Good lord. I appear to have finished writing the first draft of Craven Place. That makes it my third completed novel, and you’ll forgive me for indulging a little further in the drinking of vino this evening.

Damn me though, it’s short. Three quarters the length of Cuckoo, my only published novel to date, itself no monster. Next to my second novel Thy Fearful Symmetry, currently in the wilds trying to hunt down a publisher, it’s a dwarf, only a little more than half the length. As my friend Jackie C says though, it’s about quality, not quantity.

I think she was talking about the novel. I shall continue to charitably assume so.

There have been some surprises along the way, particularly in the way the supernatural elements surged to the fore, so much more than in the screenplay on which the book is based. Oh, and then there was the cameo from Dexter Lomax, in the final pages. That came out of left field. Some of you have met Dexter before, in the novella The Flesh Remembers, and the short story The Loch. You might even be waiting for his further adventures, which I long ago promised to write, and plan this year to make good on. His appearance is appropriate, because he was born in Craven Place.

Oh yes, before those other stories, Dexter was created for Craven Place. In the screenplay, he was one of the central characters, and I liked him so much I used him again later on. By the time of those later tales however, he had evolved some, to better suit their overtly fantastical elements. He’s no longer the same man he was in the screenplay, and trying to make him fit his former role in Craven Place has proven impossible, at least if I’m to keep him consistent with his previous published appearances. As such, his role in this book is now taken by one Max Fletcher, who has proven a worthy replacement. With Max centre stage, I thought that Dexter was no longer required for the novel.

Dexter disagrees, and when I was seeking an epilogue today, he sort of took over, and did it for me. Good to see him again, and a nice warm up for next month’s major project…

Of course, when I say the book is ‘done’, I’m only talking about the first draft. I’ll be printing it off tomorrow, and putting it aside for a month while I work on other things. Then I’ll be back into it with fresh eyes, for the second edit. Still, while it needs fine tuned, it’s a novel, on my hard drive, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Wow. Third novel, done. It’s an incredible feeling. Raise a glass with me, and toast to Craven Place.

Cheers.

Okay, another five and a half thousand words done on Craven Place, and into Chapter 32. I’ve broken the 60,000 word mark, which at the start of the week I would have said put me with another quarter of the book to go. As you can see above, I’ve reassessed. When I left off earlier this evening, I was into the final pages of the screenplay that forms my guide and synopsis. The mysteries are explained, the villain unmasked, and there’s a single confrontation to be had. Not a lot else to be done, and I’m sure now that I’ll definitely finish by Friday (erm, possibly even tomorrow). I’ve amended the countometer thingy above to 70,000 from my previous guesstimate of 80,000 words, but even that is generous. I’ll be amazed if it hits 65,000, which surprised me when I worked it out this afternoon. I spent so much time this month working over what I’d already written, I haven’t really sized what’s still to come.

This will make it damn short for a full novel (the usual estimated word count for a novel would be about 80,000 – 120,000 words for a ‘normal’ sized book, whatever that means…). That in turn, may make it a tough sell, when I get it to that stage. I have a few things I want to add in to earlier sections of the manuscript, standalone interjections from various characters which add a different flavour to the action, and that will bump it up a little. At the same time, the first good edit will probably take 6000 words back off, so it’s likely to balance out. We’ll see. You never know where a bit of writing’s going to go before the final full stop, and saleability isn’t really forefront of my mind at the moment. Finishing the damned thing is rather more important.

But the story is entertaining me, which is the most important thing, and I’m glad I made it major project two of twelve for 2009.

Now there is wine. See you on Day 3.

Okay, coffee is to hand, I’ve started the day’s work, and Hopkins is about to pull the second big reveal. I’m playing around with multiple first person narrators in this book, and Hopkins is the most difficult of all. Where I know a lot about Tanith, who tells most of the story, and Nicholas and Max, who chip in occasionally, Hopkins is a deliberate enigma. He’s not a man of words, which should make this next bit something of a challenge.

