Paul Finch's Blog, page 20

Cold sweat and stomach-churning terror

It seems like an age since I last blogged. In fact, it's only been a month or so, but an awful lot of water has passed under the career bridge since then. And it's been far from easy: as one job after another is delivered, more seem to come in, and always, it appears, the deadline is as tight as a gnat's chuff (as they say in Wigan). I've even had to turn work down, and interesting stuff too - something that always pains me.

However, there are no complaints here. Lots of work is way better than no work at all (trust me, I've been there too).

Without a doubt, the highlight of the last month was easily the THEAKSTON'S CRIME-WRITING FESTIVAL in Harrogate. Not only did I use those lively four day to hook up with my agents and publishers, but with a host of old writing mates too: COL BURY (pictured below with yours truly), NICK QUANTRILL , DAVID MARK , TOM WOOD , HOWARD LINSKEY , LUCA VESTE , GRAHAM SMITH , STEVE MOSBY , SARAH PINBOROUGH , NEIL WHITE , ASH CAMERON , PETE SORTWELL , to name but a few.

The event was a little more testing this year, as I sat on my first ever crime writing panel, addressing the high faluting subject of New Wave Forensics. I freely admit that I broke into a sweat beforehand. Not only was it a very hot day - it was literally like a steam-bath outside - but I was in seriously august company. Check out the image below. Left to right, my fellow panelists are organised crime expert and best-selling true crime author, TONY THOMPSON , world renowned forensics expert Professor DAVID BARCLAY, police intelligence analyst and best-selling author, ELIZABETH HAYNES , and Chair of the panel and top international author in his own right, DAVID HEWSON . All I can say is that it was a fabulous experience. We had a great chat, which the 600 plus audience seemed to lap up. Some excellent anecdotes got shared by everyone - a few of them rather stomach-churning, I must admit - plus I signed a raft of books afterwards too, which was a nice bonus.


I owe all this to my Heck novels - a series of crime-thrillers from Avon Books (HarperCollins), following the investigations of Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, the most recent example of which, THE KILLING CLUB , has now been on the bookshelves since the end of May, and seems to be doing very nicely indeed. On the same subject, I'm now able - more or less - to confirm the next three books in the Heck series.

DEAD MAN WALKING will arrive next November, this one taking our battered and bruised hero up to the English Lake District in the depths of a foggy autumn to pursue a killer supposedly long dead. Following that, HUNTED , the fifth in the series, will be published in May 2015, and on this occasion we head south, Heck exploring the leafy lanes of rural Surrey as he enquires into a series of bizarre and unlikely accidents. Last of all thus far - and this is the real exclusive in today's post - RIGHTEOUS FIRE (at this stage that's a working title only) will provide the sixth outing, probably sometime in late 2015, and will see Heck return to his roots, on the trail of a fire-wielding maniac terrorising the run-down, post-industrial Lancashire town where he grew up.

That latter title is still far in the future, of course. Much sooner than that - in fact, hopefully in time for Fantasycon 2014 in York - will be TERROR TALES OF YORKSHIRE, which will feature such ghostly outings as the stalking devil of Boroughbridge, the murder machine at Halifax and the black tunnel at Renfield.

TERROR TALES OF YORKSHIRE will constitute the seventh title in a series very close to my heart. Despite my novels focussing on the world of crime, the Terror Tales anthology series I edit is fast becoming one of the great pleasures of my professional life. It is several years now since I first hatched the concept of a round-Britain (and who knows, maybe beyond that?) horror anthology series with strong emphasis on local folklore, history, mythology, geography, etc. I can only say that, at this stage, with six titles now in the bag and more to follow, I am truly delighted with the way it's turning out. Thanks enormously to all the writers and artists who have made this possible, and to GARY FRY and GRAY FRIAR PRESS , without whose publishing expertise, there is absolutely no chance this series would have happened.So I'm well chuffed ... but as always, it's onward and upwards. Watch this space for further info.

Pictured above are the six titles so far in print, while one of the contributing authors, STEPHEN VOLK , shows off the most current volume in the series, TERROR TALES OF WALES , and well he might as I can honestly say that his contribution to that book, Matilda of the Night, is one of the scariest and yet most moving horror stories I have ever read.

