I had to put off the temptation to sit down with a pint of “real ale” with Martin Tracey, otherwise this post may never get published. (The sacrifices I make for y’all, I tell you what.) On top of that, I had to also work at not getting sidetracked into the world of football…or music…or…oh go on, just read the great interview!

Martin Tracey writes ‘Dark Fiction that strikes a chord’. Swapping songwriting for novels, music is a crucial part of his chilling page turners. Martin likes to push the boundaries of reality in his fictional works including Crime (with a twist) and flirting heavily with the Paranormal.

The terror that grips you is very real!

He has a passion for The Beatles & Wolverhampton Wanderers FC and both music and football/soccer often find their way into his stories. His other passion is ‘horror’: “Watching those Hammer films as a kid really hooked my interest,” says Martin. “All the classics like Count Dracula, werewolves and Frankenstein’s monster fed my imagination, as does anything really connected with the occult or otherworldly. And then an adaption of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot starring David Soul came along followed by the awesome offerings of The Lost Boys and From Dusk Till Dawn. Every one of those movies proved an inspiration for my dark fiction.”

Being a multi-functional author, including some non-fiction works, he has tackled topics as diverse as conspiracy theories, mind control, religious cults, serial killers, memoirs and supernatural thrillers. His wild imagination would never allow him to put pen to paper in any other way!

As well as playing about with words, music initially became the dominant career path and his love for writing materialised through his passion for writing songs. Martin went on to form various bands on the Birmingham music scene and he is the songwriter and co-performer of ‘Raging Bull’ which can be found on the album Old Gold Anthems – the songs of Wolves (available on Amazon, Spotify & more), thus demonstrating his love for the club that he should commit to song a tribute to their most successful goal-scorer. It was his love for Wolves that first gave him the idea for werewolves to infiltrate a football team, however, that concept swiftly changed to vampires and his debut novel Beneath The Floodlights was born. Later, Martin went on to co-found Entity Fair with singer/songwriter Scott Stackhouse and Martin’s song ‘Saturn Rising’ won a competition on BBC Radio, resulting in them supporting Roland Gift and the Fine Young Cannibals at Birmingham’s Alexander Theatre.

Music is never something Martin could dismiss completely, but his passion for writing has evolved to penning novels of chilling suspense that bring to life many a topic, exercising that active brain of his that is ‘wired’ a little differently to most!

Martin is currently writing the authorised biography of the late, great Robin George and has provided the introductions to the fabulous Duran Duran En Scene Photo Book series 1979-1982 which contains images of early Duran Duran and the iconic Birmingham music and fashion scene of the time, all expertly taken by the keen eye of the late, talented photographer Paul Edmond.

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Hailey Piper Interview

When I was teaching art as a long-term sub, I’d always tell the kids that art was the place where they could explore, experiment, and where they could freely make mistakes–that making so-called mistakes was an essential part of the creative process. Hailey Piper’s interview was a reminder that, as she puts it, the creative process is wonderfully “messy”! Read on to discover more about her and her writing process!

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth from Rooster Republic Press, All the Hearts You Eat and A Light Most Hateful from Titan Books, Cruel Angels Past Sundown from Dead Sky Books, Cranberry Cove from Bad Hand Books, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy from The Seventh Terrace, The Worm and His Kings trilogy and Your Mind is a Terrible Thing from Off Limits Press, and other books of horror. Her 2022 dark fantasy novel No Gods for Drowning was a finalist for the Locus Award and the Dragon Award. She is also the author of over 100 short stories, appearing recurring publications such as Weird Tales, Pseudopod, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Vastarien, Cast of Wonders, and elsewhere, as well as in anthologies such as Shirley Jackson Award-winner The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, Splatterpunk Award winner Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, and more. Her fifteenth published book, A Game in Yellow, will be published by Saga in 2025. When not writing, she loves to read, paint, watch movies, sometimes play video games, along with daily cooking. Lately she likes to snack on broccoli. You wouldn’t think broccoli makes for a great snack, but it’s actually really simple and quick to prepare in a satisfying way. Three minutes at a boil, or else it might get too soft, and then a generous powdering of salt and pepper. It’s important to get both. The combination is fantastic, and despite dietary misunderstandings about salt, it’s still much healthier than eating snacks packed with sodium, a too-common nutritional issue. You don’t have to believe her; just try it for yourself so long as you don’t have a good allergy to the vegetable or salt or pepper. But food aside, she’s a lifelong Godzilla fangirl, and she lives with her wife in Maryland, where they try not to summon any cosmic entities. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com.

