Excerpt: “What the devil is happening … ? ” The voice exuded fear before the radio transformed itself into hiss and died. A few seconds later, another different voice more or less said the same thing before it too faded. Darinko this time was listening. “My goodness that was Tarly ’s voice, he must ’ ve run into a problem! ” Tarly finally collapsed into the powerful embrace of an unspeakable something that began to drag him backwards toward a hole in the ground. He twisted, kicked, struck out with his fists, to no effect. He was held tightly and dragged deeper into the hole. In the backsplash of light coming through the hole, then in the rapidly dimming beam of his discarded flashlight, Tarly saw a bit of the thing had him in its grasp. Not much. Fragments looming out of the shadows, then vanishing into darkness again. He saw just enough to make his bowels and bladder loosen. It was lizardlike. But not a lizard. Insect. But not an insect. It whaled and mewled and snarled. It snapped and tore at his thermal suit as it pulled him along. It had cavernous jaws and teeth. A double row of razor-edge spikes. It had claws, and it was huge, and its eyes were smoky red with elongated pupils as black as the bottom of a grave. It had scales of skin, and two horns, thrusting from its brow above its baleful eyes, curving out and up, as sharply pointed as daggers. A snout redder than a nose, a snout that oozed snot. A forked tongue that flickered in and out and in and out across all dim deadly fangs, and something that looked like the stinger on a wasp or maybe a pincer. It dragged Tarly further into the hole. He clawed at the rocks, desperately seeking something to hold on to, but he only succeeded in abrading away the fingers and palms of his gloves. He felt the cool underground air on his hands. It dragged him into the tunnel of darkness. Then stopped, and held him tightly before tearing at his suit. It cracked his helmet. It pried at his plexiglass faceplate. It was after him as if he were a delicious morsel of nutmeat in a hard shell. His hold on sanity was tenuous at best, but he struggled to keep his wits about him, tried to understand. At first, it seemed to him that this was a prehistoric creature, something millions of years old that had somehow dropped through a time warp and out in front of him. But that was crazy. The beast tore away most of his decontamination suit. It was on him now, pressing hard, a cold and disgustingly slick thing that seemed to pulse and somehow to change when it touched him. Tarly, gasping and weeping, suddenly remembered an illustration in an old catechism text. A drawing of a demon. That was what this was. Like the drawing. Yes, exactly like it. The horns. The dark, forked tongue. The red eyes. A demon risen from Hell. And then he thought: No, no; that's crazy, too! And all the while that those thoughts raced through his mind, the ravenous creature stripped him and pulled his helmet almost completely apart. In the unrelieved darkness, he sensed its snout pressing through the halves of the broken helmet, toward his face, sniffing. He felt its tongue fluttering against his mouth and nose. He smelled a vague but repellent-odour, like nothing he had ever smelled before. The beast gouged at his belly and thighs, and then he felt a strange and brutally painful fire eating into him; acid fire. He writhed, twisted, bucked, strained-all to no avail. Tarly heard himself cry out in terror and pain and confusion: "It's the Devil, it's the Devil!" He realized he had been shouting and screaming things almost continuously, from the moment he had been dragged down the hole. Now, unable to speak as the flameless fire burned his lungs to ash and churned into his throat, he prayed in a silent singsong chant, warding off fear and death and the terrible feeling of smallness and worthlessness that had come over him …
Would you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
Everything has to start from somewhere.. even an author has to begin with that first paragraph before molding it into an art. I typed my first paragraph at the age of nine on my dads typewriter for my next door neighbors dad after he’d asked me to say something in a sports column. He was so impressed that he gave me the column for quite a while.
Which book or books are you currently promoting?
The book I am presently promoting is Anomaly.
How did you come up with the idea for this book ?
The idea I came up with originally when I was twelve. It is a book I started seven years ago.
What can you tell us about your main characters?
The characters are all scientists.
What made you decide to become a writer?
Writing is something that I have always done from a very young age.
Do you have a general idea of what direction you want the plot to take ahead of time? Yes, most definitely.
Have you ever had second doubts about a story you’ve written?
No
What other projects are you currently working on?
I am presently completing a compilation of short stories. Two novels are in their final stages and I have nine more novels in a variety of stages of completion.
How long have you been writing?
Forty years.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us that we have not already covered?
My next novel is called The Tower. I am a musician coming from a very musical family.
Tell me something about yourself that might be funny to others? (other than writing)
I once went to a general meeting. There must have been two hundred people present there. The spokesman was quite boring and quite honestly didn’t stop talking. I am pretty good at imitating and so I started to mimic him. At precisely that moment, he stopped talking and everyone in the meeting turned around and looked at me.
Tell us something that you did that might be considered dangerous.
When I was younger I went to catch a train and I was mugged at knifepoint. They took whatever I had on me.
What is your day job?
I teach English.
Tell us the worst criticism that you’ve received about your book.
Up until now, I haven’t received any bad criticism.
What advice would you want to give other writers?
Only to keep at it and never give up. Write whatever you feel, whatever you see.. try and see it from a different perspective then write what you see. Write your feelings, what you smell and taste.
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