Author focus: Rob Wickings – zombies, pirates, film

Rob Wickings is someone that I admire hugely – an author, short filmmaker (that’s short films – he’s actually quite tall), blogger and fellow geek, he’s not only a very good friend, he’s also an inspiration to me. Whenever I make an attempt at writing, it’s usually because Rob is writing/creating/publishing something. We’re book swappers too. But the difference is that Rob actually gets his writing out there into the public domain and is now achieving some of the success he deserves with much more coming his way, I am sure. There’s another difference too. Rob is a writer of horror and steampunk – two genres that have me running for the (silent) hills. Last week we had a sit down, over a pint, and had a discussion about stories, publishing, making films and zombies. Electrical zombies.

Publications:
Temporal Tales
Untruths
Satan’s Schoolgirls
The Dead Files Volume 1
The Dead Files Volume 2
The Dead Files Volume 3

Let’s start with the zombies – is there an audience out there?

I think there is. I think the important thing we have to bear in mind is that 90% of zombies novels, zombie stories, aren’t anything to do with the classic idea of a zombie. The traditional idea of a zombie is the recent dead. Most zombies that you see in books and film these days are rage or virus-infected humans. Angry, almost rabid. But they’re not the living dead. There’s always going to be mileage in that sort of thing because it’s like any kind of centre for disease control base coming through. You can take that initial fear of society. It doesn’t have to be the dead coming out of their graves and walking. You get the weird thing like in Warm Bodies (by Isaac Marion) where you get a zombie romance where love can bring the dead back. Because the initial remit is so broad, you can narrow it down. I think it’s incredibly broad. You’ve basically got very simple ideas. You’ve got a dystopia, you’ve got the few versus the many, you’ve got global disaster. All that stuff you can narrow down and you can find little tweaks and twists in there.

My take on it that I’ve been doing with the Dead Files is with a slightly more science fiction approach where it’s set 500 years after an event. It’s a science gone wrong kind of thing where we design this electrical field that’s supposed to be free power, cheap power. What it effectively does is reanimate the dead. Huge dystopia. The world goes to pot but we find a way of shutting that field down 500 years later. There’s hardly anyone left. We’ve gone back to a kind of agrarian, almost medieval society and the tasks that we need to do to actually keep the field damped have become almost something that no one believes in anymore. 500 years later suddenly all of the machines that were keeping the field damped start failing and the dead start coming back again. So, what do you do when an old myth or legend suddenly comes real? It’s kind of far future and almost historical fiction in a way.

I’m always fascinated by the mix between horror and science fiction. I think when that works well, as in Alien for example – probably my favourite film of all time – it works brilliantly.

Do zombies have to be nasty?

There’s a wonderful French movie, Les Revenants, in which the dead come back to life but they come back to life as they were before they died. They go back home. You’re trying to live with your partner or kid and yet they’ve come back to life. They’ve got no recollection of that at all. If you’re in the middle of the grief process it’s possibly the worst thing you could watch but it’s more an exploration of grief. It’s not really a horror movie at all.

The decision to publish – putting oneself out there

It was massively difficult girding my loins to put that first collection out there even though what I was basically doing was collating all the stuff I already had on the website along with a few other bits and pieces. Putting them all into a Scrivener project and then out to Amazon. But there’s always that moment when you hover with your finger over the publish button and you think ‘Are you sure you want to do this?!’ With that first collection, in some ways it was almost like an experiment, to see what would happen because it was stuff that wasn’t really doing much and I thought that rather than have it on a random website that no-one was ever going to see, why not try the book experience, collate it all together and see how easy it would be to put it into Amazon and that experience was remarkably simple and remarkably positive.

When, where, how to write…

Two events changed the way I write, and freed me up to get the work done. First up, NaNoWriMo. The National Novel Writing Month taught me discipline, the importance of the first draft (and not sweating the details on a first draft, most importantly–just get the words on the page and worry about the polish later). At the same time, moving to Reading from London meant that I had a 30 minute train ride to work every day, which was the perfect opportunity to sit and write in a distraction-free environment. Every writer has their sweet spot, the time which works best for them in terms of creativity. As luck would have it, I write best in the early morning. Tie that into the train journey, and I have motive and opportunity to write.

