Sam Spallucci: Troubled Souls sees the light of day!

So, finally, after a year or so of teeth gnashing, soul searching and shirt ripping (well, probably two out of three of those…) Sam Spallucci: Troubled Souls is finally in print. It’s only a year late, but who’s counting? I’m just pleased to see it happily alive and kicking after suffering from continual bouts of ill health and then the insanity of Lockdown. Hopefully it should be a dose of refreshing summer entertainment for established and new readers alike.

Troubled Souls follows straight on the heels of Sam Spallucci: Dark Justice. We see Sam co-opted into the hunt for a missing angelic companion of the mysterious, librarian styled, Sophia. Along the way he encounters a ghost in a local supermarket who happens to dressed as a Cherokee chieftain as well as an entity from another universe that has possessed an unfortunate teenage girl. 

However, the main connecting arc of the five cases concerns the ruthless serial killer known only as the Bare Lane Butcher. Sam and Spliff first track him down in Victorian Morecambe only to find him resurface in modern day Lancaster. Not only this, but he seems to have his sights set on someone near and dear to our poor hero. 

Throw in a good dose of apocalypse-loving, cowl wearing Kanor plus an actual face-to-face meeting for Sam and a certain fallen seraph, and you have my personal favourite of my Sam Spallucci books to date.

You can buy the book over on Amazon or order a signed copy from Yours Truly by messaging me through my website.

 

Something else which also has me excited is that I will be venturing over to the wonderful city of York on the 9^th August for my first comic con since Lockdown began. York Unleashed is going to be a fantastic affair and a much welcome dose of geeky fun. I’ll even get to stalk the amazing David Warner who will be appearing as a guest. I can imagine it will be something akin to me just standing there and squeaking lots at him…

 

Then, once I’ve recovered from that, I will have to sit myself down and crack on with Sam Spallucci: Bloodline which is due out next summer (laughs inwardly at the notion of deadlines). Not only this, but I will be officially be launching my Patreon site. But more on that next time. 

 

All the best!

Austin.

Hello 2020!

Happy new year to you all!

2019 was a fantastic year for me. I had three new publications come out. Here’s a quick run-down of them in case you missed them.

Children of Cain – A Vampire Omnibus was a collection of the vampire stories that I had previously published across my first three short story anthologies. It collected together for the first time in one place all the stories of the Children of Cain who exist and interact with Sam Spallucci’s universe. There were the three tales set in the modern day concerning newly created vampire Dave Nichols and his mother the regent Nightingale. Alongside these there were three in the Wild West centred around the reluctant heir to the empire, the gunslinger Claw and the ill-fated relationship that he develops with a young orphan boy. Then there were two contrasting stories centred around my favourite pair of construct hunters: Tigress and Scorpion. One saw them out on the tiles and hunting down their unsuspecting prey whereas the other showed us a more vulnerable side to their relationship.

Songbird was another Children of Cain based book. This novella centred around the vampire Nightingale. It tracked her last few weeks as a human, suffering at the hands of a sadistic employer, through to her rebirth and rise to regent of the shadowy figures that await the Divergence and the rise of Kanor.

Finally, Needs Must received an outing as an eBook. Originally part of the anthology All Things Dark And Dangerous, this very popular short story tells the tale of Odd Bod, a human-eating creature down the bottom of a well who has to venture up into the world above when his food source dries up, only to encounter something far more deadly than himself – a little red-headed girl.

So what of 2020? Well the big news is that the next Sam Spallucci book Troubled Souls is now in the editing stage and, all being well, should be published late spring. Like Casebook and Shadows of Lancaster, this new outing for Lancaster’s investigator of the paranormal will take part over five interconnected cases as Sam tries to come to terms with the fallout from Dark Justice. 

The Case of the Cherokee Checkout sees Sam reluctantly drawn into the spectral happenings at a new supermarket which has apparently been built on a Native American burial ground. Quite an achievement for Lancashire! During the investigation, he encounters Craig Shaw, a local author who has written a book about the Bare Lane Butcher, a serial killer in Morecambe from the 1800s. Not only this, but photographic evidence puts Sam right at the heart of the Victorian killing spree.

The Case of the Distressed Demoniac has Sam called in to try and cure a teenage girl from what appears to be a demonic possession. However, things aren’t quite what they seem and, what’s more, a certain shadowy figure who haunts Sam’s dreams begins to take a far from healthy interest in the occult goings on. 

The Case of the Time Travelling Tea Room sees Sam and Spliff transported back to a Victorian Morecambe which is in the grip of the murderous hand of the Bare Lane Butcher. As they try to solve the case and find a way home, they team up with detectorator duo, Mulberry and Touchstone who have leapt from the pages of Peter Cakebread’s novel The Morecambe Medium. 

The Case of the Dabbling Dominion involves more time travel as the dominion Mister Tibbles whips Sam and Alec back and forth through points in history (and out of history...) as the diminutive angel tries to force the hand of Sam’s mysterious lodger and get him to accept his destiny. Be prepared to find out what really caused the destruction of the Indus Valley civilisation!

