Birth of a Novel: Part Two

KICKING ON

"They scanned the room. There were so many auras; they could see them all now. Their vision was improving. Most of the auras they saw were torn and frayed, but the specific one they sought would be slashed and trashed, hanging in tatters from whoever carried it."

I've had a quiet week on the actual writing front, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on the project. As most writers will tell you, a lot of work is done when we're simply sitting about staring at the wall. DEAD BAD THINGS has a complex plot, so I find that I'm spending even more time than usual just thinking about the story. Keeping a world inside your head is hard work; often bits keep sliding off. Real life gets in the way.

Sometimes it feels like you're wrestling with the story, and other times it's like dancing. There's a kind of choreography to what goes on inside your head, and you have to keep up with the beat or fall flat on your backside.

So, right now I'm wrestling when all I really want to do is dance.

This struggle makes it all worthwhile in the end, or so you keep telling yourself. You kick on and you keep chipping away at the book. It's what writers do. We're persistent fuckers. Especially me.

Current word count: 22,500

The Harm

As it'll be out from TTA Press just in time for World Horror 2010 next month, I'm proud to unveil Ben Baldwin's rather magnificent cover for my latest book THE HARM.

Order your copy now from the TTA SHOP

Birth of a Novel: Part 1.

STARTING IT

"Deep down, even when she was much younger, she had always known that her father had a hidden life – one even more degraded than the one he let her see at home."

So I thought I might use this here blog to chart the progress of the first draft of my new novel, DEAD BAD THINGS. The advantages of this are twofold: it forces me to update the blog on a regular basis, and hopefully by doing this I can inspire myself to keep chipping away at the novel.

The first five chapters are down, and they're not bad. I'm pretty pleased with how the early stages of the book are developing, and the plot is slowly beginning to twist and turn and mutate into something interesting. This is a sequel to PRETTY LITTLE DEAD THINGS, but where the first book was a first-person narrative this one is a mix of first and third-person perspectives. It happened this way naturally; a progression. Other characters demanded to be heard, and their stories couldn't be told through the main character Thomas Usher's perspective - indeed, he is no longer the main character at all.

The early parts of a novel are both frightening and exhilarating. The Fear grasps you by the balls; you doubt that you're up to the task. But also you are filled with an enormous sense of...well, adventure. Where will this all take you, and who might you meet along the way?

Current wourd count: 18,000 words

First quote for THE HARM

This is just in from genre star, Dr Who author and all round sex god Mark Morris:

"Gary McMahon is the baron of bleak, the godfather of grim...and I mean that in a good way. His new novella, THE HARM, is a distillation of the essence of true horror. As uncompromisingly confrontational and as arbitrarily vicious as real life can sometimes be, THE HARM casts a bright light onto the deepest recesses of the human soul and encounters nothing but endless darkness."

Not the News

I'm trying to post something here about once a week - just to keep my web presence reasonably up to date. So here goes:

I'm currently 15,000 words into DEAD BAD THINGS, and it's shaping up nicely. The plot's mental...but it's meant to be. It's a twisty-turny crime story as well as a tale of supernatural horror. Ooh, get me all genre-blurring. That'll get my bum smacked off the genre police.

Elsewhere, things are moving along with the publication of THE HARM. The mighty talented Ben Baldwin is doing the cover, and hopefully the book will be out in time for World Horror 2010 in March.

Speaking of World Horror, I have a bit of a timetable scheduled over the weekend and will post it when I can be arsed.

Until then, go and read a book or something. Take a wee drink. Maybe even have some sex. Do something good, rather than faffing around on the sodding Internet...

Harmful Things

So I've started work on the new novel, DEAD BAD THINGS. It's an interesting process, mainly because it's the first time I've written a sequel. The story keeps growing bigger and bigger inside my head, with characters intersecting and revealing aspects of themselves whenever I turn my back on them.

Like I said: interesting.

In other news, I have a stand-alone novelette called THE HARM: A POLYPTYCH due from TTA Press hopefully in time for World Horror 2010 in Brighton this March. This one's dark. Very dark. The story tackles the subjects of violence and abuse and how the pain caused by some crimes never goes away, but acts like psychological ripples on a pond...

This will be a slim A format paperback, signed and modestly priced. It's a slightly experimental story and one I'm very proud of. I'm delighted it's going to find an audience.