Paul Stephenson's Blog, page 12

Who needs a writing degree anyway?

Chronicles of Mar Word Count: The same as last week.

When the time came for me to choose a university degree, I weighed up the pros and cons of every option available to me, as one should when making a decision of such obvious importance. I knew, thoroughly knew that I wanted to be a writer. But, back then, as someone who’d just discovered Hunter S Thompson’s wonderful world of gonzo journalism, I had moved on from the childish dream of becoming Stephen King. No, I was going to be a JOURNALIST. 

I was going to crack the biggest stories of the day while receiving free albums and books and possibly taking mescaline. I wasn’t really sure. But journalism, that was the thing. I believed it in my very core. I was going to do IMPORTANT WORK. This was before Leveson, naturally. These days that title is lodged somewhere between Phil Collins and Piers Morgan.

Now, you’re probably thinking that, naturally, I took the course that aspiring journalists the world over had done before - English Literature. But no. This was the late nineties, and we were all dazzled by the bright lights and heady excitement that was… Media Studies. So, off to the north I popped, and did my Media degree.

I’ve barely used it since. After all, one doesn’t really need to be able to interpret the Frankfurt school much in order to do a boring desk job. Now, as a wizened old man looking back through tears of regret, I keep looking back at that little idiot with the terrible curtains and think - why the hell didn’t you do an English degree?

Now, I can’t go back to university to do a literature degree, or heaven forfend a creative writing degree, what with the having of the kids and the crushing responsibilities of actual adulthood, plus my burgeoning career as a sub-mid-list indie author to prop up. But, heavens to Betsy, I sure would like to.

Luckily, I live in the period that is now. Since I finished working on the two arcs I had been working on, I’ve given myself a few weeks off to try and do some digging into craft. I’m less than a week in, but the resources I’ve found are overwhelming.

Now, I’m not about to say to any young aspiring writer that they don’t need to go get that degree they were planning on ploughing themselves into debt for. But for those of us for whom that’s not an option, there really is a wealth of knowledge out there for you to marinate in, trying to absorb as much of it as you can. So, here are three great things I’ve found so far.

Skillshare

This is a series of online courses, with a free period that I’m currently burning through like it’s kindling. So far I’ve done a fantastic course by Daniel Jose Older on storytelling fundamentals, one on Journalling by Emily Gould, and one on writing for Wattpad by Rebecca Sky, each of which led to copious pages of notes being hastily scribbled over less than an hour. And, hey, if you go sign up with this link, they'll give me a few more free months. Free months are good.

Youtube

Now, I don’t want to blow your tiny minds or anything, but there’s this new site called Youtube, and it has videos on it… yes, okay, I know this is hardly going to be revolutionary news, but there’s a ridiculous amount of free writing resource available these days — from Brandon Sanderson’s 12-hour masterclass on writing to the excellent 10-minute bites of truth dropped by Jenna Moreci each week.

Story Grid

This hyper-analytic approach to self-editing by story guru Shawn Coyne has completely blown my mind over the last few weeks and months, as I devoured all the videos on his youtube channel, wait patiently to see if my lovely wife will buy the book for my birthday, and burn through all the podcasts he does with Tim Grahl. If you want to get deep under the hood of storytelling, this is the place to go. 

It's ridiculous, really, to have such abundance of free learning all around us. Whatever you want to do with your life, or whether you just have a broken toilet, chances are you'll find someone online willing to teach you how to do it (or fix a toilet). You might not get a piece of paper at the end, but at least you'll know how to do it.

So, while I take a break from writing, I’m filling the void with, um, more writing. Anyone would think there’s something wrong with me. And since I'll be doing more deep dives, what online resources could you not do without?

Before I away, I’ve put together a bookfunnel giveaway that’s running for the next two weeks of over twenty free horror books, of which Blood on the Motorway is one of the chosen (helps when you get to be the chooser). Go check out the page if you want to get some free ebooks, there’s some cracking reads in there. Oh, and tell all the people you’ve ever met about it, too. Cheers.

How I blew my university savings in the worst way possible

I've had a blog for a very long time. Over 15 years. Recently I've been thinking how it'd be nice to bring back some of the better old posts, once a week. I'm starting with a series that I did back in 2009, before Blood on the Motorway was but a twinkle in my eye. I'd asked for seven blog topics from people on Twitter and got some of my best blog material as a result. Skipping over the sixth, which was a silly list of comics I liked, here's Day Seven, a suggestion from Kerri, who's also remained one of my dearest internet friends. Basically, if you want to stay friends with me a long time, respond when I put out calls for blog topics! Originally posted on September 2nd, 2009, this is possibly one of my more shameful tales. Mum and Dad, if you're reading, please look away now.

