Luke Walker's Blog: https://lukewalkerwriter.wordpress.com, page 28

Pushing on through to the other side (of a finished book)

I think I said a few weeks back that my blogging wasn't as frequent as it used to be. Real life and all that. What I probably didn't mention was I was slogging through the final draft of my current book. I've recently finished the final draft and read through, come up with various cock ups I need to fix and put my attempts to trim it to below 100K (108K at the moment) on hold until a couple of people read it and give me their thoughts. Anyway, as this book has been a nightmare to write, I knew I had to push on through with it, force the words down and get the plot and characters into a vague semblance of shape before my remaining hair falls out. So blogging went a bit quiet, as you may have noticed. The other thing is that writing a book - the actual act of sitting down and hammering out 1500 words in a session - is not particularly interesting to anyone other than the writer. You don't go to a restaurant and watch the chef prepare your meal, do you? You wouldn't watch him chop and dice and simmer and all that. No, like a normal person, you'd wait for your meal to be done and on the plate, all lovely and ready for you to scoff. In the same way, you wouldn't want to hear a writer bitching about their sodding, stupid plot and their idiotic characters who keep getting in the way of all the fun bits while that writer is wading through the third bastard draft and cursing the idea that hit them almost a year ago.

Putting the difficult birth this book has had alongside real life issues over this year (everything from my day job to family illnesses to decorating the house in the vain attempt at selling it) has meant a draft that would normally take me, at most, two months took me twice that, and then needed a load of edits and rewrites before it stopped blowing goats and began to have the potential of being quite cool. But here's the thing - this is what a writer does. They push on through to the final, polished draft and they listen to what a few select people say about it before they make any adjustments. Writing is not sitting about in coffee shops, stroking your beard and making sure people see you have Word open. It's work. Fun work some of the time but most definitely work.

Anyway, this book is done. Like everything single thing I write, it may never see publication. There are no guarantees, but at least I can say, yet again, my book is finished. And for what it's worth, this 108K nightmare is called Pandemonium.

The Red Girl and 'Set half price today

Just a quick one today - you can get my first two books, The Red Girl and 'Set half price today. Both are $2.50 direct from Musa's site. Go on. Treat yourself.

Postscripts To Darkness Vol 4 Giveaway

Fancy a chance of winning Volume 4 of Postscripts To Darkness which, as we all know by now, contains my lovely story Echidna in between a load of other cracking horror tales? You do? That's smashing. Because the people behind it are doing a giveaway over at Goodreads. And as Americans and Canadians are so much nicer than us Brits (also because there's way more of you than us and PSTD is a Canadian publisher), it's only open to you lot on the other side of the pond.

So, have a gander this way and try your luck at winning a copy. You UK bunch, you'll just have to make do with forming a queue and complaining about it.
 

Darkness lit with little lights

I turned thirty-six at the weekend (which is just foul and hideous and obscene). My wife told me we were going to a private members' club my dad belongs to so we could have a few drinks with family. So we headed there Saturday night at about eight and I walked into a huge group of family and friends - people who'd come from such dark corners of the world as Leeds and Ascot, people who I don't see enough of because of work or distances or because people keep breeding. I honestly had no idea my wife had organised all of it or that so many people would take the time and effort to be there. I'd been full of cold and germs (and still am for that matter) for a couple of days so couldn't give it 100% but after necking two cans of Red Bull, some flu pills and having six pints, I gave it a good shot. I think it's fair to say a jolly wizard time with lashings of jelly and ice cream was had by all.

Now someone who doesn't know a horror writer might assume they're a grumpy bastard who likes nothing more than to plot violence and misery and grief while laughing about it because they have huge flaws in their personality that stops them interacting with real people on any meaningful level. While I put my hand up to sometimes being a grumpy bastard, the rest is crap - or at least it is for me. I love my family and friends; I wish there was time and more occasions for nights like Saturday because, if nothing else, it proves one very important thing.

When it comes to family and friends, they are what I mean when I say the world is darkness lit with little lights.

