Short Story: First Hunt - Then

 Hello and welcome to this month’s short story video.

This time around, it is the turn of First Hunt: Then, one of two short vampire stories from 2015’s anthology All Things Dark and Dangerous (links for which you can find at www.aschambers.co.uk).

I’ve always been a fan of vampires; more so than werewolves. This is why they feature as heroic figures in the Spallucciverse. However, I’ve always despaired somewhat at stories where they’re put up on untouchable pedestals. When I read vampire fiction that basically regurgitates the same language and tropes as Dracula (which I hasten to add is one of my favourite books), I sigh in despair. That iconic novel was written over one hundred and twenty years ago. Surely, vampires, like humans need to move with the times?

So, when we see my vampires, the Children of Cain, they are very much characters of their own time periods. They neither ravish virgins nor laze around in an armchair in a “sanguine haze”. They are still rather human, with all our human problems.

The two First Hunt short stories really illustrate this, showing how vampires who take waifs and strays under their wings are just as must at sea as a human counterpart would be.

I hope you enjoy this one. First Hunt: Now will follow next month.

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: Dante the Cat

 Greetings and welcome to this monthly dive into characters, places and themes in the ever-expanding world of my paranormal investigator, Sam Spallucci.

This time around, I want to have a little chat about one of my favourite little characters in Sam’s world: Spliff’s cat, Dante.

When I first started out writing the Sam Spallucci books, Dante was firmly based on a cat I knew about thirty years ago. His name was Mephistopheles and he was the cat of the chaplain at Saint Martin’s College in Lancaster. Mephs, was a big, black beast, more panther than a domestic cat and was known for his hunting prowess. As with Dante, he lived at the top of a tower block and was regularly seen on the windowsill, swiping careless sparrows that flew too close. Dante’s loathing of humans was firmly based on that of Mephs. Both felines had a hatred of anyone who wasn’t the human that fed them and lavished unconditional love on them. I recall many times when a student got too close to Mephs and paid the price with a severe, bloody scratch.

However, Dante began to be redeveloped somewhat in my books seven years ago when a black bundle of fur and bossiness strolled into my life. Those who follow me on social media will know very well that my constant companion is Schroedinger, a small black cat who is incredibly like Dante in appearance and personality. Schrodie regards most humans with disdain, only lavishing his affection on a select few. So it is that, as the books have progressed, Dante has taken on more and more of my own cat’s characteristics. It is now up to my readers to decide which of the tales I tell about him are fiction and which are, indeed, reality.

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 - March Roundup

 Good morning one and all! 

Well, after January seemed to drag on for six months, February passed in the blink of an eye and I’m hitting March with a definite bang and a huge grin on my face.

So, where to begin? First, the Kickstarter for Out of the Depths has been a resounding success. It reached the target in just 22 minutes! I was totally gobsmacked. Not only that but it is now sitting at having reached over 500%!!! It’s been great to see not only regular readers snapping up fab rewards but also a number of new readers too, having found the project through Kickstarter and social media. It is looking like it will be my most successful anthology to date. Don’t forget that, when it is published in April, all Seraph members of my Patreon Book Club will receive a signed copy.

Then, just a few seconds after OOTD reached its target I received a wonderful piece of news. The author Douglas Lindsay, who writes the amazing Barney Thomson books, has agreed to let me use his characters in a standalone Sam Spallucci short entitled The Case of the Pillaging Pirates. This will be out later this summer and will see Sam and Spliff holidaying on the island of Cumbrae shortly before the events of Casebook. More details about this one later in the year.

Plus, to top it all off, I’ve just been looking over my sales figures for February and can’t believe my eyes. Macabre Collection: Volume Two has been flying off the shelves, not only in the UK, but globally! I now seem to have regular readers in Australia, Canada and Poland. Not only this, but multiple copies have been bought over the channel in France! When you consider that I haven’t promoted this book yet, this is incredible. It means that some lovely people have accounts set up somewhere to receive notifications when my books are published. It certainly makes me feel the love.

 So, what’s coming up in March?

The Kickstarter for OOTD finishes on the twelfth. Once, Kickstarter have sent me the monies, I’ll finish the formatting of the book and publish early April. This will then be followed by the Easter Egg videos which will include shoutouts for all my lovely patrons and those who chose that reward on Kickstarter. As mentioned above, all Seraph members of my Book Club will receive a signed copy as part of their membership.