FROM THE VAULTS: 7 DAYS, DAY SEVEN

Indecision

Indecision is a bitch.  For example, my boss currently can’t seem to decide whether he wants to go on his lunch or not, which is playing havoc with my ability to make this post.  Or take the fact that on Monday morning, already a day behind on this esteemed challenge, I couldn’t decide whether to start on the next post before going out drinking. Which inevitably led to this post being two days late.

I’ve always had a problem with making decisions. Or at the very least I inevitably choose the path of least resistance. Why do something today that you can put off until tomorrow? While I have always suffered from an inability to choose a course of action, back in my teen-aged years this was an almost debilitating affliction, and in the end it cost me all the money I had saved up for University. 

One hot summer’s day, I had a day off from my job at Blockbuster Video (which still ranks as the best job I ever had, even now) and so a few of us grabbed the train from Basildon to Southend for a day at the seaside. Our ulterior motive was to purchase some weed, as there was a drought in Basildon at the time.

Once in Southend, we started to ask around in all the usual places and eventually came across a very scary looking fella, who took our money and disappeared. He said he could only buy in bulk, so we ended up forking out all the money we had on us. We waited for an hour or so, and just as we decided that we’d been skanked out of all our money, he returned. But this time he had a group of thick-skulled thugs to accompany him. ‘I couldn’t get any smoke for you, so I got you these pills instead,’ he said, menace and violence in his eyes.

Now, none of us in our party were interested in anything more than smoke (I have never gone past smoking weed) and so we started to argue that this wasn’t what we wanted, and so please could we have the money that we gave him back, please?  He refused, and his group of associates started to square off for a fight.

Sensing immediately that this wasn’t a fight we were about to win, outnumbered as we were two to one, we retreated immediately, without either the drugs or the money in hand.  Displeased overall with our day’s visit, we decided to call it quits and return home.  The only problem being that we no longer had the funds to get the train back.

Southend station was one of the first to have installed ticket barriers leading on to the platform, making it almost impossible to get onto a train for free, and so we pooled what little money we had and decided to buy a single to the next station on the route, allowing us access to the train without paying the full fare.  If we saw inspectors coming along, we’d simply alight at the next station and wait for the next train.

And so we boarded the train, all rather pleased with the duplicitous nature of our entry, feeling somehow that we’d finally had a small victory in a day of failure. The ticket man even came up and checked our tickets while they were still valid, before disappearing to the other end of the train. We laughed and joked and felt better.  All up to the moment when we looked up to find a British Transport Police officer stood right next to us.

He asked to see our tickets, making it plainly clear with his tone that he knew what he was about to find.  He looked at me first, and I decided that I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.  I pretended to look in my pocket and said I couldn’t find my ticket. He ordered me to empty my pockets.

‘Oh, there it is.’

‘Are you aware that this ticket doesn’t take you this far?’

‘Doesn’t it?

‘No.  You need to make up the rest of the fare.’

‘I don’t have any money.’

‘Then you will have to pay the rest of the fare, and a £25 fine. Can I take your name please?’

And this is where I got really foolish.  About a week previously I had split up with my girlfriend, who I discovered had been cheating on me with her ex, who was also now incidentally a heroin user.  Needless to say, I was miffed by this, and without thinking, I blurted out his name, presumably with my brain deciding that the least he owed me was 30 quid or so for stealing my girlfriend.  Although to be fair, I had stolen her from him to begin with.  My friends looked at me in shock.  Without looking up, the policeman continued. ‘And your address?’

Ah.

I hadn’t thought this through. I didn’t know his address. What should I do? Give mine? Make up an address? Admit defeat and come clean? Instead, I simply stammered, feeling my face grow redder and redder. The policeman looked up from his notepad and fixed me with a stare, making it even worse. Now I couldn’t even remember my own name and address.  There was a thumping sound in my head.

He let me stand there in my own shame and indecision, my mind literally frozen, for what seemed like hours (although, given that it was only a half hour train journey, that seems unlikely) before slowly he said;

‘That’s not your name, is it?’

I shook my head and proceeded to answer every question truthfully. When I had finished, he gave me a caution and told me that my fine would now be for a higher charge, and I may need to go to court. I sat down slowly, my face undoubtedly still supernova red. Needless to say, my friends made no such mistakes, and gladly reeled off their names and addresses.