Since starting work yesterday, I’ve pushed the book from 63% complete up to 70%, according to the little graphical thingy at the top there. It’s a satisfying thing to see, suggesting I’m cresting the final hurdles. In reality, that’s chapters 26 through 29 in the bag, and I’m making a start on chapter 30 now. I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m closer to the end than I think – it no longer feels as though I need another 25000 words to finish the story, so it might end up shorter than 80000. We’ll see. It will be as long as it needs to, and no more.

One great pleasure to writing this book is the personal flashbacks to making the movie (which I also acted in, playing the mysterious Hopkins). Man, that was a good two weeks…

Oh, and I found an alternative to Braveheart. Harry Gregson-Williams’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe came on after Gladiator while I was writing yesterday, and I couldn’t break away to turn it off and find something else. Turns out, it works very well indeed.

Which is nice.

Onwards!

Nearly 4000 new words on Craven Place today, which isn’t bad at all given this morning was mostly finishing off the editing of what had gone before. I’m not quite done for the day, so there may be more to come, but my brain is caffeine-fried, and there are televisual distractions to be had. I’ll tap little bits through the evening, and see what happens.

Although the screenplay forms a loose outline for the novel, the emphasis is on ‘loose’. The novel is evolving quite significantly from the movie that never-quite-was, with the supernatural aspects in particular becoming more pronounced. The conclusion is also going to be rather different, I think, though I’ve yet to decide. There’s a way to go yet, and not much time. March happens on Sunday, after all.

The prep work I’ve done re-reading and editing the first half of the book has helped me to skip easily into the groove today, so it’s been time well spent. My biggest worry about taking this book back on was that I was going to be bored by what I’d previously written, or unable to get into the mindset I had ten years ago, when the book really began. So far, it’s been an easy journey. The only regret I have is my writing music of choice. I had wanted to write it to the soundtrack of Horner’s Braveheart (my writing music is always, without exception, wordless mood stuff, usually movie scores), because that’s what I wrote the screenplay to all those years ago. Alas, my CD must have been scratched when I burned it in iTunes. I’m using Zimmer’s Gladiator as a reliable standby, but it doesn’t quite fit, especially when it gets bombastic. Still, it’s a small complaint, from a good day.

It counterbalances any gloom from a short story rejection that popped into my inbox this afternoon. There are some interesting notes from the editor – the story contains so much detail that, despite nice turns of phrase, they lost the thread of the tale – that I might come back to some day. This particular story is quite personal to me, and I freely confess that I have real problems standing objectively back and looking at it, so there might be some mileage in the crit. However, it may be that this falls into the spectrum of a particular editor’s taste, and the next person to read it may respond quite differently. I’ve sent the story to a new market, and I’ll see how it goes. Normally, I’m quite good at judging how important it is to change a story from a particular editor’s note, or whether it should be left alone, but not with this tale. Time will tell.

Right, time to take plonk my fried brain in front of something that isn’t this computer screen, I think.

Okay, this week I’ve a break from the day job, and nothing difficult scheduled for my days, which gives me time to attend to the major writing project of the month (last month’s was finishing off the draft of Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow for Shroud Publishing). That project is to finally complete the novel Craven Place.

There’s quite a history to this piece. The original story was co-devised by myself and my then partner-in-crime Mitchell Morgan, director and screenwriter, and at the time also a producer with Splendid Films ltd. Having successfully written, directed, and released (to video in the States) his first feature length movie Only Darkness, Mitch was looking for a second project. For reasons to complicated to explain, he already had a location, an old farmhouse in North Wales, sitting next to the Menai Straits, but he didn’t have a story.

We got together. Beer happened. There was an inspiration involving cows that we could never quite remember the day after (fortunately), and the supernatural murder mystery Craven Place was born. Having plotted it out together, I took the outline away and spent a caffeine and nicotine fuelled 72 hours turning the idea into a full script (those were the days). Scarcely a week later, we were on location, filming with a small cast and crew on 16mm. We were there for a splendid couple of weeks, and Mitch and Jon, the co-director, got the thing in the can.