On top of that, I’ve realised that I enjoy being a mobile writer. Trains, cafes, pubs, you name it. I can write at home, but there are a lot of distractions. I can blam out 1000 words in an hour in a cafe. At home, I’ll find excuses to dodge the keyboard. If I need to write, all of a sudden the hoovering gets done. Get me out of the house, and I write like a demon. All of which means that I’m a great believer in a stripped-back, clean writing solution. I’m an Apple fanboi, as the hard- and software are robust and trouble-free. Less faff, more wordcount.

Future writing plans

Simon Turney invited me into the Inkslingers group which is doing themed anthologies. I have something planned for a series called Tortured Hearts – dark romance. Temporal Tales is already out. They’re working on a historical fiction, fantasy anthology, fairy tales. I’ve got stories in two or three of those. I’m also currently doing the second part of my electrical zombies story that I started in Dead Files 2 so that’s set in a future past world. Hopefully I’ll get that ready for Dead Files 5.

The next long piece of fiction is probably going to be a fairly radical step away from horror. It’s a science fiction book – part one of a trilogy – called Pirates of the Moon. It was written as part of NaNoWriMo in 2007/2008 probably and I’m really, really pleased with it. I’m very excited about it. It’s about a 15-year-old female space pilot, Aurora Armstrong, and her adventures after she crash lands on the Moon. I’m very pleased with it in terms of plot and character. This is the one I’m probably most proud of. I did actually sit down towards the end of last year and write a plan of stuff I wanted to do in terms of writing for both film and prose. I’m currently just about still on target but I’ve got a busy year ahead of me.

Film projects

In terms of projects that aren’t book related, I’ve got a couple of scripts that I’ve been working on. One is a horror script that my partner in that is taking to Cannes this year. It’s called Seeds of the Vampire. It’s set in Serbia in the 18th century and it’s got vague science fictiony bits in it. If you imagine something akin to Nosferatu meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it’s that kind of thing. Apart from that I’m doing an awful lot of documentary work with my filmmaker partner, Dominic Wade. We’re currently working on three different projects, one of which is a documentary about Banksy, which hopefully should be getting a distribution deal in the States fairly soon. We’re doing a documentary on rave culture called ‘Decks, Dance and Videotape’ which had a screening, the short version, a couple of weeks ago in Crouch End and in Bristol the following day and that got a very positive reaction. We’re doing a long term project that follows a guy called Gimpo who was involved with the KLF. He’s doing this performance art project where he drives around the M25 for 25 hours once a year. He’s doing that for 25 years and has been doing it since 1996/1997. It ties into ritual and endurance. Year 17’s just been completed so we went over to his gaff in East London yesterday and sat and chatted to him about it. We’ve been doing that for five years. That project’s probably going to mutate over time. We want to get a half hour cut of that into the Portobello Film Festival in August but there’s no reason why we can’t do little updates here and there. The scheme won’t finish until 2021. Dominic Wade is the prime mover in these and I’m usually the guy behind the camera.

Inspirational writers

Names that spring to mind most immediately, probably Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, I think in terms of their simplicity and the style and the way they can absolutely devastate with a sentence. Elmore Leonard – he’s got that thriller sensibility and at the same time the ability to push you through a story. I should probably mention Neal Stephenson, sort of going the other way, the breadth of vision he achieves is extraordinary. He can populate stories with this huge mass of people.

Long or short?

Novel-length projects are all about organisation. Keeping the plot nailed down, not losing track of details (characters hair colour, accents, names) balancing the pacing, trying to avoid the ever-present middle-act sag. A novel is a project that is much about management as it is craft. There’s a reason that books start life as a rainbow of post-its on a fridge door, or an Excel database. The idea of starting a book at page one without knowing what happens in the middle or end is utterly alien. That, to me, is what short stories are for. There’s a reason that JK Rowling, James Patterson and GRR Martin make the money. They are consummate, meticulous plotters. The characters blossom alongside the plot, but without that framework they’re just wandering about bumping into the scenery.