Two months later, having elected not to defend myself in court, I was handed an additional £250 fine, on top of the £25.  I paid it out of the money that I had spent the summer saving towards University, and as a result, went to Sunderland with about £15 in my account.

Looking back on it now, I think it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t my finest hour.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores.

The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning is the end

Chronicles of Mar word count: 258,103 words

One of the weird things that I’ve discovered about trying to write a series in bits and pieces is that there is no longer the sense of beginning and ending. Which is weird, when you’re a storyteller. With the Blood on the Motorway trilogy, I wrote three books, in order, and didn’t think much about the next book in the series until I was done with the one before it. Thus, when I finished a draft, I got to do the thing where I celebrated, maybe had a glass or two of wine. Or a vineyard’s worth. It’s a very satisfying thing, to type The End. 

Now I’m writing a full six-book series, with interweaving narratives, plots that span years, and nothing where it was originally intended to be. I wrote an entire book but realised it was actually better split over two books and mixed in with other narrative threads that were written for what was originally book two in the series. Then, having looked at the timelines, I decided that some of those threads should really be in book three or four in the series. It all ends up a bit like Charlie in It’s Always Sunny trying to work out who Pepe Silvia is.

That’s left some gaps, which is what I’ve been working on so far this year. Two timelines, one new, one a continuation of an earlier thread, which aren’t even going to end up in the same book. 50,000 words, all told, written alongside each other, feeding into each other, then to be torn asunder. It’s all a bit strange. 

Not only that but as I round the last corner of this chunk of 50,000 (I should finish it tonight if I get this update written quickly enough) my reward for completing two random strands is… two more random strands to write!

Now, once those are done, I’ll have the first drafts of three whole novels, in the bag. Then will come the wine. After the wine comes the tough work of pulling them apart, seeing what goes where, judging the narrative arcs (more on that for another day), having an in-depth look at the characters, and all the other fun things that second drafts are for.

But for now, after fifty straight days of hitting a thousand words, I feel burned out by the whole ordeal, and the thought of picking up two new strands sounds like hell on earth. So, that must mean it’s time to take a break, put the keyboard down for a bit, and focus on something else.

That something else is going to be digging deep into some craft stuff. I’ve found some great tutorials that Brandon Sanderson did on creative writing on Youtube, and I’ve recently found the writing vids that Jenna Moreci does that are both insightful and funny as hell. That’ll probably lead to a whole rabbit warren of other things. Then I’ve downloaded some books on Craft, and I’ve been burning through the Story Grid podcast. Oh, and I have one eye on Aaron Sorkin’s Masterclass course because Aaron Freakin Sorkin.

So, a week off words, a week (or maybe two) of diving into the craft, and then hopefully it’s back to the grindstone to pull another 50,000 words out of my arse before the summer.

Blood on the Motorway – An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches, is available on Amazon , iBooks , Kobo and more besides.

If you want to know more about me or my books, you can follow me on Twitter , like the Facebook page , or follow me on Instagram . For news, offers, and special content s ign up for the mailing list .

A letter to my daughter

I've had a blog for a very long time. Over 15 years. Recently I've been thinking how it'd be nice to bring back some of the better old posts, once a week. I'm starting with a series that I did back in 2009, before Blood on the Motorway was but a twinkle in my eye. I'd asked for seven blog topics from people on Twitter and got some of my best blog material as a result. Here's the fifth, a suggestion from [Last Year's Girl], who's also remained one of my dearest internet friends. Originally posted on August 30th, 2009, my daughter was two at the time. I'd say this still holds true.

From the vaults: 7 Days, Day Five.

A letter to my daughter

 Dear Rosie.

As I write this, your Mum has gone to work, and you are sat in the lounge in your ball pit watching Cbeebies. You just came in to give me a cuddle and I told you that I was writing you a letter, and you told me (in your roundabout way) that you didn’t want to grow up, so wouldn’t be able to read it. I hate to break it to you, but you are going to have to get older, so one day you might stumble across this.

Since I set myself this test, this was the one topic that has me genuinely daunted.  There are so many things I could say to you, so much advice I could give you, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few days, and there is one piece of advice that I can give you that hopefully can help you later in life.  It’s something that it has taken me most of my adult life to work out, and I offer it to you in the hope that it doesn’t take you as long.

Don’t ever regret your decisions or your actions, for they have all brought you to this point now, and for good or ill, they will all inform the path that your life takes. You won't ever know what that path is until it’s upon you, so enjoy the path you are on, and let it take you where it will.

