile of book awaiting review, I have found in There Is Always More To Say a touching, intense and emotional book that deserves far more recognition than it has already had. I really recommend it.

About Lynda Young Spiro

Lynda Young Spiro is a mixed media artist whose love of textiles, found objects and recyclable materials are incorporated into her colourful work. Lynda was born in 1959 in Hampstead, London, where she now lives with her husband and two sons. Her previous book Latch-Hooking Rugs is published by A & C Black. There is Always More to Say is her first novel.

You can find out more about Lynda by following her on Twitter and visiting her website.

Having recently reviewed and absolutely loved Liz Nugent’s latest novel Lying in Wait I am thrilled to be part of the launch celebrations. Lying in Wait will be published by Penguin Ireland, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 14th July 2016 and is available for purchase from Amazon, W H Smith, Waterstones and from all good bookshops.

You can read my review of Lying in Wait here and my review of Liz’s first novel Unravelling Oliver here and it gives me enormous pleasure to interview Liz today.

Lying in Wait

‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’

The last people who expect to be meeting with a drug-addicted prostitute are a respected judge and his reclusive wife. And they certainly don’t plan to kill her and bury her in their exquisite suburban garden.

Yet Andrew and Lydia Fitzsimons find themselves in this unfortunate situation.

While Lydia does all she can to protect their innocent son Laurence and their social standing, her husband begins to falls apart.

But Laurence is not as naïve as Lydia thinks. And his obsession with the dead girl’s family may be the undoing of his own.

An Interview with Liz Nugent

Hi Liz. Thank you so much for agreeing to answer some questions on my blog about your writing and your second novel, Lying in Wait.

Firstly, please could you tell me a little about yourself?

I was born and bred in Dublin, Ireland where I now live. I’m 48 years old, married to Richard. In my late teens, I lived in London for a few years. Novel writing is about my third career. In previous decades, I was a theatre stage manager (12 years) and then a Story Associate on a TV soap opera (11 years). I might see about Formula 1 driving when I get bored with novel writing!

(Promise not to do that any time soon – we need more books like Unravelling Oliver and Lying in Wait first!)

There’s a strong Irish presence in writing at the moment. Why is this do you think?

I think Irish women in particular have finally found their voice. For years there was Maeve Binchy and then Marian Keyes and Sheila Flanagan who flew the flag for us amazingly well with top class popular fiction. They made it possible, and then Anne Enright won the Booker Prize and opened the floodgates for all of us who wanted to write in all kinds of genres or no genre at all. The current Bailey’s prize winner, Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies is fantastic, and Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing was groundbreaking in its originality. Nearly all of the current crop of Irish crime writers are women and the really wonderful thing is that we all know each other and are genuinely delighted for each other’s success. Irish writers are very supportive of each other. The book biz here is small and there is no point in being petty or jealous.

How different was the experience of writing Lying in Wait from writing Unravelling Oliver?

It might have been easier if Unravelling Oliver was less successful. I felt a huge weight of expectation for the second novel. I don’t think that’s going to go away! When you write your first novel, you don’t have a deadline and you don’t have to conform to a genre. On your second novel, you are more limited. On the upside, I would never have dreamed of submitting anything that wasn’t edited to death first time round but on my second novel, I had the luxury of being able to submit a first draft that was as rough and unpolished as it gets. I learned a huge amount from the editing process of Unravelling Oliver and that really helped when it came to structure, in particular.

Your three first person narrators, Lydia, Laurence and Karen, have very distinct voices. How difficult was it to achieve that effect?

Maybe it’s because I had some training as an actor back in the day and my teachers always said I had great imagination (code for massive liar!) but I find it relatively easy to get into the mind-set of all types of characters and write from their point of view. Laurence and his mother Lydia are both very middle class, but while they may have the same kind of vocabulary, their thought processes are very different. Laurence is naïve while Lydia is incredibly manipulative. Karen is a working class character who is fiercely determined and brave, so I just pretend I have all of those qualities depending on which character I’m writing.

Many of your characters are essentially flawed. How far do you think this is a characteristic of human nature in general?

I think we are probably all flawed. The difference lies in the decisions we make in the spur of the moment. A casual lie to get you out of a small problem can cause major repercussions down the line. When my characters make really bad decisions- that’s where the drama is.

I couldn’t decide if Lydia was evil, insane or merely damaged by her own experiences. What’s your view (without spoiling the plot please!)

I think her big childhood incident (!) two years after the departure of her mother damaged her irreparably, but if she hadn’t been sent away, she might not have become so desperately insecure later. Leaving her home became a punishment. I don’t think she is evil. I think she has spent her whole life being terrified of what she is capable of. She is undoubtedly a monster, but I feel very sorry for her.

