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

Short Story: Teeth

 Greetings one and all and welcome to this month’s short story, Teeth.

Originally published in my Oh Taste And See anthology and then in my Macabre Collection: Volume One, this tale of dentures, nightmares and childhood terror was one of the first non-Spallucciverse stories that I wrote. At the time, there were a plethora of adverts on the radio for teeth implants, encouraging people to do away with the awkwardness and discomfort of dentures. Promises were being made of a nice new smile which was easier to maintain and didn’t need soaking overnight in a glass tumbler.

Now, I have an overactive imagination at the best of times, and upon listening to these tales of wonderful dentistry, I couldn’t help but wonder: What would the old dentures feel about being thrown away? So, it didn’t take me long to sit down and take a piece I had written in my late teens and bring it bang up to date, complete with the disturbing dream sequences regarding the marionette (Because let’s face it, marionettes are seriously creepy…)

So, the next time you think about trading up for the next latest and greatest, just bear a quick thought for that thing which you’re getting rid of. They might not like being consigned to the drawer, wastebasket or recycle bin…

Don’t forget that I have Patreon Book Club where you can access all these videos long before they reach this blog. Also, Seraph tier members get free books for joining as well as free signed copies of every new material book that I publish. You can find out more details here.

You can also 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.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Spalluccipedia: Alec The Twin

 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 one of the major side characters in the ever-expanding Spallucciverse: Alec. We first come across the boy who is described as being in his late teens right at the beginning of Sam’s journey in The Case of the Satanic Suburban Sitcom. Sam first spots him outside the White Cross industrial estate before he enters John O’Gaunt Media, then, later on, it is apparent that Alec saves our hero from being sacrificed.

It’s during Ghosts From The Past that Sam gets to know Alec better and, in fact, lets him move into his attic room. However, when I say, “Gets to know Alec better,” it’s always apparent that the boy is hiding things of importance from Sam, especially what seems to be a very older personality hiding within him. He lets things slip from time to time such as his angelic parentage, but on the whole, the boy plays his cards close to his chest, normally infuriating Sam.

I actually came up with the idea for Alec before I started writing Sam’s adventures. When I was eighteen, I started a “novel” about a teenage boy who kills his abusive parents and then runs away from home. I didn’t get very far, but I do recall he was going to hitch up with a sexy older woman and there would be gypsies. Please remember, I was just eighteen… Now, the sexy older woman and the travelling companions may have long since been ditched, but as I write this I’m actually working on Alec’s origins novella, Child of Light, and let’s just say that things won’t pan out very well for his parents, or should that be, those who are posing as his parents. 

As the stories continue, Alec and his sister Amanda will become more and more integral to the expanding universe and, as the Divergence approaches, you will start to see just how important the Twins are and why the vampires are supposed to protect them.

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.

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

A.S.Chambers.

A.S.Chambers - September Roundup

 Greetings everyone and welcome to this September update.

August was an insanely busy month for me as I was out and about at three conventions (Wigan, Lancaster and York). As a result, I decided to take the month off from writing to give myself time to concentrate on the minutiae of organisational tasks that conventions and signings require. 

Well… when I say, “Take the month off,” that might not be entirely true as I started playing with the first case in next year’s Sam Spallucci: Lux AEterna. It’s going to be a belter of an adventure for Sam and will see him travel through a somewhat trippy Alice in Wonderland experience, escorted by a rather familiar and well-loved guide, meeting his all-time television hero whilst getting dragged off on a quest to find Excalibur in the most unlikely of places and going head to head with none other than Lucifer himself. Sam 8 will take place directly after the events of Fury of the Fallen.

Talking of which…

Next week will see me putting the final touches to this year’s outing for Sam. All that’s needed now is for me to enter the two side-cases that my Kickstarter backers chose for Sam and the name of the poor family that meet their demise at the hands of Asmodeus. Once that is done, I’m on to formatting and then publication. All being well, I’m hoping to have things ready to publish in late September with books and rewards going out in early October, a month ahead of what I had originally planned. Once the book has been published, I shall start uploading the Easter Egg videos to my YouTube channel (You can find that here. Why not have a peek at some older videos?) which will contain the shoutouts for my Patrons and the Kickstarter backers that chose those as rewards. All being well the first one (The Case of the Ghostly Guide) should see the light of day in October, with the other three following in consecutive months. The links for the videos will be posted in the Patreon Book Club and in updates on the Kickstarter project as well as in my monthly newsletter, so make sure you have notifications turned on, if necessary and, if you’ve not already subscribed to my newsletter, you can do so here. 