How it began: Heck vs the weirdest killers

Anyone following this blog will know that my new Heck novel, THE KILLING CLUB , was published at the end of last month, and that a blog tour accompanied it. What that basically meant was that I was that, at the kind invitation of a number of webmasters/crime thriller fans, I wrote a number of guest posts to appear on various crime-writing blogs. 
In case anyone didn't get a chance to see them at the time, it was always part of my plan to repost these blogs on this site as well. So without further ado, we'll kick off now. 
Here's the interview I gave to CRIME BOOK CLUB , which appeared on June 14 (along with a 5-star review - sorry, had to drop that in). Thanks very much to them for their interest in the new Heck novel.  
Welcome to Crime Book Club Paul and thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.
No problem. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted.
Congratulations on the publication of ‘The Killing Club’ last week, can you tell our readers a little about it?
Thanks very much. The Killing Club is the third outing for my fictional detective hero, DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg, of the Serial Crimes Unit at Scotland Yard. The Serial Crimes Unit, or SCU, has a remit to investigate serial murder cases, serial rapes, assaults etc, taking place across all the police force areas of England and Wales. And Heck is one of its lead investigators. By the nature of this beast, he can show up anywhere, from Cornwall to the Lake District, from London to Manchester. He is not office-bound, and rarely works with the same bunch of colleagues, though his overall boss is Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, his former girlfriend (when they were both DCs), so as you can imagine, this leads to occasional complications.
Though The Killing Clubis the third in the series, it’s a direct follow-up to Stalkers, the first, which concerned the activities of a brutal rape and kidnap gang called The Nice Guys Club. I won’t give away too much details because it’s possible some folk haven’t yet read Stalkers, but I will say this: while the second in the series, Sacrifice, was a free-standing story, The Killing Club is, in some ways, Stalkers part 2. So you could read Sacrifice before you read either of the other two books, and it would make no difference, but if you want to read The Killing Club, it’s much better if you read Stalkers first. As usual, the book takes us up and down the country – a real trademark where Heck is concerned – and is loaded with action. Though I’m an ex-policeman, I don’t really do police procedurals, at least not under the Heck banner. These are hard thrillers with what I hope is a grimy, authentic feel and urban mayhem by the bucket-load. In The Killing Clubin particular, we see a Nice Guys gang hell-bent on massacring their opponents. These aren’t the sort of hoodlums you can sort out with harsh language alone. Heck has no option but to get stuck in … but that’s all I’m going to say about it at present. Don’t want to give any spoilers away.
When you spend so much time writing about someone like Mark Heckenburg do feel you know him inside out or does he surprise you each time?
I’m sure most authors would agree there’s nothing more pleasing than a character who’s so well-developed in your mind that he or she take on a life of their own, and can literally produce their own lines of dialogue. I’ve certainly reached this stage with Heck, though I doubt the development process has run its course yet.