I’m not entirely sure what happened next. I’ve seen a rough cut of the movie, which looked dandy for what it was, though the sound quality, especially the exteriors, was awful. As far as I’m aware, the project ran out of what limited budget it had before it completed post-production, and it was never released. The company moved on, producing at least two more films, the bonkers crime / zombie flick Jack of Diamonds, and the genuinely intriguing Requiem with Jason Connery, and no more was ever heard of regarding Craven Place itself.

Which is where the story would stop, except that I own the rights to turn the thing into a novel. While Mitch had carte blanche to film the script as he saw fit, making changes and asking for on the spot rewrites while we were in Wales, and profiting from the movie however he saw best, I asked for, and happily received, all rights to adapt the story into a novel. In 1999, I began that process with a couple of chapters, until another project forced me to put it aside. Later, in 2006, I went back to the story, hoping to finish it off, and brought the whole thing up to the 50,000 words mark before getting pulled away again.

Now, I’d like to finish it. I like Matthew, Tanith, Nicholas, and the crowd. I like their story. I think it deserves another shot at being aired, between pages rather than on screen. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been quietly going through the first 50,000 words, amending, tweaking, reminding myself of what had transpired, and what is still to come. This week, I’m hoping to get it most of the way to a full draft, and you’re welcome to watch.

Of course, there’s no publisher awaiting this manuscript. When it’s complete, it will be submitted to slush piles the world over, and you’re welcome to follow that process too. We’ve a way to go before then though. As I sit down today, there are 50,936 words to the manuscript. I think there’s at least 30,000 words to go, at a rough estimate (who knows – it could yet be longer or shorter). I can’t promise I’ll get it done before March lands on us, but if I can even progress it, I’ll be happy enough. Craven Place is unfinished business, and I need to clear it before I can move on to other things.

So, I’m sitting down and going back to that old cottage in Wales. Some people have died. Some have fled. Some have stood their ground, and are waiting to confront the thing that haunts the stones of Craven Place…

Time to go and see how they’re getting on.

My birthday this year fell on Thursday, and was most pleasant. Despite this being the first birthday of my thirties which I’ve actually spent in the UK, therefore potentially something of an anti-climax, it was pleasant enough. Wine was flowing, Kirsty whipped up the most amazing rack of lamb to feast on, and I even had a Spongebob Squarepants birthday cake to follow. It was a quiet affair – I spent most of the day writing – but a good way to ease into another year. Of course, a traditional gloom of reflection fell over me at points, which I’m finding to be the way of things as my twenties fall further behind me. It’s much easier to look at your failures than your successes, but isn’t that always the way? When you achieve something, it’s done, and it slips into the ordinary structure of your life after some initial delight. When you fail to achieve something, it stands out.

All of that was offset considerably by my looking forward to a very exciting year, which is off to an excellent start – more on that below.

And, if you must know, the presentation of a Spongebob Squarepants cake was only slightly tongue-in-cheek. I love the Sponge, and delighted in feasting on his spongy carcass.

Because Kirsty and I had a rare day free together, we also caught a movie – Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. I’m not one of those who mixes up a person’s politics with their art (I would be denying myself too many pleasures, were that the case), and am a bit staggered by the way the film’s been reviewed in various places. I thought it was superb, although it is being misrepresented on two fronts. The first comes from Gibson, the producers, and the publicity machine, all of whom give the impression that this is a movie about the end of Mayan culture. It isn’t. While it’s set during a period in which ancient Mayan culture was in decline, and the environment gives several suggestions about why the culture may have died out, the story itself has no such epic intentions. Rather, it’s a pretty simple story about a simple man who is captured for sacrifice, escapes, and has to race home to save his wife and kids from death. Simple. A chase movie, with an entirely refreshing, non-westernised cultural setting. On that front, it’s bloody brilliant. While there are several ideas we have seen before, they’re handled so well that you don’t mind.

