Luke Walker's Blog: https://lukewalkerwriter.wordpress.com, page 30

Short story Bear now available

The collection featuring my short story Bear has been published. 'Serial Killer Tres Tria' is available here and obviously on the US Amazon, too. I'll post more about the story at some point, but for now, have a look at the front cover. Then enjoy the stories.

It's all about Who. It's all about now

Unless you've avoided all news and all internet activity (and even that old-fashioned thing of actually talking to people), the chances are you've heard who's going to be the new Doctor Who. Even if you don't give a monkey's, you'll have heard. Since the Beeb announced Matt Smith was heading off to do other things, various names have floated about for his replacement. And in the last week or so, speculation online and in the press has been just about impossible to avoid. Ditto the hoo-hah on whether the next actor would be a black guy or a woman or a black woman for that matter. Which then, of course, led to the usual accusations of political correctness and it's not real, you idiots. What does it matter who plays him?

As much as I enjoy the show, I really couldn't have cared less who's going to play him next. I enjoy the stories, the writing, the plots that don't give everything away all at once. I liked Matt Smith being young enough to come across as someone's cool uncle, while being best part of a thousand years old means the character knows a thing or two. What I did care about was, as River would say, 'spoilers'. But here's the thing: there's literally no way of avoiding now knowing Peter Capaldi will take over after the Christmas episode. I couldn't have stopped myself from knowing that. It didn't matter that I didn't watch the reveal last night (although I did hear a clip of it on the radio this afternoon. Whoever forced Zoe Ball to milk it that much needs a slap). It didn't matter that I stayed off Twitter and Facebook. It didn't matter that the only person I spoke to last night - my wife - was only marginally interested in the reveal and so didn't know any more than I did. And it sure as hell didn't matter that I, along with others, didn't want to know. Given the chance to see the regeneration happen, to be as much a part of the change from Smith to Capaldi as it will be for the characters, now that would be something special. Something more special than milking it for all it was worth, in any case.

But that's not how things work. It's all about now. We meet up with family or friends and we get our phones out to post on Facebook where we are, so everyone who isn't there can know straightaway instead of being told next time we see them. Meanwhile, the people we're actually with are doing the same thing. Anything slightly interesting happens and we reach for our mobiles to record it. We don't live it. We watch what we're recording, and then we share it online immediately. We don't live what we're doing or seeing. It has to be recorded or shared otherwise it doesn't count. Karaoke singers are wheeled out for multi-millionaires to laugh at and we make them famous for a couple of months. Then it's time to forget about them because it's not now. It's already old.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating some mythical golden age pre-internet when all this were fields and they had proper music with tunes you could whistle and we were nicer, happier people because Facebook didn't exist. I don't believe that crap for a minute. I just think waiting for stuff, waiting for something that isn't right now, is no bad thing.

But Doctor Who isn't real, so what does it matter, right?

Review for 'Set

I'm in the middle of a load of decorating so just a quick update today. Decent review for 'Set this way so have a wander over there and check it out. Now if you'll excuse me, that wallpaper isn't going to strip itself.

A rambling post about not much (my God, it's hot)

So, while the country bakes and my back sticks to my chair because it's just that hot, what better time for a rambling blog post about nothing in particular?

My wife and I had a weekend away with some friends in Folkestone for a wedding of a mutual friend. As my wife is recovering from an appendectomy, getting away was nice. On a definite plus side, it gave me chance to buy a new hat to protect my shining dome from the sun. And then I drank lots. A photo or two will be here at some point hopefully soon. Probably not any of me in a waistcoat and jacket, though.

It's about three months to the release of Mirror Of The Nameless from Dark Fuse which I'm really chuffed about. The people at DF have been first rate (if any writers have something they think is good enough, I definitely recommend them as a publisher) and I'm proud of my little tale. While it's the shortest book I've written, it's also one of the best, so I'm looking forward to seeing it out in the world and hearing what people think of it.

Also in the world of my writing, we've got about four months before the publication of Postscripts To Darkness Vol 4. Again, I'm proud of my story Echidna especially as the finished result is a much better story than the original, and I'm proud to be part of what's looking like a collection of great horror fiction.

Lastly, my plans for the second draft of my WIP are just about done. Draft one was a complete mess so I've taken my time in coming up with all the necessary improvements. Next week's plans are all about decorating and house stuff, so I'll start draft two the week after that. No idea how long it'll take before it's done, but again, I'm not rushing it. Any finished story deserves my best writing in the same way any reader deserves the best tale I can give them.