I also have two conventions this month: Sheffield on the 12th and Carlisle on the 25th. If you’re in the area, do come along and say hello.

Right, I need to shoot off now and have a calming brew. I haven’t even had time to tell you about the Spalluccipedia book that I’ve started working on with talented artist Jack Knight! Ah well, perhaps next time ;-)

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 Writing Workshop: Planning With A Spreadsheet

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

This month, I want to have a little chat about something that I do when planning out a piece of fiction. Using a spreadsheet.

Back in the day, I used to be an avid writer and scribbler of notes. They would contain great ideas and wonderful plot points that I was convinced would create a fantastic story. However, my handwriting is atrocious so, when smartphones came along, I quickly jumped ship to typing things up, meaning that I could spend less time deciphering my scrawl and more time actually writing.

Using a spreadsheet for planning was the next logical step for me.

By putting plot points in individual cells, not only could I read my handwriting, but I could then move those cells around, allowing me to manipulate the plot of my story. There was no tedious re-scribbling or rubbing out, no copying a section and trying to locate the correct space to paste it in. I now just pick up a cell and move it. The plotline of a  story can be changed with ease in a matter of seconds, again allowing more time for writing.

Why not have a go? It could revolutionise how you plot out your stories.

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: Test Flight

 Hello and welcome to this month’s short story video.

This time around, it is the turn of Test Flight, a short piece of flash fiction from 2015’s anthology All Things Dark and Dangerous.

Test Flight was the second flash piece that I published in an anthology (Extraction being the first, the year previous). I love really short pieces. I find them a challenge and enjoy getting the word count as low as possible. I think this little chap works and I hope that you enjoy it.

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: Sophia

 Greetings and welcome to this monthly dive into characters, places and themes in the ever-expanding world of my paranormal investigator, Sam Spallucci.

This time around, I want to have a little chat about one of the more curious side characters in my books, Sophia.

Dressed in appearance like a prim and proper librarian, Sophia first turns up in Sam’s world in Sam Spallucci: Ghosts From The Past, where she warns Sam that Wallace is involved with the coming of the Divergence and insists that our hero tries to stop his old university acquaintance. Sam being Sam is never one for having his chain jerked one way and then the other and has a decidedly frosty relationship with this entity as he feels that she is constantly looking down on him and seeing him as beneath her, only there to do what she wants “for the greater good”, so to speak. 

Things certainly come to a head in Sam Spallucci: Troubled Souls when it is revealed that Sophia is, in fact, Alec’s mother, the part human/part angel Eloise and possesses the same aptitude for digging into people’s heads with her psychic capabilities.

I hope you enjoy the short video in which I explain a bit about her origins, how I’ve used her and my thoughts for her future.

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 - February Roundup

 Good morning one and all after what seems to have been an incredibly long January.

Well, the mornings and evenings are starting to get lighter so it’s time for me to start thinking about waking up from hibernation and cracking on with more writing. I always find December and January hard to write in as I’m an early riser, normally up with the sun. So, when the sun decides that it doesn’t want to put in an appearance until gone nine in the morning, that makes my creativity plummet. 

Having said that, I have ventured out of my bear cave from time to time to scribble certain things down and, as a result, Sam Spallucci: Lux Æterna is now about three-fifths complete. So far, I have first drafts of the following cases: The Weird Wonderland; The Zealous Zombies and The Argumentative Archaeologist. Last week I started on number four, The Ridiculous Retreat (although the title may change on that one), with The Crying Crucifix standing in the wings, waiting to see the light (see what I did there…?) as number five. 

The biggest challenge with Lux is that it is now in the same time period as Fallen Angel which is already written, albeit not yet published. As a result, I am frantically noting things down on a wall planner and in a diary to make sure that the correct events happen at the correct time. I’ll probably do a special Spalluccipedia video about this micro-management either later this month or in March. I think you’ll find it fascinating to see how all the stories weave together. Archaeologist alone links into about five other stories. 

More imminently, though, for publication is Out Of The Depths. The Kickstarter for this launches at the end of the month and all Seraph members of my Book Club will receive a signed copy of this new material anthology as part of their membership when it publishes in April. If you’re not a Book Club member, make sure that you sign up for notifications regarding the Kickstarter project. You can do that here.

Before that, I’m looking at publishing the second Macabre Collection in late Feb, early March. Look out for its cover reveal later this month.

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.