Luke Walker's Blog: https://lukewalkerwriter.wordpress.com, page 11

Short stories, a guest piece and future novel plans

I've had a week off work so along with normal life stuff, I've really focused on writing for the last few days - two new short stories which I'm pretty happy with even if they're the usual messy first drafts. Working titles of She Waits For Me In The Snow, and The Whistler In The Woods. The second is 7k which is longer than my usual short tales (I wrote it over Wednesday and Thursday, pushing myself through 5k of it on the second day which meant I was totally knackered by the end of the session), and one I'll probably trim down a bit to get to the action sooner than later.

Short stories are a strange experience these days. While I obviously still enjoy writing them, the publishing side isn't so much fun. The market definitely seems to have shrunk over the last few years; many of the remaining publishers are closed temporarily or pay next to nothing. It's not an area a writer will ever make a pile of cash from, but let's be fair here: anyone who produces something should be paid for their work and time. You wouldn't ask someone to paint your kitchen and then tell them you'll pay them by telling all your mates how good a job they did, would you? So I stay away from markets that pay in exposure which does limit me a hell of a lot. Even so, I'd rather keep hold of a story until it finds the right home.

I've also done a Q&A and guest piece for Sam Missingham over at Lounge Books as Sam is doing a special on horror fiction near Halloween. Same great questions from Sam and as it's been a while since I've written a piece for another site, I enjoyed the chance to blabber on in a new place. Links to follow as soon as everything is up on Sam's site.

Novel wise, I'm chewing over the plots for two new books - one a linked series of pieces about characters faced with a certain Norse legend which will probably be 20 - 30k each and come together at a certain point, or an unreliable narrator tale set in the world of Anti-Social which you can read in the collection Die Laughing. Whichever idea shouts the loudest wins.

And then I write the next one.

Working on an old book

While my wife reads my latest book, pen and comments at the ready, I've spent the last few weeks going through an older book which caught my eye again for some reason. Almost immediately, it was obvious that while the story and concept are decent, the execution was pretty sloppy: repetitive terms, poor description and issues with the pacing. Funny thing is fixing all that stuff hasn't really taken a hell of a lot of work. Time, yes, because I'm reading through it carefully and literally checking each line, but the work has been fairly easy. Whether that means the overall book isn't as bad as I first thought with the new read or I've improved a lot since the first draft, I don't know. The latter, I suspect.

The original submissions didn't go too badly - several requests for the full book based on the opening and a contract from a small press which I passed on after spotting some flaws in the contract (missing clauses and terms that were much more for the publisher's benefit rather than mine) which is definitely more of a result than some of my other submissions. The plan is to finish going through it today, finalise the new cover letter (it's already got a new title) and then start a fresh load of submissions. Even if it goes nowhere, I've enjoyed the work and found it extremely useful. It's been a great tool for seeing what I get wrong or overdo in my fiction; I can take that with me into new books and  hopefully have more polished first drafts than I do usually. And maybe this one will find a home second time around.

A newsletter and instagram. Maybe.

Been thinking lately of ways I can connect with more readers outside of my blog and Twitter. It's difficult for nearly all writers as obviously not many of us have the power of a big publisher behind us to take care of the marketing. Plus if people don't know you've got a new book (or an older one for that matter), they're not going to be reading it, are they? But then there's the question of time. I need to write the books that I then edit, rewrite and polish before submitting them to publishers. I also need to take care of my 9-5, eat, sleep, relax, see my wife on occasion (ditto friends and family) and switch off - just like anyone else. And let's not forget the time spent online already researching potential markets or blogging and tweeting.

But like I say, we don't all have one of the big boys in terms of publishers to pimp our books so I'm thinking about sorting out a newsletter or maybe having a go at Instagram (which struck me as a strange idea for a tool for a writer when I read about it the other day but apparently I'm behind the times). I did have a Facebook page, but frankly, it was pointless. Each post reached an average of about twelve people even though a few hundred people liked my page, so unless you're paying for it or you have several thousand people who give a monkey's, it seems like a waste of time to me.

Like most writers, I'm more about the actual writing rather than any social side which is probably why it took me so long to start a blog and join Twitter. Odd thing, both are more fun than I expected. Once again, it's just a question of finding the time.

So, anyone up for seeing a newsletter from me every couple of months? Or seeing what sort of rubbish I can post on Instagram? Let me know here or on Twitter and I'll look into it in more detail.