This may seem like strange advice for a parent to give their child, given the emphasis we all put on making the ‘right’ decisions.  Maybe by the time you are reading this we are hassling you about your GCSE subjects, and how those choices affect your life, but the truth is that it is the smallest decisions that shape your life, just as much as the ones that seem to be big decisions at the time.  Every decision you ever make is a big one, and the truth is that nobody ever gets those decisions right all of the time.  I’ll give you one example, a small incident that has shaped everything that followed.

When I was seven, I was sat at school, alone on the swings, listening to a tape of Kylie Minogue.  Even back then I listened to a lot of music, mostly tatty 80’s pop, but when I was sat on those swings a boy called Ben came up to me and asked me what I was listening to. I told him, and he told me that I should listen to a band called Guns N Roses. Now at this point, I could have dismissed him or forgotten the conversation, but I didn’t. Next time I was home I begged your Granddad for some money to go and buy the tape. And that was the tape that got me into music, something that has stayed with me for all of my life, and which has informed so many of the decisions that followed.

Now, I know that no matter what, I would have ended up becoming a music obsessive. It’s in my blood, and I hope that you will share the same passion for music that both your Mum and I have.  But I often wonder what would have happened if Ben had told me to listen to The Smiths instead.  Would my musical journey have been altered by a different point of entry? Would I have had the same friends at college if I had gotten into indie music rather than rock music? What if he had gotten me into the other new scene at the time, dance music?

When I went to Sunderland to go to university (again an utterly random decision based largely on the fact that I wanted to move as far away as possible from your Grandparents, who I wasn’t really getting on that well with at the time, in part because I kept blaring Korn and Marilyn Manson at top volume from my stereo) my entire social circle was based around the music I listened to.  I started a DJ night, and my love of music deepened even further.  I formed a band, and because of that, and the friends I had, I stayed in the North East for four years after I finished University.  Would I have done that if I hadn’t had those passions, those friends? No.

When I was still living in the North East I met someone, and when they left Sunderland I went with them to York.  When I was there it was the music that I loved led me to the friends I met here, a lot of whom you now call Auntie and Uncle because to me they are family.  But without that first Guns n Roses tape, I wouldn’t have met them, wouldn’t have been in York.

And this brings me to my final point. Under no illusions do I want you to think that I’ve always been happy, or that I’ve always made the right decisions. There have been many times that I could have made a decision that would have improved my career, or taken me to new places, but I can’t ever change those decisions, and I will never regret them.  How can I ever regret anything? Even the slightest difference in my life could have taken me on a different path.  If I had never come to York, if I had taken a different job when I was here, or if I had skipped one particular works party then I would never have met your Mum. And if I had never met your mum, then you wouldn’t be reading this at some unseen point in the future, and I wouldn’t be writing this while you run around in your pyjamas, placing brightly blocks into a shape sorter. And that is a world I would never want to imagine.

I can’t ever regret any of the choices I made because, without them, you wouldn’t be here, and no matter what happens for the rest of my life, I know I will always have made those choices right because of that.  And so whenever you sit there and regret some boy you didn’t talk to, or exam that didn’t go well, or a job interview that you missed, don’t worry too much because that path you are on is still there.  And besides, no matter what road you take, what choices you make, none of them will ever mean that we love you any less, or that we won’t be there to pick you up when you fall down.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores.

Chronicling the Chronicles

Chronicles of Mar word count: 250,578 words

Somewhere in the lead up to Nanowrimo in 2016, I started planning out what was going to be my first new book in a series other than Blood on the Motorway. Those three novels were all well on their way towards completion, and I knew that whatever I wrote next would not be in that universe. Don’t get me wrong, I love post-apocalyptic, and I may write in that genre again, but I knew that I wanted something different. Something new.

So, I started working on something that I’d actually attempted some years earlier, but discarded on the grounds that it wasn’t very good. A sci-fi horror idea that’s been kicking around my head for well over five years. A doomed mission to the ice moon of Europa, somewhere between Alien and Event Horizon. I wrote that first draft and decided it wasn’t very good, so I wrote a second draft and found that, finally, the third time was a charm. It was scary, it was interesting, and most of all the main character was great.

The only problem was, it didn’t feel like a series with just this character was going to be… satisfying enough.

The world, however, that had legs. The horror adventure of that first book was rooted in global problems that had ramifications far beyond that one story. It’s a world 100 years in the future blighted by The Mar, a disease that has decimated agriculture and food production, on top of the ravages of global conflicts and global warming. The next book I started in the series introduced three new characters and events that ran concurrent to the first book. Then I wrote another one. Now I’m writing more. At this point, I’ve just rounded 250,000 words of predominantly first draft of a sci-fi series that has some good potential but is quite frankly a bit of a sprawling mess.

