{"id":13257,"date":"2011-01-05T12:20:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T11:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=13257"},"modified":"2011-01-05T13:55:28","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T12:55:28","slug":"witchfinder-william-hussey-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/witchfinder-william-hussey-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Witchfinder: William Hussey interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Your next book, Gallows At Twilight, follows on directly from Dawn Of The Demontide, doesn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, I\u2019m trying to ramp it all up really, take all of the things that worked in Dawn Of The Demontide and just make them a bit more epic. I don\u2019t want to give too much of the plot away, but you\u2019ve got time travel via Egyptian scarab beetles, there\u2019s zombie civil war soldiers and all kinds of nastiness like that, but I think basically it\u2019s just that kind of continuation of the story \u2013 we\u2019ve now got the Demonfather released from Hell, and he\u2019s trying to smash through dimensional barriers in order to bring his dark children to this world, and it\u2019s really up to this small band of fighters, led by Jake, to stop him. I think a lot of readers, once they\u2019ve finished Dawn Of The Demontide, think that they know the secret of Jake\u2019s identity and all that kind of stuff, but there\u2019s little clues peppered throughout the books, and I\u2019m just finishing up the last one now where all is revealed. That\u2019s not a very good plot summary, is it? I\u2019m awful at those. We ramp up the peril, though; in this one we discover that the British Government has been infiltrated by dark witches as well, and the Demonfather\u2019s witch is high up in there as well. It\u2019s looking a bit grim.<\/p>\n

Were you pleased with how the first was received?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it was brilliant. I was really pleased actually, because it was my first children\u2019s book, after doing a couple of adult horror books. When you do your first one \u2013 I did a lot of background research in terms of tone in children\u2019s horror \u2013 it\u2019s kind of like walking that line between being thrilling enough for the kids, but you\u2019re not stepping over the boundaries of what\u2019s acceptable. But what I found interesting when I did this research was how much you can push the horror envelope with kids\u2019 stuff now. I found it really refreshing \u2013 decapitations, the mass slaughter of children\u2019s families is fine now. But it was a brilliant reception and it\u2019s kind of gratifying because there was a point where I finished the first book and I thought brilliant, this is all working. Writers are generally a paranoid bunch, I call it the Emperor\u2019s New Clothes Syndrome, where I think even the most successful writer walks around thinking one day everyone will go, \u2018This isn\u2019t that good actually, and I will be exposed as being terrible.\u2019 But the reception has been wonderful.<\/p>\n

Is it a different experience from adult book promotional events, where you\u2019re just signing books?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well I do events with adult books, readers groups, and you can go through the whole event and not be sure whether the people in the room like what you\u2019ve written or not, because adults don\u2019t give anything away. Then they\u2019ll come up at the end and say they enjoyed it. But with kids\u2019 events, it\u2019s an honest, emotional event \u2013 if it\u2019s rubbish, they\u2019ll tell you straight away, but what\u2019s been gratifying is during readings I\u2019ll do a jump moment where I just scream at them about five minutes in, and they all jump out of their seats. And at the end where they\u2019re all whooping, you\u2019re not going to get that from adult events. That\u2019s what\u2019s great about writing kids\u2019 books \u2013 they\u2019re not going to go in-depth with analysing events and what works
\nand doesn\u2019t work, they just know.<\/p>\n

Witchfinder: Gallows At Twilight is on sale from 6 January priced \u00a36.99 courtesy of Oxford University Press. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Demontide author, William Hussey, on Witchfinder: Gallows At Twilight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13265,"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":[1624,7,140],"tags":[1635,1772,1770,1771],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/william.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}