David Moody's Blog, page 54

The Unkindness of Ravens (and Lord of Tears)

I owe an apology to director Lawrie Brewster and writer Sarah Daly. After watching (and loving) their 2013 feature, LORD OF TEARS, I asked Sarah to answer a few questions for an article on this site. Events have since conspired against me, and I hadn’t been able to post the piece until now. Why now? Because their new movie THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS is currently in its last few days of Kickstarter funding, and it’s tantalisingly close to hitting its target. I urge you to watch the video below and get involved. If LORD OF TEARS is anything to judge the new movie by, your investment will be worth every penny.

I wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little about LORD OF TEARS, not least because one of the RAVENS’ Kickstarter perks is this incredible limited edition action figure of LoT’s iconic and nightmarish Owlman.

LORD OF TEARS is a unique, beautifully filmed and paced, haunting movie which is truly worth your time. It tells the story of schoolteacher James who, haunted by horrific nightmares, returns to his childhood home in the Scottish Highlands. There he meets a mysterious woman whilst being plagued by visions of the terrifying Owlman. Once you’ve checked out the Kickstarter for RAVENS, click the link below to read more about LORD OF TEARS.

Please note – if you’re trying to track LORD OF TEARS down, a repackaged and retitled version of the film – OWL MAN – is coming in 2016.

I asked Sarah to tell me a little about the background to LORD OF TEARS, and something about hers and Lawrie’s backgrounds too:

“Lawrie and I have been working together for almost five years now. We started out in the glamorous world of corporate videos, with our own creative projects on the side, but in the last couple of years we’ve managed to make the transition to producing feature films full time. It’s not always been the easiest road but we’re both delighted to have made it here! I did a degree in film back in Dublin, specialising in scriptwriting and had been peddling my scripts for years, working admin jobs to make ends meet. I had a string of short films to my name but hadn’t managed to make the leap to working full time in the industry. Lawrie, meanwhile, studied an array of subjects from Theology to Acting and eventually Film. Since leaving university, he had been building his corporate video business here in Fife, Scotland, squeezing in the odd short film, and dreaming of one day directing and producing his own creative projects exclusively.

“When our paths first crossed online and we began sharing our creative work, we realised that we shared similar goals and a pool of skills that could work well together. I made the move to Scotland back in 2010 and we’ve been running our production company here ever since. We produced our first feature film, the mumblecore disaster film White Out, that same year amidst corporate work, and that was what really set us down the path to making feature films full time. In 2011, we started to plan our next project, what was to become Lord of Tears. We established a sort of method of working together on story that we’ve run with since on all our projects. First, we went through an extensive period of research into ancient mythologies, folklore, gods and monsters, searching for characters and stories that hooked our attention. We knew at this point that we wanted to make a kind of gothic/folk-horror inspired film so delved deep into those wells to find inspiration. The owl-headed God that eventually became the Owlman, the film’s antagonist, immediately caught our interest.

“Around the Owlman entity, Lawrie built a narrative backstory that tied the Owlman to our film’s hero, James Findlay. I then worked from this blueprint as if it were a historical document, building the narrative of the film around it, with the aim of creating a world that felt authentic, while obviously uncanny. We like to tell stories in the manner of dark documentarians, I suppose, in the style of Lovecraft to an extent, imagining that we are opening a window into another, darker world that may well exist somewhere in the multiverse!”

So how about that Owlman character? He made quite an impact in the marketing for the movie… Sarah said:

“When we first stumbled across the owl-headed God that was to become our Owlman (whose true name I won’t mention for fear of spoilers!) we instantly saw that he had potential as a cinematic villain. The depictions of the God online mostly showed the deity in ancient settings, and we knew that we wanted to make him slightly more modern if not entirely contemporary. We took inspiration from the online phenomenon Slenderman, a nightmarish, long-limbed faceless entity in a black suit. We saw the great menace that this character had, and how he captured the imagination of so many, and wanted to try to bring some of these same qualities to our monster. So the Owlman was to wear a Victorian tail suit, more fitting in a gothic environment, and would similarly have long limbs, in our case topped off with enormous talons. In a visual sense, the character was designed by our art director and director of photography Gavin Robertson and brought to three dimensional life by local artist Angela Allen.

