Terminal State – the background (Part 2)

I think I’ve mentioned at some point the basic background for Terminal State but I thought it might be interesting to post in a bit more detail about where it came from and the ups and downs of it over the last few years.

Around ten years ago, I published a short story collection called Die Laughing mainly because a small publisher who took my first two books folded so those books were suddenly homeless and I wanted to have something out there with my name on it. I was proud of the collection especially a tale called Anti-Social which was horror as far as I was concerned but it still stood out because there was nothing supernatural in there. Just people being horrible. I spent a few years thinking about that one and wondering if there was room to develop it. Also if I should develop given I called myself a horror writer and wanted to make a go of that with publishers and agents. Eventually, I took my head out of my arse and sat down to make a few notes on the book that would become Terminal State.

The basic premise in the short story was that while literally anyone could be judge, jury and executioner, not everyone wanted to be so you’d never know who had the authority to kill you if you pissed them off. I altered that for the novel and created the legals – certain people of a certain background who could carry a weapon and kill anyone who broke social norms or laws. At the same time, someone connected to the creation of this situation is slowly losing their mind over their role in that creation. And someone else. . . well, nobody’s ever told that guy he can’t always have what he wants. And what he wants is his ex-girlfriend dead at his hand.

That was the basic premise but I knew I had a lot of room to play with. Usually when that happens in my early drafts, I tend to get lost and loss track of the essential idea. After a few rewrites and polishes, I left a lot of the world-building in the background. Most of those ideas came from looking at where we are now and picturing the scene in 25 years. I don’t have a very optimistic view of things, I’m afraid, so my 2050 isn’t a happy place for much of the world, but it’s honest. I don’t really care about optimism or pessimism. I care about being honest. What I see coming is my honest view.

Around five years ago, I submitted Terminal State to a lot of agents. The very first submission resulted in a full request which was a definite result. That agent eventually passed; others outright rejected it and plenty just didn’t reply. Eventually, it landed me an agent who, I think, had high hopes for it. Ditto the second book I sent her. Not the third, though. Around then, it became pretty clear to me she no longer had those high hopes so when she told me it was over, it was no surprise at all. Eighteen months down the line, I was right back at square one. Not my finest hour. I licked my wounds, wrote a new book (which became The Ninth Circle) and polished what would have been the fourth book to send to my agent. I spent another year trying agents with Terminal State to no avail but I didn’t trunk it, either. Near the end of that year, I started thinking about publishing it under a new name to separate a speculative thriller from my usual horror fiction. I knew it would mean more social media and getting a name with zero history out there, but it still seemed like a good idea. I also knew there might be more spec thrillers to come but there would also be horror so why not have two names?

So that’s about it. A book that began as a short story more than a decade ago; several versions later and God knows how many agent submissions before my adventures with my ex-agent has finally come to life. If you want to see where I think we might end up in 25 years, this is the book for you. If you want a warning of it, well, this is also for you. Personally, I’m very happy with my dark tale of a future Britain that’s lost its soul. Even if getting there took me the long way around.

Terminal State is out now.

Terminal State – out now

Today’s the day. My first dark spec thriller under my other name is now out in ebook and paperback.

TERMINAL STATE

Britain, 2050. Driverless cars and bullet trains; drones and cameras watching the streets; the nation’s borders sealed.

State-sanctioned murder.

To combat antisocial behaviour, the Government allows certain people – legals – to carry concealed weapons and to kill anyone committing an offensive or objectionable act. Surveilling the legals and the general population, the Department of Social Order is the most powerful organisation in the country. Close to destitute and too young to apply for legality, Kara Niven has little to do with lawful killing or the Department. That is until she breaks off her relationship with her violent boyfriend Adam.

Convinced she is seeing someone else, seething at an imagined betrayal, Adam is desperate to have his revenge on Kara even if he isn’t legal. Yet. At the same time, someone is systematically assassinating the people who created authorised murder ten years ago – and the killer’s path will lead him right to Kara’s door. Targeted by men who know nothing but violence, faced with threats from all sides, Kara won’t be anyone’s victim.

The law calls her a statistic.

Kara calls herself a survivor.

If you’re looking for a comparison, I call it 1984 meets The Purge. Any spreading of the word will be a massive help and very much appreciated. More to come on the book in the next few weeks. 

Be well.