I know you have written drama and led drama workshops. How do those skills transfer into writing a novel?

With all fiction writing, there are five main principles: plot, structure, characterisation, dialogue and the awareness of the medium in which you are writing. The last of these is the tricky one. I judged a radio play competition recently and you would be shocked by how many people entered the competition who had never bothered to look at a play script to see how it was formatted even though there were samples in the guidelines accompanying the entry form. In order to write a novel, you have to have read them, a lot of them! You need to be fully aware of what else is being published. The other principles are the same. They must sound authentic: dialogue. They must be believable and consistent: characterisation. You must try to keep the reader engaged in the way you construct your plot: structure. You should try to defy the reader’s expectations and build tension: plot.

So, when did you first realise you were going to be a writer?

I think I always knew. It was just a question of when I was going to get round to writing anything(!), and then of course, whether it would be published. I took the scenic route.

If you hadn’t become an author, what would you have done instead as a creative outlet?

A childhood brain haemorrhage meant that I pretty much lost the use of my right hand and I limp with my right leg. In an ideal world, I would love to play the piano, or any musical instrument. I love the clarinet and cello too but you need both hands. I type with one hand.

How do you go about researching detail and ensuring your books are realistic?

To my shame, I do very little research. I write the story first and then try to make sure it can work. There’s a certain element of genetic inheritance in Unravelling Oliver. After I had written the story, I set out to check whether it could happen and I eventually tracked down a Professor of Anthropology in Pennsylvania State University who said that the scenario I described was highly unlikely, but possible. All I need is ‘possible’. I’m writing fiction, not documentary. When I have done research, I’m really tempted to put it all in as if to prove to the reader that I know my stuff but then my editor takes it out and points out that I’m just showing off.

Which aspects of your writing do you find easiest and most difficult?

The most difficult is actually starting every day. I will find a million things to do around the house before I actually open the document. I could easily win the Procrastination Olympics.

The easiest part for me is the cliff hangers at the end of each chapter. I love to leave the reader on such a knife-edge that hopefully, they won’t want to put the book down. That’s from my soap opera training I guess.

(You certainly manage those chapter cliff hangers. I had to read Lying in Wait in one full day – I was in danger of developing DVT as I didn’t move for hours!)

What are your writing routines and where do you do most of your writing?

I do my first draft plotting in my local library and then second drafts at home with occasional forays away to a writers retreat called the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co. Monaghan. I aim for at least 1000 words per day.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to read?

I read very broadly from contemporary lit fiction to romantic fiction, classics, historical fiction, crime, young adult etc. but it is nearly always fiction.

The cover of Lying in Wait is essentially grey making me think that, despite the events that happen, there are no clear-cut black and white interpretations. How did that image come about and what were you hoping to convey (without spoiling the plot please!)?

I had absolutely no influence whatsoever on the cover design but I think it is incredibly beautiful and atmospheric. It is the work of designer Leo Nickells, a man who I have never met. If I ever do, I’ll be buying him a large whiskey. I live in Dublin and a lot of the book production work like cover design, marketing, proof reading and copy editing is done by a team of geniuses in London that I have never met but to whom I am very grateful. All I do is write the words.

If you could choose to be a character from Lying in Wait, who would you be and why?

I’d be Helen. She is foul-mouthed and kind of ruthless but sometimes she’s the only one who talks common sense. I used her like a Greek chorus. She tells Laurence uncomfortable truths. The only reason I want to be her is because she’s funny. I love funny people. I’ll forgive anyone if they can make me laugh.

If Lying in Wait became a film, who would you like to play Laurence, Karen and Lydia?

Saoirse Ronan (see more here) would be an amazing Karen (I met her a few weeks ago in New York. She was adorable. I didn’t mention that I had mentally cast her in a non-existent film). There is an Irish actress called Cathy Belton (see here) who would be an ideal Lydia. She has all of the fragility and steel that the part demands. Laurence needs to be a solid looking guy with chameleon qualities. Briain Gleeson (see here) would be super.

If you had 15 words to persuade a reader that Lying in Wait should be their next read, what would you say?

‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle but the lying tramp deserved it.’ (my opening line is exactly 15 words!)

(And what an opening line it is – the novel doesn’t let up after it either! – My 15 word persuasion to readers!)

Thank you so much, Liz. for your time in answering my questions.

Thank you so much Linda. I really appreciate it! x

You can follow Liz Nugent on Twitter and visit her website and there’s more from and about Liz with these other bloggers:

Usually it’s a pleasure to invite an author onto Linda’s book Bag, but today I wasn’t so sure. You see, I don’t read horror or anything remotely scary – I’m too much of a coward. So when Karl Drinkwater suggested I read his latest collection of short stories, They Move Below, I challenged him to write a blog post persuading me to do just that. However, when I saw what a convincing case he made, I had to keep my side of the bargain and read his stories too. This post is the result!

