The Hydra is a many headed serpent of Greek
mythology who guards the entrance to the underworld. The hydra could be utilised in literary terms
as a metaphor for futility; when you cut of one of those heads, two sprout up
in their place.
That metaphor of futility, of blindly hacking at a
many-headed assailant, the actions of which only make the situation worse is an
apt one for writing a novel.
The original idea, the inspiration for writing a
prequel to Six Stories was the easy part. Premises tend to fall into my head at
the most unexpected moments (in this case whilst mopping the kitchen floor and
listening to a true crime podcast).
Then there was the structure, the six episodes,
the presenter and the bits in-between. That should have made it all easier,
right? Writing this would be a breeze.
Oh how indescribably wrong I was.
I don't plan. I never have. I mean, I have, but
it's killed the story before I can even be bothered to write it. I have huge
admiration for authors who can sit and plot, weaving intricate webs of plot
like assiduous literary spiders - perfecting their arcs before settling down to
fill the gaps with magic.
This above mess
was all I had to go on.
Don't worry,
there's no spoilers here - I only ended up using the first line. Actually, only
the first four words.
And the bit
about BEKS ... don't know what BEKs are? Don't worry ... you will ...
When I wrote Six
Stories, I had no idea who killed Tom Jeffries or why until I was half way
through episode 5. If I'd have decided beforehand, then it would have been no
fun to write. The same rule I imposed on Hydra ... except that with Hydra, we
know whodunit, we just don't know why.
My personal
circumstances were completely different this time around too. My wife and I had
separated the previous year and I was living on my own. Would this have any
bearing on my writing? I'd written Six Stories when we were still together.
So the
circumstances of the book were different, I was different and this book had to
be different too.
I imposed a few rules
on Hydra - the first being that it had to be, save for structurally, nothing
like Six Stories. There would be no moody landscape that I could hide in if the
process got difficult, I wanted this one to be about about motive. Hydra felt
like it came from a place of fury. Killing your family with a blunt instrument
is an expression of rage. That's where Hydra began and that was the path it had
to take. I had little choice in the matter. I never intended to write anything
more about Scott King and his podcast!
Then the final
rule (imposed by me and some stage in the process) that we'd also find out why
Scott King wears a mask.
Now there's a
couple of real true crime podcast presenters who hide their identities, one of
them even wears a mask! (I assure you, I only found out about him long after
Six Stories was published) and their
reasoning is pretty straightforward - they want the story to be the focus, not
themselves. That's what Scott King says; he says it a lot. But is it the truth?
It could be, I
suppose.
But where would
be the fun in that?
I wrote the
first draft Hydra in three months. Like most things I write, it gushes from my
brain like the pipe of a leaking toilet. The only time it stalled was when we
had to find out conclusively why Arla Macleod killed her entire family with a
hammer in the middle of the night. Not only that, there were a load of frayed
edges, a load of threads that hadn't been tied up, things that had to be
resolved. What on earth did BEKs have to do with it? They'd been there from the
start, they demanded to be let in. I remember wording whether a resolution
would come. If there were too many rules, too many heads to fight. Maybe I
simply couldn't write books anymore.
Yet just like in
Six Stories, the end announced itself when I least expected it.
As endings
sometimes do.
Hydra by Matt Wesolowski published by Orenda Books, January 15, 2018 Pbk £8.99
Before Scarfell
Claw, there was Hydra … One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the
north west of England, 26-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father
and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the
'Macleod Massacre'. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health
institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative
journalist, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation.
King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five
witnesses and Arla herself, as he questions whether Arla’s responsibility for
the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out. As he unpicks the
stories, he finds himself thrust into a world of deadly forbidden ‘games’,
online trolls, and the mysterious Black-eyed Children, whose presence extends
far beyond the delusions of a murderess …
No comments:
Post a Comment