Where the Birds Hide at Night
Where the Birds Hide at Night is the fourth in a series dealing with The Great Collective, an ancient group of people who were granted immortality by a mysterious entity known as The Space. These people die and are reborn endlessly, witnessing the terrible evils of humanity over and over again. All of this wickedness has manifested itself as Reaping Icon, a figure who appears in their minds at whim to goad them into terrible sins.
The main character Peter Smith has got stuck living his 21st century life again and again because his girlfriend was murdered and he must solve the case. He no longer wants to live forever, seeing it as a curse. He just wants to live a normal life and die for good at the end of it. He does not feel fulfilled either sexually or emotionally, and it is his psychological struggle through various events in life that is the basis for much of the storyline.
At weekends you attend sci-fi conventions to sell your books and meet your readers; how important is it to you to get feedback from your fans?
Indeed I do. I recently attended the sci-fi weekender in Pwllheli, and have Wales Comic Con coming up in Wrexham on 27th April and London MCM Comic Con at the end of May. It is crucial for me to attend these events in order to meet my readers and gain new and continued appreciation of my writing. Readers make an author, so really what they say is gospel. I've had some great feedback from some very lovely people and this is encouragement enough to carry on writing. I've also had a few unusual and strange people approach me at these events, which can prove challenging as you're a bit of a sitting duck behind a stall.
You are a landscape gardener by day. How much inspiration does this give you for your novels? Does it let your mind wander?
Most of my clients are elderly, so the biggest inspiration from gardening came when I was writing my first book, which dealt with an increasingly elderly population and how to cope with it! They are also constantly discussing death, and are quite humorous and blasé about a subject which is very close to home for somebody who is well into their 80s or 90s. I can get quite carried away whilst spending endless hours weeding a border or mowing a lawn, thinking up all kinds of plot twists and weird and wonderful things.
Why did you want to tackle some topical issues, such as same-sex marriage?
I want my writing to mean something and to spark further debate and thought. For example, in my first book I AM DEAD, I dealt with the issue of people living longer. I speculated about what might happen if the government could no longer pay pensioners or cope with a swelling elderly population, so they get everyone to sign up to the dignity experiment - once you turn 80, you get taken away in the middle of the night and are 'dispatched' with. I also like to bring it back to the personal reasons for the people in charge doing these things. In I AM DEAD, it turns out the guy in charge of setting about the dignity experiment was abused by an elderly man as a child and as an adult his young wife was killed in a car crash caused by an elderly couple driving carelessly. The issue of same-sex marriage started in my third book A MATTER OF DARK, with the character of Katie realising she was a lesbian. She has somehow been led into marriage with her male childhood sweetheart Alex and finds herself increasingly trapped to the point of resenting him. By the time of WHERE THE BIRDS HIDE AT NIGHT she is unable to have a fulfilling sex life with her husband, and she begins to find herself sexually with female lovers - with the one stipulation from Alex that he be in the room when it happens. He grows increasingly more and more resentful and this manifests itself as a hatred for homosexuality. In a sci-fi twist, helped by Reaping Icon, Alex becomes the prime minister and as same-sex marriage is just getting underway and accepted by everyone he makes homosexuality a crime. Other politicians, some of whom are gay, and the police who must enforce the law, struggle to accept this backward step and rile against it in spite of Reaping Icon's mental hold.
In both of these cases, I explore the possible personal motivations behind people's hatred for certain things.
Gay people have had a hard time being accepted, and I explore this more close to home too with Katie's old-fashioned parents being taken in by Alex's poison and initially turning against their daughter. Of course, it all comes good in the end but it is a relevant point that even now with such liberal views towards homosexuality there still often lies bigotry and intolerance under the surface.
This is the final book in the series – what can you tell us about The Great Collective Saga?
I am actually working on a prequel to my original novel, which will deal with how The Great Collective were first formed and how they came into contact with The Space, which is the summation of everything that ever was, is or will be. It starts in the year 1580 when the original Peter Smith is born. I have purposely made The Great Collective all male because they arrogantly see themselves as a group of higher minds and look down on everyone else, which naturally includes women (especially in that era). These men have the testosterone-fuelled arrogance to devour The Space's offering of immortality, which quickly becomes a curse. Peter Smith struggles to see women as equal - he either views them as an object of sexual desire or he puts them on an unreachable plinth of godlike status.
Why was the sci-fi genre of choice for you?
Sci-fi allows you a huge amount of freedom, especially with the themes and issues that interest me. I can speculate on the what ifs with the current topics I choose to write about. I'd probably classify my books as sci-fi crime or speculative fiction with a doomed romance thrown into the mix.
What is next for you?
As well as book five, I'm also working on a musical about a man who eats himself to death (sounds cheery I know!) and I have a sixth book in the works about a near-future where all of Earth's resources have been depleted and humanity has regressed backwards.