Useful links

Rob’s website: Excuses and Half Truths
Rob’s Amazon page
Rob on GoodReads
Verse Publishing

The English Monster by Lloyd Shepherd

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 432
Year: 2012
Buy: Paperback, Kindle
Source: Bought copy

Review
The English Monster is a most intriguing and unusual novel. As it begins, one might suppose that we are in the grip of historical fiction, albeit divided into two different periods of English history, but, as the story proceeds, it soon becomes very apparent that we are caught in the spell of something else.

The novel has a focus in Wapping, an area of London that has been reclaimed from the river and its marshes. It opens in the 1560s, with pirates hung by their necks beside the river. Meanwhile, young Billy Ablass sets out from his Cotswold home to make a fortune to bring home to his girl bride Kate. He enlists with John Hawkyns and begins a series of adventures at sea mostly capturing, transporting and selling slaves, with his friend Francis Drake by his side. In tandem is another story set in London in 1811 which centres upon a series of brutal murders – the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. The murderer is chased by old magistrate John Harriott and policeman Charles Horton, a man with a past. The two time periods and stories alternate, seemingly distinct, separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, but, as the chapters go by, the gap begins to narrow.

The English Monster has many layers to it. It is as fertile and earthy as the land on which London grows. It is a seafaring adventure, full of exotic mysteries and wonders, even fantastical elements that shock and amuse. It is also a history of early policing. Here we see the first detectives investigating a real-life series of crimes that must have terrified the people of Wapping and Shadwell. It is also, though, a tale of great horror, rich with symbolism and metaphor. At its heart is the beast on which London and England were built – the slave trade. This English monster stalks the novel, bringing real life and familiar characters such as Drake, Hawkyns and Henry Morgan, together with demons.

This is a novel steeped in atmosphere, hugely evocative of both the exotic, foreign and open as well as the dirty, domestic and secret. Whether Lloyd Shepherd is writing about the stews of London or the beaches of Florida or the Ivory Coast, there is a wonderful mix of the grimy and the fabulous. We follow it through the experiences of the young Billy Ablass and through his eyes we see the damage that slavery can do to the soul, on a personal level as well as on the grandest.

The novel does change its shape as the monster tightens its grip and so it is full of surprises. The English Monster presents a powerful and chilling portrait of one of the most all-pervasive and despicable demons in English history – the slave trade. It does its subject justice, proving to be an excellent, atmospheric and extremely clever read. That The English Monster is a debut novel is also astonishing. Lloyd Shepherd is an author to watch. The English Monster frightened me more than any other novel I read in 2012 and is one of the books I’ll remember the most.

The Twelve Blog Tour – Amy is back!

The day has finally arrived! Justin Cronin’s The Twelve, the much anticipated sequel to The Passage, is published today. I’m honoured to be a part of the Blog Tour, and particularly chuffed that the post falls on publication day itself.

The Twelve is the second novel in a trilogy that takes the world to the brink of apocalypse. Twelve Death Row prisoners have been given the chance to avoid their sentence by taking part in a medical experiment. The result is a tribe of virals, vampire demons, who, once loose, prey upon a world that withdraws into pockets behind well lit walls.

There is just one hope – the child Amy.

One thing I can promise – there’s not a sparkly vampire in sight.

As part of the Blog Tour, I’m delighted to bring you the first chapter of The Twelve to feature Amy. You can read and download the chapter here: The Twelve: Amy returns

Do take a look at the other posts in the tour. Yesterday’s took place at Wondrous Reads and tomorrow the tour makes its final stop at Geek Chocolate.

Buy The Twelve: Hardback, Kindle.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Publisher: Orion
Pages: 256
Year: 2010 (Pb 2011)
Buy: Hardback, Paperback, Kindle
Source: Bought copy

Review
Dark Matter is a ghost story. It’s not often I’m brave enough to immerse myself in the dark and lonely and quiet world of a ghost story but there was something special about Dark Matter that appealed and it has a lot to do with its setting – the 1930s’ Arctic wilderness. I’ve always been attracted to novels set in wide open expanses of cold country – most recently The Snow Child and Dead Men – they lend themselves perfectly to mysteries, chills and spiritual journeys. The isolation and emptiness of the landscape are compounded by months of night, illuminated only by twisting dancing lights of colour. All well and good, and so beautiful, in theory, but what if you were on your own and then you began to realise that you weren’t on your own after all? What would you do? Would you go mad?