DarkFuse closes

Well, this isn't a post I expected to write, but here it is. The publisher DarkFuse, home to a lot of great writers and books, has gone bankrupt and closed for business. Included in those books was my novella Mirror Of The Nameless which is obviously now unavailable. To say I'm gutted is an understatement. I had a lot of fun writing that book and it came with a relative ease I find hard to believe now. I also struggle to work out how the hell I managed to focus on nothing but the basic story of it without any outside bullshit, but that's just one of those things.

I have zero clue what will happen with Mirror in the long-term. Possibly nothing as it's hard enough to pitch new work to decent publishers let alone stuff that's already been published. I can always do it myself, of course, and maybe I will. At the moment, I just don't know.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know this isn't the first time I've experienced this and it's no less of a bummer now. One of those older books is still homeless and maybe Mirror will join it. Anyway, my little tale I wrote as HP Lovecraft meets Mad Max is done for now along with some quality work by a lot of authors I admire.

New blog look

Afternoon, all. It's the first nice day of this crazy English summer in feckin ages (also the first day for a long time that I'm in shorts, but we probably shouldn't talk about that) so what better time to have a spring clean. In August.

It's been a fair while since I've done anything to my blog in terms of its layout so I've had a refresh of background, colour and overall look. I'm also thinking about binning a load of old posts just for the sake of clarity and size. Anyway, let me know what you think of the new look - easy to read, clear, an improvement or not?

Enjoy ya weekend, people.

Cat charity theft

I've written about some really nasty bastards over the years - people and monsters (sometimes both) who either think they're misunderstood or don't give a toss about being the bad guy, who embrace it. Every time one of these characters comes to the page, I try to ground them in some degree of reality no matter how small. After all, there is nothing more frightening than reality. All you have do to see that is watch the news for about five seconds.

At the same time, there are the good guys: people who are put into that position simply because they don't want to get killed or maybe because they want to stop the bad guys from their moustache twirling, cackling, tying women to train tracks ways (depends on the story, obviously).

It's the same in the real world as it is in fiction. My first reaction upon hearing about a robbery at a local cat charity that resulted in all the food being stolen and leaving the charity with literally nothing to feed their cats was something along the lines of what kind of fucking bastard piece of shit would do that isn't there any honour among thieves and then I saw the comments on the charity's Facebook page: people offering anything they could from a few quid to more cash to dropping off donations of food to blitzing the charity's Amazon wishlist.

The good guys, in short.

So, if you want to be one of the good guys and you've got a bit of cash you can do without, you know what to do.

Cat charity JustGiving page

Thanks.

Dropping the bomb

I'm in the middle of a load of edits for my current book (working title The Kindred) which is taking a while because I've, unusually for me, added to the original wordcount instead of reducing it. As it's gone from 75k to 117K, I'm also trying to knock it down while tidying it up and sorting my mistakes. The basic plot concerns the aftermath of a nuclear conflict which occurred in the mid 80s. It didn't really dawn on me until a fair way into the first draft that it could be connected to the world of Ascent in as much as nuclear war is featured in both books. For what it's worth, I've never seen them as connected. They share no characters, settings or situations other than the bomb dropping. Still, the connection has got me thinking about my fiction in a bigger picture sort of way.

All writers have themes and areas they return to whether they realise it or not while writing. I know what most of mine are and if someone pointed out one or two I haven't considered, that would be no surprise as a lot of the time, I don't think about what I'm writing. I just follow the characters. It's their story I'm telling. Saying all that, I'm well aware I've written more than once about the end of the world - or at least the potential of it. I really couldn't say why other than it gives me a lot of scope to play with and it can be quite fun to wipe everything clean and let those who survive see if they can keep going through whatever comes next. Ascent is definitely about the potential of the end of everything for the few characters trapped in Greenham Place (incidentally, the name of the office block was no accident), and not solely the end of the world. It's about the end of their world and everything they think they know. I suppose it's me saying don't take all the elements that comprise your life for granted because any one of them can be broken in two without warning. Because life is just that much fun.

On the other hand, The Kindred is more basic when it comes to an ending. I've stopped the twentieth century at some point in the middle of the 1980s and although ten years have passed by the time the story starts, it's still the mid 80s because there's nothing left in culture, politics or history to change and develop. The world I've made has ended but  - again supposing - that doesn't mean we end.