That’s more or less it for now. If you live in the Sheffield area, pop along and see me at Sheffield Comic Con on the 25th of September. It’s always nice to see familiar and friendly 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.

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

A.S.Chambers.

One Minute Workshop: Story Length

     This month, I want to have a little chat about something that I see a lot being discussed in writers’ forums: story length.

A lot of new writers and authors seem to be obsessed with writing that great Magnum Opus. They want to produce a novel of 80,000, 100,000 words plus. There seems to be this misconception out there that this is what you should be writing because that is what people want. 

But what about what your story wants?

All too often writers get stuck in a rut because they feel that they have to fill a certain box for the sake of selling their work. This is a terrible way to approach writing! Writing is an art form and, as such, the writer should let the story develop at its own speed and into its own length. So, you might produce a huge epic novel, but you might instead produce a neat, sharply edited short story or even a piece of fifty words flash fiction. 

Don’t feel pressured into producing what others say “sells” or what people say is “popular”. Write from the heart, let the plot and characters speak for themselves and the story will flow easily, finding its own shape and form. 

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.

Short Story: Extraction

       Greetings all and welcome to this little article about one of my shortest pieces, Extraction.

This tiny piece of flash fiction is taken from my first horror anthology Oh Taste And See. I’ve always been a fan of short-form fiction and poetry. When I was a teenager, I was a classic reluctant reader. I never read poetry over half a page long and novels were way beyond my interest. Instead, I would plough through Stephen King’s short story collections such as Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. It was only later, as my reading increased in confidence, that I started to venture into the world of novels. As I did so, my own writing style began to grow and evolve. 

But, I never left the world of small-form behind. Even now, as an adult, I still love to pick up a novella or a short story and read it in one sitting between household chores or my own writing projects. I love how it takes skill and ruthlessness to pare a large piece down to bare bones and be left with an understandable piece of fiction. Extraction was my first attempt at this. From what I recall, I had been watching The Andromeda Strain. There is a scene in that film, near the end, when one of the scientists has to run to shut down the destruct sequence for the base and I think that was sort of an influence for the little scene that Extraction sets for the reader.

I hope you enjoy my reading of it. You can find this story in its original place in Oh Taste and See, and also in my Macabre Collection. There are purchase links over on my website.

Don’t forget that I have Patreon Book Club where you can access all these videos long before they reach this blog. Also, Seraph tier members get free books for joining as well as free signed copies of every new material book that I publish. You can find out more details here.

You can also 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.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Spalluccipedia: Spud

      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 a fan favourite, Spud the grotesque. We first meet the animated piece of stonework from the roof of Lancaster Priory in The Case of the Grotesque Graffiti, the first case in Sam's third book, Shadows of Lancaster. Sam encounters him tagging the door to the Ashton Hall around the back of Lancaster’s Town Hall. Not wanting to lose track of the street artist, Sam rather recklessly jumps onto Spud’s back before he flies off to his impromptu gallery down on the Quay. This then leads to a confrontation with a far more conservative chief grotesque on top of the Priory which ends up with a pile of rubble on the floor and a severely shaken investigator of the paranormal.

We then come across Spud in Dark Justice when Sam goes for his advice concerning the rogue king of the vampires. By this point, the friendly grotesque has been appointed as the replacement for the former leader of the grotesques, a position which he takes with great pride and has developed even more when Sam and he cross paths again in Fury of the Fallen.

Spud is one of those characters that I have always enjoyed writing. He has a very distinct personality and it is fun to watch it evolve. He is a wonderful comic relief character with his straight talking and dry wit. I can see him appearing again from time to time and I’ve always fancied writing a standalone short story from him, should I have the time. I hope people continue to enjoy him as much as I do.

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.

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

A.S.Chambers.