At the same time, I’ve been digging back into looking into craft in a big way this year. I’ve tried to really cut back on social media (with limited success) and obsessing over news events (with more success) and tried to fill that void with books, blogs, podcasts, and videos that are all based around the craft of writing. I’ve found some fantastic resources, and every day I’m making copious notes about story structure, character, agency, and a million other things.

I think this world that I’m writing in has real potential to it. Some of the characters are really coming to life, and some of the narrative strands are really fun and exciting. Not just that, but I’m starting to get a sense of where this whole thing could be going, even if I’m a really long way off that endpoint. My sense right now is that I’m looking at a six book series of roughly 700,000 words which will take us all the way from a doomed space mission to a total global war.

Even if this does all come together, it’s going to take some doing. It’ll be probably at least another year until I have even one book ready in the series, if that. By the time I have 300,000 words of first draft I’ll be about ready to start the process of second draft, which could take another year all by itself.

While I’m doing that, I thought I’d start doing a weekly update on the whole process here on my blog. I’ll be sharing some of the things I’m looking at, some of the frustrations, some of the tools that are working for me, and maybe even some of the work in progress, if I feel brave enough. I’m going to tag them all as Writing Chronicles, and they’ll be up every Monday afternoon.

In the meantime, if you’ve not yet read my Blood on the Motorway series, you can check out the first book completely free here, or pick up the full trilogy for about the same as a bottle of wine at any of these fine retailers. You know it makes sense.

A monkey holding a watermelon

I've had a blog for a very long time. Over 15 years. Recently I've been thinking how it'd be nice to bring back some of the better old posts, once a week. I'm starting with a series that I did back in 2009, before Blood on the Motorway was but a twinkle in my eye. I'd asked for seven one blog topics from people on Twitter and got some of my best blog material as a result. Here's the fourth, a suggestion from, well, I'm not sure who suggested it. Lost to the sands of time. Originally posted on August 28th, 2009, a time when my now-ten-year-old daughter was only two years old.

A monkey holding a watermelon

From the vaults: 7 Days, Day Four.

One of the bewildering things about becoming a parent is the lack of basic instructions.  If you go to Argos and buy a piece of furniture you will find assembly instructions enclosed within, and yet when it comes to being given a newborn child, which will require much more effort and constant management than a three-tier wardrobe will ever do, you get nothing. At the very least they should provide you with the child equivalent of an Allen key, a multi-purpose tool that can stop it from crying or deal with the never-ending flow of poop.

One of the things they should prepare you for is how much children’s television has changed since you last bothered to tune in. The main example of this is the advent of all-day children’s channels, such as the wonderful and yet bewildering Cbeebies. No longer are children’s programmes a way to settle a child for a few hours in the afternoon, now they provide it from the moment your child wakes you up until the time they go to bed, like a constant opium release for your child.

Of course, this leads to the temptation, especially on those weekend days when you are feeling a little worse for wear, to just pop it on and leave it running all day, like a constantly running distraction machine. But (and this is where the warning comes in) you do this at your peril because soon you will get sucked into the bewildering world within. When I was a child I doubt that my parents could name any of the characters of the programmes I watched. They lacked any awareness of the organisational structure of the Autobots, for instance. And yet I can name virtually every character that comes on Cbeebies over the course of a day. I know the words to all the songs they sing on Me Too, have seen every episode of In the Night Garden and have even found myself leaving the channel on when Rosie isn’t even in the house, dancing around to Boogie Beebies.

But none of this prepared me for the latest marvel to grace Cbeebies.  The terror that is Waybuloo.  I first stumbled across this one afternoon after Rosie and I had been to the park. After two hours of running after a toddler as she attempted every single area of the park that she was not old enough to go on, we returned home with me far more exhausted than her.  I popped on Cbeebies and curled up on the sofa to die.

About half an hour later I woke, with a strangely serene feeling washing over me, as the gentle music of pan pipes and clinking crystals greeted me. I opened my eyes and could see Rosie transfixed to the screen.  I glanced at the television, trying to make out what was going on.

