I love to travel, I love to see the world. For me it’s an
essential part of writing, because those experiences widen your mind and bring
so much depth to your work. But with a whole planet out there it’s easy to
overlook the place you call home, so this is a cool opportunity to appreciate
everything that’s great about the world outside my own window!
There’s so much I love about the UK, and about my home
county of Norfolk. I wasn’t sure whether to write about the history, the
literary heritage, the people, the landscapes, the spirit of adventure, the
fact that Norwich has just been made England’s first ever UNESCO City of
Literature. In the end I decided to try to fit it all in! And I thought I’d
start with one of my favourite book series of all time, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows
and Amazons.
I honestly can’t remember whether I read these books before
I visited the Norfolk Broads and the Lake District, or whether I read them
because we used to holiday in both those locations when I was a kid. All I know
is that in my head the fiction and the reality are one and the same. I must
have been eight or nine, and it was the first time I really understood that the
adventures people had in books could actually be found in my own life.
Some of my most vivid memories are of going out on a boat on
the Broads and exploring, just like the Callums. Or hacking my way through the
woods and leaping the streams of the Lake District like the crews of the
Swallow and the Amazon. Of course there were no real dangers, but in my head
anything was possible. The world was full of pirates and thieves, buried
treasure and abandoned caves, mysteries and murder. Every second I spent
outside with my sister and our friends we felt as if we were inside a story of
our own making, a story where anything could happen. It was fiction, and it was
reality, and it was fantastic.
I’d started writing a few years earlier – it’s the only
thing I’ve ever wanted to be – but up till now I had penned crazy tales of
space travel and monsters. By letting my imagination roam free across the Lakes
and Broads I realised that adventures didn’t need to take place in far off
lands or distant planets. They could happen right under your nose. The stories
I wrote after I’d read these books were often based in similar locations. They
weren’t inspired by childish flights of fancy, they were inspired by my own
experiences. Obviously they weren’t actual experiences, but to me those
adventures felt as real as if everything in my imagination had been completely
genuine. The breathless excitement, the wonder, the occasional moments of fear,
the sense that absolutely anything was possible, it all fed into my writing,
bringing those stories to life in a way that they never had been before.
I think I learned one of my most valuable lessons as a writer
back then, that it’s always best to experience the world of your story as
vividly as possible when you’re writing. The lives of your characters and the
places they visit. It’s something I’ve done ever since. When I was eleven, and
I decided I wanted to write horror, I tried to spend the night in a haunted
house (and lasted seven minutes before running out screaming and puking). Now,
if I can, I’ll always try to spend time in a place that I’m writing about, or
at least visit it. It really does help bring the story to life. It’s still an
excuse to make my own life an adventure too. Because wherever I am – in far-flung
lands or down the road – I can let my imagination wander. Just like when I was
a kid, anything becomes possible.
There’s also the incredible history of the UK – the real
history, and the myths and legends that are tied in with it. There are
thousands of years of stories in every city, every town, every stretch of
countryside. You can barely walk ten paces without spotting castles and barrows
and ruins. Spending time in these places, walking in the footsteps of your
ancestors, you can’t help but come up with stories of your own. Your head is
full of them, like the dead are shouting at you. It’s actually where I had the
inspiration for the terrifying secrets behind the prison in my series Escape
From Furnace. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s the idea of
something lying dormant in the ground, something ancient and evil that has
seeped up through the cracks in the world, something part history and part
legend. Even this most unthinkable of horror stories was inspired by the real
world where I live.
I don’t visit the Lakes so much any more, although I’d love
to go back there one day. I’m on the Broads all the time, though – in fact
we’re shooting a horror movie there next year – and every time I visit I think
back to when I was a kid, those first real adventures I had and the stories
that they inspired. I think it’s where the writer in me was born. And I’ll
always be grateful to the UK. We may be a small country compared to some, but I
honestly think that what we lack in width we make up for in depth! It’s a land
of stories, through and through.
Imagine if one day, without warning, the entire human race turns against you.Every single person you meet becomes a bloodthirsty, mindless savage, hell-bent on killing you – and only you.
Friends, family, even your mum and dad, will turn on you. They will murder you.
And when they have, they will go back to their lives as if nothing has happened.
The world has the Fury.
It will not rest until you are dead.
Cal, Brick and Daisy are three ordinary teenagers whose lives suddenly take a terrifying turn for the worst. They begin to trigger a reaction in everybody they meet, one that makes friends and strangers alike turn rabid whenever they are close. One that makes people want to tear them to pieces
Cal and the other victims of the Fury – the ones that survive – manage to locate each other. But just when they think they have found a safe place to hide from the world, some of them begin to change...
They must fight to uncover the truth about the Fury before it's too late. But it is a truth that will destroy everything they know about life and death.
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Author bio
Alexander Gordon Smith is the author of the Escape from Furnace series of young adult novels, including Lockdown and Solitary. Born in 1979 in Norwich, England, he always wanted to be a writer. After experimenting in the service and retail trades for a few years, Smith decided to go to University. He studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and it was here that he first explored his love of publishing. Along with poet Luke Wright, he founded Egg Box Publishing, a groundbreaking magazine and press that promotes talented new authors. He also started writing literally hundreds of articles, short stories and books ranging from Scooby Doo comic strips to world atlases, Midsomer Murders to X-Files. The endless research for these projects led to countless book ideas germinating in his head. His first book, The Inventors, written with his nine-year-old brother Jamie, was published in the U.K. in 2007. He lives in England.
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