On the eve of the second world war, Jack Miller joins Algernon Carlisle and Gus Balfour on a scientific expedition to Gruhuken, a hut and nothing else on a remote island to the north of Norway. Miller, a middle class office clerk, a failure in his own eyes, wants to belong and he is seduced by the confidence of upper class and wealthy Gus and Algie. The journey is an escape from drudgery and, despite ominous portents before they even leave London, Jack longs for Gruhuken. Nothing can dent his optimism, not even the reluctance of their ship’s captain Mr Eriksson to set just one foot on the shore. Sometimes, you need to listen.

When the expedition arrives on base it is still midsummer. The light is never ending. Birds nest. The men settle in their hut while the dogs get used to their own. A few feet from the entrance is the bear post; a post from which trackers would hang animal remains to attract polar bears for hunting. Finally, Eriksson and his crew leave. Jack, Gus and Algie are on their own and before long the sun begins to disappear below the horizon for longer and longer each night until finally it never appears at all. The Arctic Winter fastens its grip on the land. This coincides, unfortunately for Jack, with the evacuation of Gus and Algie from the base in a medical emergency. Jack is on his own and it’s not just his imagination that he has to cope with.

The novel takes the form of a journal written by Jack, interspersed with images of Arctic scenes. On his own, learning to know the dogs, depending on one in particular, Jack relies on us to listen to him. When he stares out of the window and sees things he shouldn’t see but want to be seen, we hide out of sight from the glass, willing him not to look and deploring his obsession with what is happening outside, especially around the bear post. The Arctic Winter is a dangerous environment. You wouldn’t want to go outside at the best of times. But Jack is determined to continue his scientific experiments, to validate the expedition, fighting against his own fears, the echoes of the past, the rar (‘the strangeness’) and the Ishavet kaller (‘the Arctic calls’).

Dark Matters is a spooky read for sure. Jack is a brave man, driven to prove his worth to Gus and Algie even when terrified to the extreme. He will not abandon his post. His journal entries become increasingly frightened. He doesn’t give in to it easily. He grasps at straws of hope. This serves to make the story all the more frightening.

Other themes are touched on here – the end of the golden days of rich exploration as the second world war looms, the murky human past of the Arctic, even the nature of love. All set within a beautifully evocative ice night.

I had questions about the shakiness of the journal format in places, especially at the end, but otherwise Dark Matter places us firmly within the increasingly frightened mind of a man on his own in the most remote and darkest of environments. It’s a short novel and so, like me, it’s possible that you may read it all in one sitting, ideally during a dark and stormy autumnal or wintry night. A book like this is made for nights like that.

172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad

Publisher: Atom
Pages: 362
Year: 2012 (originally published in Norway in 2008)
Buy: Paperback, Kindle
Source: Bought copy

Review
It’s time to go back to the Moon. In the near future, with space exploration stalled, NASA decides that it needs some good publicity. What better way than to send a bunch of people to the Moon in the full glare of the cameras, with every step of the journey monitored by the media and social networkers? Actually, there is a better way. Make half the crew teenagers, recruited by means of a glorious international lottery, and you have the makings of some fabulous reality show. And so we have Mia from Norway, Antoine from France and Midori from Japan, three youngsters aged 16 and 17, who find themselves not only envied by the world but also facing their fears.

The novel is divided into two and much of it is not spent on the Moon. A generous amount of time is spent giving the three teens their chance to vent against the injustices of the world, the stupidity of their parents and the meanness of friends and boyfriends/girlfriends. However, far from finding this irritating, I was genuinely interested in their stories, especially as they were a little outside the norm, coming from parts of the world other than America and Britain. They also demonstrated that no matter the country, teenagers are united by a common language and it resonates. Possibly, for some, the solution is to go as far as possible from everyone and everything. The Moon, then, is perfect.

The parents, too, have their own perspective. Eager for their children to extract all they can from this incredible life-changing adventure, they also have to face the fear and worry. Mia’s parents in particular realise the importance of this trip for the process of letting their daughter go, letting her lead her own life. The symbolism is strong.