“Lawrie and I created a full and plausible (in the context of the story!) character by blending various mythologies from pagan Scotland to ancient Carthage. We knew we didn’t want him to be an active, slasher-type monster but instead an ominous, brooding presence. The Owlman is almost always still, or moving very slowly – a watcher rather than an actor.

“Finally, we gave him a voice which he used to deliver several darkly poetical monologues. These are an important part of the Owlman character, brought to life by awesome veteran English actor David Schofield.”

LORD OF TEARS firmly wedged itself into the horror psyche a couple of years back, and I asked Sarah how the unique marketing strategy came about?

“I suppose that for Lawrie and I, creative control, independence and sustainability are the things we strive for, so to produce, market and distribute the film ourselves was a natural choice. We did some things that others in the industry found unorthodox or even foolish, for example, focussing on a premium physical product when the rest of the world is obsessed with VOD. We are big believers in the power of a tangible object, in creating something beautiful that feels special to own. We hoped that there were horror fans out there who shared our belief in the physical artefact, and were relieved to find that we weren’t alone. Reviews of our film have consistently remarked on the unique design of our Special Edition, and on the packaging too (each one is individually wrapped in black paper and adorned with a feather).

“It’s been a huge learning curve handling every element by ourselves from running a successful Kickstarter campaign, to creating viral content, to physically producing and posting out products, but it’s ultimately been hugely rewarding. We’ve been lucky enough to find an incredible, supportive audience for our film, who we hope to continue to engage with, and take with us on our journey into future films! We’ve also found support in the shape of patron of the arts, and artist in his own right Sultan Saeed Al Darmaki, who came on board as our Executive Producer. Lord of Tears went on to become Sultan’s company Dark Dunes Productions’ first ever co-production.

“Really, our aims were to build a model that would allow us to sustain ourselves telling the kinds of stories that inspired us, and I’m very happy to say that thanks to Lord of Tears, things are looking very good on that front!”

Which leads us nicely onto Sarah and Lawrie’s new movie, THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS. Sarah says “it’s a horror feature about an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD relating to a traumatic incident he suffered in Afghanistan. The trauma of this event manifests itself in a very real way in the Scottish Highlands where he is holed up, attempting to battle his demons.”

Let’s give this movie the final push to get it over its Kickstarter target, because I for one cannot wait to see it.

The Unkindness of Ravens (and Lord of Tears) is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Year of the Zombie

It’s fifteen years next year since AUTUMN was first released. Back then there were very few zombie novels about, and the living dead were nowhere near as prevalent in the mainstream as they are today. How things have changed. But AUTUMN’s not the only anniversary coming up… 2016 also marks the fifteenth birthday of INFECTED BOOKS.

I reckon we should celebrate, so I’m putting these two events together and designating 2016 as YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE.

Next year Infected Books will be releasing twelve zombie novellas – one per month – from eleven of the best zombie writers out there. But wait… check the maths… It doesn’t add up – twelve releases but only eleven authors? That’s where YOU come in. From the press release:

“As part of YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, we’ll be running a very special Pitch & Page comp via the Infected Books Facebook page. The comp will be judged by our very own Dragon’s-Den-esque panel of bestselling horror author and IB head honcho, David Moody, US literary agent, Gina Panettieri and Micheal Preissl of German and English language publisher, Voodoo Press. The winner will join our 11 established authors to have their novella released as part of Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE. How cool is that?

And if that ain’t enough, we’ll have a few more surprises along the way, as well as a heap of zombie-themed prizes and giveaways courtesy of our sponsors.

So hang onto your hair, kids – 2016 is YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE… and it’s going to be brutal.”

I can’t wait for you to see who we’ve got lined up for this. More details in the coming weeks.

Year of the Zombie is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Happy birthday to the STRANGERS

A spate of brutal murders occur in and around the small town of Thussock. The bodies of the dead – savagely mutilated, unspeakably defiled – are piling up with terrifying speed. There are no apparent motives and no obvious connections between the victims, but the killings only began when Scott Griffiths and his family arrived in Thussock…

Time flies. It’s a year today since STRANGERS was released, so I thought I’d give the book a little first anniversary love. It’s a novel I’m very proud of. I set out to write a quick and bloody horror story – the kind of pulpy tale I’ve always loved to read – and that’s exactly what I did. The book’s had some great reviews, but I think what I’ve been most pleased about is the reaction to the characters. I can’t recall ever writing about quite anyone like Scott Griffiths before. He’s an arrogant, misogynist prick, and your reactions to him have been great. You’ve found him as vile as I hoped you would!

