Alex Bell – fantasy author

The dark gods and goddesses at Headline Towers have worked their magic to give you a sneaky peek into your future. Want to know whether great riches or great doom or great foolishness lie in store for you? Just go to http://www.lextrent.co.uk and play the Lex Trent game, if you dare. This is not a game for the faint of heart. These are guaranteed fates, guaranteed to come true, guaranteed.*

*Please note, that neither Alex Bell, nor the Headline Gods, can be held legally or morally responsible for any consequences, reasonably foreseen or otherwise, of someone’s reaction to learning their fate. These include, but are not limited to, unwise investment decisions, making premature funerary arrangements for oneself or for one’s friends, refusing to leave the house, or running away to sea or space in despair.

It seems hard to believe now that I never used to wear heels. I think I was frightened of them – frightened that I’d fall over, or that I wouldn’t be able to walk in them, or that the heel would snap as soon as I put my weight on it. I remember my friend at college sternly lecturing me when I was seventeen about the fact that I only ever wore ugly trainers. So, one day, I took the plunge and bought a pair of ankle boots. They had the smallest heel you could imagine but they seemed pretty daring to me at the time and I felt immensely proud of myself as I wobbled into college the next day.

I’ve moved on from that since then. I can even navigate heels when I’m drunk now – a fact of which I am immensely proud. At the Lex Trent launch party in October, I left the bar at 5am (4am if you count the clocks going back), and walked all the way back upstairs to my room in 10 cm heels without falling over once! That’s the mark of the true professional, that is. No more bruised knees for me (I’ll never forget the look of horror on the faces of my Mum and Aunt the time I got undressed at the spa only to give away that both my knees were black – an unfortunate consequence of trying to navigate a cobbled street in heels outside a pub after a night of drinking). Here is the fantastically named Jezebel shoe:

Yep, I’m a dab hand at the high heel thing now. I’ve got a weakness for a pretty shoe. It tends to play out like this:

But then, just as I’m reaching for my wallet to buy the shoes, I realise that they’re made of leather or suede or that they’re almost vegan but not quite because they have leather soles. And I have to put them back on the shelf and weep because my ethics prohibit me from buying the shoe no matter how pretty it is. So, for a long time after discovering my love of heels, I had to stick to ugly flat shoes because there were no pretty vegan heels. That’s not the case anymore, however. The Jezebel shoe above is entirely vegan and came from Dune, which is a great place to find dressy animal-friendly heels. I also got the shoes for my Jasmyn party there, as blogged about here.

Sadly, many of my shoes have met a messy end since I got my Great Dane (sob! I had to learn to keep my shoes away from her the hard way) but one of my favourite pairs to have survived Moose are these Vivienne Westwood Melissa Lady Dragon heels, made entirely from rubber plastic that smells like bubblegum:

And then, of course, there is Beyond Skin, which makes the best selection of the most beautiful vegan shoes I have ever seen anywhere. I have never seen an ugly shoe on their website.

I went to a baby shower last weekend and was going to buy a babygro or something but then I found these:

A teeny tiny pair of Ugg lookalike booties. So, so cute. I couldn’t stop taking them out of the bag and looking at ‘em once I got home. And whilst browsing the Vivienne Westwood website today I found these:

Are they not gorgeous? The Vivienne Westwood Mini Melissa. I feel like I must have a baby at once in order to be able to buy these shoes. Still, perhaps that’s taking the love of high heels just a little bit too far. Splashing out a week’s wages or suffering from toe blisters is one thing – a proportionate sort of sacrifice. Getting knocked up for the sake of a shoe is probably in a different league of shoe obsession altogether. A slippery slope into madness, no less. And if you’re going to go crazy then it ought rightly to be for reasons a bit more lofty and impressive than the love of a baby Viv Westwood shoe, no matter how fabulous it is.

As part of our ongoing plan to Take Over the World, I have recently read fellow Chainsaw Sam Enthoven’s book Crawlers:

The cover, I believe, tells you what you most of what you need to know about the book – there’s a dreadful, spidery thing attached to his neck! Arghh! Nightmare-inducement commenced! Crawlers is the story of four boys and four girls who find themselves trapped in the Barbican Theatre when a horde of these horrible, squidgy, slimy Crawlers (and Mr Enthoven is immensely skilled at describing, in exquisite detail, just how nasty these things are) descend upon the building. Once attached to the back of the neck of the people there, they are able to control them and make them do their bidding zombie-style. Thus a kindly teacher trying to help the protaganists one minute might be trying to bash their heads in the next. And the real killer of it is that the Crawlers don’t have to attach themselves to a person’s neck. Meaning that anyone in the theatre, no matter how normal they might appear, might have a Crawler on them somewhere – which makes for a lot of mounting paranioa within the group.