But, of course, as soon as the reality hits and the excitement of the lottery win wears off, the two girls and boy are faced with the very real danger of a trip into space, to spend 172 hours, a full week, on the surface of the Moon. It doesn’t help that they each experience mysterious and creepy clues that not all is as it seems. And they are not alone in this. The good reason for this unease is proven early on with NASA’s announcement that the team of teenagers and astronauts will stay in DARLAH 2 – a base on the Moon built secretly during the 70s as an extra measure of security during the Cold War. But, as one of the teens points out, what happened to DARLAH 1?

The second half of the novel did its very best to give me the heebie jeebies. Once on the Moon, everything familiar is challenged and not even the most qualified astronaut is prepared for what they face. Suddenly, 172 hours seems a very long time indeed.

172 Hours on the Moon is a fun, fast, undemanding and spooky read, with characters (teen and astronaut) that do enough to make you very worried indeed for their chances. There might be the occasional loose end or plot hole but I was prepared to let those slip as the pages flew by. The book itself is an interesting one with plans, diagrams, images and an imaginative use of black and white. I originally intended to read this on the kindle but once I saw the book I had to read that instead.

The Moon has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. After reading this, I might turn down the trip.

The Testimony by James Smythe

Publisher: Blue Door
Pages: 368
Year: 2012, Pb 14 February 2013
Buy: Hardback, Kindle, Paperback
Source: Review copy

Review
Imagine if you, and everyone around you, suddenly hears a voice. It comes out of a static noise that will make you, and everyone else, freeze in your steps. ‘My children’, the indefinable voice says, ‘Do not be afraid’. What would you do? How would you behave? What would you believe?

This is the premise of the new thriller The Testimony by James Smythe. Twenty-six people present their points of view on this mysterious announcement in a narrative that reads like a series of journal or news posts, blog posts even. There is no wise all-seeing persona, instead we spend the entire novel moving between our twenty-six spectators – or listeners. The voice or ‘The Broadcast’ was heard across the planet and so we have witnesses from America, Britain and France to South Africa, India and New Zealand. They range from high government officials, unemployed and doctors to the retired, criminal and scientists. All have their own idea of what this voice means – some of them turn to God, others think of aliens while more prepare to face a perceived human threat with firm action. There are a few, however, who hear nothing at all. What does that mean?

The Testimony raises questions that many citizens in a modern world aren’t equipped to answer – for many God is forced back into their lives leading to riots outside the churches, confusion among the main faiths and the birth of new religions. But for others, including a nun, who see nothing of God in the Broadcast, there must be a secular reason and, for many, the response is violent. Terrorists are reborn and those on the extreme of politics and religion use the Broadcast to tear the world apart.

But what if there is no explanation? Can people live with that? And when the novel takes an apocalyptic turn, what if there is no reason for whether one dies or survives, for the loss and the fear?

Starting The Testimony, I had some concerns about its structure. I wondered how I, who can barely remember the names of my closest relatives, would cope with the multitude of voices and stories but I needn’t have worried. The voices are distinct, each with their own character and all with their own stories to tell, many of which are moving and painfully honest. Some people play more of a part than others but I remembered them all.

James Smythe has achieved quite a feat here. He has given us a clever thriller with a disturbing psychological edge. God, alien or terrorist – these are major concepts all tossed into the crowd and scrambled over as a voice, viewed as positive by some and negative by others, forces its way into our lives from nowhere. It’s a mix of thriller, scifi and horror and it will intrigue, sadden and horrify in equal measure. It will also make you think and that gives The Testimony that edge that will make this one of the thrillers of the year.

October Skies by Alex Scarrow

Publisher: Orion
Pages: 486
Year: 2008
Buy: Paperback, Kindle
Source: Bought copy

Review
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and many times more I’m sure, Alex Scarrow has a fine imagination. He is also a remarkable storyteller with the power to pull the reader into the tale alongside characters who are not only lifelike, they are extremely intriguing as well.

In October Skies, one of Scarrow’s books for adults, the author turns his attention to parallel tales, one taking place in the 1850s in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, and the other set during the presidential elections of 2008. When journalist Julian Cooke comes across the wheel of a wagon, lost in the woods, he realises that he may have found another ‘Donner Incident’, the remains of another wagon trail that vanished to history and became lost in myth and folklore, which here focuses upon a figure known locally as the Rag Man. Julian’s suspicions and interest are increased when he also finds buried a journal.

This novel, then, moves between the technoworld of the present day journalists and the past world of the journal, written by Ben Lambert, a man searching for adventure and inspiration among the pioneers of the wagon trains. He travels with a group that mainly comprises Mormons who have left others of their religion and instead have chosen to follow their charismatic leader Preston into the unknown. When winter draws in earlier than expected, the mountains prove impossible to cross, and so the travellers must become settlers, surviving in the most inhospitable of environments while trying to maintain civility. This all falls to pieces when a woman is found brutally murdered in the woods. Something is let loose.

This gripping story, which is so vivid you can almost share the intense cold, hunger and fear of the travellers, is told alongside that of Julian Cooke and his friends. As he tries to hold onto his exclusive, Julian slowly becomes aware that forces are as much at work against him as they were against Ben Franklin. As the mystery grows, and its significance increases, the danger becomes more intense, especially when it becomes clear that Cooke’s discovery may have an impact on the presidential election currently underway.

October Skies is horror, thriller and historical fiction combined. We can be in no doubt that something terrifying has gripped the camp of suffering settlers as they try in vain to keep the other world of the wood from their camp and keep a grip on their religion. While these scenes from the 1850s are scene stealers, I did find myself continually wanting to remain in whichever of the stories I found myself at the time. With twists and turns, madness and ghosts around every corner and behind every tree, Ben and Joseph are in great danger. While I admit that I may be easier to frighten than many, October Skies is deliciously chilly.

Guest Review: The Exorcist (40th Anniversary Edition) by William Peter Blatty

I’m delighted to post here a guest review by Rob Wickings – writer, film maker, cook, good friend and horror maestro. I can think of no-one better suited to review the new commemorative edition of The Exorcist, a book with the tagline ‘The most terrifying book ever written’. As someone who was traumatised by Watership Down, I was fortunate in that I could pass this demonfest along to an expert in the genre. Many thanks to Rob, whose work you can read on Excuses and Half Truths, and to Transworld for the review copy. Published this month, you can buy a copy here.

Review
For any horror fan that knows the genre, The Exorcist is the alpha and the omega. A dark, brutal trap of a film, and one of the few whose reputation remains unsullied and potent.

But the book, published in 1971, came first. A sensation on it’s release, a large part of the success of William Friedkin’s adaptation is due to how closely it cleaves to the original story. Now a fortieth-anniversary edition has been brought out, with tweaks and tidying by William Peter Blatty – an excuse, as he says in the foreword, to polish “the rhythms of the dialogue and prose throughout.” The original, as he admits, was rushed, and subject to editorial meddling. We have been presented with something closer to a director’s cut. Although fear not – there’s no George Lucas-style redecoration here.

Blatty began his writing career as a screenwriter, and those skills are obvious in the book. The story moves like a runaway train, at a pace that becomes ever more hectic. The purple prose that he uses in the prologue, set in Northern Iraq, is something of a red herring – the main body of the book uses a cool, distant style. Reportage that only makes the horrifying events in the book that bit more awful.

Do I need to tell the story? In broad strokes: actress Chris McNeil lives in a rambling house in a suburb of Washington with her daughter, Regan. The girl, a sweet-natured creature, starts to talk about an imaginary friend, Captain Howdy. The good captain gradually takes over, slipping into Regan as if he was shrugging on a suit. Howdy is no friend. Regan has become possessed by a demon.

The book is soaked from the first lines in a thick sense of dread. We’re never sure where Howdy comes from. A relic bearing his likeness is unearthed at the Iraqi dig that begins the book. Regan has been playing with a Ouija board. It’s never clear. It doesn’t need to be. All we need to know is that the girl has been taken, and that she will not be easily recovered.

In some ways, the story unfolds like a police procedural as Chris, and later the priest who becomes entangled in the case, the conflicted Damian Karras, try to find evidence that Regan is sick, suffering from delusions, somehow self-hypnotised. Like Sherlock Holmes, they eliminate the impossible to reach the incredible truth. The exorcist of the title, the haunted Father Merrin, only appears three-quarters of the way through the book. Before then we, like Chris and Father Karras, are struggling to make sense of the senseless.

The book still holds the ability to shock and unsettle. Sweet Regan’s transformation (is it any coincidence that her nickname is Rags? Howdy treats her as a puppet, throwing her around like a rag doll) is rapid and terrible, her foul language a shock when we have witnessed how her mother can’t even swear properly. Blatty’s clear, uncoloured description of what the possession is doing to Regan brings us to horror and revulsion in equal measure. We are rarely out of the Georgetown house, and as the focus becomes more claustrophobic, the tension builds. When Merrin arrives, in a moment that is the most memorable image of the film, the relief is palpable. But the worst is yet to come.

Blatty delivers his shocks like a swordsman’s coup de grace, leaving them to the end of a chapter, often in the space of one line. Then away again, leaving the resonance of what we’ve just read to clatter like a man thrown down a set of steps. It’s key to the pacing of the book. He doesn’t dwell on the horror. He knows that we’re more than capable of doing that ourselves.

The Exorcist remains a remarkable achievement in modern horror, a book that transcends any danger of pulpy exploitation in favour of something much darker and richer. Seen at the time as harsh commentary on the corruption of the American soul during Vietnam, it stands today as an allegory on the ugliness that lurks in everyone, and how it can infect even the most innocent of victims.

Howdy may be otherworldly, but he takes a lot of his material from the people around him. The book digs more deeply into the characters than the film can, drawing you more deeply into their suffering, into their conflicts, and into the awful understanding that is The Exorcist’s black heart. The sacrifice at the end of the book is almost inevitable – you can see it coming from page one. Evil has a price that has to be paid before any form of salvation can be reached.

Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley

Publisher: Bantam
Pages: 448
Buy: Paperback, Kindle
Source: Review copy

Review
The love story of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most enduring and popular tales from antiquity and its tragic end is well known. But, while Antony was a Roman through and through, Cleopatra was queen of a more exotic land and she was regarded as the the embodiment of the goddess Isis. In Queen of Kings, Maria Dahvana Headley, takes this idea to its extreme and looks at the choices that Cleopatra may have made if she could have used the dark power of Isis to save the man she loved.

Trapped in the Mausoleum, waiting for the victorious Octavian to claim her for his triumphant return to Rome, Cleopatra uses an ancient spell to merge with Isis. The bite of the asp transforms her into something crazed and monstrous. She can take on the form of snakes and lions but she has become even more fearful than that. She is now a vampire that must feed on her own people by night and is never sated. Of course, it’s not them she wants vengeance on. It’s Octavian she wants.

Like any good book, there are several layers to Queen of Kings. On the one hand, we have a dark and quite sexy tale of Cleopatra’s deep passion for Antony, a passion which drives her to inhuman deeds. On the other hand, we witness Cleopatra’s growing realisation that when all’s said and done, no matter what she does, Antony will never be more than a ghost. In that sense, we follow Cleopatra’s journey into despair and sadness as she begins to deplore what her grief has made her and she begins to come to terms with her new skin. There is something unbearably sad about Antony’s lot.

We witness the fear and loathing that others feel for Cleopatra but our feelings for her are not allowed to be straightforward. Most painfully, we see what Cleopatra’s selfishness has done to her daughter Selene. Selene turns from this monster of a mother to none other than Octavian, the murderer of Cleopatra’s son, in search of security. We also follow much of the book from the perspective of Cleopatra’s scholar Nikolaus who, better than anyone, knows what Cleopatra has unleashed and fears it. He runs from it while also trying to destroy it.

Rather than being a tale of Cleopatra with elements of horror, this is first and foremost a vampire story with lashings of historical detail thrown in for the mix. You won’t find Cleopatra, Antony of Octavian from history here but what you will read is a dark and very sensuous tale of a woman, the original femme fatale, so stricken by grief, rage and guilt that she will turn the moral order of the world on its head in order to win vengeance.

To sum up, Queen of Kings is a fast and undemanding read that pumps new and original blood into the vampire genre.