Matthew Samuels's Blog

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that Small Places, my new urban fantasy novel, is available for pre-order, ahead of its launch on Amazon on August 3rd. Small Places joins Jamie, a boy living in a country village, as he runs an errand for a friend of the family to collect medicine from a witch, Melusine, who lives in a hidden forest in the countryside.

Thirteen years later, strange earthquakes and storms are wracking Britain, Jamie’s parents have separated and his mother is suffering from cancer. He returns home to look after her, but receives a mysterious summons from Melusine. Figuring that if she needs him, she may be willing to help his mother, he meets with the witch, learning that the freak weather is being caused by something affecting the earth spirit, Gaia. Mel needs his help to find the source of the problems – and this means travelling to the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, hunting down clues, whilst simultaneously putting up with the irritable witch and dealing with his mum’s terminal illness.

It’s been an instructional (read: slightly painful) process, but I’m thrilled that it’s finally here. Looking back at the process, I finished the first draft on New Year’s Eve of 2019, and ran through preliminary edits by March … and then the pandemic happened and things *really* slowed down. Beta readers enjoyed it, but I did a relatively major re-write after my chief editor (and long-suffering partner) suggested a tweak that affected the entire book. Nonetheless, it’s a better book because of it, and thanks to the changes, we (most significantly) get to meet Jamie’s mum, which also affected a hundred and one other things throughout the book – including the ending!

As ever, you can see the content and trigger warnings on my site – please do consult them prior to reading, or get in touch if you have further questions.

If you’d like a review copy, please do get in touch – the kindle versions are ready for pre-order, and the paperbacks will be ready soon; I had a proof through today and they just need a little tweak. There’ll be a blog tour running with Storytellers on Tour from the 1st August, and merch, goodies and other bits and pieces are also in the works – so stay tuned!

Parasites is about hope, adventure and found family, which are perhaps the three of the most important things in the world to me. It’s a science fiction novel in the genres of solarpunk and hopepunk; it takes place towards the very end of the universe, when the very fabric of space itself is cooling and contracting.

It follows two explorers, Kael and Alessia, in their exploration of thinnings: patches where two universes rub together, overlapping and allowing travel between worlds in different places. The discovery of thinnings has allowed the people on their resource-poor planet, Lyra, to survive and colonise other places in other universes.

Alessia’s father, also an explorer, died two years prior to the start of the novel, on a mission that – until now – she knew nothing about. But when Kael and Alessia find a message hinting at a ‘solution’ to the problems of the universe, she jumps at the chance to follow in his footsteps and uncover the secrets of the past, recruiting Basteel, a family friend and their bodyguard, to keep them safe.

Parasites is set across a weird and (hopefully) wonderful set of places; planets and space stations with their own cast of creatures and hazards. It’s a journey with friends.

I’m conflicted as to whether Parasites is YA: the protagonists are in their mid to late twenties, but the narrative is also fairly straightforward. It’s on the verge of being hard sci-fi, but my background in the sciences is flimsy to say the least: let’s just say that I’ve tried to make it accessible, which is something that runs through my fantasy books as well. There are no long lineages of characters to remember, no geography to memorise, no large casts, no tough scientific things to get your head around. There’s technology and magic, but it’s my aim to explain it all in a simple way that allows you to just be immersed in the story.

You can read more about the book using Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature. If you’re concerned about trigger content, you can find a list of trigger and content warnings for all of my books on bit.ly/bad-stuff.

You can also keep up with me and what I’m up to on this blog, my twitter feed, my website (www.theabditory.co.uk) and (less frequently!) my Instagram page.

One last thing – if you were hoping this book was something to do with the Oscar-winning Korean film, I apologise – but I hope that I’ve piqued your interest!

I would like to be a full-time author, but that's not really why I write.

I've been working full-time for a long time now, and I'm pretty aware than 'J.K. Rowling syndrome' can be a dangerous thing. Thankfully, there are a lot of authors out there who are pretty up-front about how writing as a career can often ... well, it sucks financially.

