A VICTORIAN HORROR WONDERLAND

2/6/2015

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 1865)

The Singular and Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath (Angry Robot, June 2015) is my first published novel and is best described as a dark adult fairy tale set in a topsy- turvy Victorian period, encompassing fantasy and horror elements.

The plot, in a nutshell: a little girl is locked inside a grandfather clock. She is rescued by a policeman who becomes her supernatural guardian. The Lord of the Underworld orders his assassin son, Mr Loveheart, to hunt her down because he wants to eat her and absorb her powers.

The book is played out in Victorian England, Egypt and the Underworld and reveals a variety of unusual and colourful characters, including fraudulent psychics, mesmerists, Jack the Ripper and bewildered Scotland Yard detectives.

I have explored a lot of themes within the book, but I think, if asked to focus on the most significant, it boils down to three areas:

Madness

Most of the characters within the book are insane or mentally unhinged. The few sane voices reside with the Scotland Yard Detectives; Goliath Honey-Flower, Percival White and his trusty sidekick Constable Walnut (who is very fond of food and his Granny). Detective White, attempting to solve the disappearance of a girl, meets the magical and dangerous Mr Loveheart: an insane aristocrat, assassin and Prince of the Underworld. They are then pulled into a mind boggling underworld of secret cults, necromantic clockmakers and Demon Lords.

Because the majority of the characters are mad, England becomes a ‘Victorian Wonderland’ with Detective White performing the role of ‘Alice’ and having to interact with weird and wonderful characters to solve the mystery.

Time within the book is edible. Mirror is made to eat time to grow up fast. She can also control it, bend time, spin it backwards and forwards. Turn it upside down. The villain, Mr Fingers, the demon lord of the Underworld is completely obsessed with time and the tick -tock of mechanisms. His Palace is filled with clocks, which chime every quarter of an hour. Time is malleable in this world, and moves at a different rate in the Underworld.

I wanted to create a world where I could play with time, knock years literally off the clock if I chose to; make characters grow up instantly or throw them backwards in time.

The Underworld/ The Underneath

When I started writing the book I wanted to explore the idea of ‘Underworlds’, which manifest as a layering, both in physical environments and psychological states.

Victorian England reminds me somewhat of a trifle. The top layer of high society which is emotionally restrained through precise formal rituals, is let’s say the custard. Underneath, the Underworld (sponge fingers and jelly) the home of those repressed desires and violence which when they emerge to the surface can reveal themselves as psychotic states of insanity, delusions, obsession and outbreaks of violence (for example Jack the Ripper).

While I was writing this book I had been researching Victorian Spiritualism and I was interested in exploring a story involving demonic possession and exorcism, and the character of Goliath Honey-Flower was originally going to be a priest. I came across lots of peculiar rituals and cults for honouring the dead during this period, involving Psychic Trays (a variant of Ouija boards) bees, photographs of the dead, séances and all these motifs which inspired me and some I threaded within the plot, such as the photographer of the dead, Dr Cherrytree and his sinister waiting room.

There is also a lot of food in the book. Mention of eating and cannibalism, which is a theme which reoccurs in mythology and fairy tales. The idea of eating something/someone to absorb their power or to honour them in some way, or as an act of revenge, to completely decimate them through digestion. It is a topic I explore in all of my books in various forms.

I hope you enjoy the book!

Thank you Gingernuts of Horror!

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In the summer of 1887 my grandfather stole a clock. It was six feet high and the shape of a coffin. 1888. A little girl called Mirror and her shape-shifting guardian Goliath Honeyflower are washed up on the shores of Victorian England. Something has been wrong with Mirror since the day her grandfather locked her inside a mysterious clock that was painted all over with ladybirds. Mirror does not know what she is, but she knows she is no longer human. John Loveheart, meanwhile, was not born wicked. But after the sinister death of his parents, he was taken by Mr Fingers, the demon lord of the underworld. Some say he is mad. John would be inclined to agree. Now Mr Fingers is determined to find the little girl called Mirror, whose flesh he intends to eat, and whose soul is the key to his eternal reign. And John Loveheart has been called by his otherworldly father to help him track Mirror down -