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Author Chat: David Hadley

1/24/2016

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Hi David. Make yourself at home. I’ve just read your latest publication, In The Beginning. It’s a great premise for a story. How did you come up with it?
 
Thanks, glad you liked it. I wish I knew where it came from. Even though I walked out of Sunday School when I was six years old, not believing a word of it, I’ve always been fascinated by religion and why some people have it and I don’t.
Another part of it, no doubt comes from playing Populous a lot, back in the earlier days of computer games. For those that don’t know, Populous was a ‘God Game’, a strategy game where you take on the role of a god for your tribe of people, helping them grow and spread and killing their enemies with floods, volcanoes, earthquakes and so on.
The rest of it grew from this Although, as you can see the novel turned out very different to that original idea.
 
I think playing that kind of game has given many a kid a God complex.
I’ve also read some of your more serious work, such as What Dreams May Come, but even here, you can’t suppress the occasional laugh. Do you have difficulty taking life seriously?

 
Yes.
The universe doesn’t seem to want to take me seriously, so I refuse to take it seriously.
I once said, only half-joking, that I learnt more from Monty Python than I ever did from the educational system.
I think I feel happier writing funny books and I recently gave up working on the outline of a more serious one because I realised I wouldn’t enjoy writing it as much as I would a funny one. So, for the foreseeable future I think they will be more or less all funny ones of some shape or form.
 
I agree. If you aren't enjoying it, a reader won't.
Much of your output is humorous but you’ve ventured into what could be called speculative fiction. Is there another genre you’re itching to try?

 
I don’t know. I don’t really think of things in terms of genre as such. I’ll quite happily read anything from chick-lit to historical fiction to horror, science fiction to literary fiction to erotica and all points in-between as long as the story engages me. I see genre as an artificial boundary created for marketing purposes than anything significant or real. So I could see myself writing more or less anything, that is if I could be bothered to do the research for a genre that demands it. I’d much rather make things up than research them, though.
 
So, you don't like spitting writing into genres, but for the sake of argument, is there any genre you’d definitely not feel drawn to writing?
 
I suppose, if anything, Young Adult, New Adult or whatever they are calling it this week. Mainly because I don’t understand what it is. Back in my day, I read kids’ books until I was about 12 or 13 or so, and then I wanted to read proper grown up books, so I can’t really get my mind around having a sort of in-between category. Having said that though, I have read a fair few books classed as YA and loved them, so it is not the books themselves, just the category/genre that confuses me. But like I sad above, I’m not much of one for genre limitations.
 
I've always enjoyed Young Adult fiction. You can't get away with waffle or youngsters won't read it. And, if it’s not a state secret, what are you currently working on?
 
Ah.
I have a four-stage process: outline, first draft, second draft and final draft. I always try to have at least one project at each stage. The current final draft is one based on characters and situations from an old blog of mine – a very silly one indeed: combined with a sort of Dan Brown Da Vinci Code type story. The World famous antique treasure: The Golden Sex Spatula has been stolen from the British Museum of Perversion and it is feared that the erotic potential it possesses could – if misused - cause a cataclysmic destruction of all the sex particles in the universe. That is unless the UK’s leading investigators of the rude and naughty – Norbert and Maureen Trouser-Quandary, can recover it in time. There is a secret society, high-end physics, cream cakes, a very well-endowed blacksmith and a charabanc trip to the Naughtie Islands and its ancient monument, Stoneminge in it. It is very silly indeed and should be out in a few months.
The second draft one is about a bloke who writes a book and things get complicated.
The first draft one is my short story​ Twisting the Night Away, expanding out into a novel.
The current outline is going to be about a collision between magic and bureaucracy – possibly, although at the moment it is only a handful of sentences.

Thanks, David. I look forward to seeing those, and best of luck with In The Beginning, which I enjoyed very much.

You can find David and his writings on Amazon here.

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Author Chat - Tim Arnot

1/15/2016

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Come in, Tim. Take a seat. Your new publication, Stranded, is the third in the Flick Carter series, set in a Britain after a technological collapse. What is it about the Post-apocalyptic genre that draws you?
 
Why thank you, it’s very nice to be here. This might sound a little strange, but “Post Apocalyptic” in its traditional sense doesn’t actually interest me all that much.  Rubble-strewn ruined wastelands filled with war-weary characters struggling to survive the indefatigable onslaught of enemy soldiers / monsters / aliens / zombies / mutant germs / regular germs / insert baddie here, has been done to death. I’ve read that story a hundred times.
 
