Author Spotlight: Craig Hallam

I’ve been writing for a few years now, starting with a pair if novels that will never see the light of day. Ever. So don’t ask. They were a real learning curve and after I got over the initial creative splurge, I tackled short stories. With a lot of encouragement (and a kick in the backside) from my wonderful partner, I finally plucked up courage to send them to magazines. The first was accepted to New Horizons (British Fantasy Society) in 2009 and I haven’t stopped writing since. Seeing one of my stories pressed between the pages of a publication is about as close as I get to Nirvana.
While leaning toward the darker side of fiction, I’ll dabble in anything. Although, ‘An Ode to Post-its’ will probably remain the only poem I ever write. I like gothic imagery and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast is my idea of perfection. I’m also a sucker for Steampunk and all the fantastic doo-dads and thingumies that come along with it.

My collection of short stories, Not Before Bed, is finally available from Amazon. It’s an accumulation of a few years’ dark fiction. Some funny, some weird. Some published, some new. I’m nervous, but itching to find out if people enjoy it. A few early reviews have been good, but my big head is filling with dust and old furniture rather than being useful.
My real labour of love has been Greaveburn. Written over two years, it’s the first novel that I’m truly happy with. Set in the eponymous fictional city, it’s really about the nature of good and evil; how good people can be driven to madness, how far villains will go for redemption. And, above all that, how the love of one girl can steer different men to new destinies. It’s dark, pretty bleak and even has some Steampunk elements that wrote themselves in without my knowledge.
I hope I’m making this sound good.
So, if you’re a literary agent, there might just be a copy of Greaveburn hidden away in your slush-pile. Do the poor thing a favour will you? Dig it out, wrap a blanket around its shoulders and give it a cup of tea while it waits. It’s had a long, arduous journey.
My next project is a very different beast from Greaveburn. It’s a rip-roaring Steampunk swashbuckler; a collection of adventures taken as snapshots from the main character, Alan Shaw’s life. It has automatons, mechanical tentacles, flying frog-men and alchemists and I’m only a quarter of the way in. I’m starting to worry about what trouble Alan will get into next.
My writing motivation is purely selfish for two reasons. The first is that I love it. I can’t think of anything better than giving myself a bad back hunkered over my laptop all day, thrashing out words. The second is self defence. If I don’t get all these pictures out, I think I might burst. Imagine getting all those cogs and spiders out of the carpet.
My blog, Pseudowriter: http://craighallam.blogspot.com
Not Before Bed Amazon Page: http://tinyurl.com/NBBamzn