“STRANGERS is easily Moody’s best work to date, a dark, disturbing and visceral book that gives him a legitimate claim to the title of Britain’s Best Living Horror Author that was left vacant by James Herbert’s untimely death.” — This is Horror

“I can’t stress enough how utterly captivating STRANGERS is.  It’s addictive reading from start to finish.  And it proves once and for all that there’s a hell of a lot more to Moody than the end of the world.” —DLS Reviews

STRANGERS is available now from all the usual outlets. You can get hold of a signed copy of the paperback (along with a free ebook version and free UK delivery) for the bargain price of £7.50 as part of the Infected Books BLACK CHRISTMAS promotion.

Happy birthday to the STRANGERS is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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Maggie

When I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger was starring in a zombie movie, I wasn’t interested. For me, the best zombie stories are about the surviving characters and how they deal with the dead, and by deal with the dead, I mean how they fight to stay safe and alive, not how many corpses they can kill and how big the guns and bombs they use are.

I’ve never been the biggest Schwarzenegger fan. Sure, I’ll happily watch the first two (maybe three) Terminator movies again and again, Total Recall is superb, and the first Predator movie is an eighties classic, but Arnie’s never been a personal favourite, and the thought of the ageing all-action, ex-bodybuilding, ex-politician rampaging through hordes of the living dead just didn’t appeal. When I heard more about the project – MAGGIE – I became more interested. And when I got around to watching the movie, I realised my preconceptions were misplaced. MAGGIE’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a damn good little movie (yes, little movie), and Schwarzenegger is a revelation.

As a viral pandemic spreads across America, Wade Vogel (Arnold Schwarzenegger) searches for his runaway daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) and finds her in the quarantine wing of a hospital. Wade brings his daughter back home to his family for the short time before the teenager begins a painful metamorphosis.

Determined to hold onto his precious daughter as long as he can and refusing to hand her over to the local police Wade edges ever closer to a time where he will have to take matters into his own hands.

I think of MAGGIE as a movie about redefining relationships, and with that in mind, Schwarzenegger’s casting here is inspired. I guess a sizeable proportion of the film’s audience will go into it expecting the same kind of thing I did: Arnie being Arnie and saving the day and beating the bad guy as only Arnie can. But that’s not what happens. Arnie can’t save the bad guy, because the bad guy also happens to be his daughter and all he wants is to protect her, no matter what the cost. In the same way, what we’re expecting from our knowledge of Schwarzenegger’s back catalogue makes the faults and frailties of the character he’s playing all the more affecting.

As I said earlier, this isn’t a perfect movie. First time British directed cultivates a lovely tone of grim hopelessness, and knowing that Maggie herself is walking a thin line between being a helpless kid and a cannibalistic killer (and she can’t control which side of that line she’s on, no matter how hard she tries), gives whole story an uncomfortable sense of unease. For all Arnie’s efforts here (and I think he’s really, really good), the real revelation is Abigail Breslin as Maggie. Helpless and heartbroken, you can’t help but connect with her.

All said, MAGGIE is definitely worth an hour and a half of your time. Such a shame it had a very limited theatrical release, particularly when you think how many people turned out to see Terminator: Genysis. On the strength of this film, I’m not particularly interested in seeing Schwarzenegger return to his old roles. I’d much rather seem him tread new ground as he does here.

MAGGIE is available now on Bluray and DVD.

Maggie is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Black Christmas

Okay, so we’re cynically jumping on the bandwagon here, but why not? All we’re trying to do is spread a little doom and gloom this coming holiday season… Not content with Black Friday, we’re having a whole Black Christmas!

Loads of signed books, plenty of discounts. Free shipping in the UK. The sale also includes Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza’s recently released VOODOO CHILD, which Starburst Magazine gave a superb 8/10 to in their review this week.

Stocks are limited, so please head over to Infected Books now.