The Case of the Bare Lane Butcher is the final of the five connected tales and sees Sam rooted firmly in the present as the Victorian serial killer seems to raise his ugly head in modern day Morecambe. As Sam hunts down the murderer before they can kill someone close to him, he struggles with continued appearances from Kanor, before things finally come to a head.

So, have a great 2020. Continue to watch this space for more details as and when they are announced and remember: The Divergence Is Coming!

www.aschambers.co.uk

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Embarrassed? You and me both...

What is it with us Brits and being embarrassed? This idea is used so much in films, books and television, isn’t it? I know, I’ve been guilty of using it as a device myself in my own stories. Are we all sufferers from the severe case of, “Err, um, scuse me?” I am, definitely. A case in point: there is a café that I frequent which has two

unisex toilet cubicles. One of these is wider than the other and contains a washbasin. The other is narrow and you have to use the washbasin which is in the vestibule shared by both cubicles. So it is that I often find myself coming out of the larger cubicle having already washed my hands to be confronted by someone who is stood mid-ablution. Now, the rational part of my mind says, everyone who drinks and eats here knows that there is a washbasin in the larger cubicle. It’s no biggie. However, the major part of me is cringing at the supposed look of disgust from the other toilet user as I leave the vestibule, apparently not washing my hands. What should I do? Should I just use the smaller cubicle and therefore have to use the shared wash basin? Should I, if there is someone in the vestibule, wash my hands for a second time even though they are perfectly clean? Or, perhaps I should explain that my hands are germ free, clean and indeed ready for inspection? 

You see my predicament?

There seems to be the inbuilt genetic defence mechanism which compels us to do what we deem to be socially acceptable. When our actions come into conflict with this mechanism, then profound embarrassment ensues.

Perhaps it has always been there? If you look back through history, there are possible examples. The English reformation is a suitable candidate. King Henry VIII found himself in a situation which he believed to be socially unacceptable. He had married his dead brother’s wife and no children were forthcoming. Feeling that he had committed a spiritual misdemeanour which would end his lineage and cause another War of the Roses, he appealed to the Pope for an annulment. However, perhaps because he was embarrassed with the situation, Henry sent his minions in his place, rather than tend to the matter himself. Perhaps, if the monarch had not been so red-faced over the matter, then he could have sat down with his Holiness and discussed the matter face to face, come to a political agreement and hey presto, one annulment, no English Reformation.

Now, this isn’t to say that embarrassment can’t be overcome. In fact, there is a simple method that dispels all inhibitions and worries: strong liquor! A few pints or a number of shots and you don’t care that you were walking butt naked down the high street wearing a pair of fake breasts on your head late one Saturday night. But, the relief from our genetic mechanism is only short-lived, especially in this age of social media and our wanton acts will always come back to bite us on the same butt that made that group of nuns tremble when they were out ministering to the homeless one cold, wintry night.

So, perhaps there is nothing we can actually do about our inbuilt need to worry and fret? Perhaps our fear that whatever we do is the wrong thing will always be there?

Indeed, the best thing we can do is just sit back, peer over the top of a large squishy cushion at our raging insecurities and have a secret chuckle at just how daft we actually are?

In case you missed it, I recently gave my short story Needs Must a fresh outing in Kindle format. My most popular story when I read at signings, it is all about a creature named Odd Bod who lives down the bottom of a dark, dank well. Unfortunately for Odd Bod, his human food supply appears to have run out and he has to climb up out of the well to see what has happened. When he reaches the world above, he discovers that he might be the only monster in the neighbourhood...

Until next time, keep looking for what lurks in the shadows.

A.S.Chambers.

www.aschambers.co.uk

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Why Lancaster?

A question I am frequently asked is, “Why have you set

stories about a paranormal investigator in Lancaster of all places?”

When I first moved to this hidden jewel of the North West, tucked away to the side of the M6, I was but a mere university undergraduate. Living on the campus a few miles south of the city, I rarely ventured into town. However, when I did, it was normally at night time to frequent the pubs and clubs. I was soon drawn into a world the like of which I had never experienced before. Having grown up in a small market town which had undergone numerous rejuvenations, I had only ever heard of these mystical little routes between buildings known as alleysand had never actually seen them up close.

Lancaster was (and still is) full of them.

The city's heyday was in Georgian times when the majority of the hoi polloiwandered around on foot. Only the rich had access to carriages and, as a result, most of the main roads were narrow and the small footpaths that connected them were even more of a squeeze. Wandering around as a bright-eyed fresher, I could not help but be attracted to these tiny veins and arteries of my new home. As I passed one in the middle of the night, I could easily imagine what creatures might lurk down its shadowy depths and I would automatically cross to a lighter side of the high street to avoid being dragged away for some nocturnal creature's midnight snack.

