Colin F. Barnes: Author
A fellow UK writer and twitter friend, Steve McHugh has released his first novel. I put a few questions to him to find out why he went indie and what his book is about.
1. Hi Steve, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your writing background?
Well, I’m Steve McHugh. I’m originally from a small town in South Yorkshire called Mexbrough. My family and I moved to Southampton when I was about 6, and I’ve lived here ever since… so 26 years now. I’ve been married for nearly seven years and I have two young daughters, aged 7 going on 25 and 2.
I started writing stories at school, mostly in English lessons when we’ve be given assignments for creative writing. My first attempt got me in trouble for excessive violence and swearing. But my teacher saw a spark of something and I was soon writing bits and pieces all over the place. I never finished anything until my first book was completed, which will never see the light of day. Crimes Against Magic is my first published work.
2. Was there a specific point in your life that made you decide to write a novel?
I was about 12 when I first started to want to write a novel. I wanted to be up there with Stephen King and Terry Pratchett, both of whom I was a huge fan of at the time (and still are). I’d always write the first few chapters and then give up. It wasn’t until I was about 25 that I got serious about it.
3. What made you go the Indie route? Do you think you have benefited or missed out on anything specific that you might have got if you went the traditional route?
I’ve probably missed out on a marketing budget. And it would have been easier to get the books into shops, but both of those things are possible without, just slightly more work.
I wanted to go the Indie route for a few reasons. The control was a big one. The fact that I could decide the cover, when it went out, how much it was, were all big plus factors.
It helped that the traditional scene is in a case of flux at the moment while they decide what they’re going to do about the ebook industry. They seem less willing to take a chance that they did before, but hopefully that will change.
4. What were some of the challenges that you’ve had to deal with you might not have expected?
Formatting the book for mobi. There aren’t enough swear words in the world to describe how much of a pain in the ass that was. Fortunately I found scrivener to the rescue, which did it all for me. Best. Software. Ever.
5. Tell us a bit more about your book — what was the inspiration for it? Are there key themes/messages that you wanted to explore? Is there more to come in this world etc…?
The inspiration for it was simple. I wrote a book I wanted to read. I’ve always loved mythology and history and wanted to combine it with my love of Urban Fantasy. I wanted to create an action adventure with a story and characters that people would enjoy reading about. Hopefully I achieved that.
Book 2, Born of Hatred, is being written as we speak. It should be out within the next 6 months. After that I have detailed plots for another dozen books and notes for a dozen more. So, I think it’s safe to assume I plan on staying in this world for a while.
Thanks for the interview, Steve. Good luck with your book. You can find out more about Steve and his book by visiting:
Dark fantasy is a genre that’s been around for a while but is growing larger in the awareness of readers and writers today. I also see more categories and shelf-space in book stores dedicated to dark fantasy than just a few years ago.
You could argue that it’s just a genre invented by marketing people to segregate stories from horror and paranormal romance/urban fantasy. To some degree this is true, but I also believe that as a concept and descriptor, dark fantasy makes a lot of sense.
Some also consider there to be a great deal of overlap between horror and dark fantasy. It’s common to ask what the difference between the two is, and it’s not entirely clear in all cases.
Horror is usually stories that aim to frighten or scare. Dark fantasy doesn’t necessarily need to do that, but it does, fairly often, contain dark, horror-like elements such as:
- The presence of evil, whether an entity or a force
- Suspenseful scenes and elements of anxiety
- Creatures, monsters or things of hellish origin
- Characters with questionable morales and goals
A good dark fantasy story doesn’t have to have any horror element to be dark, this can be created by atmosphere and setting. Gormenghast is an example of great, dark setting, although it’s regarded as a Gothic novel, in modern-day categorisation this fits the profile of dark fantasy. Some of H.P.Lovecraft’s stories come under this categorisation, too (At The Mountains Of Madness as one example).
Is dark fantasy just watered down horror?
It’s a fair question. As horror’s star has waned in the late 90s and 2000s, dark fantasy and dark crime stories seem to have filled the niche. In many bookshops the horror section has dramatically shrunk while the dark fantasy section has increased. Some would argue that this is just a re-branding exercise, but if you look at the titles there is a difference between the two genres.