It was no good. On the screen were what appeared to be three small monkey-like creatures, all laying on the floor doing yoga.  Then they suddenly exclaimed something in a weird language and started to float off the ground, manic smiles plastered on their faces, eyes huge with dilated pupils.  The screen cut to another of the little monkey creatures, this time holding what appeared to be a watermelon.  Another was jumping calmly up and down on a box, neither of them showing any expression other than what appeared to be a manic bliss.  The monkey holding a watermelon handed it to another monkey and then flew away without a word. ‘Noktok,’ said the other monkey creature, and walked away to do some more yoga. Everything was so surreal that I wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised if what they’d actually said was ‘Nobody puts Noktok in a corner.’

I watched the rest of the episode without a clue what was going on, but unable to look away. Even the most surreal episode of In The Night Garden will still furnish the viewer with some plot, generally about someone losing something and then finding it again, but try as hard as I could, there was no plot to be found here.

Afterwards, I turned the television off, despite the protestations of Rosie, who began immediately to shout ‘Beebies.’  I looked at her, and said ‘We’re going to go back outside Rosie, I think we need to make sure that the world is still real after that.’  She nodded and headed for the door.  Thankfully all was as it had been only an hour before. But for a while there I was beginning to suspect some kind of cosmic shift, the world spun out of orbit by the sheer oddness of the show we had seen.

Needless to say, it’s now Rosie’s favourite show. 

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores.

Women in Horror Month

February. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, if you discount those pesky other months and boil the whole year down to just the first two. Hey, at least it’s short.

February does have one thing going for it, however. Women in Horror month, an annual celebration of, well, women in horror. 

As they themselves say:

Women in Horror Month (WiHM) is an international, grassroots initiative, which encourages supporters to learn about and showcase the underrepresented work of women in the horror industries. Whether they are on the screen, behind the scenes, or contributing in their other various artistic ways, it is clear that women love, appreciate, and contribute to the horror genre. 

From Mary Shelley to Anne Rice, female horror writers have been around for generations. This month is all about celebrating female horror writers and strong female leads in horror stories. 

Now in its ninth year, this is a multinational event which sees women from across the different horror related arts — filmmakers, writers, actresses, producers, bloggers, and everything else besides (last year there were even events held in SecondLife) get together for events both online and in the real world to discuss all things horror. This is, needless to say, pretty chuffing awesome.

One such event is being held online by the excellent S.K. Gregory, author of Daemon Persuasion, over at her blog. She’s interviewing a different female author (or male author with female leads in their horror works) every day in February. Already this month there’s been interviews with the likes of Fiona Hogan, Suzi Albracht, Rita Kruger, and S.K. Gregory herself, and there are interviews with Pamela K Kinney, Alathia Morgan, and Yolanda Olson and loads more coming up over the month. There are already some fascinating discussions about representation, the female perspective, and the future of the genre going on. Oh yeah, and I’ll be dirtying up the place on Monday, talking about Blood on the Motorway (as if I ever talk about anything else).

So, if you’re looking for a new horror read, and you want to support up-and-coming women in the horror genre, head over to the blog, bookmark it, and check back every day. Or if you’re interested in what else is going on for Women in Horror Month, head to the main site to see if there are any events near you. Or check out the hashtag #WIHM9 over on the twitter dot com for a refreshing break from all the Nazis .

From the vaults: 7 Days, Day Three - Festivals

I've had a blog for a very long time. Over 20 years. Recently I've been thinking how it'd be nice to bring back some of the better old posts, once a week. I'm starting with a series that I did back in 2009, before Blood on the Motorway was but a twinkle in my eye. I'd asked for seven one blog topics from people on Twitter and got some of my best blog material as a result. Here's the third, a suggestion from @gregeden, who's remained one of my dearest internet friends ever since. Originally posted on August 27th, 2009, I've gone ahead and changed some of the names on this story.

Festivals

I consider myself to be quite the connoisseur of festivals, having been to about 20 of them over the years, and like anyone who has been to festivals have quite a few good stories. My favourite festival story is not mine though, and so I bring you the story of my good friend Jed at Reading 1999.

Jed had always had a bit of a reputation for needlessly getting himself into trouble. This is a man who did a bungee jump one week after a hernia operation. The same man who scaled a lighting pole at one Leeds Festival only to lose his grip and plummet into a bin. Jed is the guy you take with you to a festival who gets so wasted on the first night that he doesn’t go and see any bands until the last day.

At the Reading festival in 1999, he outdid himself. Jed started off the first night asking around if anyone had any acid, which none of us did. He’d never been a prolific drug taker, none of us were, so it took us a bit by surprise.  He didn’t manage to score any that night, nor the night after, although he remained adamant that he wanted to take some.  He still got drunk out of his skull as per usual and by the last day of the festival, none of us had heard from him for a while.

