Hayden Gribble's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-lurking"
The Lurking - Behind the Book
Book number 6 is nearly upon us. Well, actually, it's been with me for years. Although the book itself was written between January and September last year (2019 for those of you reading in the far off future), the concept has been with me ever since I was a little boy.
Two decades ago, my Father worked at a research centre in Essex (it sounds like a Pertwee-era Doctor Who setting already, doesn't it?) somewhere between Saffron Walden and Linton. On some occasions, he would be called out to work on Saturday mornings and to give my Mother some time to herself, he'd take me and my little sister along for the ride. Of course most of the time we just sat in the car and sometimes we could roam around the deserted building as long as we didn't touch anything, but our journey always took us on a long, straight country road. No lights, never any cars passing by.
I can remember my eyes being drawn to the most curious thing. There, in the field, not far away from the road, was an old abandoned control tower. I asked Dad about it and he told me that it had been an airfield during the Second World War and that the building he worked in had been decades earlier a hospital.
He then proceeded to tell me all the ghost stories that went hand-in-hand with the place. There was the tale of the old lady who one night had been driving home and spotted an RAF pilot sitting on her back seat. Distressed, she parked that car and left it for a few minutes, gathering her wits. Upon her return, there was no-one sitting on her back seat. Just a flying corp badge placed in the vacant space the ghost had been...
To a child with an overactive imagination, I lapped this up and the stories of his work colleagues also working nights in the old hospital and their grizzly stories of the things that went bump in the night. Of course we were both skeptical, but the fear of the unknown and the weirdness of them made them cool and long lasting in my memory.
I also used to suffer a recurring nightmare as a boy. I would dream that I was trapped in a dark place, pursued by something malevolent, evil, and yet I could not see it, or comprehend what it was. That is until it caught me in the end and savagely ripped me to shreds!
Luckily these nightmare stopped but their savagery and mystery also stayed with me. So marrying these two aspect together formed the basis of what became the book that I hope that you will go on to read and enjoy.
The Lurking is my first foray into horror, and the first time that I have written anything other than Captain Random since my Doctor Who book in 2017. So I hope you will forgive it if there are aspects you don't find to your taste, but I loved writing it, even if it felt difficult in places to do so. I'd got myself into the swing of writing for one world so it was good to step out of my comfort zone and write something completely different. One thing you should always do as a writer, I feel, is challenge yourself, do something that scares you a little every once in a while. Couple that with the build-up to my wedding in August, having a lot of exciting things on my mind meant it was a slower writing process than usual.
There's a fairly minimal cast on show here. The main protagonist, Rob, suffers a night of terror on the very same evening he has put a full stop to his old ways and promises to be a better person for his long suffering girlfriend Claire, who although she only features through the medium of a phone call, is what keeps Rob going on in his nightmare.
There are also voices from the past who help Rob unravel the mystery of the abandoned aircraft hangar and then there is the thing that lurks in the shadows...but I don't want to say anymore so I'll keep that a secret!
It's also shorter than my previous three novels, and my Doctor Who book Child out of Time. One of the joys of being a self-published author is that you can be your own boss. There's no word count or deadline set by anyone else, only you. So instead of writing until, let's say 70,000 words, I let the flow of the story dictate it's own length, hopefully delivering a punchier tale that will stay with the reader long after they have put it down and donated it to their local charity shop! Although not a medium you'd attribute to inspiring literature, I found TV shows such as Stranger Things and Black Mirror to be a source of guidance in it's dark, supernatural and human feel.
Once again I am in debt to the brilliant Victoria at VC Book Covers on Twitter and Fiverr, who delivered a striking cover, Nicola Gent and Tom Savill-Owen for proofing it and making it better than I alone could ever have done and of course my ever supporting and loving wife, who was fittingly the first person in the world to read the finished piece.
And to you for reading this and hopefully reading my works.
I'm immensely proud of it and who knows? It may not be my only journey into horror...
Hayden Gribble, 23rd July 2020.
Two decades ago, my Father worked at a research centre in Essex (it sounds like a Pertwee-era Doctor Who setting already, doesn't it?) somewhere between Saffron Walden and Linton. On some occasions, he would be called out to work on Saturday mornings and to give my Mother some time to herself, he'd take me and my little sister along for the ride. Of course most of the time we just sat in the car and sometimes we could roam around the deserted building as long as we didn't touch anything, but our journey always took us on a long, straight country road. No lights, never any cars passing by.
I can remember my eyes being drawn to the most curious thing. There, in the field, not far away from the road, was an old abandoned control tower. I asked Dad about it and he told me that it had been an airfield during the Second World War and that the building he worked in had been decades earlier a hospital.
He then proceeded to tell me all the ghost stories that went hand-in-hand with the place. There was the tale of the old lady who one night had been driving home and spotted an RAF pilot sitting on her back seat. Distressed, she parked that car and left it for a few minutes, gathering her wits. Upon her return, there was no-one sitting on her back seat. Just a flying corp badge placed in the vacant space the ghost had been...
To a child with an overactive imagination, I lapped this up and the stories of his work colleagues also working nights in the old hospital and their grizzly stories of the things that went bump in the night. Of course we were both skeptical, but the fear of the unknown and the weirdness of them made them cool and long lasting in my memory.
I also used to suffer a recurring nightmare as a boy. I would dream that I was trapped in a dark place, pursued by something malevolent, evil, and yet I could not see it, or comprehend what it was. That is until it caught me in the end and savagely ripped me to shreds!
Luckily these nightmare stopped but their savagery and mystery also stayed with me. So marrying these two aspect together formed the basis of what became the book that I hope that you will go on to read and enjoy.
The Lurking is my first foray into horror, and the first time that I have written anything other than Captain Random since my Doctor Who book in 2017. So I hope you will forgive it if there are aspects you don't find to your taste, but I loved writing it, even if it felt difficult in places to do so. I'd got myself into the swing of writing for one world so it was good to step out of my comfort zone and write something completely different. One thing you should always do as a writer, I feel, is challenge yourself, do something that scares you a little every once in a while. Couple that with the build-up to my wedding in August, having a lot of exciting things on my mind meant it was a slower writing process than usual.
There's a fairly minimal cast on show here. The main protagonist, Rob, suffers a night of terror on the very same evening he has put a full stop to his old ways and promises to be a better person for his long suffering girlfriend Claire, who although she only features through the medium of a phone call, is what keeps Rob going on in his nightmare.
There are also voices from the past who help Rob unravel the mystery of the abandoned aircraft hangar and then there is the thing that lurks in the shadows...but I don't want to say anymore so I'll keep that a secret!
It's also shorter than my previous three novels, and my Doctor Who book Child out of Time. One of the joys of being a self-published author is that you can be your own boss. There's no word count or deadline set by anyone else, only you. So instead of writing until, let's say 70,000 words, I let the flow of the story dictate it's own length, hopefully delivering a punchier tale that will stay with the reader long after they have put it down and donated it to their local charity shop! Although not a medium you'd attribute to inspiring literature, I found TV shows such as Stranger Things and Black Mirror to be a source of guidance in it's dark, supernatural and human feel.
Once again I am in debt to the brilliant Victoria at VC Book Covers on Twitter and Fiverr, who delivered a striking cover, Nicola Gent and Tom Savill-Owen for proofing it and making it better than I alone could ever have done and of course my ever supporting and loving wife, who was fittingly the first person in the world to read the finished piece.
And to you for reading this and hopefully reading my works.
I'm immensely proud of it and who knows? It may not be my only journey into horror...
Hayden Gribble, 23rd July 2020.
