And so the Blog Tour participation falls to me and what an honour it is. When I was younger I used to fantasise about being interviewed and here I am being interviewed. Okay, I used to fantasise that I was getting interviews by Parkinson or Terry Wogan and this was in the eighties. Getting interviewed like this, at least you have control over that you say as apposed to a like situation where you could accidently say ‘bum’ on live TV or fu…listen, shall I just stop waffling and get on with this? Okay, I will.   

 

 

 

 

1) What is the working title of your next book?

It is Highcross. Highcross being the name of the English village where the story is set.

 

 

 

 

 

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

 

This is a long one. I originally had the idea when I was 15 (I’m now 42) and I actually wrote the whole thing and got my mum to type it out. I was inspired by a song called ‘The Tempter’ by a band called Trouble. In the original story this dead vicar comes back to life and tempts people to do bad things then they fall under his spell. This idea isn’t new. I was inspired by the children’s story ‘The Ugsome Thing’. However I called my story ‘The Church on Highcross Hill’. 26 years later I still thought it was a strong idea so revived it and the Tempter became a glamorous woman.

 

 

 

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Definitely horror. The start of it begins like an MR James ghost story but it builds up to, and climaxes in, hellish depravity.

 

 

 

 

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

 

Well, the hero is a religious property developer of Jamaican decent. Reggie Yates, the radio 1 DJ has acted in Doctor who so maybe him but he’s a bit too young. Noel Clarke? Another character is a woman who is out of prison and serving her sentence on a tag. Lisa from ‘Trollied’ would play her. The villain of the piece is Lady Grey. Beautiful but utterly evil. Helena-bonham carter springs to mind. However, there is a mature ex-page three model called Linda Lee who is Lady Grey. Does she act? Is so, does she want a job?

 

 

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Left abandoned for sixty years, Highcross is renovated into a luxury village by property developers. Highcross may have been abandoned but it it’s not uninhabited.

(Alright, that’s two sentences)

 

 

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Nothing is guaranteed. I will try for an agent but I am ultimately looking to self publish it. I think my idea is strong enough to sell.

 

 

 

 

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
                         What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I’m still writing the first draft but I began in August and aim to finish in March (2013). I work full time and write in the evenings and weekends. A hundred thousand words usually take me nine months to write.

 

Other books I would compare it to would be Salem’s Lot by Stephen king. There are no vampires in Highcross but there are a lot of characters. I was very inspired by The league of Gentlemen and Psychoville. Again, like these works Highcross, has a lot of characters all connected by an event or place.

 

 

 

 

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

For a start I was bored with writing about goodies verses baddies. I wanted to write about individuals challenged by an unusual situation. I never get over quite how weird people are. (I include myself in this). I work in healthcare and see people’s lives up close and get to study individual and family dynamics. For instance one old lady kept parrots as pets. When they died she kept them in a freezer and got them out once a year at Christmas. Another lady lived with her son who resented her for sending his girlfriend away when she was young. I wanted to write about these characters and what would happen to them if they were given their heart’s desire in exchange for their souls. So, the weirdness of people, really.

 

 

 

 

 

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It is set in a village that was taken over by the army in World War 2 and then abandoned much like the real villages of Imber in Wiltshire and Stanford in Norfolk. When property developer Mark Grange buys the Land from the MOD he finds the village in remarkably good condition but the village church appears to have been vandalised back in the 40’s There are bullet holes in the walls and hanging from the rafters, above the altar, is a hangman’s noose. As the houses are renovated and residents move in strange unexplained events occour, such a hauntings, strange footprints in the dust one such house that was not renovated and has laid untouched for sixty years. When Lady Grey, the resident of Highcross House, appears she offers the residents their hearts desire in exchange for a promise of their soul. Many residents agree to this, one by one, until Lady Grey has a faithful flock of worshippers. As winter sets in, all hell breaks loose as desires are granted at any cost.

 

Oh, I’ve just written a synopsis. There’s necrophilia, vampirism and taxidermy of the worst possible kind in Highcross. They houses may be cheap but you really don’t want to live there…

 

Thanks.

Merry Christmas.

Paul Melhuish.

 

 

I only found one writer to nominate as everyone else had already done a blog tour. I nominate James Rhodes.

 

 

 

 

Have fun!