Heck is not an unusual character for me. The lonely, vulnerable hero who makes up for his social flaws with courage, intellect and incisiveness isn’t exactly a revolutionary concept. But I like to think we’ve done all that and a bit more with Heck. On his creation, I produced a notebook full of back-story for him – to the extent where I could actually picture him in my mind’s eye. But the real reason he’s been so familiar from the get-go is because I’ve based him on people I’ve known very well, not just friends and fellow workers, but family members as well.
He has blue-collar origins, and hails from a post-industrial town in South Lancashire called Bradburn, a very thinly disguised Wigan, the town of my birth. But he doesn’t have hang-ups about this. In this respect, there is a lot of my late-father in Heck. He was a dogged, bluff northerner from a typical coal-mining family, but he was never a class warrior – he firmly believed that everyone had issues they needed to overcome in life. He was also self-educated to a high level, which showed great spirit and ambition, and yet this was an ambition to be as good as he could be at what he did, not an ambition to rule and dominate. This is another key aspect of Heck. He isn’t interested in getting promoted. He’s an out-and-out detective; as he says in his own words, he’s “an investigator, not an administrator”.
But he’s also a tricky customer, who can pull a fast one whenever he needs to – like so many of the real-life police detectives I knew – sometimes at the expense of fellow officers as well as criminals. On top of that, thanks to his background, he isn’t averse to strong-arm tactics if they’re absolutely necessary, but he prefers the affable, even-handed approach. And yet he’s a chancer too. In the rugby league parlance so favoured by my dad, if he has the ball and he sees even the slightest opportunity, he’ll go for the line.
These were all part of my original concept. But yes, to answer the second part of this question, he still surprises me. It was always the plan that he’d work hard, putting in long hours by choice, but it’s become increasingly clear to me that it isn’t really by choice. Heck is an obsessive, constantly at war with personal demons stemming from tragedy in his early life, and his stubbornness and unwillingness to give up is a symptom of this, which, Gemma, for one, thinks is very unhealthy. On the subject of Gemma, I never really know where Heck’s hot and cold relationship with her will finish up.
When I first hatched this idea that his senior supervisor was his former girlfriend, I was worried it might turn out to be stock and that they’d basically end up getting it on at every opportunity. But again, as the stories have unfolded, they’ve evolved away from that a little bit. There’s no denying that Heck and Gemma have a strong if unspoken bond of affection, but there are massive differences in their personalities. Gemma is a straight bat and a real spitfire, whereas Heck’s Machiavellian ways, not to mention his high risk-taking, give her endless headaches. It’s become progressively harder for these two to become romantically re-entwined, and yet the possibility always lurks in background. This is something I never planned for, but am enjoying immensely. I know it’s torturing some readers, who tell me they love the sexual chemistry between Heck and Gemma, but ask when is it going to happen? The simple answer is that I don’t know. Because these two are battling ferocious opponents, regularly in danger themselves, they often have bigger fish to fry – but then again, the sheer stress of their daily work will sometimes throw them together in unguarded moments when they genuinely need the solace of each other’s company, so you never, ever know.
Do you have one guilty pleasure that not many people know about?
I wouldn’t call it a guilty pleasure, but I put every minute of my spare and ‘hobby’ time into the editorship of my Terror Tales series. This is a series of all-new horror anthologies (featuring fiction and non-fiction, with a strong folkloric feel), which I edit for an independent label, Gray Friar Press. It’s a world away from Heck, but I love ghost stories and I love mythology, and it’s great fun combining them in this way. It also gives me the opportunity to work with some great writers and artists. To date we’ve done five: Terror Tales of the Lake District, Terror Tales of East Anglia, Terror Tales of London, Terror Tales of the Cotswoldsand Terror Tales of the Seaside, with more to follow.
Is your approach to writing different when it comes to a novel compared to your screen writing?
In both cases, I tend to devise my character notes and write my dialogue first, so initially it’s a similar process. In fact, I’ve been told several times that my prose has a very filmic style in that it’s broken up into scenes and is very visual in its content. A flattering review of The Killing Club said the action sequences were “cinematic, so vivid that it is almost as if the reader is there, experiencing it alongside the characters”. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but if so, it may be that my screenplays and novels have influenced each other more than I realise. But, though there may be superficial similarities between them and the initial approach to the writing may be the same, the two processes ultimately diverge.
For example, writing a film or television drama is very much a process by committee. The more drafts you produce, the more people seem to get involved, each with a different opinion you must take into account. The plot may suddenly make an illogical right-hand turn depending on a phone-call you’ve just received, and then may turn back again with the next phone-call. In the midst of all that, it’s easy for the original artistic vision to be lost. It can become very stressful trying to please everyone and at the same time tell the story you started out with. It may even be, at some stage, that another writer is brought in – it’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it happens. As such, I tend to take a much harder, more objective view of screenplay writing, whereas, with a novel, it’s very different. With a novel, it’s yours from beginning to end, and usually you tend only to heed the words of your commissioning editor. This means you can love it more and consider something entirely yours. Of course, writing a novel can be more physically exhausting than writing a screenplay. It tends, on average, to be about five times longer in terms of word-count, so I usually give myself several months rather than several weeks and stock up a lot more on elbow grease.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to the same thing. Some of the disciplines required are different, but not too many. You need to pace your screenplay, but you need to pace your novel too. In a movie you’ve no time for introspection, for navel-gazing etc, though a novel will quickly bog down too if you start waffling. In both cases, you have to tell a story as clearly, excitingly, entertainingly, and concisely as you can. The basic skill-sets apply to both forms.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t spend too much time writing short stories. I love short stories, and they are a great training ground for new and young writers, but on their own they are not commercial enough to give you the writing career you seek. Pen them now and then for sure, but concentrate more on novels and screenplays. Once you’re established, you’ll have lots of time to pick up the short form again.
What was the last book you read that you would consider a must read?
Whenever anyone asks me this, I give the same answer, and yet it’s not a novel that is widely available any more, nor is it within any of the genres where I normally work.
It’s The Saxon Tapestryby Sile Rice, published in 1991. This is a historical fantasy concerning the life and death of Hereward the Wake, the great freedom fighter who gave everything he had, including his life eventually, to liberate England from the Normans. It’s an epic tome, concerning major events in history and involving multiple real-life characters, but with mythological elements interwoven as well. It’s also beautifully and poetically written, though that only serves to enhance the incredible battle scenes, of which there are many, and to underline the increasing heartbreak, as a way of a life, a rich culture, and ultimately a unique people and their society, are systematically and cruelly destroyed. Very few books have ever brought genuine tears to my eyes, but this one did. Whatever your field of literary interest, if you’re looking for a genuine must-read, I unreservedly recommend The Saxon Tapestry. Don’t be put off if you don’t like history, because this is first and foremost about humanity (or a disturbing lack of it).
We know that you have more planned for Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg but can you tell us about Heck’s future?
It’s difficult to say a lot about this without giving away any essential spoilers. I think I’ve already mentioned that Heck has no desire to rise through the ranks, plus he’s trodden on so many toes in the past that this would be unlikely anyway, even with Gemma as a benign (if abrasive) driving force behind him. So basically you can expect more of the same as he hunts down the worst elements in our society, disturbing and complex investigations galore as killers and maniacs cross and re-cross the police force boundaries of England and Wales.
It’s early days yet and maybe I’m already saying too much, but I have detailed outlines planned for investigations in Cornwall during an English summer heatwave, in South and East London at the very heart of England’s organised crime culture, and in the leafy lanes of Surrey, the kind of place you’d least expect to find violent offenders, though this one has the potential, I think/hope, to be more hair-raising than most.
Can you tell us what are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently working on three live projects. First of all, the fourth Heck novel, the working title for which (though I suspect we’ll stick with it), will be Dead Man Walking. This will be published in November, and will take Heck up to the Lake District in the depths of a dank and foggy autumn. No more spoilers about that one just yet. The fifth Heck novel – the working title for which is Hunted – is also being knocked into shape. You may wonder why we’re working so far ahead of ourselves. Well the truth is that Hunted was originally going to be Heck 3, but readership demand to see the Nice Guys again caused us to fast-track The Killing Club forward into third,pushingHunted a little bit further back down the line.
The third project is completely unrelated to Heck and is a movie script entitled War Wolf. This is a medieval horror/fantasy set during the Hundred Years War, and is filled with knights, battles, beautiful women and terrifying monsters. It was commissioned from an outline I sent to Amber Entertainment, a major film company with offices in London and Los Angeles, and things are now moving on apace. I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to say all this, but casting is underway andwe’re hoping to shoot in Europe in September, though anything can happen in the movie world. We’ll have to see how that one goes.
The characters you create can be very dark and intense, where do you get your inspiration from?
I think I can safely say that dark characters are my stock-in-trade. I met many killers, gangsters, robbers and rapists when I was a police officer, and they were, without exception, scary guys. It’s not something to be taken lightly either. I mean, behind every one of these creatures there is a human horror story: abuse, poverty, violence, endless trips to prison, where they only thing they were taught was how to ensure they’d end up there again not long after they’d been released. But you know, we all love impressive villains. It’s important in every genre; even in romance and in family fiction, there are bad guys as well as good guys. On that basis, I think it’s very important to give the audience what they expect, though with Heck I like to go a little bit farther if I can.
From the beginning, I wanted to make the Heck novels frightening as well as exciting. That’s probably a hangover from my horror-writing days, but I want my readers on edge all the time. Don’t ask me why … maybe I’m just a sadist. But if that means taking them into mysterious rural enclaves where unseen evil is lurking, or exposing them to ghastly urban nightmares where almost no-one gets out alive, so be it. It certainly means they’re going to be meeting the baddest of the bad, and I make no apologies for that.Where do I get these guys from? Well, I’ve already mentioned my real-life experiences, but I also watch the news, and current affairs programmes, and documentaries, and I’m very fond of history. There are lots of prototype villains and madmen out there in the real world. You don’t have to look too hard to find them.I suppose the dark and intense thing could also apply to some of my good guys. Heck in particular. Well, I guess that’s the hardboiled cop thing. It’s the other part of the equation. Having created heavyweight villains to terrorise the innocent, I don’t believe in going easy on them. It’s absolutely essential that we have a hero you genuinely believe can go round for round with these crazies. Again, I make no apologies for this – these were always intended to be taut, brooding thrillers, filled with darkness and realistic urban violence, but in which the good guys win, though not without suffering significantly in the process.
Lastly, do you have much planned for the rest of 2014?
Well … the three current projects I’ve already mentioned will be my priority, but all need to be finished well before the end of this year, so hopefully, all being well, we’ll be closing out 2014 by going on holiday somewhere. Seriously. There’s been a lot of intense writing in the last few years. It would be nice to take a break and recharge the batteries, though that feels a long way off at present.
Thank you again for your time and we look forward to the next instalment from Heck!

