{"id":101191,"date":"2018-02-01T14:42:23","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T14:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=101191"},"modified":"2018-02-01T15:45:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T15:45:58","slug":"fury-from-the-tomb-author-sa-sidor-gives-us-tips-to-keep-your-monsters-fresh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/news\/fury-from-the-tomb-author-sa-sidor-gives-us-tips-to-keep-your-monsters-fresh\/","title":{"rendered":"Fury From The Tomb author SA Sidor gives us tips to keep your monsters fresh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone loves a good monster mash, so we’re very excited to reveal the beautiful cover for SA Sidor’s upcoming novel Fury From The Tomb<\/em><\/strong> thanks to Angry Robot!<\/p>\n

This excellent cover was created by Daniel Strange<\/a>, who said “<\/em>The real buzz line given to me as a means to get the imagination flowing was Indiana Jones meets Sergio Leone which pretty much gave me permission to delve back into the history of classic B-Movie poster art with a healthy dose of Pulpy adventure to finish it all off.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Doesn’t that sound good? Here’s a plot synopsis for the novel (out in May) if you need your appetite whetted a little more.<\/p>\n

“Saqqara, Egypt, 1888, and in the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient sorcerer, Rom, a young Egyptologist, makes the discovery of a lifetime: five coffins and an eerie, oversized sarcophagus. But the expedition seems cursed, for after unearthing the mummies, all but Rom die horribly. He faithfully returns to America with his disturbing cargo, continuing by train to Los Angeles, home of his reclusive sponsor. When the train is hijacked by murderous banditos in the Arizona desert, who steal the mummies and flee over the border, Rom \u2013 with his benefactor\u2019s rebellious daughter, an orphaned Chinese busboy, and a cold-blooded gunslinger \u2013 must ride into Mexico to bring the malevolent mummies back. If only mummies were their biggest problem\u2026”<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, here is Sidor himself to tell us how to make creatures feel fresh…<\/p>\n

Mashing Up Monsters Makes Them Feel Alive Again<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in a time of sequels, reboots, and retreads. For fans of horror and sci-fi\/fantasy, that means the audience often finds themselves in a lifeless, check-all-the-boxes, and ultimately unsatisfying landscape. But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way. We like old monsters\/villains and favorite setups. We have a taste for time-tested tropes. They have the magtheic to return us to our first experiences falling in love with a genre. But the trick is to take the audience to familiar territory and make it feel fresh. That task is not easy, and it is almost always doomed to fail. But if creators open up their trick bag they might find something to spark their brains in new directions. [Caution: a lot of these ideas will lead in new and bad<\/em> directions. If executed poorly, they\u2019re nothing better than gimmicks, desperation moves, and Hail Mary passes.]<\/strong> But if they are used as springboards instead of formulas<\/em>, they deliver an alternative way forward, climbing past the dead end to bring old monsters back to life and keep things interesting.<\/p>\n

When I set out to write Fury From The Tomb<\/em><\/strong>, I wanted to write an adventure about an archaeologist and mummies. But I wasn\u2019t interested in hacking my way to a Universal monster circa the 1930s, or even the late 1990s. How did I start? My initial goal wasn\u2019t to write a book with the widest possible audience in mind. In fact my first audience was really, really small: just me. I wanted to write something to entertain myself. I did it for fun. But I take my fun seriously. I didn\u2019t start out with a template or any paint-by-the-numbers outlines. Instead, I had an image. In my mind I saw an Egyptian mummy walking in a Mexican desert. How did he get there? I didn\u2019t know. So I wrote my way to an answer to that question. I wanted the story to be historical rather than contemporary. I went back to the 1880s, well before the time of any Indiana Jones adventure. The setting and time period put my story in the American Old West. My favorite Western movies are spaghetti Westerns. A spaghetti Western vibe with mummies — that idea felt weird but fresh. I\u2019d never seen one of those before. But if I saw one on Netflix would I watch it? You bet I would.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Old Monster Needs a New Scene<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember Jason X<\/b><\/em>? The science fiction slasher put icon Jason Voorhees in space. It\u2019s better than some of the sequels, but worse than others. Maybe going into space was too big a leap for the hockey-masked machete aficionado. But the reason that movie comes up short isn\u2019t because it\u2019s in space. It\u2019s because nothing else changed. Our arguably best-loved monster, Dracula, likes to spread his wings. One big reason Dracula and vampires have survived and thrived in our cultural consciousness is because they got out of Transylvania. Whether it\u2019s London or Louisiana or \u2019Salem\u2019s Lot, changing setting has boosted the fanged bat\u2019s love bite.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bring in Some Other Baddies<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d argue that Aliens<\/strong><\/em> is the best monster sequel of all time. It works because a lot of aliens sounds scarier than just one. Alien<\/strong><\/em> was a haunted house movie in space. You\u2019re trapped and no one can hear you scream. But in Aliens<\/strong><\/em>, everyone can hear you scream only they can\u2019t help you because they\u2019re also dealing with an acid-for-blood tooth machine. Whether it\u2019s Graboids, Crawlers, Velociraptors, or kaiju, more is, if not merrier, then usually scarier. A good way to amp up the action is to put multiple monsters in play. Restraint is not advised. My mummies have ghouls, satanic cannibal monks, hopping vampires, and sandworms added in the mix.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Give Me a Hero (Team)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lone hero is a thing of the past. It\u2019s more dynamic and more believable to tackle monsters with a team effort. A group working together means more talents, more imperfections, and more inner conflict to go with the challenge of killing the unkillable. It means more characters for people to identify with and care about. From Star Wars<\/strong><\/em> to Star Trek<\/strong><\/em> to The Walking Dead<\/strong><\/em>, the team approach prevails. We have to learn to work together, and so do our heroes. Or are we our own worst enemies? Can we put aside our differences and learn to get along to beat the bigger threats we face? In Fury From The Tomb<\/strong><\/em>, I play off the Indiana Jones sidekicks by making them more than just sidekicks. My archaeologist is young, inexperienced, and in way over his head on his first expedition. He needs the help of a millionairess occult librarian, a young Chinese railroad worker, and a grizzled bounty hunter. This oddball artificial family takes a road trip pursuing stolen mummies into the Sonoran desert. How they learn to work side by side is almost as challenging as their battle with a bandaged sorcerer resurrected from his cursed tomb\u2026 almost.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Blend and Twist <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mixing genres injects life into tired conventional narratives. And it creates new space to work. For example, I really wanted to write a train robbery sequence. One of my favorite subgenres is train thrillers (Train To Busan<\/em>, Snowpiercer<\/em>, The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3<\/em>, Terror Train<\/em>, Horror Express<\/em>, Runaway Train<\/em>, The Great Train Robbery<\/em>, The Cassandra Crossing<\/em><\/strong>). Mixing elements of spaghetti westerns with horror gave me the chance to drop a bandito train robbery right in the middle of my mummy novel.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve left the most important trick for last. And it\u2019s not a trick at all. Any reinvention of a genre monster needs heart. It\u2019s not mechanical, it\u2019s human. Story rules. Without that secret ingredient, it\u2019s going to taste like Seth Brundle\u2019s (The Fly<\/strong><\/em>) steak.<\/p>\n

Fury From The Tomb by SA Sidor is published on 1 May from Angry Robot.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out the beautiful cover for SA Sidor’s Fury From The Tomb and find out how to give your monsters new life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":101193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1624,1718,3],"tags":[2247,5986,5987],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/FuryFromTheTomb_144dpi-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}