Guest post - Paul Collins
THE BECKONING
RRP $5.95 EBOOK
RRP $15.00 PRINT
AMAZON: http://tinyurl.com/ny6urwy
PUBLISHER: DAMNATION BOOKS
RELEASED: SEPT 15 2013
Matt Brannigan is a lawyer living on the edge. His daughter Briony is psychic and trouble shadows his family wherever they go.
Cult guru Brother Desmond knows that the power within Briony is the remaining key he needs to enter the next dimension. Once he controls this, he will have access to all that is presently denied him.
When Briony is indoctrinated into the Zarathustrans, Matt and psychic Clarissa Pike enter the cult’s headquarters under the cover of night to rescue her.
So begins Armageddon . . .
You will often hear that persistence is the key to most success. Luck and word-of-mouth help, too. I wrote The Beckoning thirty plus years ago on various counters of bookshops I owned in St Kilda, Prahran and Brisbane. Luckily for me, despite various rejections from major publishers (it once made the long list at Lothian!), I typed a draft on to a computer. It travelled over the years on various storage devices such as 3.5 discs, floppies, zip drives, USB sticks – five computers.
On whim I searched for it when I saw Damnation Books was open to submissions. I followed their guidelines, submitted three chapters. Within two days they wanted the rest. Within two weeks it was accepted and away we went.
I prefer one-on-one research, so after writing the original first draft, I approached various people I knew to authenticate certain aspects of the book.
It’s easy to dismiss psychic phenomena as fanciful and in the realm of fantasy. But if you’re going to write about it, you need to suspend disbelief in those who do read your book. Luckily for me I rented rooms out to psychics in my bookshops, so I had a psychic go over my manuscript to tell me exactly where I had gone wrong and how to correct it? Similarly, it’s easy to write about cults – back in the 80s and 90s we all read about Jonestown, WACO and a plethora of other catastrophes involving cults. But I wanted to make my cult to be authentic, so I cast around and finally met a former cult member. She gave me all the rituals, acronyms for recruitment drives, mantras that you’ll read in The Beckoning. I have detectives in the book and as luck would have it a good friend of mine was a Detective Sergeant. Rather than guessing about warrants and the rights police have, or even studying literature and still getting it wrong, I asked my friend to read the relevant aspects of my manuscript and steer my hand in the right direction. I also have prayers, so I asked an Anglican priest, after giving him an outline of the book and the scenes for which I needed prayers, for some original scripture. Last but not least, a lawyer friend went over the entire book to ensure the authorities played out their bits to the letter of the law. All of this material will suspend disbelief simply because it was created by experts. And I think this is the most important part of any work of fiction.
Some material I couldn’t corroborate, such as medieval woodcarvings and how they were created* – this took research and I endeavoured to get it right. I didn’t look at tourist maps to get the lay of the land in Warrnambool, where it’s set. I went there and stayed in a motel for a couple of days, pottering around the place. Yes, two of my characters stay in that same motel.
I have to admit that I don’t usually go to so much trouble with my fiction. But I’m glad I did put in the effort. An unfortunate part of this book’s journey is that cults were extremely topical at the time. Just three weeks ago I saw a documentary basically asking where they have all gone. Still, at the time of writing this blog I see that Amazon ranks The Beckoning at #15 on the psychic thriller page (just 14 behind Stephen King’s latest book!) and #42 on their occult suspense page.
Hopefully my friends and I have put forward a very credible horror tale.
Paul Collins
Melbourne 2013
*Note from Gillian: Paul didn't know me that that time...
RRP $5.95 EBOOK
RRP $15.00 PRINT
AMAZON: http://tinyurl.com/ny6urwy
PUBLISHER: DAMNATION BOOKS
RELEASED: SEPT 15 2013
Matt Brannigan is a lawyer living on the edge. His daughter Briony is psychic and trouble shadows his family wherever they go.
Cult guru Brother Desmond knows that the power within Briony is the remaining key he needs to enter the next dimension. Once he controls this, he will have access to all that is presently denied him.
When Briony is indoctrinated into the Zarathustrans, Matt and psychic Clarissa Pike enter the cult’s headquarters under the cover of night to rescue her.
So begins Armageddon . . .
You will often hear that persistence is the key to most success. Luck and word-of-mouth help, too. I wrote The Beckoning thirty plus years ago on various counters of bookshops I owned in St Kilda, Prahran and Brisbane. Luckily for me, despite various rejections from major publishers (it once made the long list at Lothian!), I typed a draft on to a computer. It travelled over the years on various storage devices such as 3.5 discs, floppies, zip drives, USB sticks – five computers.
On whim I searched for it when I saw Damnation Books was open to submissions. I followed their guidelines, submitted three chapters. Within two days they wanted the rest. Within two weeks it was accepted and away we went.
I prefer one-on-one research, so after writing the original first draft, I approached various people I knew to authenticate certain aspects of the book.
It’s easy to dismiss psychic phenomena as fanciful and in the realm of fantasy. But if you’re going to write about it, you need to suspend disbelief in those who do read your book. Luckily for me I rented rooms out to psychics in my bookshops, so I had a psychic go over my manuscript to tell me exactly where I had gone wrong and how to correct it? Similarly, it’s easy to write about cults – back in the 80s and 90s we all read about Jonestown, WACO and a plethora of other catastrophes involving cults. But I wanted to make my cult to be authentic, so I cast around and finally met a former cult member. She gave me all the rituals, acronyms for recruitment drives, mantras that you’ll read in The Beckoning. I have detectives in the book and as luck would have it a good friend of mine was a Detective Sergeant. Rather than guessing about warrants and the rights police have, or even studying literature and still getting it wrong, I asked my friend to read the relevant aspects of my manuscript and steer my hand in the right direction. I also have prayers, so I asked an Anglican priest, after giving him an outline of the book and the scenes for which I needed prayers, for some original scripture. Last but not least, a lawyer friend went over the entire book to ensure the authorities played out their bits to the letter of the law. All of this material will suspend disbelief simply because it was created by experts. And I think this is the most important part of any work of fiction.
Some material I couldn’t corroborate, such as medieval woodcarvings and how they were created* – this took research and I endeavoured to get it right. I didn’t look at tourist maps to get the lay of the land in Warrnambool, where it’s set. I went there and stayed in a motel for a couple of days, pottering around the place. Yes, two of my characters stay in that same motel.
I have to admit that I don’t usually go to so much trouble with my fiction. But I’m glad I did put in the effort. An unfortunate part of this book’s journey is that cults were extremely topical at the time. Just three weeks ago I saw a documentary basically asking where they have all gone. Still, at the time of writing this blog I see that Amazon ranks The Beckoning at #15 on the psychic thriller page (just 14 behind Stephen King’s latest book!) and #42 on their occult suspense page.
Hopefully my friends and I have put forward a very credible horror tale.
Paul Collins
Melbourne 2013
*Note from Gillian: Paul didn't know me that that time...
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