 

Funfear and Realfear

So far in my life there have only been three writers whose work has actually left me scared. M.R.James, H.P. Lovecraft and Adam Nevill. Considering the amount of horror I’ve read and enjoyed you’d think there would be more than just three writers who have scared me. Not to denigrate other horror writers but the fear response may be due to circumstance. Adam Nevill’s novel Last Days is brilliantly written and he knows how to create tension but at the moment I’m reading it in winter and I’m living alone in a four bedroom house. (Not because I’m rich, I’m not. My missus is working away and my lodger spends every night at his girlfriends. He still pays me rent as all his stuff in here, making my house the most expensive storage locker in the Northamptonshire area)

When a book or a film scares me enough to make me jump or gasp I mentally give credit to the writer of director because they’ve managed to scare me. Well done. The other thing is that I enjoy this fear, it gives me a thrill. It’s not unpleasant. You become afraid because of fictional events. This is the side of fear I like. Funfear I call it.

Me and fear, we’re like that (crosses fingers). Funfear is fine but most of the fear I feel comes from reality. This is genuine and unpleasant. One of my biggest fears is going to the cash machine and checking my bank balance. I even break out in a cold sweat just looking at the screen when passing a hole in the wall or hearing the bleep of the keyboard. I do have another fear, though. A new fear. My new fear is opening the post.

‘Dear Mr Melhuish, you have defaulted on your mortgage repayments…Dear Mr Melhuish, you owe us, Northampton Borough Council, three billion quid for an unpaid parking fine stretching back to 1988….

            All manner of horror lies in wait in the post. I’ve got a skyscraper of unopened mail tottering in the hallway. Its not creaky stairs or wind outside that keeps me awake at night but the contents, or lack of, in my bank account and how I’m going to pay bills etc.

So here I am in a four bed roomed house on my own (which at the time of writing is on the market for £219,000 if any body’s interested in a detached house in the Northamptonshire area. Single garage, Tesco express at the bottom of the road, close to the M1).

So when I’m not avoiding the mundane fear of reality, I’m embracing the fear of nothing, of fictional events, by reading scary literature and watching scary films (note, I do not include Carry on Screaming in this list). Just lately I’ve taken to scaring myself without the help of other people’s fiction. I’m writing a horror novel at the moment set in a village that the military occupied for training then abandoned after the Second World War. A property developer buys this village and renovates the houses not knowing there is a strong supernatural presence in this village.

At one point in the story the protagonist enters a dust-covered room in one of the houses. He walks around the room, stopping to look inside a wardrobe in the left hand corner before walking to the window. After looking out of the window at the empty village below he turns to leave. In the dust is a second pair of footprints that weren’t there before, crossing the middle of the room towards him. They end right before him. (Note, he’s alone in a village that hasn’t been touched for sixty years)

I managed to scare myself with that one. And I still enjoyed it.

So, pretty soon I’ll be moving to a smaller, less creepy house but until then I’ve got Mark West’s The Mill to read and cause me to look out of the window and periodically to wonder what the hell that noise in the back garden was and a wicked little anthology called Fogbound From Five edited by Peter Mark May to make me ask myself if that sound in the attic above was footsteps or not.

Real fear will provided by HSBC, Nationwide, Northampton Borough Council and my own incompetence at dealing with reality. The rest of the time I’ll just relax.

‘Real’ as opposed to Eee.

After several months away I’ve actually figured out what my password for my blog was and got in. As I’m in I feel I should update you. Recently, my publisher and editor bought round four paperback editions of my novel ‘Terminus’. They were actually real books as opposed to ‘Eee’. It was like holding a new-born infant. However, I’ve got to lend them to friends to review and said friends will put said reviews on Amazon. However….I WANT TO KEEP THEM ALL, KEEP MY BABIES, THEY MUST NEVER LEAVE HOME. I have to fight this impulse because I need reviews. So far I’ve compiled a list of people who will be reviewing the book. I’ve also compiled a list of people I won’t be lending it to.

Graham Harris – because he only reads stuff by Andy McNabb.
My Aunt – because she’ll lose it in her cluttered spinster dwelling.
My sister – in – law – because I leant her Perdido Street Station and never got it back.
Mrs Green next door – because it’ll give her nightmares.
The bloke by the war memorial who drinks White Lightning and always asks me for a quid whenever I walk past.

Finally a note on the phrase ‘Eee’ which I’ve invented. Sounds bloody stupid, doesnt it. Yeah, well, so does Google, Wii and Yahoo but we all got used to using those words pretty quickly. Wii? Honestly, am I really the only one that still sniggers when someone says ‘I had a Wii for Christmas’?

Two New Year’s Resolutions

I only have two new year’s resolutions. None of them involve going to the gym more or giving up chocolate. To be honest, I’d rather spent five hours in a slaughterhouse than five seconds in a gym. No, my new year’s resolutions are both life changing and utterly orignal. If you know anyone who has the same new year’s resolutions I will give you five pee. So, here they are.

