Booksquawk
interviews The Wolves of Langabhat author D.A. Watson.
Interview
by Hereward L.M. Proops
Booksquawk: Tell us
a little bit about yourself.
D.A. Watson: Well
I’m pushing forty, I live in the Inverclyde area with my family, and I’ve been
doing this writing thing seriously for about four years now. I was doing a
music and digital media degree at Glasgow Uni, and showed an early unfinished
draft of my first novel to Louise Welsh, who was writer in residence at the
time. She thought I had something, and told me I had to finish it. So it was self-published
on Amazon after being knocked back by just about every publisher and agent in
the UK. It still seemed to go down well with folks though, so I wrote the The Wolves of Langabhat, landed a
literary agent and got it published. When I’m not scribbling, I work in an
office, play guitar with my band Remembering Joone, and enjoy reading, Mexican
food, Candy Crush, and Nerf battles with my five-year-old son.
B: Viking
werewolves is a great concept. Where did the idea behind “The Wolves of
Langabhat” originate?
D.A.: I like
to base my stories on existing folklore, and I found the story about the wolf
men of Loch Langabhat on a paranormal database of the UK. As I’ve never
actually been to Lewis, I figured I should find out about the place, and it
turned out there’d been a lot of Viking activity back in the day on the island,
which is always a good jumping off point for violence. I wanted to do something
different with the whole werewolf mythology, and when I was researching Vikings
and berserkers, I found all the stuff about King Harald’s Ulfhednar and the
wolf god Fenrir, and it all just fell into place.
Booksquawk: Werewolves
don’t get as much attention as zombies or vampires. Are there any werewolf
movies or books that influenced you?
D.A.: Hell
yeah. I grew up watching An American
Werewolf in London and The Howling,
which are still brilliant films. Dog
Soldiers is also a firm favourite. Book-wise, The Howling III : Echoes was the first horror novel I ever bought
with my own money when I was about ten. I also love Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf trilogy, and there’s some tremendous
David Gemmell fantasy novels featuring weaponised lycanthropes and
ultra-violent battle scenes. They were definitely an influence.
Booksquawk: “The
Wolves of Langabhat” is quite a lengthy novel, particularly for a horror story.
How long did it take to write?
D.A.: I
think it was a little over a year to get the first draft done, then about another
two in re-writes and edits.
Booksquawk: Writing
convincing action is a real challenge for many authors. The novel is chock-full
of great action sequences - do you have any tips for writers who struggle with
this?
D.A.: Learn
from the masters. I’m a fan of good up-close and detailed action scenes, and
guys like Joe Abercrombie, Richard Laymon, David Gemmell and Dean Koontz should
all be studied. Simon Scarrow’s Roman novels are also required reading for anyone
who wants to know how to write a really good and brutal battle scene. You could
also actually act out some of the movements to get the mechanics right. I found
myself jumping about the room, locked in mortal combat with imaginary enemies
quite a few times while writing this story. Anyone passing by the window must
have thought I was mental.
Booksquawk: Was it
a challenge to write a book with a real location that you haven’t visited?
D.A.: Well,
that’s where Google Earth came in handy. I spent a lot of time virtually flying
around the Isle of Lewis, watching videos and looking at pictures of the place.
From the feedback I’ve had, it seems like I did a decent job. Go, technology!
Booksquawk: The
book’s ending leaves plenty of scope for a sequel. Have you considered writing
another werewolf book?
D.A.: Maybe
a short story, but I’ve no plans at the moment to write another werewolf novel.
Got other fish to fry.
Booksquawk: Do you
have a particular routine for writing?
D.A.: Having
a full time job and a family makes it tricky to get any real writing time in,
so my creative process really just involves waiting until everyone in the house
goes to bed and staying up way too late, hoping to get a thousand words down.
Booksquawk: What
other writers inspire you?
D.A.: Other
than the guys namedropped above, The King, of course, who’s just the man, and
his boy Joe Hill’s not too shabby either. Some of my other favourites are
Irvine Welsh, Christopher Brookmyre, Wilbur Smith, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon
and Adam Nevill. Joe Donnelly, a little known Scottish writer who wrote some brilliant
horror novels, is probably the one who inspired me to try my hand at writing,
as his stories are set in the area where I grew up.
Booksquawk: Have
you got any other books in the pipeline?
D.A.: My
first novel In the Devil’s Name, has
finally found a publisher and the new edition’s just gone live on Amazon. The
launch night’s at Waxy O’Connors in Glasgow on the 25th August if
anyone’s around! I also just started writing the epilogue of my third novel Cuttin Heads, a supernatural rock n roll
story. After that, I’ve got a few short story ideas I want to get down, and the
next big project with be either a post-apocalyptic screenplay called The Shift, that’s been started, or a
horror/fantasy/western revenge novel, which in my head is currently titled Adonias Low and features a badass bounty
hunter out to violently right some wrongs.
Read the review of The Wolves of Langabhat here.
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