Luke Walker's Blog: https://lukewalkerwriter.wordpress.com, page 16
August 3, 2016
Hometown - visual inspiration
While I have zero talent when it comes to drawing anything, I do like to picture scenes or locations from my books. When it came to Hometown, I had images in mind before I'd written a word. I've always had a thing for normal, known places turned a little...odd. Unused traintracks for example. I was on a train a few years ago, pulling into a station and noticed a bunch of old tracks covered in weeds, all rusting and half-obscured by the undergrowth. Once upon a time, they would have been used, of course, but at that point, they were just metal lines left in the ground. I quite liked that. If there'd been some global pandemic or war, the tracks would have looked much as they did on that day.
Now, expand that image to a street or a city centre or the entire city. Or a country. Everything still more or less in one piece but covered in weeds, windows broken, doors boarded up and damage from smoke or water leaks marking brickwork.
I quite like that, too.
With that in mind, coming up with descriptions for the other side (the underside if you like) of the town in my book was easy. All I had to do was think about those old traintracks and bear in mind the look of a couple of films: Silent Hill and Escape From New York - one of which gets a cheeky mention in Hometown.
Now, expand that image to a street or a city centre or the entire city. Or a country. Everything still more or less in one piece but covered in weeds, windows broken, doors boarded up and damage from smoke or water leaks marking brickwork.
I quite like that, too.
With that in mind, coming up with descriptions for the other side (the underside if you like) of the town in my book was easy. All I had to do was think about those old traintracks and bear in mind the look of a couple of films: Silent Hill and Escape From New York - one of which gets a cheeky mention in Hometown.
July 30, 2016
Guest post - an essay from Sara Jayne Townsend
Very happy to welcome my friend Sara Jayne Townsend to my blog for a guest post...
The Endurance of HorrorBy Sara Jayne Townsend
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, it’s hard not to notice that we are living in a troubled world. Political strife. Terrorist strikes. Civil war tearing countries apart.
Fiction has always been a way of escaping from the real world, but what’s popular in genre changes depending on what’s going on in the world. In the 1990s, cyberpunk was a hot genre. But in the early 21st century, the near-future dystopia it portrayed is uncomfortably close to the mark and it has, understandably, lost popularity. Instead we’ve seen the rise of steampunk – an idealised version of the past that has enough of a fantasy element to provide escapism. And allows, as an added bonus, an excuse to dress up in top hats and corsets.
Horror, too, has always evolved with society. What scares us in fiction has always reflected what’s scary in the real world. In the 50s, fear of the stranger (the ‘Red under the Bed’) manifested itself in stories of alien invasion. In the 60s, fear of nuclear war led to stories about mutant monsters. More recent decades have given rise to environmental disaster stories, conspiracy theory stories and society being decimated by deadly viruses, to name just a few of modern fears.
The modern world, though, is far more complex. In such times, there is generally a rise in fantastical monsters. The supernatural and the mythical – things that are scary, but that we know aren’t really real – provide a way of getting scared ‘safely’.
And, of course, there are always zombies. Because you know where you are with zombies. Things that are no longer human, have no conscience and no sentient thought beyond the need for fresh human flesh, are quite clearly the bad guys and things you can go after with a shot gun without any kind of moral dilemma. In real life, the bad guys are not always quite so straightforward.
The other thing to note about horror fiction is that it lets you escape to a world that is far worse than real life. If you’re reading about a world where humanity has been decimated and the handful of survivors are being pursued relentlessly by zombies, or a supernatural nasty has the protagonists literally fleeing for their lives, your own everyday worries might not seem so bad in comparison.
Sara Jayne Townsend is a UK-based writer of crime and horror, and someone tends to die a horrible death in all of her stories. She was born in Cheshire in 1969, but spent most of the 1980s living in Canada after her family emigrated there. She now lives in Surrey with two cats and her guitarist husband Chris. She co-founded the T Party Writers’ Group in 1994, and remains Chair Person.
She decided she was going to be a published novelist when she was 10 years old and finished her first novel a year later. It took 30 years of submitting, however, to fulfil that dream.
