Welcome back, Stephen. Always a pleasure to have you visit my neck of the woods.
Tell us a bit about your topic today: Diversity of Genre as an author and Winter at the Light
I just hit submit at Amazon for a short story called Glimpse, The Dinner Guest, as part of a series of stories by thirteen authors featuring Friday the 13th as a theme. I had to write a short bio for it and wanted something different, so here’s what I wrote:
“I share a name with another, far more famous writer (shh, you know who) and I am often asked why don’t I write under a pseudonym? Well, I am Australian, living in Perth, Western Australia, Stephen King is my real name, and I have an ego. I like people to know I am an author, but I do NOT want to be confused with the other guy. I have read every book the original SK has ever written, and I often think that if I could write one tenth as well as he does, I could die a happy man. We are about the same age, give or take a year or two, and I used to think I don’t write horror or supernatural. That is, until Alicia asked me to contribute a dark thriller for the Friday the 13th series of stories, and I jumped at the chance.”
This book is coincidentally, my thirteenth…spooky huh? It is book 5 in the Deadly Glimpses series and has been very well received. Anyway, the point is that I hadn’t written supernatural or horror before, just mainly (let me stress, MAINLY) police procedural, crime thriller based suspense. That said, my previous release was called Winter at the Light, and that is a romantic, historical thriller set on a remote lighthouse in 1952, so what was that about mainly crime thrillers? When this thought struck me I was reminded I had also written (and won three literary awards for) Thirty-Three Days, a romantic thriller using time travel so the protagonist could save the future of the world from a deadly, all consuming blight.
I’ve come to realize that I revel in the diversity of genres I choose to write in. Some authors would disagree. I’m sure, they prefer to stay in the pigeon hole that has brought them the most pleasure and success and more power to them – this is not in any way a criticism. Fortunately, I don’t write for money or success; both are very hard to come by, but because I love to tell stories; whatever type of story that appeals to me at the time.
When I think of my famous namesake I think of gut wrenching, horrific books like Carrie, It, The Outsider or Pet Sematary…but then I also think of the magnificent warmth and portrayal of childhood friendship such as The Body (more famously brought to life as the movie Stand by Me) And what about the sheer brilliant writing in The Shawshank Redemption? In one collection of SK’s short stories I read a diary of one season when his son played little league baseball and it was so beautifully written I’m not ashamed to admit I cried. Now that man can diversify, so maybe, just maybe it’s Ok for me too.
Winter at the Light does not have a serial killer, nor a swear word, almost no violence and no sex, but I think it entertains, and that is my job as a writer, to entertain. Here is the Blurb:
Forbes Lighthouse is a dangerous place. Twenty-year-old Molly McLaren agrees to tend the light when her father breaks his leg, so she leaves behind the city and her nursing career. Molly dreads the thought of three months as the sole inhabitant on the tiny island, nineteen nautical miles off the rugged coastline of Augusta in Western Australia.
Molly discovers she enjoys the solitude, and when a massive storm arrives bringing a life raft, Molly risks her life to save the unconscious man inside. On waking, he says he has lost his memory but as Molly nurses him back to health she wonders if he has. When the storm finally clears, Molly has fallen for the man she's nicknamed John, but still has doubts about his honesty.
The real danger arrives with two men who are searching for her mystery man. They want to kill him and anyone else who can identify them, and Molly quickly learns; on a lighthouse, there is nowhere to hide.
Here is an excerpt:
Before she could change her mind, she picked up her lamp and headed back up the stairs, determined to get her check done as quickly as possible, and get back to bed; perhaps the worst of the storm will be gone by morning, she hoped.
Molly was panting by the time she stepped up into the watch room. She placed her lamp on the floor, then grasped her knees as she bent at the waist and took several deep breaths.
Molly looked out of the windows and saw an incredible sight. Forbes Reef was instantly lit up by three forks of lightning, which simultaneously streaked from the sky. They snaked across the darkened clouds and hit the reef and ocean all around her.
In the harsh, blinding flash, she could see the rain being driven at a forty-five-degree angle by the wind, and as the glare died down, it was replaced with the sweeping beam radiating outwards from the light in the watch room.
“Wow, Molly, my girl, that is some sight,” she uttered.
As her eyesight followed the beam, in the murky distance beyond the shoal, she could see the waves were mountainous as they rose and fell upon themselves to boil and bubble then rise again. It was as if the howling wind was stealing away the white caps from their tips to add to the torrential rain.
Molly no longer felt scared. The fear was replaced with awe and appreciation for nature’s beauty and wrath. Her eyes followed the revolving ray of light, loving everything that was illuminated in its glow, as thunder crashed overhead again. This time it didn’t make her jump. Molly realized she could no longer hear the wailing. It was probably just the wind through the lean-to all along, she thought.
A lightning fork flew from the clouds and disappeared into the heaving seas to her right. Then came another to her left. “Oh, my goodness,” she exclaimed, “I’m so glad I’m here to see this; it’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.”
Molly felt warm wearing the oilskin and shrugged it off; it had become superfluous because she didn’t need to go out on the balcony. Molly could see all she needed to from inside. And there was still no sound of screaming. For a moment she hoped that wasn’t because whoever made the noise had died or passed into unconsciousness. Nature’s light show will show me all I need to see, especially with my binoculars, she decided.
Molly unhooked the Weiss Glasses, strung the lariat around her neck, and raised them to her eyes just as another obliging explosion of light flooded out from a twin fork. Under the magnification, everything became more evident, and even more visually spectacular, as she scanned the three hundred and sixty degrees around the island. Using the recurring lightning flashes and rotating beam from beside her, Molly’s vision was crystal clear in the harsh, stark black and white view.
Molly was diligent and pleased with her sense of responsibility as she studied every rock and crevice on the island and surrounding reef her from her vantage point. She paid particular attention to the rocks around the cave knowing full well she was only doing that because of the ghost story she’d heard over lunch. Once completed, Molly turned her attention to the reef, her gaze traversing across it slowly as she allowed for the waves to subside so she could see behind them when they receded. She took her time, enjoying the task, and had no idea how long her vigil lasted. When she finally lowered the binoculars, she was satisfied there was no-one in trouble. There was no shipwrecked boat that had run aground, and no one lay injured on the rocks screaming for aid, so the wailing noise was nothing more than a trick of the wind.
Molly breathed a long sigh of relief, turned and hung up the glasses. She realized she was no longer tired and made a spur of the moment decision to stay for a while longer.