In any case, the two books aren't connected by plot or character but perhaps they take place in the same universe. I'll let you know when I know.

ASCENT LINK

George Romero

You know what's funny? I honestly can't remember the first time I saw Night Of The Living Dead. Now, I have a pretty good memory for fairly useless stuff like this and you'd think, given it's the greatest film ever made, I'd know to the minute when I first encountered the film. After all, I know I saw Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead at some point in the mid 90s during a late night showing on BBC2 (and the chances were Dawn was still missing the scene during which Peter shoots the two zombie kids as the BBFC cut that after the school shooting in Dunblane - an act I continue to find staggeringly pointless). I know I was blown away by the levels of violence in both films and the the almost cartoon-like garish colour of the blood in Dawn. I know I found Stephen getting shot in the arm while hiding on top of the lift to be more disturbing than the zombies chowing down, and I know I had to wait a while before getting the uncut versions of both films on dvd.

But, Night? That memory just isn't there.

Maybe it doesn't matter in the end. I know the film inside out and I know what it means to me as a horror fan, as a writer and as a man. And all that comes down to George Romero.

It's easy, all these years later, to overlook or simply forget what Romero and his colleagues did when it came to making Night. Changing horror is one thing; changing cinema is something else. Night managed both which is no mean feat for a low-budget shocker which has been in the public domain for decades. Of course, Romero wasn't just responsible for Night. The Crazies may well be the most cynical film ever made while Martin is up there as one of the grubbiest Much as I love most of his work, it will always be Night for me. They'll always be coming to get you, Barbra. If you burn them, they'll go up easy. And there'll always be a howl of impotent rage at the sheer ugly unfairness of the ending.

It will always be Night for me. And for that, I thank George Romero from the bottom of my undead heart.

Being your own admin department

I finished the second draft of my current book two weeks ago (working title: The Kindred) and have been sorting out a few odds and sods since then. I sometimes get the impression people think writing is simply just a case of writing a book, finishing it and sending it straight off to publishers before the money comes rolling in (hahahaha) and while that might be the case for some of the big names, it definitely isn't for writers like me. For starters, my first drafts are always terrible. Seconds aren't perfect, either, so it would be a waste of everyone's time if I subbed a book that wasn't as close to perfect as I can get. Outside that, there's a lot of what I think of as the business/practical side of writing: researching publishers, agents and markets; choosing the right place to send a sample or a query; getting everything ready and then, as in the case of one night last week, getting an auto reply to say they were now closed. Then writers need to keep track of what they've sent to who and chase if it's required and obviously if that's part of the company's policy on submission - the majority are now a no reply at all means no.

This all takes time and as the writer's life is better spent writing than being their own admin department, it's a case of needs must. Unless a writer is content to write purely for themselves or a select handful of people they can give a copy of their book to, all this practical stuff has to be done. And believe me, it's a drag which is why I try to time it for when I'm between projects rather than in the middle of a book. As the market for horror isn't large (and seems to be shrinking by the year), it's also disheartening. But like I said, it has to be done. Publishers and agents don't go looking for writers; they have enough work to do and enough queries and samples coming their way. All the writer can do, especially if they write in a genre that has a loyal but small audience, is keep looking for the markets to send their work.

And then return to their tale of cannibals in a post-nuclear war alternative history Britain.

Ascent - opening chapter

Because I'm so nice, here's the opening chapter for Ascent as a present to you. Of course, I'm  not that nice so if you want to read more, the links are at the end of the sample. As always with my stuff, all honest reviews are more than welcome on Amazon or wherever you fancy.