Her latest release is SUFFER THE CHILDREN, a supernatural horror novel that is out in e-book format on 9 August 2016, and is available now for pre-order from MuseItUp Publishing.
Learn more about Sara and her writing at her websiteand her blog. You can also follow her on Twitterand Goodreads, and buy her books from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
Orphaned at eighteen, Leanne's life is adrift in a sea of grief and drug use. She washes up on the shore of estranged relatives, the Carver family, struggling with loss of their own. The transition from her South London council estate to her new home in the Surrey middle-class suburbs is difficult for Leanne.
But beneath the respectable veneer of the quiet neighborhood, something terrifying lurks. Displaced and troubled teenagers are disappearing. Leanne recruits her cousin Simon and his girlfriend Carrie to help get to the bottom of the sinister mystery. Can the three of them stop a creature of unimaginable evil before Leanne becomes a target?
The Endurance of HorrorBy Sara Jayne Townsend
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, it’s hard not to notice that we are living in a troubled world. Political strife. Terrorist strikes. Civil war tearing countries apart.
Fiction has always been a way of escaping from the real world, but what’s popular in genre changes depending on what’s going on in the world. In the 1990s, cyberpunk was a hot genre. But in the early 21st century, the near-future dystopia it portrayed is uncomfortably close to the mark and it has, understandably, lost popularity. Instead we’ve seen the rise of steampunk – an idealised version of the past that has enough of a fantasy element to provide escapism. And allows, as an added bonus, an excuse to dress up in top hats and corsets.
Horror, too, has always evolved with society. What scares us in fiction has always reflected what’s scary in the real world. In the 50s, fear of the stranger (the ‘Red under the Bed’) manifested itself in stories of alien invasion. In the 60s, fear of nuclear war led to stories about mutant monsters. More recent decades have given rise to environmental disaster stories, conspiracy theory stories and society being decimated by deadly viruses, to name just a few of modern fears.
The modern world, though, is far more complex. In such times, there is generally a rise in fantastical monsters. The supernatural and the mythical – things that are scary, but that we know aren’t really real – provide a way of getting scared ‘safely’.
And, of course, there are always zombies. Because you know where you are with zombies. Things that are no longer human, have no conscience and no sentient thought beyond the need for fresh human flesh, are quite clearly the bad guys and things you can go after with a shot gun without any kind of moral dilemma. In real life, the bad guys are not always quite so straightforward.
The other thing to note about horror fiction is that it lets you escape to a world that is far worse than real life. If you’re reading about a world where humanity has been decimated and the handful of survivors are being pursued relentlessly by zombies, or a supernatural nasty has the protagonists literally fleeing for their lives, your own everyday worries might not seem so bad in comparison.
Sara Jayne Townsend is a UK-based writer of crime and horror, and someone tends to die a horrible death in all of her stories. She was born in Cheshire in 1969, but spent most of the 1980s living in Canada after her family emigrated there. She now lives in Surrey with two cats and her guitarist husband Chris. She co-founded the T Party Writers’ Group in 1994, and remains Chair Person.
She decided she was going to be a published novelist when she was 10 years old and finished her first novel a year later. It took 30 years of submitting, however, to fulfil that dream.
Her latest release is SUFFER THE CHILDREN, a supernatural horror novel that is out in e-book format on 9 August 2016, and is available now for pre-order from MuseItUp Publishing.
Learn more about Sara and her writing at her websiteand her blog. You can also follow her on Twitterand Goodreads, and buy her books from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
Orphaned at eighteen, Leanne's life is adrift in a sea of grief and drug use. She washes up on the shore of estranged relatives, the Carver family, struggling with loss of their own. The transition from her South London council estate to her new home in the Surrey middle-class suburbs is difficult for Leanne.
But beneath the respectable veneer of the quiet neighborhood, something terrifying lurks. Displaced and troubled teenagers are disappearing. Leanne recruits her cousin Simon and his girlfriend Carrie to help get to the bottom of the sinister mystery. Can the three of them stop a creature of unimaginable evil before Leanne becomes a target?