1. If you have Sky telly then you’ll know that when you are looking at the listings then the screen shrinks and appears in the right hand corner playing whatever is on the channel you are watching. For a full year I intend to watch T.V. with only that little screen on. Why? Because in a years time I will, after a whole year of squinting through series 7 of Doctor Who etc, my mind will be blown by suddenly seeing everything on full screen again. It will be like a blind man regaining his sight, only not as good. I’ve already started this. Watching Das Boot with English subtitles was nearly impossible. Fantastic.

2 To speak fluent Polish. No, readers, I won’t be going to Polish classes or listening to some tape whilst I’m asleep. I have the advantage of having a missis that speaks Polish fluently. She speaks English as well, which is handy, but my plan is to only have her speak to me in Polish when we are at home. She’d banned from speaking English for the next year. With her only speaking Polish I’ll have to work out what she’s saying to me and I reckon, after a year of this, I’ll have picked up a few words. I know Skelep is Polish for shop and I’ll imagine I’ll hear that a few times, mainly on Saturdays, around pay day. The biggest test will come in a crisis situation, when she has to tell me some bad news such as one of the cats had run into the jaws of a combine harvester or the house being repossessed because we’ve defaulted on our mortgage payments again. What an interesting and fun-filled year we will have and this experiment can only improve out relationship.
Happy new year, everyone, or as they say in Polish, Yak mash dozsi piwor (at least that’s what I think she was saying)

Oh, and Terminus is only 77 pee now (that’s $99 in pyramid-eye money) as it’s part of the January sales.

An Idiot Abroad

Greetings to anyone who is reading this. I’ve recently returned from a ten-day excursion to Thailand. the plane didn’t crash and, despite staying in a hotel in Phuket which was located in an official tsunami hazard zone, I didn’t drown either so the holiday went quite well. I didn’t get any writing done but it did lead me to think about the connections between writer’s and their protagonists. Do they reflect the writer’s own personality? Is Stephen Daedalus a manifestation of James Joyce’s own personality? Is Frodo Baggins an aspirational character for Tolkien, a small person achieving big things? (I don’t know how small or big Tolkien actually was) So here’s the bit where I dare to compare my own work to these literary giants. Terminus  features the protagonist of the same name who is something of a drunkard and an exaggerator. (Umm…this is sounding too close to the knuckle) He is also incompetent and, as his vampiress nemesis observes, ‘Terminus, you’re a man who stumbles into dark places and stumbles out of them again’. He goes into deadly dungeons and forgets which way he’s come in generally puts himself in more danger than he needs to.

So how close to my own peronality is he? Do I put myself in more danger than I need to and I’m not just talking about the way I drive on the M1 every morning. A few years ago I volunteered to go on a trip to Lebanon with my church. Lebanon isn’t on everybody’s list of places to go, I know. Beirut was still full of bullet holes and bombed out buildings from the last war and this was before Israel had a go at them a couple of years later. In one rural place we stayed at I decided to go for a walk on my own. As I sat on a hill contemplating the view and getting a Biblical vibe from the place an Arab guy came up to me, said ‘Marhaba’ (hello) then patted his shoulder and indicated to the land around telling me something in Arabic. Okay, I thought, I’ve wandered onto his land and he’s telling me to get off. Making my excuses in English I headed back to the place where we were staying. 

That night I was walking along the road with one of the English-speaking locals and I noticed that there were these signs along the road with a diagram of a hand, palm facing outwards, fingers splayed, and something written in Arabic across the hand.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked my host.

She replied, ‘It’s a warning not to go off the road and walk in the hills because there’s landmines around.’

I rest my case.

Weird Creatures

In today’s blog I am introducing you to the weird creatures that populate the planet of Thanatos One, one of thirteen worlds in the Thanatos system. Before I start I’d like to warn readers to NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GO TO THE PLANET OF THANATOS ONE. EVER. TO GO THERE IS CERTAIN DEATH! Anyway, this mysterious alien system features in the e-novel Terminus by Paul Melhuish (available today from Greyhartpress).

Thanatos One has a breathable atmosphere and is densely forested, the type  your mother warned you never to go into. There’s a strange walled castle with twin jutting towers that you are enticed to enter (You really, really don’t want to go in there if you know what’s good for you)  To get there you will have to pass through the forest where real evil lurks. Here’s what waits for you…

Plaguewraiths - guard dogs of Thanatos One except they look nothing like dogs. They have six legs, hands for feet and no outer covering leaving the muscles and sinew  exposed. They are slimy to the touch. Yuk

Gravesnakes -  the body of a giant millipede whose head and legs look  human to the eye. Also slimy to the touch.

