A.S.Chambers - December Roundup

 December Book Club Update

Greetings all on an exceptionally chilly December morning.

The last couple of weeks have been fantastic with two book signing events taking place locally. On the 29th of November, I was made incredibly welcome at the Neuro Drop-In Centre in Torrisholme where I gave a chat about my books and my writing whilst having a long-term illness. Neuro Drop-In is an amazing local charity and I always enjoy going along to support them. You can find out more about the wonderful work they do here. 

Then, just yesterday, I was made incredibly welcome at my favourite bookshop, The Old Pier Bookshop in Morecambe. It was wonderful to see some familiar faces and to welcome new people to the shadowy world of Sam Spallucci. If you haven’t ever visited Tony and his outstanding temple to literature, then you can get a taste in The Case of the Bothersome Books which is the second case in Sam Spallucci: Fury of the Fallen where both book and proprietor make a cameo. Alternatively, you can visit his Facebook Page.

Now, a rather exciting bit of publication news. My next anthology, Out Of The Depths will be out in late February and, next week, I will be revealing the amazing cover art that has been developed by Liam Shaw. My Patreon Book Club members will get the first peek, then the general public. I am really pleased with this collection as there are even more stories tying into Sam’s ever-expanding universe.

On to works in development… 

I’ve finished the first draft of the first two cases in Sam Spallucci: Lux Æterna. So far, Sam has been pitted against zealous zombies and has been thrown into an Alice In Wonderland phantasmagoria. I am currently working on The Case of the Argumentative Archaeologist where he will meet his TV hero, the renowned Professor Robert Richmond. 

I am also cracking on with Child Of Fire. If you’ve been following my Sleepy Author updates on TikTok and Instagram, you will know that I have decided to write this one in the first person present, a style I’ve only used before in short stories. This way we get to see Amanda’s story unfold at the same time as she does. I am really enjoying running with this different type of style. It gives the story a great feeling of realism.  

And, just yesterday, I started work on a standalone Sam Spallucci and Spliff short which I hope to release around the same time as Out Of The Depths. At the moment it is tentatively titled The Case of the Pillaging Pirates and will be a crossover into the literary world of a favourite author of mine, but more on that as it develops…

Now, don’t forget that I have a growing YouTube channel. I’ve always loved making videos, ever since I was a kid and this is a great way for me to share facts about my characters and plots as well as post Easter Egg videos and reading of extracts. Why not hop over and give it a quick subscribe?

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: The Maths of Writing

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

It’s quite a short one this time as, quite frankly, the video says it all.

When we write we can start to become convinced that we’re not writing enough. We can become paranoid that, writing at our current speed, we will never finish a particular project. However, if we just take a moment, breathe and look at how much we’ve written, then start to multiply it by hours, days and weeks, we can start to realise that we are creating something rather impressive.

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: Relic

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

Relic made its publication debut back in 2015’s All Things Dark and Dangerous. It tells the story of a set of stones which rise to international fame after they are unearthed in an archaeological dig.

I seem to recall this was one that I more or less wrote in an afternoon. Archaeology fascinates me and I often wonder just how many things that we take as fact are in actuality completely wrong. This little story is based on some cobbles behind my house where I did indeed spill some white gloss paint after touching up some rusty paintwork on my car. As I stood there looking at the small, spindly trails of white, the thought did indeed pass through my head as to what an archaeologist might make of them, say in a thousand years or so. It didn’t take my overactive imagination long to turn this into a cataclysmic event.

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: Myth

Greetings one and all to this little dive into the characters and topics that make up the Spallucciverse.

This time around I want to have a little chat about the use of Myth in Sam’s world. I am a huge fan of ancient myths. As a western culture, we are obviously used to the Greco-Roman ones concerning Zeus, Apollo and all the Olympian pantheon. We learn at a very early age through history at school about how the Romans believed that the gods above constantly interfered in the affairs of humanity below.

However, this is such a small part of the finely crafted quilt of ancient stories that were woven together in an attempt to understand the world around us. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been immersing myself in ancient Canaanite myths surrounding El, Asherah and Ba’al. It is fascinating to watch how they have gone on to leave their mark in the ancient Hebrew myths and Biblical texts.  

This is something which we can easily overlook with myth. We often see a particular myth as belonging to a particular group of people, when it has actually developed over hundreds, if not thousands, of years to the point when it is finally recorded. Even then, as is seen in Roman mythology, that is never the end for a myth. New people can come along and develop it even further.

To a certain extent, this is something that I’m playing with in the Spallucciverse. I take established tropes and myths, study them and see where I can take them next.

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 - November Roundup

       Good morning on what is a rather cold and wet start to November. I hope you all had a great October and enjoyed some spooky merriment for Halloween.

October was a cracking month for me. Not only was I able to get copies of Fury of the Fallen out to my readers, but I was able to brave the storms and venture up north for Carlisle Comic Con. Once I had stopped shaking with fear from a crazy ride up the M6, I had a cracking time, meeting friends old and new. My next convention is over in Sunderland this Sunday. More details over at www.aschambers.co.uk.

After Sunderland, I have one more appearance this year before I hibernate. I will be signing at the Old Pier Book Shop in Morecambe on the 3rd of December. Again, the details are over on my website. It would be lovely to see some friendly faces as usual. I’m really excited about this one as Tony graciously allowed me to use his shop in the second story in Fury, The Case of the Bothersome Books.

So, now Fury is out in the wilds, the next book you can expect to see is my next anthology of short stories: Out Of The Depths. Containing eight shorts, four of which cross over with Fury of the Fallen, Fallen Angel and next year’s Lux Æterna, I am expecting it to be released in late February or early March 2023 with Bobby Normal and the Fallen following in the summer. I am also working on a Sam short story which is currently tentatively entitled The Case of the Pillaging Pirates. More on that as it unfolds.

The big piece of work that I am working on at the moment, though, has to be Sam Spallucci: Lux Æterna. I am about a third of the way through the first draft and it should be out for Halloween next year along with its accompanying novellas: Child of Light and Child of Fire. More on those in the new year.

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.

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.