I'm very pleased to welcome, friend and author, Gary Kruse ...

...to the blog today.  Hi, Gary and thanks for making time in your busy schedule to be here.  So, tell me, what is your current release?

GK  My new release is a supernatural mystery called Bleak Waters.
When the story opens, we meet Lily West, a young woman who is grieving her father’s suicide the previous summer.  Plagued by questions over why her seemingly happy, loving father took his own life, and by dark fears about how well she really knew her father, Lily finds a distraction in the arrival of Theo Sinclair.
Theo has come to Lily’s village on the Norfolk Broads searching for answers to an older mystery; the disappearance of Claire Baldwin twenty-five years earlier. Theo’s arrival stirs Lily’s long-buried ability to see the dead, and the deeper Theo and Lily dig, the stronger the visions get.
But it’s not just the dead that are awakening as hidden secrets are revealed and lies uncovered.  As the warnings of the villagers turn to threats, and then to violence, Lily is forced to choose what’s more important; protecting the father she loves, or finding the truth?
It’s out on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited now, with a paperback release due for summer 2023.
Plus, for keen-eyed readers, there’s also a Badlands easter egg hidden in the story.
AW   What first got you into writing and why?
GK  I’d always dabbled in writing stories since I was a child, but I started writing seriously after I saw the teen-horror film The Craft in the cinema when I was seventeen.  I’d seen the vampire film The Lost Boys a few weeks earlier, and when I came out of the cinema I started thinking about what would happen if the witches from The Craft met the Lost Boys and from there I started writing the stories that would make up my first novel, Blessed Be.
Funnily enough, my writing career has pretty much come full circle at this point because Trinity, my current work-in-progress is essentially a witches vs vampires tale, albeit a lot darker than Blessed Be ever was.
AW  You write dark thriller and horror stories.  Is it all imagination or do you do research?
It’s a mix of everything.  I’m very inspired by place; Badlands was inspired by the coastline around St. Agnes in North Cornwall while Bleak Waters was inspired by the area around Hickling and Potter Heigham on the Norfolk Broads.
With place, I tend to ask who might live in these places and what the existing conflicts may be.  But I also like the idea of strangers arriving in these places, so then I have to figure out the stranger’s motivation and who would have the most to lose from their arrival and the stories develop from there.
Then, if I come across interesting bits of folk lore (for example wrecker’s tunnels in Cornwall for Badlands, ghosts in the Norfolk Broads for Bleak Waters, Eastern European vampire mythology and witchcraft for Trinity, I try to weave those into the story too.

AW  What about other types of writing?  Have you dabbled with other genres of other forms of media - short stories/film/theatre/radio?
GK I’ve written flash fiction and short stories, and was fortunate enough to win the November 2021 edition of the Writer’s Forum magazine short story competition with my short story, Hope in the Dark.
AW  Famous authors such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing shed of your own?
GK  I’ve got a corner in my loft that is technically a writing area, but I hardly ever write there because most of my writing is done in local libraries, coffee shops and even the café in the local theatre during the lunch break from my day job.  I used to write on my commute on my mobile phone, but I work more locally these days so it’s all done on the laptop.
AW   And finally, what would your eight-year-old self think, and say about you and your achievements today?
GK  I think they’d be thrilled to see not one but TWO books out with their (my) name on them! When I was at primary school, we did a project where we had to write our own book and design a cover.  It had to be three chapters long, have a beginning, middle and end and was bound in card with treasury tags, with a cover image stuck on the front and a blurb on the back.  Best school project ever! Mine was a mystery about a yellow caravan.  I can’t remember the details, but I was reading a lot of Secret Seven books at that point so it would’ve had kids saving the day.
 
about the author … Gary Kruse is a writer of thriller and horror fiction about people on the edge of society struggling to find who they are, where they come from and where they’re going.  He has won and been shortlisted for several short story competitions and his debut dark thriller novel, Badlands, is an Amazon bestseller.

about the book … In the depths of winter, Theo Sinclair arrives in the Norfolk Broads
searching for answers to a twenty-five-year mystery; the disappearance of Claire Baldwin.
For Lily West, Theo’s arrival is a welcome distraction from her grief and the questions she still has over her father’s suicide the previous summer.
For others in her village, Theo’s arrival is a threat.
As lies are uncovered and long buried secrets dragged back into the light, Lily, now haunted by ghostly visions, starts to realise that Claire’s disappearance might be linked to her father’s suicide.
When the warnings and threats of the villagers turn to attempted murder, Lily has to decide what’s more important; protecting the people she loves…
…or uncovering the truth.
 
You can get the book Amazon and you can follow Gary on his page on Link Tree