The Virgins of the Abyss - they live in the moat of darkness around the Spires of the Thirteen. They appear to you as innocent children until you turn the lights off, then they change into something hideous that wants to lay its eggs in your body. Scaley to the touch.

The Thirteen – so-called because there’s thirteen of them. Imagine if man had evolved from Spiders and not from apes (or wolves as some believe. At least Eric from the pub does). You’d have a bipedal arachnid with six eyes. They are all this and much, much worse.

 As a writer I love the challenge of creating  weird creatures in my imagination then transcribing them to the page.          I started to include weird creatures in my fiction when I began studying to become an Occupational Therapist.              My training included the study of anatomy and physiology, when I invent  creatures I try to anatomically distance them from anything human. The creatures must have more than two eyes and more than two legs (apart from The Thirteen which are bipedal) Even the Thanaton spaceships are drawn from my studies of anatomy: they are designed to look like rib cages.

So in conclusion, never go to Thanatos One. Instead read the handy guide Terminus by Paul Melhuish. At £2.30 it’s less than a pint of beer. Well, a pint of beer in an expensive pub, and it lasts longer!

Bad Language: learn yerself Skyfirean.

In my novel, Terminus, the main character (Sii Terminus) hails from the planet Skyfire. When the first part was read by one Mr Ian Watson (yes, he who wrote A.I.) in a meeting of our writers’ group (the Northampton Science Fiction Writers’ Group) Mr Watson commented that kids could read this and they’d love it because it’s packed full of swear words. No, I hear you cry, swearing in your fiction? I’m certainly not letting my Billy near such filth. Ha, that’s where you are wrong, concerned parent. The swearing is all constructed. You will have never heard curses such as this before because I made them up. Drent, vulley, digest are all words your kids will be saying after they’ve read Terminus. No, concerned parent. Don’t worry about the language. It’s the gory murders and the sex planet you’ll not want your kids reading about.

Now, to  the origins of the language. It comes from the planet Skyfire. The planet Skyfire can be found roughly twenty thousand pulses from our native planet Earth. Skyfire was colonised by Earth travellers a few hundred years ago. The occupants display all the hedonism of the 1990s but have the political incorrectness of the 1970s This can be seen in their terminology. Here are a few examples.

Drent - a general curse to express dissatisfaction when something’s gone wrong. For example: ‘Drent, the pulse drive’s on the blink. Now we’ll be stuck in space drifting forever.

Vulley - another curse meaning screwed up and also slang for sex. for example: ‘The pulse drive’s vullied and now were going to drift in space forever. So we’re totally vullied.’ or ‘Lets go down to Babel and get ourselves some vulley!’ (see what I mean about the politically incorrect business. Tut tut.)

Gemmel – house or home

Snakki - booze. Any kind of booze from low-grade chemical fizz to strong lubricant. Skyfireans drink a lot of snakki.

Skangat - yet more cursing. Very bad insult implying the person is a cat interferer or worse. ‘For example: ‘You’ve vullied the pulse drive. Now we’re going to drift in space for ever, you total Skangat!’

Strentner - horrible. This is nicked from a Polish word my second generation polish geema (woman) taught me.

Pizzdeen (for men) Pizzdeena (for women) – basically this is slang for virgin. My missis went mental when she’d seen that I’d used this word in the novel. In Polish a pizzda isn’t an Italian dough with tomato puree, onions and cheese but a very bad word indeed (the C word…ummm) so apologies to any Polish readers. I hope this doesn’t cause an international diplomatic incident.

So there you have it. some examples of Skyfirean. The novel has no glossary because I’m confident that readers will pick up the meaning of the words as they read. If you’ve ever read Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange he winds the words into standard language and they attain their own meaning. So then you ganntas and geemas, I’ll scan you next stretch where I razzle you’ll be beaky enough to take a scan at my next post.

An Emotional Response to my Imminent Publication

On my Doctor Who calendar at home I have ringed September the 30th in thick red pen because that’s the day my debut novel, ‘Terminus’, arrives in the (digital) world. The 30th is a Friday, I note. Friday is my favorite day of the week. Well, Friday means that I don’t have to go to work the next day, I can drink beer until I collapse in a heap on the living room floor and it’s Saturday the next day, the second best day of the week. This could actually be the best Friday of the year for me, beating the Friday I spent at the Dartmoor Folk festival drinking lots of real ale and the Friday I spent at the Northampton beer festival drinking lots of real ale. I’ve also seen the price of the novel. (see above). Drent me, if I was in Waterstones and I saw a gothic horror/ sci-fi novel that cheap I’d snap it up!