Links

Website: https://haileypiper.com

All the Hearts You Eat purchase links:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/763730/all-the-hearts-you-eat-by-hailey-piper/

https://titanbooks.com/71814-all-the-hearts-you-eat/

Willow Croft: “Hey, look at that derelict Victorian mansion . . . let’s go explore it!” What’s the most unusual setting you’ve read about in a horror/thriller book, or included in your own creative works?

Hailey Piper: I’ve read so many books, I’m sure whatever answer I put will be wrong. In recent memory, Mister Magic by Kiersten White taking place within a children’s daytime TV show was pretty unusual, something I’ve only encountered once before in a short story.

Willow Croft: “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” What are your go-to comfort foods, drinks, or other ways to wind down after a long day (or night) of writing?

Hailey Piper: Frozen fruit. Perhaps I’m a fruit bat like Jerry Dandridge in Fright Night!

Willow Croft: “Did you hear that noise?” Everyone, even us horror/suspense writers, have our night terrors. What is it that frightens you the most?

Hailey Piper: I don’t think there’s a hierarchy. Our loved ones secretly not loving us is a nightmare I keep exploring, and maybe that’s because I fear it.

Willow Croft: “I’m sure it was nothing. But I’ll just go outside and check, anyway. Alone. With no weapons.” Have you ever gotten writers’ block? If so, how do you combat it? Do you have certain rituals or practices that help get you into the writing (or creating) mindset?

Hailey Piper: Writer’s block for me means that my attention is on the wrong thing. Maybe I wrote a character in a direction that’s against their behavior, maybe I’m too stuck on what I’d planned for the plot versus where it’s going based on what I’ve written, or maybe this project isn’t right to work on now. Or ever. My solution is first to step away, and then come back and tear apart whatever I’m doing wrong until I find the place I last left off that felt right. Sometimes that’s a few paragraphs ago, or a chapter back. Sometimes it means scrapping a whole book. There is no sunk-cost fallacy; time used can’t be returned, there’s only the limited time ahead.

Willow Croft: “Don’t go into the basement!” Are you an impulsive pantser or a plotter with outlines galore? What other writing/industry advice would you share with your fellow writers & creators?

Hailey Piper: I’m somewhere in between, which isn’t a satisfying answer but it’s the truth. I make outlines, scrap parts of them, follow other parts, write new outlines, find detours. I’ll always need a plan, but the realities of writing mean coming up with new plans. It’s messy, but that’s art. Creative folk should do whatever they find works for them, not what someone else tells them to do.

Willow Croft: “Ring ring!” It’s the middle of the night and the phone mysteriously rings. Which notable writer, or person from history, would be on the other end of the line?

Hailey Piper: Joseph McCarthy, furious over my implications about him in my short story “Bad With Secrets.” I tell him it’s just fiction, like his accusations toward countless people during the Red Scare and Lavender Scare, and then I hang up. Unfortunately once I’m up, I’m up, so it’s off to writing some more.

ALL THE HEARTS YOU EAT by Hailey Piper, publishing 15th October 2024. A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we’re gone, from the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Queen of Teeth.

What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?

Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death. Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.

“Weaving classic horror elements into a powerful tale of trans solidarity and the life-sucking toll of being forced back into the closet, Piper cements her place in the queer horror canon.”—Publishers Weekly starred review