They Move Below was published in e-book and paperback on 11th May 2016 and is available for purchase here.

They Move Below

Horror lives in the shadows. It exists under the earth’s surface in ancient caves; below the vast sea’s undulating waves; under dense forest cover; within a storm’s thick, rolling clouds; downstairs in our homes, when we hear the knife drawer rattle in the night. Even our minds and bodies harbour the alien under the skin, the childhood nightmares in our subconscious. In this collection of sixteen tales Karl Drinkwater sews flesh onto the bones of our worst fears whilst revisiting some of horror’s classic settings, such as the teen party, the boat in trouble, the thing in the cellar, the haunted museum, the ghost in the machine, and the urban legends that come true. No-one is safe. Darkness hides things, no matter how much we strain our eyes. And sometimes those things are looking back at us.

The Case For Horror

A Guest Post by Karl Drinkwater

When I first discussed They Move Below with Linda she told me “I don’t read horror as I’m too much of a wimp”, then spun it round and challenged me to persuade non-horror readers to try the genre. Ouch. How could I do that? I have pondered for some time and come to three conclusions which might help to make my case.

We’re Already Reading Horror

I remember hearing the same thing from crime fans and thriller fans – “Urgh, horror, that isn’t for me!” Then I look at the books and films they like, and discover that they’re full of murders, stalkings, kidnappings, abuse, darkness, and I wonder why they don’t see them as horror. Sometimes the concept of genres blinds us to the elements that all good fiction shares: characters you care about, plots that keep us reading, and a confident touch of style or voice as the work’s fingerprint. Elements such as murders are common because they tie easily into plot (“how can we stop/catch/evade this murderer?”) and character stakes (“I’m worried about this character because they might be killed next!”) And when you look at challenges that a protagonist has to face, threats to their life or body are bound to be common ones, because we can all identify with them. We’re all horrified by them. And thus we have a shortcut to identification with, and investment in, the plight of the characters.

I began to realise that, regardless of genre, certain dark topics will recur, and the best works resist being narrowly categorised because of this. It’s a dilemma I face, because I write both literary fiction with (sometimes) dark qualities, and dark fiction that often focusses on themes and character as much as a literary work does. I occasionally look at a short story I’ve written and realise it could fit into either a horror collection, or a contemporary collection. Am I writing horror about people; or people stories with elements of horror?

Consider these two books.

The Road (Cormac McCarthy): many see it as post-apocalyptic horror (a world of despair, cannibalism, violence, child-killing, rape, death, greyness and suffering); but it is also held up as a literary work about a father protecting his son. It’s okay for a book to contain horror as long as there is something we can connect with.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë): some see it as a fantastic love story. Some see it as a story of coming of age and a woman gaining independence. Yet it also includes scary visions, violent figures appearing in your bedroom at night, secret imprisonment, trying to burn down a house and its occupants, stabbings … at least some of its power comes from those horror elements.

There Are Different Types Of Horror

All genres have sub-genres. It is easy for an outsider to lump all things they don’t understand into a single category. I see crime festivals with logos of guns, knives and blood spatters (the latter was one I spotted in my news feed today), so an outsider may easily think all crime fiction is gory, when I’m sure that’s not true. Likewise many horror books and films have blood-spattered covers, and may persuade those outside the genre that everything in horror is gory. Again, it is not true, but we remember the extreme cases. In reality much of the blood-spattering is a shortcut marketing technique to signify genre, and may have little to do with the content.

When you get down to individual works there are those which are gratuitous, and those which aren’t. The former favour spectacle over character. As a horror fan I can appreciate that, but to an outsider it is easy to be scared away by imagery and totally miss the more subtle books and films that they might have enjoyed.

An example of a horror book that is unashamedly gratuitous might be American Gothic by Brian Keene. I thought it was entertaining enough, but the shallow characters combined with over-the-top violence and physical abuse would send many more sensitive readers running for cover. Whereas Pet Sematary by Stephen King is also horror, but at the opposite end of the spectrum – it’s creepy and ominous without being gory or gratuitous, and you read on because you care about the characters and want to know what happens. If you are new to horror it is that kind of book that will pull you in and give you a fantastic read; avoid the ones that will only repulse you.