Here at last: TERROR TALES OF WALES

In the midst of the ongoing HECK saga, and with WAR WOLF now looking as if it's going to be a major project for me in 2014, I still consider it vital that the TERROR TALES series - the collection of regional British horror anthologies I'm continuing to edit for GRAY FRIAR - continues to roll off the press.

And here, I'm so chuffed to be able to tell you, is the latest installment. It's a wee bit later than planned, but we're all of us having a hellishly busy year. So I hope you can forgive us that.

May I present TERROR TALES OF WALES - now available to be ordered from GRAY FRIAR PRESS , or from Amazon. As usual, the cover hits the spot exactly, this time courtesy of artist NEIL WILLIAMS , while the book itself contains a load of original fiction by some of the horror genre's current finest writers, including STEPHEN VOLK , SIMON CLARK , JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT , BRYN FORTEY , PRIYA SHARMA , REGGIE OLIVER and TIM LEBBON .

After our brief tour of the whole British seaside in the last edition, today's launch sees us revert to the normal format of a specific geographic locale, though on this occasion, of course, it's a country in its own right - Wales, which we investigate thoroughly through mythology, history and folklore, but only in their most dark and menacing forms.

Perhaps I'd better shut my gob from this point on, and let the official back-cover blurb do the talking.

Wales – ‘Land of my Fathers’, cradle of poetry, song and mythic rural splendour. But also a scene of oppression and tragedy, where angry spirits stalk castle and coal mine alike, death-knells sound amid fogbound peaks, and dragons stir in bottomless pools …  The headless spectre of KidwellyThe sea terror off AngleseyThe soul stealer of Porthcawl The blood rites at AbergavennyThe fatal fruit of Criccieth The dark serpent of BodalogThe Christmas slaughter at Llanfabon    And many more chilling tales by Stephen Volk, Tim Lebbon, Simon Clark, Priya Sharma, John Llewellyn Probert and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre. 
With luck that will whet your whistles for more. But in case it doesn't, here's the full table of contents, which I'm sure you'll agree gives it added umph (the italicised items are the 'true' tales with which I always like to intersperse the fictional ones):

Under the Windings of the Sea by Ray Cluley; Legions of Ghosts; Old as the Hills by Steve Duffy; The Beast of Bodalog; The Druid’s Rest by Reggie Oliver; Night of the Bloody Ape; Swallowing a Dirty Seed by Simon Clark; The Devil Made Him Do It; The Face by Thana Niveau; Hoof-beats in the Mist; Don’t Leave Me Down Here by Steve Lockley; The Werewolf of Clwyd; Matilda of the Night by Stephen Volk; The Goblin Stone; The Sound of the Sea by Paul Lewis; A Quick Pint and a Slow Hanging; The Flow by Tim Lebbon; Doppelganger; The Offspring by Steve Jordan; Prophecy of Fire; Dialled by Bryn Fortey; The Dark Heart of Magnificence; The Rising Tide by Priya Sharma; The Hag Lands; Apple of their Eyes by Gary Fry; Beneath the Sea of Wrecks; Learning the Language by John Llewellyn Probert.
Previous books in the series can still be purchased, of course.They can be found at all good online retailers, such as Amazon, or at their point of origin, the  GRAY FRIAR PRESS  website. For those interested, they are:  TERROR TALES OF THE LAKE DISTRICT ,  TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS , TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA, TERROR TALES OF LONDON and TERROR TALES OF THE SEASIDE .

Killing Club imminent, blog tour hits road

As part of what is a pretty big week for me - THE KILLING CLUB  is published tomorrow - I today embark on my first ever official blog tour.

What this means is that various bloggers and web-masters have very kindly invited me to write guest blogs for them designed to coincide with the launch of the new novel, at the same time giving a bit of background detail, character notes and so forth.

First of all, I'm hugely flattered to be asked to participate in this. So thanks to all those involved. I couldn't be more grateful. Secondly, it's been amazingly enjoyable. Quite honestly, there is nothing more exhilarating for an author - I'm sure I can speak for others on this - than to be asked to share the thought processes and creative urges that have combined to see your ideas and dreams hit the printed page.