Whatever you think of Gibson, he’s an extremely talented director, and the film is beautiful to behold (whether in the jungle, or atop a Mayan temple). The pace is blistering, the characters convincing (including the nominal villains), and the story told with a fine eye for detail. Yes, it’s bloody, but no more so than Braveheart was, and there was nothing I found to be gratuitous (i.e., everything flowed from the story, rather than existing just to shock). Yes, there are historical inaccuracies all over the place, but no more so than Braveheart.

And no, there’s bugger all anti-semitic about it, sub textually or otherwise, except in the way that people who really want there to be will probably find clever sounding ways to manage to do so (if anything, the closing notion that the coming of Christianity spells doom for the people Gibson’s just spent two and a half hours and enormous effort making you feel for completely contradicts many of the gibbering arguments that this is somehow a Catholic propaganda film. This, of course, is the second major misrepresentation of the movie.

I would say it’s well worth seeing, but take an open mind and see what’s there, rather than what other people tell you is going to be there. Discuss that sort of thing when you’ve made your own mind up.

The year is also off to a good start for my fiction. Not only is Choices now available and starting to ship (UK or US), but last night I had an acceptance on a second novelette, that could see print as early as March/April this year. More news on that when contracts are signed and the publisher is ready to announce, but here’s hoping this initial sales momentum continues for a while.

There are also publishers waiting for first look at a three novellas, all of which could make exciting sales for me, and reading for you, if things go well (it’s far too early to be getting excited about those yet, though at the same time it’s really nice to be having these conversations at all, most will have an outcome by the end of the first half of 2007, I suspect). I could do a lot of teasing about those three novellas, but I’d hate to work you up and then have everything fall through, so you’ll just have to wait.

Right now, I’m working on one of those novellas and three short stories, all of which should be done and under submission by the end of January. I also have the first novel of 2007 well underway (which is cheating somewhat, as much of it was written at the end of 2006, but there you go). If you remember my insane wish list of what I want to have complete by the end of the year (four novels, twelve novelettes/novellas, twenty-six short stories), then it’s not a bad start.

Oh – I’m abandoning the wordometer for the year, for two reasons. Firstly, it will make no sense to anybody who missed that post, and I can’t be bothered explaining from scratch every time I show it. Secondly, it’s all based on averages, which isn’t very helpful in assessing where I’m at. What I’ll do instead is close each month with a summary of what is complete, and you can keep an eye on me that way.

With a little focus, things should get back on track in the next day or two. Here’s hoping – that was too good a start to the month to waste!

Time can be a popular devil. Drop your guard for, say, a visit by your parents, and suddenly all sorts of things are slipping into that chink to make use of it. Not the least of it all is a cold that, while not causing me terrible suffering, is fogging my head up no end, and refuses to be cured.

I suppose these things are sent to try us. Onward we go…

You can also have a look at this unnecessarily detailed report, breaking my progress down by day.

The secret of my success? I know the story inside out. As I’m novelising my own film script, I have a very detailed outline to follow. I’m not sticking to it rigidly, as the fun is in the expansion and variation that a novel brings opportunity for, but I’m not exactly starting from scratch. Craven Place also wants to be told, frankly. As the movie never left post production to the best of my knowledge, it wants to find a new way to get inside your head, and a novel suits it just fine.

So, what’s it about? It’s a sort of ghost story, or possibly a locked room murder mystery, depending on which character you ask (the reader will know by the end of the book, though the characters may not). In many ways, it’s a haunted house yarn, although readers of Conan Doyle (or latterly, the likes of John Dixon Carr), will find much to enjoy too. Here’s a quick head’s up.