Rob/Luke

Terminal State – background

About ten years ago, I published a collection of my short fiction called Die Laughing which contained a story titled Anti-Social. The basic concept was a near-future Britain in which almost everyone is armed and free to deliver capital punishment if anyone is offensive or anti-social. I think I wanted a kind of Black Mirror type tale that was a little satirical and a lot scary and ended up with a story I liked a great deal. A few years later, I was thinking about that one and saw it as a longer piece. Novel-length. The only issue was it being different to my usual stuff. There was nothing supernatural or obviously horror in the concept but I still liked it and still saw it having potential with a larger scope than a short story. I wrote that book which became the first draft of Terminal State (I think the working title was Toxic), let it rest for a month and then wrote a second draft to tighten things up. The main change from the basics of the short piece was the idea that not everyone could be armed or legal or deliver instant execution. Only certain people could do this which made it a lot more frightening. After all, who’s to say if the driver you just cut off is allowed to kill you for your bad driving? Or your neighbour beating his wife – are you allowed to go to their house with your gun and make sure he never hits her again?

I did the usual round of submissions to agents and eventually sold it to one (for the record, I think it was submission 90 or so). She saw the same in my book as I did. Ditto a second. Not a third, though. After eighteen months of trying, she told me it wasn’t happening with any publishers and she was moving away from my kind of fiction which left me back at square one. Not a great time for me, really. Anyway, I went back on submission to agents for a year and had no success, so towards the end of last year, I started thinking about doing this one myself but also doing it under a new name to separate it from Luke Walker’s out and out horror. Terminal State is horror in as much as it’s a horrific idea and situation for the characters, but without the supernatural angle. . .

So, Rob Harrison was born. I did kick around the idea of keeping Luke and Rob completely separate as I know a couple of my writer friends do with the names they write under, but decided against it. Publicly, it’s no secret both names are me, but all I really care about are the books and the hope that people respond to something different from me. (And in case anyone wonders, I took the name Rob Harrison from the first piece I wrote that felt like it could go somewhere – a novella I wrote on and off between the ages of 17 and 21. It didn’t go anywhere for obvious reasons but I liked the character and his name. Close to thirty years later, it’s nice to give it a new life).

Terminal State will be published in two weeks. More to come about the book nearer the time.

Rob/Luke

The Ninth Circle – themes

Back in the days of my first books, I often wrote with a specific theme in mind or at least an idea of what I wanted to say with that book. A pretty terrible idea especially for a new writer without much of a clue what they were doing. It’s half the reason those books were so very awful and will never see the light of day. It wasn’t until I decided to just roll with an idea and a character (maybe six books in) that things began to fall into place. These days, I more often than not need a rough outline to go with the idea and character. I love the idea of literally making it up as I go, but I’m not one of those writers, sadly. I get lost and bogged down in sideplots that go nowhere. The resulting book is never any good, so I tend to use my outline as a loose map to keep things moving. And I don’t give a toss about themes.

That’s probably an odd thing to say for a post with this title, but it’s true. Themes are for writers who think they have something to say about the human condition. I’m just here to see how much shit I can put my characters through and then see who’s left standing by the end. That isn’t to say that themes don’t emerge or came to their own dark life. Most of the time, I don’t notice them until the rewrites and fresh drafts so they’re usually a surprise. With The Ninth Circle, I set out to see what would happen to a young couple caught in the middle of the apocalypse along with the supernatural. As I’ve mentioned, I wanted the small scale of a village setting rather than city backdrop because I wanted to really get into the finer details of the situation and have a snapshot of what might be happening on a global scale. The themes came in their own way.

Grief over losing a parent; attempting to reconnect with a childhood and a past because of that grief; a very British mentality unique to village life; survival and nothing but; who we are at the end versus who we believe we are.

Who we want to be.

I lost my dad about five years ago and while my reaction was different to Sam’s in the book, I suppose I could have gone in the same direction of wanting to reconnect to a past when he was still here. Thankfully for me, I didn’t, but that possibility is what the supernatural forces in the book utilise. Or exploit. Ditto Sam and the rest of the survivors with their human need to keep everyone alive and not leave anyone behind. Something else for the bad guys to exploit. I think that’s the key point of this book and the main reason I write this kind of thing. When we’re faced with the worst, we’re often at our best. Sam and the others are desperate to stay alive but they’re also desperate to do their best because there’s nothing left if they fail. The world might be gone. All they have left is each other. They lose that, they lose themselves.

That’s the key theme of The Ninth Circle and the key to more or less everything I write. Not a theme I ever give much thought and certainly not one I debated before writing a single word of the book. But it’s there on the page. In the panic. In the fear.

In the burning down.

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