It turned out that on the last day he had decided that in order to procure said hallucinogens he needed to look further afield than our little field.  Off he trundled, asking everyone he could find if they had any. It’s a wonder he didn’t get arrested.

What happened next was that he bumped into someone who recommended he go and check out the Herbal High tent.  He wasn’t sure if that would do the full job he had in mind, so he carried on his fruitless search for a little while longer.  Eventually, he gave up and was about to head back to our tents when he came upon the aforementioned Herbal High tent.  He inquired as to their effectiveness and was assured that they were every bit as strong as the real thing and that since it was his first time he should under no circumstances take more than two tabs.

Instead of taking this advice, however, Jed decided to digest the whole sheet systematically, not realising that the ‘kick’ would not come for a while.  It was around the time he finished that it finally arrived, and he spewed forth a torrent of festival food, beer, and paper.  Disorientated and tripping, he made his way back to the tent while we were all still in the arena and collapsed into the relative safety of his plastic abode.

An undetermined time later, the tent door was unzipped and Jed looked in horror as a bald man and a woman climbed in and commenced fervent lovemaking, right next to him. This went on for quite some time until the bald man looked over and saw Jed.

‘Oh sorry mate, I didn’t see you there,’ he said nonchalantly, before adding ‘are you all right mate, you don’t look very well.’

‘Well actually, I just took a whole sheet of acid.’

‘Really? Are you seeing anything weird?’

‘Well there’s two strangers fucking, right in front of me.’

Undeterred, the man and woman continued to go at it, completely ignoring him. At this point, he simply blacked out, presumably his mind shutting down for the sake of self-preservation.

Now all of this comes from the account of a man tripping heavily, so I can’t be sure what is real and what isn’t. But the one thing I do know is that the next morning, concerned for where he had disappeared to, we opened the tent to see him laying in the tent looking utterly bewildered, with not one but two naked women laying alongside him asleep, with no bald man in sight.

And who says drugs can’t do good things?

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores.

From the vaults: 7 Days, Day Two - Condom

I've had a blog for a very long time. Over 15 years. Recently I've been thinking how it'd be nice to bring back some of the better old posts, once a week. I'm starting with a series that I did back in 2009, before Blood on the Motorway was but a twinkle in my eye. I'd asked for seven one blog topics from people on Twitter and got some of my best blog material as a result. Here's the second, a suggestion from @tylermassey, who's gone on to become a tremendous singer-songwriter. Well, he was probably one then, too, but he definitely is now. This post was first published August 26th, 2009.

Condom

As regular visitors to this site will know, I was educated at boarding school.  During my time at my first such school, I went on a French exchange trip. I don’t ever remember the French coming over to us, so maybe it was one way, but this was one of my strongest memories of childhood, so I shall relate to you the story of my one week in the small French town of Condom.

The trip itself was the first time I had ever been away without my parents, and the other people I was going with were all excited by the possibility of the French contraband they would be stocking up with on the trip. The possibilities seemed exacerbated by the fact that the town we were visiting had a name which was to us a very rude word. We had all heard of the plurality of french merchants of ninja stars and pornography, which overwhelmed any sense we had that we were going to be stuck in a foreign country of whose language all of us had only the basest grip.

Once we stepped off the bus, however, all of our inhibitions were tempered by the harsh reality that we were being lined up to be matched up with families we had previously no contact with.  We surveyed the children in front of us, who seemed as scared as us. I was paired up with a pretty blonde girl and counted my lucky stars as the thoughts of romance blossomed in my pre-pubescent mind.

My happiness was short-lived, however. At my school I was always singled out by the powers that be as the son of a publican, not truly deserving of the heritage that the school had, and as such was predictably paired off with the one desperately poor family. They ran a small eaterie in the town itself, and by the end of the first night, it was clear that the parents of my new friend expected me to earn my keep. The whole of the first night was spent washing dishes and picking up and cleaning the mess of the clientele.

The family I was with spoke no English at all, and since my French was broken at best, they spent most of their time barking their orders at me in the same way you can see British tourists doing whenever they go abroad.

My predicament was not helped by the fact that whenever we all met back at the school the next day, everybody else seemed to be having a whale of a time, with lovely families who did nothing but feed them exotic food and sneaking them wine while taking them out on bike trips. By the third night, I was broken, and called my parents in floods of tears, proclaiming how I wished to come home immediately.