I’m far more interested in what I call “Post-Post-Apocalyptic”. Wind the clock on a century or two until whatever happened is just a distant memory. People will  have a vague idea of what happened, but not the details, and it won’t be relevant to daily life. Rather like the Battle of Waterloo (yes, that was 200 years ago) to people today. And so the Flick Carter stories are set around 200 years in our future, and 150 years after “the end of the world”.
 
It’s kind of Robin Hood meets Survivors!
 
Yes, I have to say that your 'future' world appears to have taken a step back in time. It's had the opportunity for its civilisation to strike a balance. Tell me a bit about Flick. She’s not your typical girlie heroine, is she?
 
Flick, or Felicity Anne Carter, to give her full name is an ordinary teenage girl living in this somewhat dystopian post-post apocalyptic society. She’s not a kid in the sense that we might think of teenagers today—life is short and often brutal. 40 is considered old, and everything happens younger. 15 is the age of majority, when people can marry, vote, get apprenticed, get executed and so on. It’s celebrated every year with the Choosing ceremony, when every fifteen year old legally becomes an adult, and often leaves home to start a new life.
Flick missed out on her Choosing, because her mum died when she was young, and she had to become surrogate mother to her younger siblings. She just slipped into helping her dad with the family business, but legally she was unchosen. That becomes important later.
Her idea of relaxation is getting on her old bike (three new frames, five new sets of wheels, but it’s still the best bike a girl could have…), going up into the chalk hills and finding nodules of flint, which she uses to make stone knives and arrowheads that she can sell. It’s on one of these trips that she discovers something that gets her into a world of trouble.
 
 
I do like a feisty heroine! Another of your characters, Socko, seems to have taken up a life of his own too. Why do you think he’s become popular?
 
Socko is one of those minor characters that, for some reason, gets a life of his own. He’s a Kingsman, which in story terms makes him one of the bad guys, but he’s also a KSI (my equivalent to a CSI, or forensic scientist), and a proponent of what he calls “experimental forensics”. This usually involves things that go bang, or catch fire.
Socko isn’t his real name—that’s Andy Garrett. He’ll swear blind that his nickname came about because he always wore odd socks. But in reality, it’s a case of nominative determinism: SOCO, from which Socko is corrupted, stands for “Scenes Of Crime Officer”, which is the UK version of a CSI.
 
Socko becomes more important in book 2, which leads to him becoming a full POV character in book 3. And of course he has his own spinoff series of novellas and novelettes, which are more police procedural/cosy mysteries.
 
I love the way this character grew, all on his own. Do you ever feel like pulling away from this world you’ve created or do you feel there’s more there to discover?
 
The first two books are basically set close to home: Oxford, Faringdon, Swindon, Bristol. Book 2 has a scene in Madrid, which opens us up to some of the politics in this world. Book 3 opens this up even further. But that also poses new questions that somehow demand to be answered: How come “we” have an airship base in Cherbourg (currently part of France) Whatever happened to Scotland, and parts north? There’s clearly trade going on, with ships in and out of Bristol and Liverpool. Where did they come from, and what’s happening there? Also some people seem to have “easy” access to old technology, how come?
So yes, I do feel there’s lot more to explore, and more stories to be told. we’ll probably leave Flick at the end of this trilogy, but there are certainly ways that she and other characters can make an appearance down the line.
 
 Any hankerings to write something totally different – and if so, what?
 
I’m an avid reader of science fiction, and particularly space opera. But I don’t think I could write it — I don’t have the military / naval background that that kind of story seems to demand. But having had a taste of detective fiction with Socko, maybe something along those lines, but in a contemporary setting … After all, it’s not like there are any detective series set in/around Oxford, is it? (Okay, Morse. Lewis. Endeavour. Midsomer Murders….)

Thanks, Tim, and good luck with the new trilogy. 
You can find Tim's Amazon author page, and links to all his books, here.


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    Author

    Kath Middleton, author of Ravenfold
    Message in a Bottle
    Top Banana
    Long Spoon
    Souls disturbed
    Stir-up Sunday
    Beneath the Ink
    The Novice's Demon
    The Flesh of Trees
    The Sundowners
    The Angel Monument Muriel's Bear
    Tales from Daggy Bottom Becca.
    ​Through His Eyes
    ​Contributor to Beyond 100 Drabbles
    ​Criminal Shorts
    ​Part-author of Is it Her?



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