July 28, 2016
Hometown - US release
Cry your pardon, but I've ballsed up. Turns out the US release for Hometown is 1st February next year. It's a distribution issue that I didn't realise affected the date to such an extent. I honestly thought the publication date was the same all over; alas, it isn't.
So, anyone on the other side of the pond will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, you can still have a go of my other stuff either in print or on Kindle.
So, anyone on the other side of the pond will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, you can still have a go of my other stuff either in print or on Kindle.
July 24, 2016
30% off Hometown
A quick post to say Hometown is on the UK Amazon with 30% off. Yes, I know they don't have any in stock but that should be sorted very soon (it was the same yesterday and all the copies available in the morning sold by the afternoon). Either way, you can still get it for the reduced price. Which is better than a poke in the eye.
Amazon 30% off
Amazon 30% off
July 21, 2016
Hometown - published today
So, today's the day. Over a year in the making but here we are. Hometown is published today. As you might have guessed, I'm very chuffed with the way this one turned out so I'm hoping people enjoy the book. Feel free to let me know either way (I'm all for honest reviews, not having smoke blown up my arse).
It's available at several sites, but I figure Amazon is the one most people use, so:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
And not to forget the ebook version.
It's available at several sites, but I figure Amazon is the one most people use, so:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
And not to forget the ebook version.
July 18, 2016
Hometown - an excerpt and an interview
July 16, 2016
In my hand
Here it is. The physical copy of Hometown clutched in my sweaty hand.
Buy your copy now and impress your friends. And girls. Girls, especially.
Buy your copy now and impress your friends. And girls. Girls, especially.July 14, 2016
Hometown - ghosts and monsters and all that good shit
With a week to go before Hometown is published, I've been thinking a fair bit about where my story came from and the funny thing is, I can't really narrow it down to a precise point. I did write a pretty awful book fifteen or sixteen years ago about a group of kids in their last year of school - those characters grew up to be the characters in Hometown - but the actual story idea...nope. All I can really be sure of is ten years after that first book is wondering about what the people in it might be up to now. Obviously their schooldays were long ago; they'd have jobs and partners and the usual life troubles that everyone goes through at some point. And maybe they were going through a bit more than usual problems.
Maybe ghosts and monsters and all that good shit.
That's more or less where the book came from. Characters who'd stayed with me for over a decade, sleeping in the back of my head while I grew older and (hopefully) became a better writer than the guy who'd created their first tale as directionless and rambling as it was. Characters ready for another story in a world that is not nice or kind. Characters who need to face that unkind world or die trying. So I came up with a rough outline and started writing. If I remember correctly, I wrote the opening 20k in a week off work which is a decent speed and rate for me and although the first draft was just as messy as most of my firsts, it definitely had something. Some potential, and it was only while working on the other drafts and edits that I realised that the something came from telling an honest story. I didn't try to say anything important about friendship or grief and how regret might be one of the worst things in the world; I just told my tale without any crap getting in the way. And now we have the result.
Ghosts and monsters and all that good shit.
Maybe ghosts and monsters and all that good shit.
That's more or less where the book came from. Characters who'd stayed with me for over a decade, sleeping in the back of my head while I grew older and (hopefully) became a better writer than the guy who'd created their first tale as directionless and rambling as it was. Characters ready for another story in a world that is not nice or kind. Characters who need to face that unkind world or die trying. So I came up with a rough outline and started writing. If I remember correctly, I wrote the opening 20k in a week off work which is a decent speed and rate for me and although the first draft was just as messy as most of my firsts, it definitely had something. Some potential, and it was only while working on the other drafts and edits that I realised that the something came from telling an honest story. I didn't try to say anything important about friendship or grief and how regret might be one of the worst things in the world; I just told my tale without any crap getting in the way. And now we have the result.
Ghosts and monsters and all that good shit.
July 7, 2016
Yep, another interview
Two interviews in one week? Madness!
More thoughts on writing, Hometown and all that business. Hope you like.
Interview the second
More thoughts on writing, Hometown and all that business. Hope you like.
Interview the second
July 5, 2016
New interview
I've done a new interview with the writer Simon Bestwick. You can read my gibberish and rambling thoughts on writing, Hometown and other guff over here. As always, comments welcome.
Interview
Interview
