Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
I’m a screenwriting graduate from Falmouth University Film School, UK, now embarking on a career as an indie author. Alongside my writing I also design journals and format novels under my freelance company Pennard Press. When I find a free ten minutes, you’d usually find me hunting down vegan food, cycling country lanes or learning a new craft — I’m currently teaching myself book-binding and (faux) leather work. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? Without a doubt, the gywandras. In my debut novel The Frequency, the gywandras is a face-less figure made of molten black shadow that leeches upon negative thoughts. As the story goes on, it is linked to a string of brutal possessions. There’s also Vanessa: a cold, manipulative occultist that is always five steps ahead of my protagonists. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? Gosh, where to begin. David Mitchell, writer of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, balances time-hopping, mind-bending high concept novels with beautiful prose and rich character work. Contemporary writer Sally Rooney, author of the beautiful Normal People, has a way of writing relationships in such a realistic — and brutally honest — way that she often leaves me grieving for relationships I’ve never had! Anthony Doerr, Andre Aciman, and Neil Gaiman are highly influential and have, in my opinion, never put a step wrong with their novels. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? I think people still widely associate the horror genre with pulp novels from the 70’s and 80’s — the outright macabre, body horror slashers that have very little going on under the surface. But for me, horror is much about what lies beneath the action. To quote my own novel, ‘there’s a horror that can only be found in the living.’ I believe that the horror genre has so much potential to really examine humanities deepest, darkest fears, and explore how people can react when faced with their worst existential nightmares. We need to continue to champion and support horror that has something to say. Books that come to mind such as Silence of the Lambs, Never Let Me Go, Outer Dark, Lord of the Flies, Bird Box, Annihilation — the list goes on and on. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? Without a shadow of the doubt, Covid-19 is definitely going to spawn a slew of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, biological horrors, and claustrophobic psychological thrillers. The public’s trust in governments across the globe is also at an all time low, and I can see some more projects in the vein of The Purge rising in popularity. I myself have a few ideas knocking around for all of those categories — though most will be filed into my ‘Doctor Who Ideas’ folder. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? I think it’s for the same reason that people ride rollercoasters, sky dive, and climb high-rises without safety equipment: to experience the thrill and the adrenaline of being close to death’s door — but at a comfortable arm’s length. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? Although not strictly horror, I would love to see a huge reprise of the survival genre. Growing up in the noughties we were treated to books and films such as 127 Hours, Buried, Touching The Void, Everest etc. I often find those kind of things scarier than monster flicks or hauntings because they bridge the gap between fiction and reality — they could happen to anyone. Some are even based on true stories. The scariest ideas are ones that touch too close to home. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of? Yes I’m really looking forward to Melody Razak’s debut novel Moth which is set during India’s partition in the 1940’s. There’s a lot of buzz for it being an intimate portrait of family in a hostile political climate, which really is right up my street. It’s coming this week (24th June). Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? I’m still in the early stages of publishing my debut novel where I’ve yet to have a review — either good or bad. I’ve had my fair share of constructive criticism from beta readers and critique partners, which helped the novel develop. Their comments, such as being too forthright with theme and overly generous with backstory, have stuck with me when redrafting — and all for the better! What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? As I say often, the most difficult aspect of writing is re-writing. I can knock out first drafts relatively quickly, and always have new ideas pinging around my head. I can’t say I’ve ever suffered from writers block. But true writing — and the most difficult part — is the redrafting and the editing, refining and making sense of the mess that is your first draft. I’ve had to part ways with huge set pieces, reams of interesting dialogue, backstory, and flashbacks. To say it felt like severing a limb each time is an understatement! But I’m at a point in my career where I’ve developed a decent instinct to know whether something will work in a story as I’m writing. But hey, I’m a pantser — so I can make no promises! Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? Anything is on the table for me as long as I have an idea that excites me and has enough legs to fill a 90,000 word novel. I will always write diversely and inclusively, as I want to reflect the people I know and the experiences I’ve had. Social and existential themes will always bubble under the surface because I wear my heart on my sleeve where the state of the world is concerned. But maybe erotica. That genre demands a specific skillset. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? Absolutely, sometimes progress is stagnant and other times it’s in leaps and bounds. My development is an interesting one because I first had to break away from screenwriting before transitioning into literary writing. The skeleton of both formats are largely the same, so for me it was finding my voice amongst the prose. At first I ran wild with this new found liberation that comes with a far less limited word count, and the ability to be inside my characters’ heads and project their perspectives onto the story. So I had to find a balance amongst all that, strip back what was unnecessary or expository, and be more succinct and powerful with my descriptions. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? My screenwriting lecturer once said (and I’m sure I’m disastrously misquoting him here) that we should always write with cause and effect in mind. It’s where that forward momentum comes from; it keeps your protagonists active within the plot; and creates nuances in characters’ relationships. It’s something that’s always at the forefront on my mind whilst writing. Which of your characters is your favourite? Wow, that’s hard. There’s three main protagonists within The Frequency that share equal page time. Rasha, a teenage Syrian refuge living in the wilds of Cornwall, England, has become my spirit animal. She’s at that age where she still approaches events with a curious mind and an open-heart, but she’s also learning to be a tough in a world that can be cruel and unforgiving. Then there’s Sam, a flawed man dealing with addiction and his sexuality. A lot of his inner monologues are reflective of where I was a few years ago, and so I see a lot of myself in him. He’s also flippant and unpredictable — oozing with a lot of misplaced anger — so you just never know what trouble he’s going to get into next. Then there’s Trish, who is a real mother hen, an ode to all the woman that were in my life when growing up, relentlessly loving and supporting, and always willing to make sacrifices for her loved ones. Which of your books best represents you? The Frequency is my first book but it’s definitely a springboard into the subject matter that I want to explore moving forward. The Frequency champions diversity, is socially aware and tackles sweeping existential themes, all the while being a fast-paced page-turner with lots of twists and set-pieces — and plenty of macabre and gothic elements to boot! Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? It’s a line that has become somewhat of a tagline for the book: ‘We all belong to the frequency.’ I like it because it’s immediately mysterious and foreboding, and throughout the book it takes on various different meanings. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? My next book is a sequel to The Frequency and takes places in Manchester, four years after the events of book one. Ghostly apparitions and gruesome murders are on the rise. Our protagonists attempt to infiltrate an underground occultist group called The Hive, but what they find there is beyond anything they can comprehend — and redefines everything they know about the afterlife. I’m aiming to release it in Summer 2023. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? It’s probably the small contrivances that get my goat. When people trip as they’re being chased, the car won’t start, or suddenly there’s bad cell phone reception. They’re convenient go-to’s and I think we need — and can be — cleverer than that. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? The last great book wasn’t a horror, but it was Sally Rooney’s Normal People. It was perfect in its simplicity; it represented the rawest, most honest portrayal of a relationship that I’ve read or seen in years. It also showed the male love interest Connell develop into an emotionally aware young man who, by the end of the book, learns to fluently express himself. It’s rare to see a male protagonist have that kind of growth. The last disappointment was Stephen King’s The Institute. I’never DNF’d a King book before — I mean, he is the King, after all — but this book didn’t work for me at all. He made peculiar choices to try and somewhat humanise adults that were torturing kids, and spent the first chapter introducing a character that we don’t see again until the final act of the book, by which point I’d forgotten all about him. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? As writers and creatives generally, I don’t think we are asked enough about our failures. It’s always about the success, but we can’t have that without learning what not to do. We need that kind of dialogue, especially in an age where we hold our favourite authors up as celebrities. My answer would be that I tried to be too grand and impressive. In earlier drafts I manipulated how time was perceived in the novel. So I was splicing and intersecting flashbacks throughout the present plot, and interweaving future scenes disguised as flashbacks, too. Which could be interesting, but the book was already divided into thirteen parts, each alternating between the three main characters. So that was a disastrous draft, and I had a few beta readers give me some tough — but much needed — criticism for that. I also cut a couple hundred pages of pure filler. I was trying to say too much about every theme imaginable and humanise the smallest characters. I think that was mostly just me telling myself the story in the first draft and being too scared to let go of it all. So I had to learn how to refine the novel back to its fundamental themes and values. Less is always more! 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Born and raised in Cornwall, England, Terry Kitto was never found without reading a book or penning one of his own. Teaching himself to write screenplays in Sixth Form, he took his creativity to Film School at Falmouth University. There he wrote the first draft of biopic Christopher’s Queen and studied postmodernism in long running television series’, earning a First Class with Honours. He further developed his television writing skills at the University of Salford, with a PGDip in TV and Radio Scriptwriting.
In February 2015 he won the award for Best Writer at the New York 100 Hour Film Contest with the short Can You See Me? and was shortlisted for the BBC's Writers Room 2016 with comedy-drama Brunswick House.
WEBSITE LINKS
www.terrykitto.com www.instagram.com/terry_kitto www.twitter.com/terry_kitto www.goodreads.com/author/show/21423420.Terry_Kitto?from_search=true&from_srp=true The Frequency: A Mind-Bending Paranormal Thriller (The Imprint Quintet Book 1) by Terry Kitto
Death wasn’t an absolute end, but a further form of being.
Deep within the bowels of an abandoned Cornish mine a covert occult group, known as the Network, protects the living from the dead. Their mediums host a plethora of abilities — from telepathy to astral projection — because of their connection to an energy source called the frequency. Fifteen-year-old Rasha Abadi and her mother are Syrian refugees granted leave to remain in Gorenn Village. The seaside town sprawls with beaches and idyllic coves, but the last thing Rasha finds there is peace. An impossible shadow visits her nightly and infests her mind with memories of the chaos that she and her mother fled in Syria. When she becomes possessed by the shadow, the Network intervenes to save her. The shadow’s wrath knows no bounds and orchestrates a string of interconnected possessions across the south coast. Having survived the shadow, Rasha eagerly offers to aid the Network’s investigation. They must all act quickly to unearth its motive before it disrupts the balance between the living and the dead, and forges a new world from the embers of their own reality. No choice will be easy for Rasha when thwarting a monster means becoming one herself. The Frequency is a paranormal thriller exploring grief in a world where death is just the beginning and where reality can be rewritten. Fans of Stephen King and James Herbert will enjoy this mind-bending, paranormal thriller with LGBTQ+ and POC characters. This is book one in The Imprint Quintet series, a five-part saga following a rag-tag group of mediums as they attempt to thwart an otherworldly tyrant from unleashing paranormal terrorism. TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITERICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE MASTERS OF HORROR: WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM, DIRECTED BY: TOM HOLLAND
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