A dark fantasy novel doesn’t need to scare or shock as much as horror. It can be slower paced, or more epic in scale such as Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, it’s wider in scope than horror, too, allowing the writer to create huge worlds that span vast areas and time periods. It takes the best from fantasy and gives it a darker, more edgier flavour. Usually eschewing the hero-quest trope for something less well-travelled.
I like to think of dark fantasy as fantasy for the curious, for those who want to know what exists in the shadows, fantasy for those who are excited by demons and ghouls. It’s because of my interest in dark fantasy that I put together Day of Demons; I wanted to see what people could do with the idea of a demon within a fantasy setting (both traditional and contemporary). Day of Demons makes a good introduction to the genre (if I do say so myself) 
Immerse yourself in the Day of Demons
Nine stories, nine demons, nine authors. From fantasy, to horror, to contemporary fiction, this anthology will fright, delight and grip you with tales of derring-do, danger and of course — demons.
Most of my greatest literary experiences and memories come from when I was a teenager and discovering fiction properly for the first time. Like most things first discovered as a teen, certain books and stories had a profound and lasting effect on me. I still remember some of those stories as clear as anything today, some 20 years on.
Dune was one of the first adult books I read as a teen and it blew my mind. Up until then, I only learned about new worlds via dodgy TV sci-fi shows. To find such a detailed and mesmerising world in fiction was incredible.
Later, I had a similar experience with Stephen King’s books: Salem’s Lot, Carrie, It etc… again, I had known nothing about provincial small town horror. I had seen a few horror films at around the same time, but my young age never really enabled me to understad the subtleties until I read King. That’s one of his innate abilities: to drag you into a seemingly normal world and twist it into something grotesque and horrific. I loved it. It was like a new world had opened up before me.
Some of this joy and wonder can be put down to inexperience of youth and discovering things for the first time. A truly unique set of experiences.
But is that all? Sure, as an adult it’s rare to find something new, or something unique to blow our minds. We’ve seen and read so much by the time we reach our 30′s that a kind of malaise sets in. Everything starts to whiff of sameness, each a derivation of what’s come before.
Maybe ‘Joy and Wonder’ can be found in other things. I’m told being a parent does this, yet I have no desire to become one. My two cats are enough hassle as it is.
So how do we rediscover this feeling of awe and surprise? Reading outside of our comfort zone is one. Looking to other cultures, looking further back into the past before our current lifestyle. I don’t think we’ll ever get back that naive, wide-eyed, super-excited feeling as we did as kids, but there are still shocks and surprises to be found if we look far enough to the dark corners of our awareness.
Immerse yourself in the Day of Demons
Nine stories, nine demons, nine authors. From fantasy, to horror, to contemporary fiction, this anthology will fright, delight and grip you with tales of derring-do, danger and of course — demons.
Great books: they’re like that close friend who always cheers you up after a bad day. Or the out-of-town friend that you don’t see very often but when they come to town they buy you a beer and tell you tales that make you cry with laughter. A good book is like your grandfather or grandmother who always dispenses the right piece of wisdom to make you feel better. But when you leave these people, when you go back home there’s a little loss, a miniature grief.
It’s the same with a great book. Quite often there is the same feeling of loss: a post-novel slump, a bit of a funk. That’s not to say you don’t always have wonderful feelings of awesomeness of reading a great story, but shortly after, I personally often feel a bit of a ‘meh’ period.
And for me that is a sign of a great book. If after I’ve finished it I still pine for the characters, or the world, and I miss it, then I know the author has tapped into something brilliant. Only a few authors have drawn that from me, and that’s why I love them.
For me, these authors have managed it through amazing characters and rich, wonderful worlds:
- Ray Bradbury
- Anne Rice
- J.R.R Tolkien
- Brian Lumley
- H.P.Lovecraft (which might seem an odd choice, given the subject matter, but hey, I’m weird like that
)
Immerse yourself in the Day of Demons
Nine stories, nine demons, nine authors. From fantasy, to horror, to contemporary fiction, this anthology will fright, delight and grip you with tales of daring-do, danger and of course — demons.