I remember reading a blog post from the incredible Steph Swainston, essentially admitting that she was going back to be a chemistry teacher because writing was too stressful and insufficiently rewarding, financially. And I remember thinking: if this insanely electric writer can't make it, then what hope does anyone have?

But I'm still writing. And it's a little like that scene in the first alien movie: something needs to get out. I have an Evernote folder full of inspiration snippets, but there are some that revolve around in my head, joining other ideas, and then essentially demand to be planned and written.

There's also the element of world creation; I was quite a big fan of the Myst series (although spoilers: I'm quite bad at puzzles) and love the idea of Atrus just sitting there, writing away and literally making worlds for people. I love that so much.

I suppose it's an intensely personal reason as to why anyone writes, but I think those are my big two. Now I've reminded myself of how much I adore Steph Swainston's work and I'm off to buy the novella of hers that I've been putting off for a while...

I don’t know many writers who don’t love to read, and every writer has their own favourite list of books. I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, although not exclusively.

When I was growing up, I definitely had ‘favourite’ books, one or two novels that I’d read obsessively. These days I have a longlist of old (and new) friends – here’s a few of them:

Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks. Absolutely my favourite Banks, although closely followed by the Algebraist. I know most people love The Culture novels, but I’ve got a huge soft spot for these

The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston. Jant is one of my all time (I initially wrote ‘all tine’) characters and some of Swainston’s writing is just incredible.

The Treason’s Heir series by Jacqueline Carey. I loved the first Kushiel set, and it took me two reads to really get into the second – but somehow, Imriel is a more interesting character to me than Phedre, although I do love that she’s still in the trilogy.

Spiritwalk by Charles de Lint. I was brought up on Narnia as a kid, so to find a grown-up, urban fantasy with incredible characters, bikers, guns, drinking, friendship, love and deep magic … it blew me away.

Transformation by Carol Berg. While the second and third books in the trilogy aren’t quite as good, this book got me through a pretty tough time – and Seyonne’s journey from slave back to soulwarden is very deftly done.

Memoirs of a Dangerous Alien by Maggie Prince. Ok, so it’s a kid’s book, but I once read this three times in succession because I didn’t want to leave the world she’d created. Needs a re-read.

The Galactic Mileu Series, by Julian May. I love May’s blend of forward-looking sci-fi, human commentary and spirituality – her characters are brilliant, her observations completely on point, and her narrative very, very compelling.

Wolf in Shadow by David Gemmell (closely followed by Winter Warriors). Pretty much all of Gemmell’s work is spectacular, but WiS is just the most striking, memorable, poignant journey.

That’s just a small selection from my bookshelf – I might have to do a second part later, as I’ve definitely missed a few friends here and there…

I feel a lot of pressure when naming things. In the early stages of writing, I tend to change names quite a bit until they really ‘take root’. Characters are particularly bad; if I make a mistake, I’ll have to write this character’s name for another 100,000 words. What if it doesn’t suit them? What if it just sounds silly?

Thankfully, Kael and Alessia (from Parasites) seemed to ‘fit’ quite nicely. Alhambro sounds suitably respectable (and vaguely piratical) and Basteel is such a solid-sounding name that I was happy with it straightaway. I generally felt that the Lyrans were a pretty straightforward people, so that (in general) shorter names were pretty practical. There aren’t a lot of them left, so why bother with long, flowery names (none of them have middle names, for example).

I initially had a few issues with naming the characters in Wild Court – more on this closer to release. I find places a bit easier and take inspiration from a lot of different sources; the logic-defying space station in Parasites, Carthusian, is from the wonderfully named Carthusian Street near the Barbican in London (and does originally refer to a religious order, rather fittingly).

The ‘dull’ planet names in Parasites were something of a relief to me – it’s terribly convenient that the explorers of Lyra chose such boring labels! But again, they work and make sense to me and perhaps more importantly, to the wider plot of a very logical, time-poor people.

I guess all writers have hang-ups; I’ve always found the first paragraph of anything the hardest, so will sometimes skip it, write the second onwards and take the pressure off (and then come back to write it once I’m in the flow). It sounds bizarre, but sometimes that first paragraph just gets stuck in your head and doesn’t quite want to come out!