The next day I was taken aside by one of my school’s teachers and told that I would be moving families, presumably after my parents had been in contact to kick up a fuss. The teacher didn’t seem too happy about it but I was overjoyed, even more so when I realised I was moving to be with two of my friends, who were already at the same house with a pair of French boy twins.

As I arrived at the new house, I was startled by the change. This was the kind of France I had heard about, a beautiful cottage seemingly hewn into luxuriant countryside, and a kitchen that seemed to be always issuing the smell of tantalising baked goods. Even the weather improved as soon as we got there.

Once I had put my stuff into what was now the most crowded bedroom in France, the kind matronly mother pulled me aside and spoke to me in perfect English.  She told me that everyone was going on a bike ride together, but that unfortunately all of the new bikes were taken, and would I mind joining them on one of the older bikes they had locked in the garage?  Of course, I immediately agreed, eager to finally start what had so far been a pitiful trip.

I sized up the gigantic and ancient racing bike they pulled out for me and, refusing to be left behind, awkwardly mounted it.  It wobbled constantly and I felt completely unsafe, but I gritted my teeth and followed everyone out onto the long gravel driveway.  The other kids sped out in front of us, and the parents quickly followed them.

I focused on the road in front of me, and although the others were soon out of sight the downhill momentum meant I was soon picking up speed.  Not far down, just as I was approaching top speed, the front wheel hit an unexpected bump and the handlebars jerked. I went flying over them and landed hard on my side.  The momentum carried me forward, my bare leg scraping against the gravel road and leaving a thin red trail behind me.  I was screaming in pain before I even stopped.

The group ahead must have heard my screams because soon they were back. The father lifted me in his arms and took me into the house. He informed me that I wasn’t to worry, that his wife was a nurse, and she would look after me.  She cleaned out the wound as best she could and dressed it.

This understandably put a dampener on the rest of the week, my leg throbbing constantly. I was cheered slightly by the discovery that the vending machine in the school was confused by our currency, so you could buy a Crunch bar for 4p, but nonetheless, it was not a good time.

Not nearly as bad a time as when I got home though.  It turns out that my French nurse had declined to think to change my bandages in the whole four days I had been there, and the gauze was now a part of the giant scab I now had. It took my Dad 6 hours to remove it in a warm bath, my screams so loud that by the end I couldn’t speak.

Thankfully, the next school trip was to Disneyland, and I returned from that one with nothing more severe than a pack of pornographic playing cards and a ninja throwing star.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores.

A Final Storm - The Soundtrack

*Shuffles papers*

Good afternoon. I hope you're enjoying your January, the endless void of which has only another seventeen years to endure before we reach February.

Did you know that my third novel, A Final Storm, is on sale now? Did you? Well, that’s not really surprising, since just about every thought that crosses my synapses these days is trying to find ever more convoluted ways to tell people about it. Chances are that if you've crossed my real-world or digital path these last few months, I've told you all about it. I'll have told you that it's the final book in the Blood on the Motorway trilogy (now available as a standalone trilogy, fact fans), that it brings to a close the epic saga of five very different people as they battle serial killers, despots and people who like to dress up like characters from Highlander while trying to survive the end of the world. I'll have told you that it's really rather good, and that you should absolutely spend a few quid on buying it because that's like injecting endorphins directly into my brainstem, and who wouldn't want to do that for a friend?

Those of you who have been paying attention may recall that when it comes to the Blood on the Motorway series, I have a bit of an odd approach to naming my chapters, and indeed my books. Blood on the Motorway is named after a DJ Shadow song, and the second novel, Sleepwalk City, is named for the 65daysofstatic song of the same name. This third novel is from a song by the vastly underrated Swedish goth metal band, Khoma.

The same is true of each and every chapter title in the novels, which are all named after songs that were rattling around the caverns of my mind while I was writing the book. Songs from the likes of Mogwai, Pearl Jam, Oathbreaker, Meshuggah, and PJ Harvey, which is a fairly eclectic mix, of itself. Given what an unspeakable music nerd I am, this is a good way to shoehorn some music trivia into an apocalyptic world where music is very low down people’s lists of concerns, somewhere just below hunger, whether the corpse dangling in the next street might be boobytrapped, and how to battle marauding gangs with a hangover.

The other bonus is that it creates a soundtrack of sorts to the whole proceedings, so that you, the reader, can enjoy the kind of sonic palette that was such a huge part of creating the world of the novel. I’ve made playlists in Spotify for each novel, and you can follow along with the one for A Final Storm below, or check out the soundtracks for the first two books over on my Spotify page, along with some of my other fun playlists.