The action is all confined to a theatre, which is very well-utilised as a creepy Doom-esque setting - disconcertingly quiet and deserted when it shouldn’t be. This also contributes to the increasingly claustophobic atmosphere, especially as the paranoia and terror mounts. In parts it’s almost a little bit reminiscent of a classic Twilight Zone episode: ‘ Four boys and four girls are on a trip to the theatre. Little do they know that they will never see the play. They’re about to be plunged into a nightmare. Beneath the theatre lies a secret. And now she has been released…’ There’s also a good dash of classic horror films, video games and old-school Goosebumps in the mix as well. This is a very visual book that feels more like a film – in an enjoyably, toe-curling horrible, way. If you like your horror creepy, freaky, fast-paced and a little bit gross, then Crawlers is definitely the book for you.

This is Sam, looking rather sinister:

And here’s his take on the Chainsaw questions:

1. What’s your favourite book?

No: impossible. The effort of narrowing it down to one would make blood
hose out of my eyeballs. But I’ve listed my favourite five hundred at
www.librarything.com/profile/othersam if that’s any help.

2. What’s your favourite monster?

The Thing, from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Everything after the husky’s
muzzle peels like a banana: now. /that/’s a monster.

3. Who’s your favourite bad-ass monster slayer?

Monkey’s been kicking &rse in China since the sixteenth century and he
shows no signs of stopping now. Have you played Enslaved: Odyssey to the
West? That transplants him and his story to a post-apocalyptic future
USA. Monkey fits right in, smacking robots instead of demons, just as if
he’s lived there all his life.

4. If you could make a pact with the Devil, what would you want in exchange for your immortal soul?

The original Sam Enthoven, the fool, swapped his paltry soul for mine
long ago. We wrote a story about it, you can read if you like, here:
www.theblacktattoo.com/thenewdeal.html

5. The Chainsaw Gang are all trapped on a desert island with no food. Who would you eat first and why?

I would eat myself: a leg first I think – mine are reasonably well
toned. I don’t like strange meat, and it doesn’t come much stranger than
The Chainsaw Gang.

Finally, if you haven’t heard about it already, we’re offering one lucky winner the chance to win a complete set of latest signed books from every single one of the Chainsaw Gang in our Blog Tour Competition. 

Here’s how it works:

To win the Chainsaw Library you need to score votes. Each vote goes into a vast hat at the end of the competition and one winning name will come out. The great thing is you can enter per blog: that’s nine chances to win! So make sure you visit each and every blog on the tour. Votes are scored as follows:

+1 if you link the blog/website to yours

+2 if you stick our Chainsaw banner up somewhere

+1 if you’re a Facebook fan/friend – here’s the link to my fan page.

+1 if you comment on this blog post

+1 if you reTweet this competition.

+1 if you follow us on Twitter – here’s a link to my twitter page 

The closing date of the competition is Friday 5^th November and the competition is open to UK residents only.

Finally, the Chainsaw Gang will be out in force at the Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival tomorrow. Myself, Sam Enthoven, Jon Mayhew, Alexander Gordon Smith, Steve Feasey, Alex Milway and Sarwat Chadda will all be there so come along and say hello to us if you can. We don’t bite. Much.

I have a longstanding adoration for Basil Rathbone, not just because he is – very probably – the sexiest man who’s ever lived, but also because I love his performance as Sherlock Holmes:

I have a box set of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films Rathbone made with Nigel Bruce between 1939-1946, and it is the most oft-watched box set I own. House of Fear and Terror by Night are my all time favourites, and I have watched both those films over and over again.

For many people, Jeremy Brett is the definitive Sherlock Holmes and it is, indeed, the case that the Brett version is far more true to the books than the Rathbone one. Rathbone’s Holmes is warmer – there is no evidence of a cocaine addiction, or much in the way of Holmes’s depressive nature. Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes lacks the cold asceticism Jeremy Brett brings to the part. These films are done with a much lighter touch, and there is much more of a sense of very close friendship between Holmes and Watson:

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the Jeremy Brett version – I do, very much, and have the box sets for that one as well, but I would not be able to watch them over and over again the way I do with the Basil Rathbone ones. This is partly because the Rathbone films have a much greater air of nostalgia. Most of them are set in “modern day” – meaning the 1940’s, which, I think, gives them a sort of sophisticated elegance that the Victorian setting lacks. Plus the fact that they’re filmed in black and white, which makes them even more effective, especially in the spookier films, such as The Scarlet Claw.

Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes may not be as cold and clinical as Arthur Conan Doyle’s original, but he is still a master of deduction, and ferociously intelligent (you can tell just by looking at him!):

Inspector Lestrade and Dr Watson are both portrayed as bumbling – if good natured – fools in these films which, of course, is not accurate to the books, but allows for plenty of fine, surprisingly understated, comic moments. There is also the odd bit of accidental comedy when the story runs into the most delicious melodrama that seems quite over the top by today’s standards but - I won’t lie - I love a bit of thunder and lightning, and villainous laughs, and da da da theme music from time to time.

In short, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films may not be the most accurate portrayal, but I think they bring something very special to the stories in terms of style, warmth, cosiness and nostalgia.

Anyway – what sparked this blog post was that it was my birthday yesterday and my lovely Mum bought me a Basil Rathbone bracelet and matching necklace from the utterly fabulous Alternative Boo Teek (for whom I have already expressed my love here):

How unbelievably cool? The photos really don’t do these pieces justice – they’re both literally stuffed with all manner of ghoulish charms – but they are totally gorgeous and combine two of my favourite things – Basil Rathbone and the macabre. Jewellery doesn’t get any better than this.  

And – because it’s beyond awesome – here’s a snap of my birthday cake, lovingly baked for me by my Mum. As anyone who knows their nursery rhymes will recognise, it is the notorious pie from sing a song of sixpence:

Yes, indeed, one of the only things that can come close to Basil Rathbone + macabre, is cake + macabre. Where possible, I always prefer my birthday cake to be just a little bit macabre, ghoulish, sinister or otherwise disturbing.

Regular readers of my blog will know that about once a year I grudgingly praise another writer’s work. I do not like to do it too often because I am greedy and grasping, and I despise the thought of people out there spending hard-earned money on books that were not penned by me. But every now and then, I enjoy reading a book so much that it enables me to rise above my natural, in-built pettiness.

So, up next is Tome of the Undergates – from the Next Big Thing ™, Mister Sam Sykes:

I think we can all agree that this cover is wicked, and the man on it is sexy as anything, and the water is . . . well . . . sort of mesmerising. It’s also a very big book (600 pages plus), and, as Amanda at Floor to Ceiling Books has already pointed out, if you were so inclined, you could, feasibly, beat a man to death with this thing. I don’t like to put it too close to any of my books because it makes me feel insecure, and I start wondering whether my efforts are just novellas, rather than actual novels . . .

Anyway, there are, basically, three main reasons why I love Tome:

1. The monsters. Heretofore (eek! I just said ‘heretofore’! The ol’ legal training creeps in when you least expect it!) – heretofore, I would have said that the estimable Chris Wooding was the undisputed king of fantasy monsters, but now I would have to say that Chris and Sam are pretty much on a level with each other on this, for there are several really cracking monsters in Tome. I don’t want to give any juicy details away, but the highlight for me were the Omens – these creepy monsters with bodies of birds, and heads of old women who parrot the words of dying men.
2. I have a special soft spot for characters who are at least a little bit mad/unstable/unhinged etc. Anyone who’s read The Ninth Circle will know this to be true (see what I did there? Sneakily got the post back onto my books, ah ha). And Lenk, who is the leader (in the loosest sense) of the mismatched band of adventurers in Tome, is haunted by a voice inside his head that only he can hear. More often than not, this urges him on to greater bloodshed and so on. It’s not clear where this voice comes from, or what its purpose is, but I’m an absolute sucker for this sort of internal conflict.
3. The similes. I know it seems a bit of an odd thing to highlight, but they really jumped out at me all the way through the book. From now on, I might have to refer to Sam as the King of Similes (he is, after all, yet to be christened by me with an appropriate nickname). I’ve never complimented an author on similes before – that’s how freakin’ great they are.

In addition, I think I would probably enjoy any adventure story that involved a rich fantasy world; a band of companions who are constantly at each other’s throats; and a heck of a lot of blood and gore. It’s true: I like my fantasy novels to be just a little bit filthy (hence my gushing love for anything written by Mr Abercrombie).

So for anyone looking for a thoroughly entertaining read, I would whole-heartedly recommend Tome. Sam is also an active Twitterer (is this a word?), but please don’t follow him because he already has more Twitter followers than me, despite having been around for only a fraction of the time, and that just isn’t right. Perhaps if I made my tweets a bit angrier, I would get a sudden influx of followers . . . ?

Finally, and most vitally, I must add that whilst Mr Sykes may write books that practically eclipse mine in size, my dog could eat his dog in one bite, because Moose is a Great Dane, and Sam is the owner of a teensy-tiny, ludicrously adorable pug by the name of Otis who, I believe, is soon to feature on the shiny new Gollancz blog.

Tome is released in the UK on 15th April, available in all good bookstores, etc etc.