In rural North Wales, on the Menai Straits, sits a farm called Craven Place, with a history of mysterious violence dating back to the burning of the witch who lived there hundreds of years ago. Now self-styled ghostbuster Nicholas Eldritch has drawn associates there to celebrate the completion of his new book The Spectred Isle. His wife Tanith Pearce, a professional psychic, will accompany him, as will his daughter Celia, a hard-nosed sceptic with little time for her father’s flights of fancy. Last to the party will be Maxwell Fletcher, reporter for The International Inquisitor, and professional exploiter of exactly the sort of history Craven Place offers.

On one stormy night, there are vanishings, murders, and manifestations. It will fall to the enigmatic Matthew Hopkins, a vagrant with a dazzling mind and an uncertain background, to put his soul on the line, pull the pieces together, and discover the horrifying truth at the heart of Craven Place.

Reading that back it gives me a little thrill. One point of note – those who have read The Flesh Remembers will be wondering whether Maxwell Fletcher knows a certain Dexter Lomax. He does indeed. Dexter might well have turned up himself, were it not for certain distractions in Amsterdam that have him otherwise occupied.

I’m enjoying revisiting and fleshing out Craven Place very much. As novels go, it’s very different in tone from both Cuckoo and the recently completed Thy Fearful Symmetry, which is enormous fun. It’s also interesting to note how much the experience of filming the script (over two and a half weeks back in February 1999!) has influenced the writing. I can’t type Nicholas Eldritch without hearing the plummy baritone employed by actor Ed Stern, for example. It’s an interesting marriage of nostalgia trip and new work, and I hope you get the chance to read it some day.

It also includes the line Nessie In Horny Threesome Shocker! which no editor on earth will make me take out.

***

Christmas is coming, and you’re wondering what gift to get me, aren’t you? You’re too kind. The thing that will make me happiest is if you read something I’ve written. You can either buy something, or download something for free.

And if you do the latter, you can make me really happy by passing it on, or pointing people to the webpages to have a look themselves. Here are your Christmas options, then.

Choices
You all need Choices. Choices is a sixty-thousand word anthology of stories from Pendragon Press that will chill you, but not necessarily repulse you. It is not a book for gorehounds, but those who prefer stories that will gently unsettle. Sixty thousand words split into six stories by Stephen Volk, Eric Brown, Paul Finch, Gary Fry, Andrew Humphrey and Richard Wright.

The cover price will be £7.99. If you pre-order the book now, this not only drops to £7, but your copy will also be signed by all contributors, and hand numbered by the publisher. You have to be quick though – the publisher states that the book is currently with the printer, so pre-ordering time is running short. Order it in the UK here, or in the US here.

Dark Terrains
Collecting my previously published short fiction, along with two exclusive new works, this new book brings together stories from the last nine years, many of which are next to impossible to find on the market today. Inside, you’ll meet the ultimate narcissist, a bulimic possessed, the ghosts of Christmas presents, the jealous dead, zombies, psychopaths, angels, demons, and more. You’ll also get to read the prologue of Thy Fearful Symmetry, a novel not yet released, and see an exclusive missing scene from that story – and every tale in the book is illustrated by the redoubtable Simon Wright. Welcome to my Dark Terrains.

Getting this one is as easy as pie. Go here, and download it. Tell your friends to do so as well. If you’re a paper fetishist, who absolutely must by a hard copy, keep your eyes open. We’re a couple of weeks away from your being able to buy the paperback.

The Flesh Remembers
Hack reporter Dexter Lomax makes up the preposterous for a living. When he investigates a series of mysterious craters forming across Northeast England, he expects to exploit a well-orchestrated hoax to maximum effect. What he doesn’t expect is for suicidal beggars to thrust weirdly compelling video tapes into his hands, to be targeted by two opposing groups with deadly agendas, or to be in the centre of a true life drama that starts with the discovery of dozens of skinned corpses on the Town Moor. Drawn on by his lethal curiosity, Dexter is forced to journey further than even he had imagined possible, in pursuit of a story he might never dare write. For once , all he has to report is the truth, and it’s driving him slowly mad. Come what may, the flesh remembers…

This original novella, with a cover by Jackie Donnelly and introduction from Mark Lancaster, is also completely free to download here. You could also buy the paperback in the US or UK, or indeed, at online bookstores all over the world – search and see.