 As authors, we are nothing without our readership. We don't write for ourselves; what would be the point in that? We write to enthuse, excite and delight that great mysterious mass of often unseen folk who provide our audience. And though the modern era and the social networks in particular allow readers to provide instant feedback - which is hugely gratifying, I assure you - we are a self-effacing enough bunch, I think, to never be absolutely sure we are hitting the right spot.

In that respect, how deeply affecting is it to be asked to sit down and chat about it? Could there be a more gentlemanly way to inform an author that he or she is starting to produce the kind of imaginings that many, many others are buying into?

So thanks again to all those who invited me to participate in this tour. I feel hugely honoured. And so, without further ado, here are the tour-dates, so to speak:

Wednesday, May 21 - WRITING.IE

Thursday, May 22 - KILLING TIME

Friday, May 23 - CRIME THRILLER GIRL

Sunday, May 25 - THE BOOK CORNER

Monday, May 26 - CRIME BOOK CLUB

Tuesday, May 27 - RAVEN CRIME READS

Wednesday, May 28 - LOVE OF A GOOD BOOK

To round off today, I've dressed up this column with some more shots from various underground railway stations in Germany, where the German translations of my Heck novels are being aided and abetted by this very eye-catching poster campaign.

Waxing lyrical on mayhem and murder

We kick off this week with the full interview I did about a month ago with Lars Schafft and Silke Wronkowski, the two charming hosts of KRIMI-COUCH-TV , a massive German website with a strong focus on crime and thriller fiction.
Lars and Silke came all the way over to the UK to have a chat with me in anticipation of the publication of my Heck novels in Germany through prestigious German publisher, PIPER VERLAG . 

STALKERS , or MADCHENJAGER (as it is known in German), was published in Germany this month. The second in the series, SACRIFICE over here in the UK, RATTENFANGER in Germany, will follow in the autumn. We're all reasonably hopeful that THE KILLING CLUB , due for publication in the UK on May 22 this year, will also be making an appearance in Germany in the near future.
Anyway, the interview is posted above. I always enjoy the opportunity to philosophise about my work (promote it, in other words), and think this occasion went pretty well.
Still on the subject of the Heck novels, THE KILLING CLUB is part of a new HarperCollins promotion, and you can acquire it early in three parts. The first piece, which comprises chapters 1 - 6, comes free HERE , but the second pieces, chapters 7 - 18, is available for 99p HERE .
If you're wondering whether Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg - a young Scotland Yard cop who goes exclusively after the maddest and the baddest - is worth your time, a nice review of  SACRIFICE  appeared today on the BOOK ADDICT SHAUN crime blog.
Now, on a completely different matter, a horror story of mine, THE OLD TRADITIONS ARE BEST, first published in SHADES OF DARKNESS and later in MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR #20 was featured today in a spoken-word version on the excellent podcast site, PSEUDOPOD , as read by top actor ANT BACON (who can be reached on Twitter at @antbacon). It comes in at around half an hour, if I remember rightly, so give yourself a little time on this one. It should be of particular interest to Cornwall lovers, and to those interested in our monstrous myths and fables, especially those centred around the mysteries of the Padstow Hobby Horse, a fun and frolicsome spirit to some, a vengeful demon to others.
Thanks to HARBOUR VIEW, PADSTOW for the picture.

Blazing on towards next publication date

It’s a bit difficult to post a blog this month and not talk about the latest developments in the world of Heck – aka Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, my fictional crime investigator. 
There seems to be promotional material everywhere at present, including over in Germany, where the first in the Heckenburg series,  STALKERS , has now been published under the catchy MADCHENJAGER  (which literally translates as ‘Woman Hunter’). 
However, it’s the UK I want to concentrate on initially. With two books now released,  STALKERS  and SACRIFICE  and selling very well – which I’m deeply grateful for and very honoured by – the third in the series, THE KILLING CLUB , will hit the shelves in exactly one month’s time, May 22 to be precise.
This latest adventure sees our rugged, blue-collar investigator renew an old acquaintanceship with the Nice Guys’ Club, a criminal organisation who, for the right price, can make your most fevered and brutal fantasies come true. As in the previous two novels, Heck is aided and abetted and sometimes hindered by the ex-love of his life, Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, while the action, which I like to think is as gritty and uncompromising as ever, takes us from one end of the country to the next, from London’s grimiest bowels to Scotland’s most isolated coastlines, and even to spiritual rural havens, the tranquillity of which will soon be disrupted by screams of terror and agony.
Don’t look so shocked, guys. It wouldn’t be a Heck book if we didn’t have a bit of that, would it? 

There’s a bit of a back-story to this actually, as some of you who may still have been expecting the third in the series to be HUNTED will now realise.  THE KILLING CLUB  was originally scheduled to be the fifth Heck novel, but such was the deluge of interest in the Nice Guys Club – the irredeemably evil opposition in  STALKERS  – that the decision was taken on the top floor at Harper Towers to fast-track it forward. If you’re still hoping for  HUNTED , don’t worry. The book's written, but it’s now been moved a little way down the line, and will be coming out in the slot originally scheduled for  TKC , fifth.
As I said, there is only a month to go before  THE KILLING CLUB  hits the shelves, and HarperCollins have gone into overdrive on the publicity front. But just to prove I’m doing my own bit, I’ve even had a special jacket made for my iPhone (up top). And yes, I do get it out at each and every opportunity (oo-er, missus!) – trains, buses, restaurants, pubs, you name it – and wield it as publicly as possible.