If you’ve read a few of the stories from They Move Below I hope it was the ones that focus more on character than gore – e.g. Web; They Move Below; Bleeding Sunset; Dancing Snowflakes. They make a better case for my argument than some of the others. It reminds me of Stephen King’s Night Shift, which I read as a child. Actually, read isn’t the word: it was more that I was transported to other worlds and lost track of where I really was. King’s collection has many horrible and fascinating stories, yet one of my favourites is The Last Rung on the Ladder, which sends shivers down my spine to this day, and there isn’t a monster, killer, or supernatural boogeyman in sight. Just a story about love and hope and the one chance we have at life. And it’s all the more horrible for it. (Horrible = brilliant, in this case.)

Horror Gets To The Heart Of The Problem

We read books to escape. To forget who we are for a while; to live other lives, see other places, experience other emotions. We read for excitement. We read to imagine: to put ourselves in other shoes and consider what we would do in that situation.

The characters have to face some kind of threat. Otherwise there is no story. “Man goes to the shops; buys chocolate; walks home whistling in the sun; is not mugged or run over or abducted by aliens.” A lovely thought, but I won’t sell many copies when I come to write it. The easiest stakes to care about are those we can identify with. And that comes down to threats to our body, or our mind, to our loved ones. Those things are often key to horror, so it is a natural fit. I once wrote:

“When I’m reading a good horror novel I forget about the room I’m in, the cat on my lap, the cars outside – I am struggling to survive against evil forces, the inhuman, the alien, the grotesque, the cruel, and that takes all my concentration. I am in the book. I discovered that when I discovered horror as a child. Something about it pulls at my mind, snips at its flesh, teases it, worries it, but gets its attention. The journey begins and you need to see it through to the end.”

That still stands. If you pick up a book and the greatest threat facing the protagonist is whether they can afford another designer hat then I assume you’d give up on it pretty quickly. How can we identify with such first world problems? But if you pick up a book and the character has woken in the night, alone, worried that someone – or something – is downstairs, then it grabs you immediately, because we’ve all had that fear, we all begin to think about what we would do. And that’s when plot and character come together in a way that is satisfying to the reader.

I don’t know if that’s enough to make my case. Is anyone convinced? Am I totally wrong? Let me know!

My Review of They Move Below

OK. Let’s get this over with. I was wrong and Karl was right! To answer his question, yes, I’m convinced and yes, he’s made his case very eloquently. As a result of this challenge I have found a whole new genre and if Karl’s writing is anything to go by, I’m in for a treat.

They Move Below is a magnificent collection of stories. Even though one or two made me feel uncomfortable, the lesson here is that horror really lies in who we are as humans and how we treat one another. The obsessive love of the mother in If That Looking Glass Gets Broken is shocking, but completely believable. So too is the insidious escalation of events in the brilliantly structured Overload.

What impressed me so much about They Move Below, however, is the quality of Karl Drinkwater’s prose. He writes with considerable sophistication and an almost urbane style that is so pleasurable to read. I also enjoyed the variety of the stories, with the different voices and perspectives. There’s such a range of presentational devices that They Move Below has something for every reader, from the police interview format of Breaking the Ice to the almost sexual vampiric Bleeding Sunset, Dancing Snowflakes. The direct speech feels natural and well constructed, especially the the dialect in Sinker and Karl Drinkwater has the ability to present scenes very visually to draw in the reader.

I also thoroughly appreciated the commentary at the end of the collection that explained a little about how each story came into being. They Move Below is a vibrant, interesting and (for me) frequently unsettling collection of stories that deserve considerable success. And in answer to Karl’s question above, ‘Am I writing horror about people; or people stories with elements of horror?’ I would answer, ‘Yes, both.’ And this is the attraction of They Move Below.

About Karl Drinkwater

Karl Drinkwater is originally from Manchester but has lived in Wales for over fifteen years, ever since he went there to do a Master’s degree: it was easier to stay than to catch a train back. His longest career was in librarianship (25 years); his shortest was industrial welding (1 week).

He started writing stories when he was 9, and hasn’t stopped. His writing sometimes spends time in the sunlit patches of literary fiction, where it likes to picnic beneath an old oak tree, accompanied by a bottle of wine, some cake, and soul-searching peace. At other times his words slope off into the dark and tense shadows of horror fiction, and if you follow them you might hear chains rattling behind locked doors and the paranoid screams of the lost echoing in the distance. There is no obligation to enjoy both of those avenues. His aim is to tell a good story, regardless of genre, but it always comes down to life, death, and connection.

When he isn’t writing or editing he loves exercise, computer games, board games, the natural environment, animals, social justice, and zombies; not necessarily in that order.

You’ll find all Karl’s books for purchase here.

Follow Karl on Twitter, visit his blog, find him on Facebook and sign up to his newsletter. You’ll also find more with these other bloggers: