HI THERE, I WON’T BE BLOGGING ANYMORE ON THIS SITE, BUT IF YOU VISIT MY WEBSITE THOMASEMSON.NET, YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MY BOOKS, AND ALL MY LATEST NEWS. ALSO, FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER AT http://twitter.com/thomasemson
HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE
Two horror-themed shows coming up on Radio 4 next week, starting with “Front Row”, introduced by Mark Lawson. He’ll be reporting on why vampires are still popular in fiction. Good news for me and other horror writers delving into that world, if that’s true. He’s interviewing Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker. The show’s on Wednesday, 7.15pm. Then on Thursday at 11.30am, Reece Shearsmith from wonderful The League Of Gentlemen will present a show discussing horror “before an audience inside the reputedly haunted Sutton House in Hackney”.
Left, my novel Skarlet, hopefully popular if vampire fiction is all the rage.
Friday 30 October, 7:30 at The Canterbury Festival Green Room, Waterstones, Rose Lane, Canterbury
Tickets: £5
01227 787 787 or from the Canterbury Festival website: www.canterburyfestival.co.uk
Produced by East Kent Live Lit, the live literature network for writers, artists, venues, promoters and producers in East Kent. www.livelit.co.uk
ARTISTS:
Thomas Emson is the pen-name of a writer whose first novel Maneater was published in April 2008. His second, Skarlet, the first part of The Vampire Trinity, followed in 2009. He is contracted to write eight books for Snowbooks over the next four years. He is also an award-winning playwright and used to be a singer-songwriter. He will be reading from his next novel Prey, the sequel to Maneater, which is published in paperback in February 2010. He is now working on his fourth novel, Zombie Britannica. www.thomasemson.net
Maggie Harris was born in Guyana and has lived in Kent since 1972. Her poetry is influenced by both English and Caribbean content and style, and she has performed throughout the UK, Europe and the Caribbean. Her books include Limbolands, From Berbice to Broadstairs, The Conch Shell and her a new collection, After a Visit to a Botanical Garden, released in February. Cds include Listen to de Riddum and Anansi Meets Miss Muffet. Maggie regularly runs workshops and runs live literature events, including the first live lit festival in Thanet, Inscribing the Island. www.maggieharris.co.uk
Katherine May is the author of Burning Out, Ghosts & their Uses and A Diary of Slow Progress. Her work stems from a fascination with ghost stories, and often plays with the idea of hauntings, real or imagined. Her short stories have been widely published in anthologies and she reads regularly from her work.
Shapeshifting will mark the first public showing of her new Arts Council-funded performance piece, Burning Out. www.notesfromtheendoftheworld.blogspot.com
The Word organizes events that focus on poetry, performance and music, often in a non-live-lit context. They seek to challenge the concept of what is live literature, as well as to widen their own perspective of what is an audience. They are interested in the thought providing and the unusual, in events that are sincere, pure, avant-garde, experimental and culturally inclusive. The Word regularly run creative workshops in Canterbury and beyond, and have appeared in a number of festivals including OOTO, Red Roar, and Lark in the Park. Shapeshifting marks the debut of a new sonic exploration. www.thewordcanterbury.blogspot.com
Tim Cronin is signed to Acid Jazz as Silverheel and has released three albums. His latest, Seize the Possibilities, is distributed by Cadiz. Tim regularly combines his film work with his music, and his music with his spoken word work, creating innovative fusions that can be experienced in a variety of ways. He has designed and delivered innovative music, film and animation projects in secure establishments, schools of all kinds, and in community.
“Prey” has been proofread, now. It’ll be out in hardback in a month. Looking forward to seeing it arrive because I think Snowbooks have done another brilliant job with the cover.
Ploughing through the second draft of “Zombie Britannica”. That’s due to be delivered to Snowbooks on December 1. Had a few stutters along the way, but I’m used to those, now. There’s always going to be points where you scratch your head and wonder if you’re on the right track with a novel. But you get through it, just as long as you stick to it and not give up.
