The late, great Weldon Kees.

 

Many, many moons ago I was given a book of surrealist poetry by my then-girlfriend. The relationship didn’t last that long and indeed the split was decidedly acrimonious. As a result, the book was shelved with the intention of never being read. A couple of years ago I was looking for a new read and stumbled across the poor volume languishing under a good coating of dust and shrouded in self-loathing. I dusted it off, sat down and consequently devoured it.

One of the poets that it introduced me to was a chap by the name of Weldon Kees. Until I’d read the handful of his poems in this book, I had never heard of the artistic polymath. Living in the USA in the first half of the Twentieth Century, Kees was not only a poet but a novelist, a musician and an artist. His work was full of incredible vibrancy and he was able to paint scenes with words that truly encompassed you and took you places that you had never visited before. You really got a sense of his thought structures and how he saw the world around him as it headed into and then emerged from the Second World War.

I’ve since bought up numerous works of his including his collected poems, his novellas and his posthumously published novel Fall Quarter. For me, I feel that his story of a newbie, straight-laced professor descending into the vices of the world around him works better than Kerouac’s On The Road as a voyage of self-discovery. It paints a picture of how a few wrong choices can send someone’s life off in a tailspin. I could wax lyrical all day about his poems, but a few that I seriously recommend you read are The Forests, Obituary and On A Painting By Rousseau. All three are masterpieces in how to succinctly portray an image that the poet holds fast in their mind.

Sadly, Kees was taken from us far too early. His car was found abandoned on the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955. Whether he jumped to his death or disappeared into anonymity, no one knows. I, for one, would have loved to watch his craft develop as he entered on into old age.

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advance screenings of my videos and free books.

ASC.

One Minute Workshop: Routine

 Hello and welcome to this little one-minute writing workshop.

When it comes to writing productively, one thing which can quite often be overlooked is a good routine. As writers and creatives, we often feel that we should start putting pen to paper when the Muses move us. We feel that we really need to be in the zone in order to generate worthwhile material that we will be proud of. 

However, this can lead to us lurching from one project to another with no consistency and a distinct lack of progress. Yes, we need to be mindful of when inspiration strikes, but that should be used as a time for note-taking and research, for the jotting down of ideas and playing with topics in our head. As far as the writing process is concerned, it is far more beneficial to have a set time of day to pursue this. For some, this could be first thing in the morning (personally, I’m up at 5 o’clock and writing at half past for a few hours before the day kicks in), some are night owls and some might split it into two blocks of a few hours each. It is important that we find what works for us and that we stick to it. This way we will be able to compare our progress from day to day and set attainable targets with regard to how we want our work to progress.

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

Take care and keep looking out for what lurks in the shadows…

A.S.Chambers.

Short Story: the Scratchcard Man

 Hello and welcome to this entry about a short story I wrote some years ago.

The Scratchcard Man made its publication debut back in 2013’s Oh Taste And See. It tells the story of an individual going from door-to-door apparently selling lottery scratchcards. However, the story turns incredibly dark at the end, leading to brutal bloodshed.

This wasn’t actually the first incarnation of the story. I originally wrote it as The Ticket Man many, many years ago when I was a teenager making a bit of extra pocket money going, as the titular character does, from door-to-door selling scratchcards for a local charity. Every time the door was answered, the resident would call back into the house, “The Ticket Man’s here!” I was just starting to get into this whole writing lark and, being an avid reader of Stephen King, I sort of took what I was doing and “Kingified” it. I still have the original version kicking around in a folder somewhere, typed up on some lined paper that I probably purloined from school. Who knows, one of these days I might make a recording of it just for fun…

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

Take care and keep looking out for what lurks in the shadows…

A.S.Chambers.

Spalluccipedia: Constructs

      Greetings one and all and welcome to this monthly dive into the shadowy world of my fictional paranormal investigator, the one and only Sam Spallucci.

This month I want to have a quick chat about those clay-based, shapeshifting golems of the Spallucciverse, constructs. We first come across a construct in The Case of the Vexed Vampire when Dave Nichols instinctively despatches one without realising what it actually is. This story establishes that they were sent back in time by Kanor to infiltrate humanity and thin the herd, so to speak, of vampires. Sam next encounters them in Dark Justice, both in their human form and their natural monstrous form. They have cropped up again in Troubled Souls and will also feature in Fury of the Fallen and To Dare The Dragon, to name but two outings. 

Sam, however, is not the only one of my characters to go head-to-head with the mindless denizens of Kanor. In the Children of Cain shorts we’ve seen all the vampires take them on in one form or another. Not only this, but as the Bobby Normal books are set post-Divergence, there are literally constructs on every street corner. In fact, the first encounters for both Sam and Bobby with a construct in its natural form were actually written within a day of each other. If you compare the passages in Dark Justice and Eternal Talisman, you can see real similarities. 

As I say in the above video, the original design for the constructs was based on a comic strip from the old, short-lived Starlord comic. The image of these faceless golems haunted me as a kid and I knew I had to use it as the basis for these foot soldiers of Kanor. I’ve attached this image for you. Unfortunately, it's not very good quality, so I apologise. 

That's all for now. Don't forget that Sam Spallucci: Fury of the Fallen launches this month and I will be signing at Carlisle Comic Con as well as at First Age Comics in Lancaster. You can find details of these and more on my website. 

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

Take care and keep looking out for what lurks in the shadows…

A.S.Chambers.

A.S.Chambers - October Roundup

      Good morning all on a bright, crisp October afternoon from Lancaster!

So, September definitely proved to be a month of two halves here as mid-month I was struck with a devil of some sort of viral cold which has really knocked me for six. This meant that I was unable to get to Sheffield Comic Con and CovCon, which is absolutely gutting as I love getting out and meeting friendly and new faces. 

However, this doesn’t mean that I’ve just been sitting curled up under a blanket binge-watching Professor T (although that may have taken up some of my time…). I’ve been cracking on with the first case in next year’s Sam Spallucci: Lux Æterna. This opener sees Sam transported into a bizarre universe populated with familiar characters from his adventures dressed up as individuals from Alice In Wonderland. 

I’ve also been putting the finishing touches to my next anthology Out of the Depths which should be out next February and will contain a number of tie-in shorts to the Spallucciverse. Alongside this, I’m on the polishing edit for Alec’s story Child of Light.

But, the big news is that Sam Spallucci: Fury of the Fallen is now published, with the official launch date coming on the 15th of October. I have, in fact, just ordered copies for all my Patreon Book Club members and all those who ordered copies through my Kickstarter.

If you’re in the Lancaster area on the 29th October, please feel free to pop along to First Age Comics where I’ll be having a public signing of Fury. It would be nice to see some familiar faces.

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advance screenings of my videos and free books.

That’s all for now. I can hear my blanket and a warm cup of tea calling.

Take care,

ASC