I decided to become a publisher (Anachron Press) for a similar reason to why writers decide to write: because they read a story and have an idea of how to do it better. It’s not an ego thing, it’s a natural human desire to improve something. It’s the little imp-like tinker inside all of us. We see things all around us in our lives everyday and wonder how they could be improved.
I’m sure you’ve had the experience with using your computer at work. When your aging Windows machine takes the time it takes you to brew a coffee and read the newspaper to boot up, I’m sure you’ve often wondered that it could be better. (And it can; it’s called a Mac).
Steve Jobs saw that the computers weren’t as good as they could be and he started Apple. He saw that animated films weren’t as good as they could be and started Pixar. He noticed that music players and mobile phones weren’t as good as they could be…and you get the idea.
It’s not base ego that drives this, it’s our innate urge to evolve, and evolve the things around us.
I’m a progressive kind of guy. I love technology and the new things that it makes possible. With the advent of Print On Demand and eBooks (and eReaders), I saw a chance to publish stories that I think are worth reading; authors that I think are worth promoting. Not everyone can get published by established, traditional publishers. It’s not a slight on their abilities, I’ve seen how good some unpublished authors are and I wanted to improve publishing in my own way: by starting my own company and shaping the publishing landscape with my own vision.
Whether I’m right, or successful is a different matter, and it will only be decided over time, but I’m having a damn good time trying so far. I’ve met some amazingly talented authors along the way, and I’ve been the first one to publish many of them. I take that as an honour. It’s real buzz for me to see some of these authors go on to achieve other successes and make a name for themselves.
That is one reason why I am a publisher.
We all like a moan occasionally, I’m sure. It’s a natural coping mechanism for dealing with things often out of our control. There is a danger though that the moaning can lead to something more damaging: naysaying.
I define naysaying as the act of deliberately being negative to effect the outcome of someone’s efforts, whether that is writing a story, making a film, creating a piece of art etc.
Naysaying is generated by a number of factors, such as:
- Jealousy
- Spitefulness
- Vindictiveness
- Ignorance
- A desire to control
You’ll see this a lot in YouTube comments (which is a frightening place to spend any length of time), book reviews, and social media comments. When a group, often a rabid core of vocal naysayers, get a bee in their bonnet, the waves of negativity pour out into the world, damaging the efforts of the creator.
There’s a difference between criticism and neysaying, The former requires some thought and a rational consideration of the book/film/piece of art’s merits. The latter is just a bunch of hot air not based on rational critique and delivered to harm the project, or the project’s creator in some manner.
As a creative, I think it’s very important to try and determine whether the negative response you receive is genuine criticism, in which case you can take some degree of notice of it and learn from it, or whether it is negative naysaying, in which case I’d suggest it can safely be ignored, lest you allow the negativity to affect you and your creative projects.
Everyone has ideas; they aren’t special, unique, or brilliant. They are just one in a billion other ideas. An ephemeral particulate floating about in a big old bowl of thoughts. What matters is what you do with that idea. Can you take a spark of a ‘thing’ and make it whole, make it real?
The only way to do it is do it. Writers often play plot-ping-pong with each other, dreaming up new stories, but then nothing comes of them. The idea may as well have not been born if nothing was going to be done with it.
I’m by no means perfect. I’ve got a stupidly expensive (for what it is) moleskin notebook half full with story beginnings, plot points, twists, metaphors, and doodles of tits. (What? Don’t look at me like you’ve never drawn genitalia in your notebook.)
Stephen King famously espouses never to write ideas down; he believes that only the good ones will then stay in your mind. As much as I admire him, I think this is bollocks. We have perfectly decent ideas all the time that would make great stories that get forgotten about after a few too many beers or a big night out on the town. No, ideas ought to be written down, and then, crucially, completed.
You’ve got to ‘ship’ as Seth Godin likes to say, and he’s damn right. If you’ve got a good idea, write it. Make it real and put it out to market. The world has got plenty of space for more ideas, and they ain’t doing anything useful sitting next to the picture you’ve drawn of a penis or a boob in your notebook.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Day of Demons is now officially live — and Anachron Press has a shiny new website with all the details for this glorious new dark fantasy anthology of demony goodness. Visist here to read more about the book and to procure your own copy:
Yes, Sir, I want those demony tales of wonder! (Click the link, thanks).