Here’s a review of Skarlet, which is very pleasing. I’m happy, particularly, that the reviewer appreciated my portrayal of Jake Lawton. I’m very proud of Jake, and I’m looking forward to developing him further in Krimson, which I’m writing next.
Meanwhile, the first draft of Zombie Britannica is done - I have 90,000 words to play with. I’ve taken a week off, and I’ll be starting Draft Two on Monday.
This is the cover for my next novel, “Prey”, designed by Emma Barnes and Anna Torborg at Snowbooks. I think it’s my favourite ever cover. I love it. “Prey” is the sequel to my first novel “Maneater”, and sees the return of werewolf Laura Greenacre. The novel’s out in hardback in November and paperback in February 2010.
I’ve been a bad blogger. I’m not good at this at all. Must be more disciplined. Anyone who does visit this site, I’m sorry. Anyway, an update: I started “Zombie Britannica”, my next Snowbooks novel, five weeks ago - and I’ve done 55,000 words of a first draft already! It seems to be going really well. The story’s flowing. It’s rough, of course, and will need a lot of work - but it is nice when things move quickly. I’m still on my weekly targets of 8,000-10,000 words a week. I had a particularly good week a fortnight ago when I wrote 14,000 words in a week. That’s unprecedented, really; I usually only manage to hit word-counts which are within my target.
Prey has been handed in to Snowbooks. It’ll be published in hardback in November, and paperback in February 2010. I’m waiting to hear what Emma and Anna at Snowbooks think of it.
I’ve now started on my next novel, Zombie Britannica - you can guess what that’s about. The novel takes place in England, Scotland, and Wales where people have to deal with zombie attacks. There’s a different story for each country, so I’m trying to work them out, now. I’ve started writing the first draft this week. I just plough through that draft quickly. Hope to get it done in eight to ten weeks.
I get diverted though: checking emails, seeing if the Lions’ team for Saturday’s match has been announced yet. The early days of a novel are difficult, I think: you’re not completeley into the book, yet; you’re finding your feet; you haven’t got to know the characters, yet.
Sometimes you just don’t think you’ve enough story to justify a novel. A novel really, I think, should be at least 70,000 words - absolutely not a word under 50,000, and that’s a short book. Somehow, I don’t know how, both my novels have been over that 70,000-word mark - Maneater was around 95,000, Skarlet came in at 115,000.
Around March, two months into the first draft of Prey, I’d written about 35,000 words and thought, I don’t have enough story - I was worried the book would struggle to reach 60,000 words.
Prey, being the sequel to Maneater, sees the return of the characters Laura Greenacre and John Thorn. Laura has lots to do in Prey. But by March, and those 35,000 words, Thorn had nothing - he was sitting around moping. And it’s really difficult to write a scene about someone doing nothing - as Kurt Vonnegut says, Make sure that one every page, somebody wants something, even if it’s a glass of water . . . Thorn, it seemed, just didn’t “want” anything and because of that he wasn’t doing anything. Of course, he did want something: Thorn wanted Laura. But he couldn’t have her.
Anyway, I looked again at Thorn. The man has been through hell - it’s all in Maneater, if you’ve not read it yet. Maybe I was subconsciously giving him a break after the rough ride he got in the first novel.
But you don’t give your characters a break. What you do is try to break them and see how they respond.
Thorn made enemies in Maneater. Prey was always going to be about revenge, and it’s easy to write from the POV of those seeking vengeance. The targets of it, not so easy. Thorn is, in this book, a target of vengeance. He was always going to be. But how he fights back, how he stands up for himself and his family, finally became his story. And fortunately, his story begat other stories and the begatting continued. Until I had 120,000 words - and a decent-sized novel you could get your teeth into, hopefully.
I’ve finished the “nearly-final” draft of “Prey“ today - well, 3.15 a.m. today. I’m pretty happy with it, I think, though it is quite difficult when you’ve been so attached to something for so many months. I’ll only really know, I’ll only really be happy, when Emma and Anna at Snowbooks tell me they like it - then I can breathe a sigh of relief. Still got some work to do on it, a polish here and there, but I’ll make the June 1 deadline. Then it’s straight into another novel, “Zombie Britannica”.