So, that's me for the moment. Did I mention it's hot?

Postscripts To Darkness Vol 4

Here's a link to the stories and authors featured in Volume 4 of Postscripts To Darkness published this October which includes a story from me. Echidna. I'm very happy with how this one turned out, and as I've mentioned before, it owes a lot to Jennifer Hillier who liked the original version a couple of years ago enough for me to give it a rewrite and send it out to the world.

You can get hold of the collection in October. More info to follow. For now, have a look at the authors here.

Time travel. Sort of.

You may have noticed it's been quiet at my end for a couple of weeks. Well, hopefully you have. The morning after my last blog post, my wife had to go to hospital for an appendectomy which came out of nowhere. As you can imagine, that took precedence over everything - writing, going to work and, of course, blog updates. Thankfully, everything is OK. She had her appendix out and while she's still sore and bored shitless by daytime telly, she's on the mend.

Now obviously, my mind wasn't really on writing while she was in hospital and I couldn't concentrate on the book I'm currently reading, so I dug out an old, tattered copy of Stephen King's Different Seasons. For those who haven't read this one, it's a collection of four novellas - two of which are a couple of King's most well-known (and probably well loved) stories: The Body which became the film Stand By Me, and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption which became the film Love, Actually. OK. It didn't really. Anyway, I went back to those two tales for their familiarity and because they're absolutely superb stories. But something caught my eye before I started reading. Something on the inside cover.

My childish signature and a date. 18th August, 1989. A quick look over at Wiki reveals various events which probably meant nothing to me as an eleven year old boy. Politics, murders, George Bush, deaths, the Sega Genesis and much more didn't really have an impact on me at the time. What mattered to me at that precise point was stories, books, made up people and stuff that hadn't really happened. I wanted characters I could live with for the duration of their story and want to return to sometimes. See how they were sort of thing. Nothing's changed. I still want characters like that. I still want stories that take me away and make me want to come back to them even if it is the best part of twenty-five years later. Seeing my scrawl on the inside cover of that book along with the date I wrote it was like time travel. Just for a second, I went back to being that eleven year old kid who loved stories. As a thirty-five year old man with a wife in hospital, that was no bad thing.

In which I murder my darlings

Several famous names have advised new writers to murder their darlings. No, not to slaughter their family and friends, but in relation to their writing. It's advice I've often tried to follow since first encountering the quote from Stephen King in his excellent On Writing. Given that I'd recently finished writing my first book when I read On Writing, you might think that I've always tried to follow it, but that wouldn't be true. Like any other writer, I have a few goals when I start a new story or when I'm wading through edit after edit. And like any other writer, I have that little voice that says 'but that bit is great. Who cares if it doesn't really do anything? It's really cool.'

That little voice needs to - and this is very important, so pay attention - fuck right off. If a 'bit' I think is good, whether it's a line, a sentence, a paragraph or a chapter, doesn't add to the overall story and is just there for me to stroke my ego all over it, then I need to kill it. Kill it fast and kill it hard. Trouble is, remembering that isn't always as easy as saying it.

I recently had the idea for a couple of short stories which I thought might be quite fun. Before writing a word on either, I knew I wanted to do something a little different with them. Nothing outlandish, just not be too constrained by wordcount, to let the stories go as they liked to, then trim the fat rather than rush through them and give them a polish as I've occasionally done. I wrote the first one that way, gave it a shine and am pretty happy with it. Not perfectly happy, of course, but happy enough to consider it ready for submission in a couple of weeks. The other one was a little different. I had a very precise image in mind which formed the basis of the story, so I built the story around it. Not a terrible idea, you might think, and it's not. The problem was the story became that image, and that wasn't enough to carry me (let alone anyone else) through four thousand words. So I went back to the start, rewrote the midsection and still had a bit of a stinker. Third time lucky - I kept the image which had inspired me (for what it's worth, it's a sidestreet pub in the middle of a city that's rapidly emptying because...ha. I'm not saying) and used it as background rather than the basis for the whole story. It needs a bit of a tidy but it's done - because I murdered my darlings.

All this brings me to the edits and planned rewrite of my WIP. This one started with another precise image and another attempt to build a book around it. For me, at least, it was a bad move. Still, I kept on with the book because you can't fix what you don't finish, and read through it over the last week. It's got big problems but I know what they are. They're my darlings. To fix them, I need to rewrite a massive chunk, lose several plot strands which go nowhere and remember something that's true for me: the story is the boss.