When I first began writing I tried to imagine the day I got published. I imagined that a printed novel would arrive through the post with an advance for fifty thousand in the form of a cheque. I imagined turning up for work and telling my boss to shove it to a round of applause from my beleagured work mates as I exited the office forever to move to a cottage in Devon and scribe to the sound of seagulls. (Actually, my boss is quite nice and I spend more time drinking coffee than working and I hear the sound of seagulls everyday because our office is near the local tip) Ha, how innocent I was. In reality the actual process of publication I’ve encountered was probably far more spiritually satisfying than just getting a cheque for fifty thousand pounds though the post. Really, it was. My editor and I (errr…I sounded like the Queen then, sorry) have been mailing back and forth swapping ideas and generally getting exited about the whole thing. I’m amazed on how flexible he’s been and what a good supportive chap he’s been over the last few months. Even helping me when I’ve managed to lock myself out of wordpress and twitter (yeah…I know…like…durrr….). So that’s Mr Tim C. Taylor of Greyhart press everyone. I also remember getting exited by the cover art, skillfully realised by Mr Andy Bigwood. Thinking about it I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll give you an insight into the culture and language of Skyfire, especially the language. Drent, vulley, skangat. All will be explained in the lead up to publication.

My debut novel’s almost ready

The '850' in orbit

My debut novel, Terminus, is nearly ready to be launched. It’s due out September 30^th as an e-book. That doesn’t just mean Kindles, you can read it on your fancy phone (iPhone and Android) or iPad. The editing from me is all done; just another round of proof-reading to go from the publisher.

If you liked Babel, you’d love Terminus. It’s kind of Hammer Horror hijacks a spaceship and crashes into Aliens. Space opera horror perhaps. Anyway, it’s drenting good.

It’s available now as an Advanced Review Copy. That means that if you ask me, I can mail you a free copy (ePub or Kindle format) if you write a review. I’m not talking about an article for the Times Literary Supplement; I mean a few sentences about what you did and did not like — something you can post to Amazon when the book’s launched or whenever you’re ready.

Babel

Welcome to Babel!

My story Babel was released by Greyhart Press last week. It’s a science fiction short story with a gothic horror theme. Babel is a brothel planet (ooh..err) and it’s facing an apocalypse.

A tourists’ guide to Babel

Situated one thousand light years from Skyfire (hot planet, lots of good bars) yet disturbingly close to the Thanatos system (thirteen dark, nasty planets. No bars at all), Babel was colonised by a human explorer team from Skyfire who quickly declared independence from the mother planet and turned Babel into a giant brothel. There were buildings in existence from the previous civilisation (who either became extinct or left the planet for some unknown reason). There is a native species on this planet; Lung-men. Their bodies act like lungs taking in oxygen and nutrition from the atmosphere of Babel. They are used by the humanoid colonists as an unpaid workforce.

Babel is set a far, far into the future. as a writer and as a person I dislike reality (yuk, reality, yuk, yuk) so enjoy writing about things that have absolutely nothing to do with contemporary reality. I admire writers who create their own universes (Frank Herbert, Alistair Reynolds, Ian Whates) and Babel is one of a series of stories and a novel (due to come out at the end of this year) set in the universe of Skyfire. It is a massive honour to get Babel published on the net and all respect and salutations to Mr Tim Taylor of Greyhart press for putting it out there. Also, I wish the best of luck to my label mates Emma Coleman and Nigel Edwards. If I knew how to put a link up here to you good people I would but I don’t so I can’t

Finally, a brief visitors guide to Babel

Do visit the red palace and study the fantastic architecture if you can keep your eyes off the beautiful Babelite hostesses who will seduce you and reduce you to a gibbering wreck with their attentions regardless of gender, species or planet of origin.

Do make sure you have enough ching (money) as the palace owners have a unique way of reimbursing any costs via your friends, family or planetary government. Put it this way, you could end up being impaled up the digest spreader by something sharp and nasty.

Do not tip the Lung-men. they like carrying your luggage and clearing up after you. Honest.

Do not declare any religious beliefs that involve abstinence from sexual activity to the Babelite hostesses as they’ll simply see this as a challenge which you will lose. God will be very disappointed with you.

Thank you and good-bye.