And now over to Germany, where the promotion for  MADCHENJAGER , is also going into overdrive. Check out the image above; this was shot by a friend of mine, T Maxim Simmler, who saw it on his way to work the other day. Apparently you can’t go anywhere in Germany without seeing posters like these. That certainly explains the excellent pre-sales in Germany, but I’m still a little startled not to say flattered. I knew Piper, the publishers who’ve acquired the Heck franchise, were really getting behind this project, but I hadn’t expected this kind of exposure. What can I say … thanks!
On this same subject, the second in the Heck series,  SACRIFICE , or RATTENFANGER in German – another awesome-sounding thriller title, I’m sure you agree (pictured below) – will be published by Piper in the autumn, roughly around the time of the Hamburg Literary Festival. It’s highly possible I’ll travel over there for this grand event, but that will only be if time and schedules permit.
If you’re perhaps new to the crime thriller genre, or perhaps are new to me, or maybe are new to DS Mark Heckenburg, and you’re still contemplating buying … I don’t expect you to take my word for it. But a nice review of  STALKERS  has recently appeared online, courtesy of another Paul (not my alter-ego, I promise you). Here’s a choice snippet, which has made me very happy:
This is a fast paced gritty crime thriller with plenty of twists and turns that leaves you breathless and excited as you read. Paul Finch has used his skills as a screen writer to draw the reader in and hold them enthralled in the story feeling central to it and feeling the tension that racks through Heck. Yes Heck is a defective detective but a damn good one at that not afraid to go against his bosses in the search for the truth. The truth in this book is that you will not be able to put it down and to use the cliché of clichés this really is a page turner well worth investing your time in.

Checking out those spooky rites of spring

One question I was asked a lot after the second novel in my DS Heckenburg series - SACRIFICE - was published last year, was why, of all four seasons, I opted to set it in the spring. Surely autumn and winter, with their creeping mist and long dark nights would provide a more suitable backdrop for a tale of kidnap, torture and human sacrifice?

Well ... there's no escaping the bright sunshine and flowery meadow stuff when it comes to spring. But the truth is that, as SACRIFICE followed Heck's investigation into a series of grotesquely theatrical murders, each one seemingly designed to commemorate (or mock!) some special feast-day in the calendar, the earlier part of the year gave us a much more varied choice of occasions.

I mean okay, I cheated a little bit by commencing the horror on Christmas morning, which can hardly be classified as spring, but of course the killers got to work fast, and as the weeks rolled by, with the cops getting no nearer, the body count rose and the blood ran red among the daffodils and crocuses.

While researching all this, I was literally spoiled for choice by my range of spring options. As we're now into that time of year again, I thought it might be of interest to assess a few of these with the advantage of hindsight.

Lenten feasts like Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, or special saints' days like St. Patrick's Day (March 17) and St. George's Day (April 23) are all well-known of course - being mainly of religious origin - and the history behind them doesn't really need explaining (though the killers in SACRIFICE tend to make their own distinctly irreligious interpretation of each and every feast). But that isn't the whole story.

Did you know, for example, that Valentine's Day (February 14), while ostensibly a celebration of the early Christian martyr, St. Valentine, also draws many of its traditions from the Roman feast of Lupercalia, at which time men would parade the city dressed as wolves, carrying whips and howling, seeking to drive away the evil spirits of winter; at the same time, girls and women hoping to improve their fertility would stand outdoors and demand a whipping (!!!), which most of them, I'd imagine, received. Or how about All Fools Day (April 1), which is only one of several medieval festivals of fools, though this particular date is believed to have been fixed upon due to a mistranslation of Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale, a mock epic filled with satirical fallacies (the horror potential of this oddball holiday has already been explored several times in the movies).

And then there are those lesser known spring feasts, such as Candlemas (February 2), Beltane (April 30) and Royal Oak Day (May 29). The first of these concerns itself with the presentation of the Baby Jesus at the Temple, but is also a Christianisation of Imbolc, a pagan Celtic celebration of the goddess, Brighid, a benign but powerful figure, who was believed to visit the homes of worshippers on this date, and had to be greeted with gifts of food, drink and bedding (or else?) - this was a popular occasion for corn dollies, divination and the like. The second of course, is the big Gaelic and Wiccan May Day festival - the blood-letting potential of which has been hugely exaggerated by horror writers and film-makers over the years (though it seems likely the maniacs in SACRIFICE had watched The Wicker Man at least once). And the third honoured the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and featured as part of its 'fun and frolics' the tying up with nettles and pelting with rotten eggs of any person deemed to have Republican sympathies or even found without a sprig of oak leaves on his or her person.

We all know about the Ides of March (March 15) on which Julius Caesar was famously assassinated, but have you ever heard about the Ides of May (either May 13 or 15, depending which piece of fiction you are reading), when the Romans celebrated Lemuralia, a festival in which the terrifying Lemures - or 'unsettled dead' - would grant boons from beyond in return for a ritual slaying (usual of the human variety, but only if said victim was very important, like a captured prince or general).

Interesting stuff, eh? Well, if you haven't read SACRIFICE yet ... I know, sorry, this sounds so like a shameless plug for the book, but there actually is an awful lot of stuff there relevant to this kind of thing. So if you're interested in the many and varied (and sometimes quite spooky and gruesome) rites of spring, now wouldn't be a bad time to check it out ... especially with blossoms outside the window and bluebells in the woods, and mysterious energies just waiting to burst out from the rich, re-energised and blood-sodden earth.

More journeys into darkness, but what fun

 A rarity to kick off with this week - details of a new short story shortly due to be published.