In short, I have to kill my darlings.

Afterlight - Alex Scarrow

Mainly set ten years after the events of Last Light, its sequel Afterlight is a grim, depressing read. In a nutshell, Jenny Sutherland and her two children have set up a base on oil rigs about fifteen miles out to sea. There, they provide food, shelter and safety to over four hundred people, and this little section of Britain is probably the largest community left in the country. When a raiding party returns to the mainland in order to find supplies, they also find a Belgian man under attack from other survivors. A decision made here sets the plot in motion...and it's not going to be pleasant.

Alex Scarrow is not a writer who shies away from the horrors that always come when a group of people are put under great stress which is why I say the book is grim. But more importantly, it's honest. If this happened, people would act as they do here. Just as Scarrow showed in Last Light that it's every man for himself when we're up against the wall, Afterlight is a study of people looking for someone to blame when everything collapses.

If all that sounds heavy going, don't worry. Afterlight is exciting, moving and does what a thriller should: thrills. It's also distinctly British. Don't expect a Hollywood story. This is Mad Max territory complete with feral children, an almost constant threat of rape and the remnants of a society with no clear way through the post-apocalyptic Britain that may one day be a reality instead of just fiction.

Thoroughly recommended.

Horror, The Fall & violence against women

Last night, the final episode of BBC2's The Fall aired (if you're still watching or haven't finished it yet, then it's best you don't read this post - massive spoilers ahoy). It was easily the best thing on TV in a long time and goes to show there's a demand for well-acted, scripted, shot and directed stuff rather than a constant glut of karaoke singers with sob stories murdering awful songs.

It was also pretty violent. The thing is, you say 'violence' to some people and they assume you mean limbs being hacked off and blood flying everywhere. Apart from one bloody murder, this wasn't the case with The Fall. The physical violence was in beatings and strangulation for the most part. And here's the other thing...all bar one of the murders involved a woman. And all were deeply unpleasant.

The set up is pretty straightforward: a young, successful woman has been killed in Belfast. After a few weeks, the Law's no closer to finding the killer than they were straight after the murder, so they bring in Stella Gibson (a superb Gillian Anderson playing a woman who might be Scully's long lost sister given up for adoption and raised in Britain) from the Met to lend her expertise. It's not long before the killer murders another woman and the plot's set for an investigation that hopes to find the killer as quickly as possible as well as taking in the politics of a British women investigating an Irish murder, police corruption and the potential for the killer's wife and kids to find out what he does at night. Because that's the unusual thing. The killer, Paul, isn't some lone nutcase sitting in his own filth and cackling. He's a calm, friendly guy who works as a grief counsellor. He's got two children and he loves them and his wife. Problem is, he's also a serial killer.

The series was successful enough for the Beeb to announce plans for a second one. However, not everybody thinks this is a good plan. Among various reviews I've read online, some of the comments have said it was too slow and the fact that at the end - MASSIVE SPOILERS BUT THEN I SAID THAT EARLIER SO WHY ARE YOU STILL READING - Gibson doesn't catch Paul. She's got an idea who he is and some leads but he still gets away. This pissed some people off. Other comments didn't care about the pace. They cared about the violence. Specifically, its brutality against Paul's victims.

Now, I've already posted here and in guest posts about violence (against women or not) and I don't want to repeat myself, but. . .

The world can be an ugly place. Horrendous acts can be carried out without the person doing them seeming to give a shit. Or worse, actively enjoying their cruelty and evil. People like me (horror writers) and the people behind The Fall put our characters through terrible events. I've destroyed, beaten and killed men, women and children in my stories. I've been doing that for years and the chances are, I'll carry on doing so. It's what I'm designed to do, along with maybe giving my characters a way out (or maybe not). The Fall was brutal and frightening and all the things it should have been if it was to treat its audience as adults. Adults should know how ugly life can be. They should know that if someone is being murdered, chances are they'll scream and struggle and fight back if they can. To pretend otherwise or to suggest television as an art form should overlook this is to deny the darkness in life. We should celebrate the light in our lives, but let's not pretend the darkness doesn't exist. In all its foulness, its ugliness, and its charming face of a nice, family guy who kills women, that darkness exists. We need to see it and, maybe sometimes, see ourselves from its side.

Because denying it, as shitty as it is, is to lie to ourselves. And if you don't believe me, watch the news.

Some great British horror tales

Fancy a read of some superb British horror writers? Then we have much to discuss. Head this way and join me in the dark...