For Remembrance Day - All The Pretty Poppies

As it’s Remembrance Day, here’s a little story in small tribute. Hope you like.
All The Pretty PoppiesLuke Walker
I bought the poppy a day before Remembrance Sunday. People had been wearing them for a while before that; they just seemed to appear like they do every year. I’d been planning on getting one at work during the week but didn’t get around to it until the Saturday. Julie and I had taken the kids for the monthly shop to Sainsbury’s; we’d gone early to beat the crowds. Trouble was, a lot of other people had that idea and with Christmas only being five weeks away, crowds filled the place. Being four and six, Natalie and Ella had enough after forty minutes of going up and down the aisles and I couldn’t blame them. We decided to just pay for what we had and pick up the last few bits during the week. Getting through the checkout took another fifteen minutes so all of us were glad to get out and away from the noise of the weekend shoppers. We wheeled the trolley to the busy carpark, Natalie in the little seat and me carrying Ella. She played with the thinning hair at the back of my head and kissed my cheek with cold lips which made me happy. That happiness went a few minutes later: we only had half of the shopping in the boot while the wind whipped around us to numb any inch of exposed flesh; the girls were messing about in the car and I remembered my cigarettes. As much as we all know we should quit (especially after turning thirty-two and having a habit for almost twenty years), I’d only made it down to six a day. Four of those at lunchtime if that day’s teaching was a bad one. Anyway, I had none. Not one bloody fag on me or in the house. Julie saw me slapping my coat pockets and frowning; she knew immediately what was wrong. I told her it didn’t matter, that I could get some from the corner shop a few minutes from the house. As I spoke, the wind gusted especially hard and cold around the carpark and a couple of drops of rain hit the ground close to us. Although the early morning had been mild, a change in the weather was obvious. The sharp taste of cold lived in that wind; it said frost after dark and probably a long one at that. The shop was only a six minute walk from the house but six minutes is a long time when November gets ugly.Julie told me to go back to the supermarket and be quick. I kissed her cheek, waved to the girls and trotted back to Sainsbury’s, moving as if I wasn’t quite running for a bus. Several people were trying to leave the supermarket at the same time; none of them gave way for the others so a crowd formed quickly. I squeezed into it. Nobody made eye contact although a few people muttered annoyed comments to the air in an English way. The poppy seller did register with me but not fully; he was just there like the trollies and the people in my way.It took a few minutes to get my fags and I hurried back to the doors, aware Julie’s patience would be running out. The area around the doors was clear and the older gent selling poppies was by himself. He obviously saw me coming but his steady gaze to the automatic doors and gentle dignity didn’t change. Feeling guilty that I’d left it so late to buy a poppy, I slowed to check my pockets and thankfully found a two pound coin. The old boy said good afternoon when I slid the coin in his pot. We made a few seconds of small talk about the increasing cold and the crowds and he handed me a poppy and a pin. I thanked him, unzipped my coat halfway and attached the poppy to my shirt as I walked to the doors. Julie was in the car, facing me and she didn’t look happy. The kids were in the back seat, clearly making a lot of noise. I smiled apologetically and waved. Movement downwards caught my eye as the poppy slipped. I swore and tried to fix it to my shirt again. The pin pricked my finger. I swore again and saw a drop of blood on the poppy, red and red together. Things slowed. The supermarket was still right behind me, the doors no more than six steps back; my family was directly in front, waiting for me. Everything looked normal but nothing was. It had all slowed down to let me see and hear every single little thing. I gazed at the poppy and my blood and the steady beat of my heart whispered in my ears, pushed back and forth with my breathing. My head tried to move, to look from the bloody poppy to my family, but it was a piece of frozen meat on my neck. I was stuck in a dying place, stuck between the world behind me and whatever was next. Move, I told myself and did nothing. All I had was the sound of my heart and the knowledge it was slowing towards a final stop. I had lost everything. Or everything had been taken from me. The result was the same. I was over; my life was over.Pain exploded in my left side in two places; it was unlike anything I’d ever known before. Fire lanced through my body, an invading agony filling every part of me, made so much worse from knowing what it meant.I was dying. Every part of my past and every part of any future I may have had were gone, and I was gone with them. Shot. Jesus Christ. I’ve been shot.Crashing in from all sides but still slow as if I was underwater, came screams and shouts; men screaming, men dying. They were all around me, voices and shouts thick and heavy as they reached my ears in the horribly cold air. Then the stink of blood, of mud and fire. Explosions shook the world; mud and earth blew up around me, scattering down into the ruined bodies of the dead men. The pain swallowed my stomach and chest, blood that wasn’t mine flowed in my throat and gushed out of the wounds in my side. I couldn’t breathe. There was nothing to breathe. The pain ate me alive. Blackness.I was nothing and everything I’d known – family, friends, my life – was all gone.Things began moving again.Julie was still looking at me; the expression on her face hadn’t changed. Natalie and Ella shouted and sang in the back seat, and my blood remained on the poppy. The screaming men had gone. The pain had gone, too. Although I had no idea what it felt like to be shot, I knew that’s what had happened just as I knew the phantom bullets had gone back to whomever they belonged. I wrapped a piece of tissue around my bleeding finger and walked towards my family.#That was almost a year ago. Remembrance Sunday is coming again; it’ll be with us in two weeks. The poppy sellers have been out for a little while. I haven’t bought one and I won’t. Not this year. Or next. I still have the poppy from last year. It’s hidden where Julie won’t find it. I haven’t looked at it since I put it away last year but I’d bet my life my drops of blood are still on the petal, fresh and red as if I cut myself seconds ago.There’s no need for me to wear one, anyway, not while I have my poppy, not while it’s safely hidden and the solider who really did feel those bullets and really did know he had lost everything is asleep in those petals. There’s no need for me wear one now I know what loss is.