For a long time I've been an avid short story fan, both as writer and reader. It used to be the case that I wasn't happy if I didn't see at least one of my short stories published every month. The demands of the Heck novels and various film and TV projects I'm developing mean that I haven't got anything like sufficient time to pen so much short fiction these days, but now and then it is nice when a gap in the schedule comes along and I can quickly jot down another short trip to terror, though it's often the case that I have to target my market carefully, or maybe respond to a specific invitation.

I was very happy therefore, when Trevor Denyer - a very busy editor back in the 1990s (the much lauded 'Golden Age of the British Small Press'), and the master of all he surveyed at ground-breaking horror magazines like Roadworks and Midnight Street - asked me if I'd be interested in writing something for a new anthology he was putting together.

The finished book, which is due for publication in the very near future, is MIDNIGHT STREET: JOURNEYS INTO DARKNESS , pictured above, which looks as though it will be a very fine collection indeed (it'll be out both in print and e-format). I don't have a full table of contents for it yet, but these are the contributors and their stories that I do know about (in no particular order):

After The Party by Gary Couzens; Again by Ramsey Campbell; Amen by Simon Clark; Dead Man's Handle by Stephen Gallagher; Lapland, Or Film Noir by Peter Straub; The Spoils by Joel Lane; When They Come For You, They'll Look Normal by Ralph Robert Moore; En Saga by Nina Allan; The Return Of The Pikart Posse by Rosanne Rabinowitz; No Such Thing As Sin by Paul Finch; Traffic by Elliot Smith; Creeping Blue by Allen Ashley.

I have it on Trevor's authority that more names will join this list in due course. My own contribution, No Such Thing As Sin, is a brand new piece concerning weird events at a lonely house on the outskirts of Atherton, one of the most desolate corners of Greater Manchester. I'll post publications details as as soon as possible, so keep an eye open for those.

In other news, I had a marvellous couple of days last week in the company of Lars Schafft and Silke Wronkowski from the KRIMI-DOUCH.DE website in Germany, a massive operation catering mainly to the European thriller and crime fiction market. The back-story to this is pretty simple. The first of my Mark Heckenburg novels, STALKERS , will be published in Germany by Piper next month, under the title MADCHENJAGER . The Heck series has also been sold to Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Japan, but Germany is currently the scene of most overseas activity - apparently there is a lot of interest and pre-sales have been very good. So much so that the guys from  KRIMI-DOUCH.DE  came all the way over to Lancashire to see me. We were together two days and I gave them several interviews on video (see above), which of course I will post links to as soon as they are available.

As always, I was shamed by my German visitors' faultless knowledge of English when my own German is so poor (not to say non-existent). But In addition, Karl and Silke were great company and hugely knowledgeable - not just about the crime and thriller scene, but about my own work, which was fascinating and flattering at the same time. Personally, I can't wait to see the interviews once they've all been edited together, and I'm hoping to meet Karl and Silke again in the near future.

Last week was fun for all kinds of reasons. I also attended a literary lunch at the Caledonian Club in West London, at the invitation of THE LADY magazine whose very attentive audience was keen to know all about my crime-writing. This was an amazing experience: the environment was sumptuous, the food exquisite, and the company convivial. I said beforehand that I never expected the grim investigations of Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg to attract the interest of a cultured mag like  THE LADY , with its very refined readership, but I was wrong. I gave my spiel, which seemed to go down well, and then participated in a lively question and answer session.

My thanks go to all the staff of THE LADY and the Caledonian Club (two of whom quietly told me they'd read my stuff and enjoyed it - result!), to ANNABEL GILES , who was my charming hostess for the day, and to  D.E. MEREDITH  and  ANNA HOPE , my fellow writers and guests at the event.

A literary lunch with some special ladies

To anyone popping onto this blog regularly, I can only apologise for the lack of posts in recent weeks. I've been astoundingly busy.

Not only did I surrender my Christmas break to dive into TALES OF TRENZALORE , the new Dr Who epic from BBC Digital, but I had to deal with a structural edit for THE KILLING CLUB , the third outing in my new series of Heck novels (published on May 22 this year), then I had to outline the fourth in the series - as yet untitled - and, after that, write a first draft screenplay based on a new fantasy/horror idea of mine that has recently caught the interest of a major Hollywood producer.

If all that sounds tremendously exciting, you're right ... it is. But it's also been massively time-consuming and has left almost no space on the schedule for twice-weekly or even bi-weekly bloggage.

However, I think it's vital to take time out to report on events now and then, so here we go ...

With the worst of the winter weather (hopefully) falling behind us, I'm shortly about to embark on the conference and convention trail for 2014, and will be starting out in March with an event that marks a real first for me.

I'm hugely flattered and honoured to have been invited as a guest to a literary luncheon hosted by THE LADY magazine at The Caledonian Club in London. This is going to be a lot of fun, I can sense it already, though I don't really know what form it will take - a brief presentation between courses, followed by questions and answers, I imagine.

Previously I'd have thought THE LADY , Britain's oldest weekly women's magazine, would be a universe away from the violent streets and blood-spattered urban passageways prowled by Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, but I'll actually be one of three guests on the day, and one of the other two, D.E. MEREDITH , (pictured left) author of the compelling Hatton & Roumande series, is also a thriller and mystery writer, so I guess that could be one of the themes of the event. The other guest, meanwhile, is ANNA HOPE , an actress well known for her startling appearance in Dr Who (as pictured at the top, and without the special FX make-up below right), but whose debut novel, Wake, tells a very different story from that in which she was famously feline - it's an emotional and beguiling tale about the painful aftermath of war.