Black Christmas is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

An update

I thought it was about time I posted a quick writing update. I’m balancing a number of projects at the moment that I hope will come to fruition in the near future. It’s been a busy twelve months and I’ve had to shelve or delay some projects to focus on others. Here’s a quick summary:

ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING

Is the first book in the second HATER trilogy, and I’m well into writing it. I’m scheduled to be done by April 2016, and I hope to be able to announce some exciting news about publication plans for the new series once negotiations are complete.

THE HATER MOVIE

Producer Ed Barratt is currently talking to a number of potentially interested partners about the movie. The script is in cracking shape. More news as soon as I can announce it.

THE FRONT

My book in this World War II zombie series is due out in early 2016. Timothy Long’s first volume will be hitting the shelves shortly, with Craig DiLouie’s book following mine. Very exciting.

TOP SECRET MULTI-AUTHOR INFECTED BOOKS ZOMBIE PROJECT

I’m just tormenting you! Watch for an announcement about something special coming next week.

THE SPACES BETWEEN

Is proving to be a real bugger to write. I’ve spoken about this science-fiction/ horror series on numerous occasions previously (and I’ve a host of competition winners lined up to appear as characters). Thing is, it’s such a huge project set in a really expansive world, that I can’t quite settle on the format and structure. Right now it looks like it’s going to be six volumes long (I’d previously said four): OCTOBER 12, THE COLLECTOR, ELYSIAN FIELDS, MESSIANIC, THE LOW PLACES and ASCENSION DAY. This one will definitely be worth the wait… I’m just sorry that the wait’s proving to be so long.

More soon.

An update is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Remember that time I said I was finished with zombies (and I was very wrong)

Hate to keep teasing announcements, but as well as THE FRONT (coming soon from me, Craig DiLouie and Tim Long), we’re getting ready to announce a MASSIVE Infected Books zombie event for 2016.

By the way, I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes here, and I missed an anniversary. It’s five years last month since Thomas Dunne Books released AUTUMN. The picture above was taken by me in Barnes & Noble on E 17th Street, New York, on the day of release back in 2010. I still find it hard to believe that my little zombie story – which started out as a free pdf I used to email to folks in the pre-ebook days of the turn of the century – turned into such a monster. Five novels, a short story collection, a movie, a radio adaptation… there’s clearly still a lot of love for the undead.

So let’s have some more.

Remember that time I said I was finished with zombies (and I was very wrong) is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Scream Magazine – issue 33 now out

As usual the latest issue of SCREAM MAGAZINE strikes an excellent balance between looking back at horror classics and looking forward to what’s new in the genre. This month there are retrospective looks at Coppola’s DRACULA and Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, as well as features on new movies including BITE, THE HALLOW, TREMORS 5, and VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN.

Highly recommended as always. To get your hands on a copy of SCREAM, visit www.screamhorrormag.com. You can also pick up the magazine from any branch of HMV, Forbidden Planet, or any of the newsagents listed here. SCREAM is also available digitally as iSCREAM.

Follow SCREAM on Facebook and Twitter @ScreamHorrorMag.

Scream Magazine – issue 33 now out is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Moody zombie goodness for your listening/ reading pleasure

Very pleased to announce that BOOKTRACK have released soundtracks to ISOLATION, THE COST OF LIVING and STRANGERS. If you’ve never listened to/read a booktrack before, you’re in for a treat. You get the entire ebook which is synchronised to a soundtrack of music and effects designed to enhance the reading experience. And believe me, it really does.

To celebrate the launch of these three titles, I’ve written a guest blog over at the Booktrack site in which I talk about how music affects my writing. And I’ve even shared the writing playlist I use which has grown organically over many years. I hope you enjoy the booktracks. Please let me know what you think.

 

Moody zombie goodness for your listening/ reading pleasure is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

Voodoo Child by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza – out now from Infected Books

It’s a retro-inspired pulp horror classic in the making! Available now. Grab a signed copy from Infected Books (click here) and get a complementary ebook version.

With back-cover blurbs from Steve Johnson (SFX genius who worked on Ghostbusters, Big Trouble in Little China, An American Werewolf in London) and Harry Manfredini (who wrote the iconic score for Friday 13th), this blood-soaked beauty of a book comes very highly recommended.

Voodoo Child is also available from Amazon and other online retailers.

Voodoo Child by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza – out now from Infected Books is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER