Avoiding disappointment

First criteria is to select something I will spend real money on that will not leave me feeling I should have spent that money on a couple of good cappuccinos. I think I have read more words of reader reviews than are contained within the books themselves!

I wrote recently about my continuing disappointment when searching for new writers to taste. Who can you listen to for advice? Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have someone close at hand who has intimate knowledge of many of the currently available best selling novels. It helped narrow the field.

Reading around what I write

I have written before about the trappings of reading works that are too similar in style to my own writing. My mind instinctively tries to emulate any other style I enjoy reading myself. Not a good prospect, of course, but less so now that I am over 100,000 words into my own novel.

However, as I do so little reading, each selection to some extent falls into the realms of research. Whether it be research around subject matter, or simply looking at how another author might have tackled particular situation, reading for me has to be more than pure pleasure.

I don’t want a real book

This one proved to be a rather inhibiting criteria. I am taking my new Sony PRS-505 ebook reader on vacation. This immediately limits my selection to what is available in ebook format, and the publishing industry, though accelerating, is still some way off having an adequately broad selection. Add to that sometimes poor implementations of the ebook sections of online bookstores – even Waterstones do not have the ability to search through just the ebooks! – and the search for a chosen title grinds to a sluggish shuffle.

Thanks to bloggers and Amazon

My selection is: Banquet for the Damned by Adam L.G. Nevill – get the ebook version from Waterstones
Few believed Professor Coldwell was in touch with an unseen world – that he could commune with spirits. But in Scotland’s oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. And now the young are being haunted by night terrors. And those who are visited, disappear. This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burnt-out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? This chilling occult thriller is both an homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacy modern tale of diabolism and witchcraft.

I’ll report back what I think of this book, but with all eight Amazon reviews giving it full five stars, I think I am in safe hands. What could be better than sitting in the Spanish sun reading of ghostly happenings in dark, damp Scotland!

In addition to the big writing project (TableRappers) and its supplementary tales featuring its characters, I want to create some old-style scary stories. By old style, of course, I means some that are genuinely scary!

I have a pile of horror short story compilations in my reading pile, acquired in recent months on the search for what I find leaves me unnerved and disquieted after reading. I found I left more modern tales behind and was drawn more and more to older, classic stories from the 19th Century up to the 1950s. The purchase of a Sony ebook reader (full review on this great device in the pipeline) has helped as it came packaged with 100 classic books, one of which was the complete works of Poe.

I had not read The Pit and the Pendulum for many years and have a stronger memory of the Hammer horror movie (I’m guessing it was Hammer) of that name, than the originating story. Reading was disturbing. I began to sense what such stories once kindled within me. I was glad I had not read this alone in a dimly lit room. Fantastic!

This contrasts with most of the modern  – to me that is post 1950s – horror tales I have recently read which try, frequently too hard, and fail, leaving me with little more than wanting my time refunded.

And so I am on a mission….

I wrote on my personal blog about creating a classic spooky tale audio episode for this year’s Halloween. If you like that sort of thing, please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to hear.

In addition, I have been reading anything and everything in the genre that I can get my eyes on with the aim of developing some of my own concepts into actual stories.

At the very least I believe I can create somethig that scares the willies out of me, perhaps it will do the same for you.