House Of The Devil - dvd review

Take one babysitter, add a spooky house in the middle of nowhere and throw in the feel of a load of early 80s horror films and you have The House of the Devil. While not a lift from any one particular film, the ingredients are so familiar that the result feels like a remake of every horror film made pre video ratings. Remember when pirate copies were swapped between friends and people waited for the babysitter to ignore the premise of the title - Don't Go In The...by going in the cellar/attic/basement/woods/cupboard/toilet/shed and so on. House of the Devil is a throwback to those films and should work well. Sadly, it doesn't.

The set up gets things going nicely: college girl Sam needs some cash for an apartment. A babysitting job comes her way and when it's revealed the `baby' is actually an elderly woman in a giant house, most of us would tell Mr Spooky and his equally spooky wife we're not interested. Of course, Sam needs the money and as this is a horror film, we know she'll take the cash and stay in the house. Cue a decent atmosphere that suggests the horrors to come and cue a very well done feel for the early 80s. Unfortunately, this atmosphere, while the film's great strength, is also its biggest weakness. The director and writer seems to be so set on evoking the feel of the time and therefore the feel of the films that inspired him that he forgets to have anything happen for a huge chunk of the film. Sam wanders around the house, dances in an 80s kind of way, watches some 80s news and uses an 80s phone and...that's about it in terms of events. It's got a great feel to it but a film, especially a horror film, should not rely on atmosphere alone.

Watch HOTD for a nostalgia trip or to get a feel of horror films that may be before your time. Just don't watch it expecting anything too impressive.

For Halloween, a horror story

For Halloween, my horror story Monk's Cave is available to read over at Vicky Walters' blog. She's been running a guest post of stories all week so be sure to check out all the others. And here's mine. As always, I hope you like my story. And again as always, feel free to let me know what you thought.

Good night, Mrs K

For one last time...

Ha.

Where Echidna came from

Six or seven years ago, my wife and I lived next to a couple of hospital buildings. One was disused and had been for at least ten years by that point. Probably longer. Back when it was in use, it was for terminally ill patients. They'd be transferred from the main hospital (which was built on a road running parallel) and taken to the ugly chunk of concrete that screamed 1960s. Next to that was another building - a maternity unit. Still pretty 60s and therefore still ugly but obviously a happier place. Both buildings were visible from our house. The forgotten one for the dying could be seen from the front of the house while the maternity unit was at the back. I could look out of the window in the spare room where I'd be writing (the first draft of 'Set was written in that house) and see the maternity unit and car park all around it. And one day, I started thinking.

It's often the case in horror that a building becomes a trap for those inside. They're stuck there for whatever reason, but what happens when those outside can't get in? And what happens when the building contains the most vulnerable people? What then?

I kicked the idea around for a while and finally settled on an opening one Saturday afternoon when I was on my way home from the local shop. Following the entrance to the car park and walking alongside it past the maternity unit entrance was a short cut back to our house, so that's where I was when I pictured a bunch of people desperately trying to get into the unit and being blocked by nothing more threatening than a cloud. A perfectly ordinary cloud that just happened to be as solid as a wall. Cool or what?

So I wrote the first draft of Echidna (then called The Mother), polished it and shared it with people for critique. One of those people was the crime writer Jennifer Hillier (that thud you just heard was the sound of a name being dropped). It's fair to say she really liked it. While I liked the idea, I didn't really like the story. As people pointed out, it took too long to get going. I left it alone for a while, but never totally forgot about it. Last year, I dug it out for a read and still liked it. Being a better writer now meant I could see its problems and knew how to fix them. I rewrote it, made some improvements and changed a couple of things (mainly to do with pace and how the barrier works) and subbed it. It sold and you can buy it here. And it's no lie to say if Jenny hadn't liked it as much as she did, I might not have gone back to it.

One last thing. While the cloud envelopes the maternity unit and it's that entrance that everybody obviously wants to get through, I had the other building in mind for what's inside. The exterior of the maternity unit leads, in my mind, to the interior of the other one. The building for the dying people.

Which is probably the best way of summing up the story.

A Thursday interview (two days later)

I did an interview a few months back which went live on Thursday. Head for some background to Mirror, thoughts on breaking the law and a couple of the hardest questions I've had to answer.