Time and familiarity tend to eradicate childish fears. So it was that, in my twenties, I started to see these little footpaths as less a potential lair for the undead and more a quick shortcut home from work. They lost their edge and became just like everything else in my early working years, part of the norm. I would stroll down them without giving a thought to ghosties or beasties that might have dwelt along their cobbled paths.

Then, when I stumbled rather bemusedly into my thirties, I began to hear tell of stories regarding Lancaster's past. Tales that portrayed the city as less of a sparkling diamond, but more of a mysterious dark orb. There were ghosts that wandered the dressing rooms of the Grand Theatre. There was the screaming head that rolled down Castle Hill. 

And who, in Lancashire, has not heard about the fate of the Pendle Witches? Members of two families whose feud boiled over into allegations of Satanism and witchcraft, leading them to be incarcerated at Lancaster Castle before gruesome deaths and executions.

So it was that I started to reevaluate my sanitised view of my city and began to once more regard its shadowy alleys with a dose of caution and a certain amount of trepidation. These were footways that had known history, and not just the peaceful type where everyday folk merrily went about their business. There were murders, deaths and destruction that had bled their way into the very cobblestones upon which I walked.

So, when I get asked the aforementioned question, I tell those who enquire to come to Lancaster. Visit this place steeped in blood-stained history and walk down its alleyways at night. Then they will see how it might just be possible that there is a werewolf roaming Williamson Park, that a vampire might happen to run a local comic shop or that maybe, just maybe, the crazy woman singing on the street corner could very well be descended from the Pendle Witches.

Until next time, keep looking for what lurks in the shadows.

A.S.Chambers.

www.aschambers.co.uk

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Something to get your teeth into!

February (and indeed early march) have been insanely busy. This has been in main due to my work on the novella Songbird. When I was working on Sam Spallucci: Dark Justice, I decided that I wasn’t quite finished with the vampires just yet. First saw the publication in January of my Children of Cain omnibus which collected together all the vampire shorts that I had previously published in my anthologies. Then came the idea that I wanted to concentrate on just one of the vampires from Sam’s world. Namely, Nightingale. Songbird, for want of a better term, is an origins story for the regent of the Children of Cain. It tells of her time as a servant to the brutal vicar of All Saints in Wellington where she encounters the mysterious watery force that dwells beneath the church before the cataclysmic event that leads to the destruction of the church’s interior, leading to the installation of the new font with its infamous inscription. We then join her in her early weeks as a vampire, having been birthed and rescued by the troubled Doulos. With Nightingale, we meet Marcus, who would become her long term partner then we travel over to the Wild West and follow her through the tragic story as previously told in Family. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Justice’s sister. In fact, she was one of the first of the children of Cain that I created when I wrote Fallen Angel. We actually meet her and Marcus there, right at the very end of her life. She came across then, as she does in the following stories, as still very human, and I think that’s why she has become a firm fan favourite as, unlike many fictional vampires, readers can relate to her and what she goes through.

Songbird was finished last week and is now at the formatting stage and I eagerly wait artwork from the incredibly talented Liam Shaw who created the covers for Mourning Has Broken and Children of Cain. I’m hoping to publish it some point during April although, before then, I’m thinking about running a Kickstarter campaign to help with costs of publishing and promoting. Watch this space and all my various social media sites for details as there will be nice little deals to be had for those who help out.

Upcoming Events:

One for the diary this month is Lancaster Litfest. On the 17th March I shall be reading a few excerpts and chatting about my books at Pizza Margherita on Moor Lane in Lancaster. More details can be found over at the Litfest website.

All the best,

A.S.Chambers (March 2019).

www.aschambers.co.uk

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Bring On The Cartoon Bluebirds!

It's amazing what a little drop of sunshine can do to lift one’s spirits. For the last few days weather here in Lancaster has been dull, damp and downright depressing.

Today, however, I woke to find a bright sky, flowers nodding in the garden and cartoon bluebirds serenading Schroedinger, my kitten, through the kitchen window. Okay, so I made that last bit up, but you get the idea.

While the weather has been grim, I've been curled up on the sofa trying to concentrate on the latest adventures of Daredevil whilst Mister Meniere's has been dancing round the living room, shaking his ample booty in my face and calling me a loser.

So today, accompanied by the first of the spring sunshine, I have donned my fedora and headed into town to find a sunny seat and start on my next Sam Spallucci book, Dark Justice. As I sit upstairs in a local coffee shop, I can see people going about their day-to-day business with a a lot more bounce in their steps. Their heads are up, looking around at the newly-illuminated city and gone are the large hoods protecting them from the elements. Like the first flowers poking up from warming earth, people are crawling out from under the covers to finally start enjoying the new year.

This puts me in a good mood so, in the eternal fight with Mister Meniere's, this round belongs to me (and those sweet little cartoon bluebirds…)

Don't forget, you can catch up with my writing bits and pieces at the following places:

My Website,

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