Cuckoo
Greg Summers is an ordinary man in a mundane job with a contented wife and a future snug enough to struggle for. Greg knows the answers to the questions. Until one day he returns home to discover that his wife no longer recognises him, that his wife is in fact married to another man called Greg Summers. Perhaps it is an elaborate hoax, a conspiracy to unnerve and derange him. Yet that wouldn’t account for the stray memories that arrive from nowhere and seem to belong to an entirely separate man. A man called Jameson. One of these men is a lie, and neither wishes it to be he. On the run from a creature that cannot exist, his comfortable truths irrevocably shattered, Greg suddenly finds his knowledge of the world suddenly questionable. If he does not know himself, what can he trust himself to know? Greg Summers and Richard Jameson are about to discover that the fight to survive is all in the mind.

My first novel, released by Razorblade Press in 2002 but now sadly out of print. You can still grab a copy from private sellers on Amazon and Amazon.co.uk though (from as little as £2.50 – how can you knock that!).

Go. Read. Enjoy. It’s you I write these for.

***

Finally – some things making me very happy, in no particular order. Snow Patrol, Rumsfield’s departure, Stephen King, Democrats in the Senate, the prospect of a Clinton in the next electoral race, and the ladies in my life. So there.

Craven Place, and the whole NaNoWriMo experiment, is going extremely well, at this early stage. I’ll say no more, for fear of jinxing it, but here’s the running stats.

Secrets and Lies

Among the stories in the free Dark Terrains collection is a piece called Bulimia Daemonica, among my favourite of what’s presented there. As you can see on my website, the story was first published in 2002 in an anthology called Son of Brainbox. The concept behind this book was to present some high class horror fiction, alongside essays from each of the authors featured that explained the ideas that fed into the fiction – the inspiration behind the story. Both the book and my contribution were reviewed well (here are two examples), and Bulimia Daemonica even picked up an Honourable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror that year.

The essay I wrote to accompany Bulimia Daemonica in Son of Brainbox, was called Secrets & Lies. While the story is collected in Dark Terrains, the essay is not. Instead, you can read it here. If it intrigues you, go grab the book and check out the story. You won’t regret it.

***

Bulimia Daemonica was originally inspired by a painting by Duncan Long which I saw online (I forget its name – sorry Duncan!). In terms of the story you’ve just read, the image was pretty much the moment when Jenny reaches out to touch her skeletal reflection in a strange blue land – underwater in the story here. You know the bit I mean.

What do you mean you don’t? You’re not reading the explanation before the story are you? Hell, what are you doing? Go on – go read the damn story! Think I sweated blood over it for the good of my health?

Been and come back? Good. Then I’ll continue.

At first, when I saw the picture, I thought of the disease Anorexia Nervosa. Between the mirror and the skeleton, it was an obvious starting point. Yet the more I thought about it, developing the story in snatched moments, the more I realised that what I really wanted to write about was the distant cousin of that condition, Bulimia Nervosa. There are several reasons for this, but the first and foremost was my experiences with a girl I dated many moons ago. You’ll forgive me if I don’t give you her name – I’ll call her Caroline for the sake of this telling.

I didn’t know that Caroline was bulimic when I first met her, nor when I started seeing her more intimately. One tearful, drunken night though, it all spilled out. I did a little reading the next day, mostly so that I didn’t say anything tactless or stupid to her in an unguarded moment, and what I discovered was radically different from what I thought I knew. That was when I realised that this was a disease that was deeply misunderstood by society in general.

