Saturday, October 14, 2017

Shadowchild and The Shady Corner Book tour & Giveaway


Shadowchild
by Matthew Williams
Genre: Horror

In 1629 something visited the parish of Feckenham. The events that followed were so terrifying that they never gained their place in the history books.



Now in 2008, something seems to be wrong with Marie Watson’s young children.
Her father won’t believe her and her mother is nearing the end of her tether.

Marie feels utterly alone.

But is she?










The Shady Corner
by Matthew Williams
Genre: Horror

A shady corner in life can be a dark and mysterious place, but in the shady corners of the mind, the mystery and darkness know no bounds!



In a struggle with his conscience and haunted by images of murder, David is given a choice to right the wrongs of his past.

Can he cheat fate and avoid his future? Or is the evil that dwells within him more than it seems?

Only one thing is certain . . .

Fate can be cruel, but true evil can be brutal!







INTERVIEW


What do you think about the current publishing market?
It’s exciting times ahead for the publishing market in my opinion. I have a network of literally hundreds of authors and the cost of books with the introduction of e-books is far lower than it used to be.  Traditional publishing seems to have narrowed its view in more recent times, they seem to take less risks than they used to, and they seem to like the safe bet. I find that most traditional publishers don’t even accept horror manuscripts, so the growth of Indie publishing is only natural, it certainly works for the music and film industries.

Do you have a favorite horror or thriller movie? which of your novels can you imagine made into
a movie?
It’s hard to pick a single film, there are so many great movies out there. But if I had to say which movie scared me the most, then it is hands down ‘Eden Lake’ it’s very realistic and genuinely hard to stomach, and that’s without relying on visual effects at all. The whole movie unfolds with increasing tension and terror, I love it!
I could definitely see either one of my books as a movie. I am not a screenwriter of course, but I do visualise in vivid detail as I write, it does often feel like I’m watching a film in my own imagination.  It has been said in a few reviews of ‘The Shady Corner’ that this book would work as a film brilliantly. I have to say that if any of my work ever made it to the screen I would be lost for words, I can’t think of anything more exciting than that.

Is it hard to evoke a dark mood through words? what’s your method?
I don’t find it hard to evoke a dark mood in my writing at all, as I already said; I have an affinity for the macabre and the creepy. My method is pretty basic really; I was often scared as a child while my imagination turned everyday noises into something more terrifying. I simply call upon those feelings and the experience of being scared, then inject that terror into my writing and my characters. I still get shivers down my spine as I’m writing at times, this effect seems to be reaching my readers so far; I’ve had several readers contact me to tell me that my books have given them nightmares. I’m so proud of that lol.
I think the hardest thing with horror is giving it a fresh and original feel. I love horror, but I have to admit that there is a lot of cliché in the genre. I always aim to give my readers a new experience; I hope that I am doing that.

Tell us something really interesting that's happened to you!
Thinking back on it, I guess I was lucky to survive my childhood. I don’t mean to imply for a moment that my upbringing was bad, quite the opposite in fact. But on two separate occasions I could have died, or at least suffered injuries that would have altered the course of my life.
When I was just eighteen months old when I was knocked down and run over by the rear wheel of a car as it was reversing out from a parking space. I had a nasty graze on my forehead from where I hit the ground, but somehow, I was otherwise unscathed. The ‘Bionic Baby’ the newspapers called me, and I got to share the front page with Raquel Welch.
The second occasion was, perhaps, even more strange than that. The living room in my parent’s house had a very elaborate fire hearth. A piece of slate that ran the width of the room, and ornate rocks that were embedded in the wall above the fire. Now, these rocks weren’t small, in fact the largest stone was over a meter in length and must have weighed over 100kgs. As a child of six, I used to sit on that slate hearth regularly. It was a favorite spot of mine until the largest rock fell from the wall and split the slate hearth. What was really strange was that until the very second that that rock fell, I had been sat there, warming myself by the fire. To this day I still don’t know what made me get up when I did. It would be easy to say that my getting up caused the rock to fall. But as an engineer I have looked at that wall many times as an adult, and I find it hard to believe that something as small as I was then would make a rock that was mounted a good 1.5 Meters up the wall fall. I don’t know maybe it did? Or maybe something?  Somewhere?  Is watching over me? What I can be sure of is that the split in the slate is still the only scar from that day.


Born in 1975, Matthew Williams has been a keen fan of the horror/thriller/fantasy genres for as long as he can remember. Whether it’s a film, a TV series, or a novel; he is drawn to all the different aspects of these genres. Mainly it’s the complexities and the mysteries that can be expressed with freedom and imagination that he enjoys the most.



A fan of authors such as Stephen King, James Herbert, Dean Koontz, Richard Layman – to name but a few!

A fan of TV shows such as Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, American Horror Story – to name but a few!

A fan of films such as Saw, Seven, Eden Lake, The Descent, Quarantine, Skeleton Key, The Sixth Sense – to name but a few!

Matthew now has a small body of work of his own with ‘The Shady Corner’ and ‘Shadowchild’ only the beginning of what he is determined to grow into an extensive collection of horror/thriller fiction novels.





Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!







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