I'm not sure what the attendance situation is, but anyone interested in going can investigate ticket availability HERE . Hopefully I'll see some of you there.

On other matters this week, I've a few bits and bobs of interesting news to report.

First of all, my congratulations go to writer NINA ALLAN , whose amazing and terrifying story, The Tiger, which first appeared in TERROR TALES OF LONDON last year, will appear in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR #6 . I remember being hugely impressed by that story the first time I read it in my capacity as editor ... I don't think I'd ever felt so affected by a sense of decadent evil and immorality. Anyway, I'm really glad to see Nina get this nod of approval. Thus far that brings Year's Best selections from last year's Terror Tales books to five, as Anna Taborska, Marie O'Regan, Mark Morris and Stephen Volk will all be going into other volumes, with The Bloody Tower, Someone To Watch Over You, The Red Door and The Magician Kelso Dennett respectively (and the contents of other 'Best Of' volumes are still to be announced).

On this same subject, those who follow this series will be interested to know that the next edition, TERROR TALES OF WALES, has now been delivered for typesetting. Such is the tightness of schedules these days, that it won't be available for pre-order for a few weeks yet - most likely it will be published in mid-April - but I think I can safely predict it'll be worth the wait.

Lastly, I mentioned TALES OF TRENZALORE at the top of this column. Well, I've had quite a bit of mail about that. It's due for release on 27th of this month, and it includes brand new Who novellas by Mark Morris, Justin Richards, George Mann and myself, but if you want any more info before then, you might be interested in an interview on the subject I did with THE TIME WARRIORS website. That can be found HERE .

Thanks for bobbing in, as always. More updates soon.

Ice-cold terror as the Autons march again

I’m over the moon to report that I’ve renewed my association with the greatest long-running British television show of all time.
DR WHO, has gone from strength to strength to strength in the last decade – which still seems like a miracle to yours truly, who watched and worshipped the show all through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and then was horrified and bamboozled when it suddenly got the chop – and now in 2014, only 25 years later (a matter of heartbeats to a Time Lord), there appears to be no limit. With each new twist and turn in the never-ending story, there seem to be all manner of fascinating spin-offs, creating adventure on adventure for that mysterious traveller in time and space known only (still known only, it would seem) as The Doctor.
I, for one, could not be happier, and as such over the last few years have been honoured and proud (and more delighted than I can say) to add my own chapters to the saga in the form of short stories, novels and full-blown, full-cast audio dramas.
Now I’m going piling in again with a novella, as part of a truly fascinating project. Here’s the back-story:
It was shortly before Christmas when I was approached by BBC Digital and asked if I’d be interested in participating in a new collection of four e-novellas entitled TALES OF TRENZALORE: THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR'S LAST STAND , the central feature of which would be the Matt Smith Doctor’s 900-year battle on the desolate ice-world of Trenzalore, defending the isolated town of Christmas against the collected scum of all the galaxies, each novella to concentrate on his clash with a different deadly enemy.  And this was the trick – these enemies had to be genuinely DEADLY, as in major-league opponents from the Doctor’s past, hard-hitting foes who previously had pushed him to the absolute limit.
I mean seriously, what more could a writer ask for? It was an invitation I accepted straight away, especially on learning that my fellow contributors would be MARK MORRIS , JUSTIN RICHARDS and GEORGE MANN, a legendary crew in their own right, whom no fan of Dr Who, sci-fi, fantasy or horror fiction would be unfamiliar with.
Even though the festive season was right upon us, we all got to it pretty quickly. Justin was the first guy to lay claim to a beastie, if I remember rightly – opting for the Ice Warriors, while George followed quickly with the Krynoids. When Mark put his ticket in for the Mara, this still left a wide range of choices for me, including the Who enemy I found most nightmarish of all; not just the first time I first saw them in 1970, when they broke out of shop windows in the guise of showroom dummies, but the second time in 1971, when they dressed as holiday camp mascots and wielded murderous plastic flowers, and perhaps most memorably of all when they provided the first opponent for the all-new 9th Doctor in 2005.
Yep … it was the Autons, the murderous plastic mannequins manipulated by that indefinable alien force, the Nestene Consciousness.
And … well, that’s about as much as I’m really allowed to say, because it wouldn’t serve any purpose to give away too many spoilers at this stage would it? Suffice to say, the finished Table of Contents reads as follows:
Let it Snow - by Justin RichardsAn Apple a Day - by George MannStrangers in the Outland - by Paul FinchThe Dreaming - by Mark Morris
And here’s the official online blurb:
As it had been foretold, the armies of the Universe gathered at Trenzalore. Only one thing stood between the planet and destruction – the Doctor. For nine hundred years, he defended the planet, and the tiny town of Christmas, against the forces that would destroy it.
He never knew how long he could keep the peace. He never knew what creatures would emerge from the snowy night to threaten him next. He knew only that at the end he would die on Trenzalore.
Some of what happened during those terrible years is well documented. But most of it remains shrouded in mystery and darkness.
Until now.
This is a glimpse of just some of the terrors the people faced, the monstrous threats the Doctor defeated. These are the tales of the monsters who found themselves afraid – and of the one man who was not.
TALES OF TRENZALORE: THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR'S LAST STAND is released on 27th February this year, initially as an e-book only, though it is entirely possible a print edition may follow at a later date. I shall keep you informed as and when that story unfolds. But you’ll need to keep checking back here. So it’s all in your hands …