ASCENT
Kelly Brown crashed to the polished floor, the impact shoving all the breath from her lungs and turning her vision into a white sheet of pain for a moment. Unable to cry out, she slid to a stop against a stone pillar. Directly above, the open space of the stairwell glared down. A great stream of sunlight shining through the wall of windows at the building’s front made the reception of Greenham Place feel like a sauna. Kelly lay utterly still, staring at the lift doors, incapable of breathing in more than tiny puffs of air, praying she hadn’t broken any bones. A voice inside that could have spoken from an old memory said: the bomb went off.At once, denial gave a furious argument back. If the bomb had detonated, she wouldn’t be here. The building wouldn’t be here. The whole city of Willington and the surrounding countryside would be nothing but a burned hole in the earth along with the open spaces and towns of the entire county. She was on solid ground; she could see the lift doors and she was all too aware of the hurt from the impact on the rock hard floor. Therefore, the bomb hadn’t exploded and she wasn’t dead.Kelly took a shuddering breath and a weak laugh fell out of her mouth. When you struggled to convince yourself you really were still alive, things couldn’t get any more messed up. If the bomb didn’t go off, then what the hell was that light and what sent you flying through the air?Ignoring the questions, Kelly eased herself into a sitting position. While her body, from feet to forehead, was nothing but aches, she was pretty sure no bones had broken or been sprained. Biting back a groan, she stood and turned in a slow circle. The foyer of Greenham Place was deserted. Silence crushed her ears—the silence of an empty building sleeping in the middle of the night even though darkness was still a little way off.She craned her neck. Although plenty of sunlight lit the ground floor, a subtle gloom lurked in the corners and around the massive reception desk to the side of the entrance. The murk couldn’t be called shadows. Not yet. But something wasn’t right; something—“No lights,” Kelly whispered and scanned the ceiling that opened for the stairwell. All the lights were off. So was the heating. The constant soft breath of the warm air circulating back and forth should have been audible since there were no voices or the tap of heels to cover it. Listening harder didn’t help because there was simply nothing to hear. What pushed you through the air? The voice asked it again, and again, Kelly blanked the question. She rested a hand on the pillar, doing all she could to breathe slowly. Sweat worked its way down her back; she’d been wearing her fleece while at work in the library a few minutes’ walk from Greenham Place—the building cool thanks to the October afternoon and an old heating system. Now, in the unbroken stream of sunlight cooking the floor and the entire entrance, Kelly’s body temperature had risen to uncomfortable levels. She told herself it came from the trapped heat and not from any fear or panic over what had happened only moments ago—the fire alarm braying into life, the panicked shouts from her colleagues all standing around a computer to watch the video uploaded to Facebook seconds before. On screen, the lone Korean man stood by a van out in the countryside while a high fence, barbed wire bordering it, ran into the distance. And the man’s tearful, ranting confession in poor English of what he and several others had set in motion.I sorry, so sorry. Not meant this, I not meant this. Clear your army. Run your city. The bomb goes off. Run. Run. Please run.Then the man’s terrified shrieks as another van sped towards him, bearing down as he ran, the view spinning, dancing as his arms waved madly. Immediately after, a hollow pop of small explosions chased him before the view spun over and over to give a quick shot of the giant lifeless miles of fields and woodland around the base. RAF Lakenheath. The road encircling it, and the huge sheet of sky, grey through most of the autumn; trees beginning to bloom, hedgerows full of spiky bushes, all the green and brown of the land caught in the view of the phone in the seconds before the screaming man had somehow managed to upload the clip while he sprinted from the approaching van and what could only be gunshots.Remembering, Kelly wiped at her damp face with a hand and crossed towards the automatic doors that opened to the pavement. Whatever had been going on out near Lakenheath, it had either been some joke or stunt aimed at going viral, or the police and army had dealt with it. No way had it actually happened. No way.No way. This isn’t what happened in Los Angeles. This isn’t last June.Last June on the other side of the world. Kelly shivered, thoughts of the previous summer similar in feel to the memory of being at school and seeing the images of New York that seemed dated to her childish eye, the impact of the second plane and the explosion like something out of a film. The memory and those images taken to new, impossible levels last summer. 