First among the incorrect assumptions many people have, including myself back then, is that Bulimia Nervosa stems solely from a body image problem. For some sufferers this is a without doubt a factor, but it’s far from the whole story. As far as Caroline was concerned, the issue of weight and attractiveness barely touched on the problem. A whole range of complex issues come into play that made some related conditions seem simple by comparison. Most interesting and shocking is that the act of vomiting, perhaps more properly thought of as voiding, is an act of will. Hard for many of us to consider this fully, but this act of purging is actually an act of control. The relief many bulimics feel upon release is profound, and deeply settling (however briefly that sensation might last). I come closest to appreciating it by considering my own habit as a smoker. A cigarette – foul and unpleasant though it is – gives me an immediate sensation of relief and confidence, of control. Of course, this wears off extremely quickly, and then I need to do it again. The voiding of the bulimic follows a similar pattern.

I was also made aware of all the little rituals individual bulimia sufferers construct around this act – it’s almost religious in its intricacy and personal symbolism. Precisely what you binge upon before the voiding becomes important, and has much to do with the ease with which the particular foodstuff can be regurgitated, and how it tastes when it comes back up. The ways in which they try to cover the sound of the vomiting is also a factor, regardless whether there is anyone to hear, and the best time and place to commit the act also become significant. What remains important throughout is the ritual, because that’s another form of control, a way of imposing order on life. For many, it really is the core of their existence, to which everything else is secondary.

Another thing that fascinated me was the secrecy involved in the disease. Though most bulimics know full well what they are doing (it’s a difficult thing to fool yourself about), it’s almost as though the condition is something very special that they cannot share. While they might feel a sense of misery regarding their condition, still they hold it dear to them. Part of this is a fear of what people will think of them. Part of it too is the fear of losing this special thing, of having to stop if anyone found out. It’s addictive behaviour of the highest order. I knew precisely when Caroline voided. I had suspicions sometimes, but she was a past master at covering her tracks, and did so with me even though she’d told me of her condition. Partly ongoing shame I think, but partly a huge sense of protectiveness that wanted to keep me away from her special act.

I broke up with Caroline some six months or so after we got together, for reasons entirely unconnected with this story (actually, she ditched me for another man – crazy, I know, but there you go). She was undergoing counselling when we parted company, but that had been ongoing for the best part of a decade with no results. How do you treat someone who feels as though their disease is the only thing keeping them sane? I wonder where she is now, and how she’s doing, but part of me is scared to find out. A vast part of the inspiration for this story comes from my wondering about her.

Of course, the second part of the story deals with theatre – musical theatre in this case. As you may or may not know, I’m an actor as well as a writer. No profession I know attracts such addictive personalities as acting (though writing comes a close second). Probably this relates to the fact that unless you’re fairly compulsive, this is a profession you’re not going to get very far in. I thought that musical theatre might support this tale better than the alternatives. My own experience of that art is limited, except as a spectator. My preference is for musicals that blend singing and fine acting – Les Miserables is probably my favourite musical of all time. When I’m chronically depressed, this show picks me up through sheer emotional intensity. Take the finest emotions, enhance them with powerful music, and you have an opportunity for catharsis that is second to none.

Bulimia Daemonica is all about catharsis, when it comes down to it. I should point out here that I’m not a sufferer of Bulimia Nervosa, I merely have an informed layman’s knowledge. I realise full well that what I’ve said above, and in the story, generalises overly in places, and is too specific in others to cover everyone’s personal experience. One of the constant dilemmas I come up against in writing horror is the nature of taboo. Does writing a piece of fiction about a real life horror such as Bulimia mean I’m trivialising and exploiting the pain of real people? I usually come away in favour of writing the story. My fictions aren’t textbooks, nor are they intended as public information brochures. I hope I can at least raise the level of a reader’s understanding though, even if it’s only through mixing a portion of truth in with the fantasy. Bear in mind that sufferers of Bulimia Nervosa don’t usually have so clear a moment of epiphany and resolution as Jenny does in this story. In my fake world, the condition is shed far more easily than in real life.

Enjoy the story. Then have a think about it. I hope you both enjoy it, and find some of it profoundly troubling.

***

Oh, and here’s the art that accompanies the story in this collection, by Simon Wright. It appeals to me, that an image inspired a story that inspired an image.

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