6/13, they’d called it. The end of the world by any other name, only four months later, the world didn’t realise it had ended and was still shuffling along while a global stalemate and the frantic efforts of the diplomats and an American President with her finger hovering over the button (and not hammering on it) were the only reason everyone in the world remained alive.Most of these thoughts lost in the immediacy of her confusion and fear, Kelly reached the doors. Her foot, still moving, struck the glass. The doors remained closed. “What?”She tapped the entrance before waving a hand still sore from the crash to the hard floor at the sensor above the doors. It stared back, black and blind. Faraway but coming closer fast, realisation bore down on Kelly. At the last second, her mind tried to shove up a wall, blocking it. The awareness landed and came with only a dull fear.Not one single person walked on the pavement outside Greenham Place and not one vehicle drove along the main road that cut through the centre of Willington. Separated by the thick glass and the motionless doors, Kelly gazed at the road she’d sprinted over minutes before while the world was filled with screams and the thunder of people sprinting away from the shops and businesses as if the buildings were on fire or had already been claimed by the bomb. And hadn’t she wondered in a broken, confused manner about the lack of any siren? Hadn’t she legged it from the back of the library, dashed down the alley between the old building and restaurant at its side, hit a great throng of milling people and wondered why there was no terrible wail of a siren like there always was in films about a nuclear attack? Had she done that or had it all been outside her head? Had—Kelly came back to herself. She’d been tapping on the glass for at least a minute without hearing or feeling the warm glass on her too hot hand. And still, Greenham Road was completely empty of people or traffic. Four thirty on a Friday afternoon and this section of Willington, filled with shops, takeaways, a fucking Tesco fifty feet away looked like Christmas Night when even the pubs had closed and turned Willington’s centre into a sleeping animal. Kelly’s fear, blanketed by confusion since she’d felt the massive shove at her back a second after she’d sprinted to the entrance, pushed its way back to full life. It claimed her body as the pain from crashing to the floor had. From toes to skull, she grew as cold as stepping from her warm car to the bright but frozen sun of a January morning. It wasn’t right. Nothing was right.A gentle ding touched the air. Already naming the cause of the sound, Kelly turned to face the now open lift. The mirrors around its sides, the wall of buttons marking each of the ten floors, the gleam of the metal railing encircling the lift’s interior were all invisible. Black swallowed them, and looking into the lift was like staring into a hole in the earth, peering straight down into a secret space where daylight never reached. Kelly told herself to not say a word, to not move or make a sound. The heat of the glass warmed her back, head and neck, and it took another second for her to realise she’d backed up, stepping as far from the mouth of the lift as she could. A faint whisper of anger brushed by and Kelly seized on it. What the hell was this shit? Scared of an open lift and the lack of light inside it? There were no lights on anywhere so why the hell would the lift be any different? Before she could stop herself, Kelly pushed away from the glass of the main doors, took three quick steps and spoke as loudly as she dared. “Hello.”At once, the lift doors slammed closed. They didn’t glide shut. Impossibly, they snapped together as if weighted down.Her body a spinning wave of hot and cold, Kelly threw herself back to the doors,(the doors they closed like a mouth like a fucking mouth)smashed her head on the glass, and did not register the impact because of the noise. Noise right behind her.Kelly spun to see the main road through Willington’s centre no longer empty but as full of life as it should be on a normal day, and her sprinting thoughts couldn’t come close to making sense of the outside being deserted one moment and populated the next.Afterwards, she’d play it all back and see and hear more than she would have thought her mind had any chance of taking in over those few seconds. She’d see the glint of sunlight as it fell on the side window of a passing white van, the long shadow cast by four businesses—a jewellers, a recruitment office, a travel agent and an empty unit last used as a takeaway—staining the centre of Greenham Road because the sun shone from exactly the right angle to cast that shadow; the group of schoolkids, still in their red blazers, walking close together towards the bus stop outside the Tesco; the cast to the late afternoon light that came only in the days before the clocks changed and the days were abruptly much shorter.All that taken in over no more than two seconds. All that and the growl of an approaching bus, the steady throb of traffic stuck at the lights further down Greenham Road where it met Park Road; the occasional gust of cool wind skittering along the streets, dancing through litter and over all the walking bodies.All that and the man barely five feet from the doors to Willington’s main Council offices, standing there on the pavement, mobile to his ear, his face, kind of good-looking in an older guy way, in profile to Kelly, and the spinning black shape raining towards him, screaminglike a missile towards the man’s head.The falling office chair struck his skull. Blood exploded, turning the window between his falling, crushed body and Kelly into a sheet of red; red littered with chunks and lumps of head, of his fucking brain, oh Jesus, oh my God.Hand over her mouth, Kelly sprinted from the entrance, running without thought to the left of the lifts. She passed through a set of open doors and another reception desk, fumbled for the smooth surface and missed. Kelly dropped to the soft carpet. A few moments later, a door to the right of the lift eased open. Beyond, a short corridor led to stairs and a curving wall of windows letting clear sunlight inside and turn the steps into smooth, white sheets. Unseen and unheard, a man crept out into Greenham Place’s silent reception. 
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