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Comprising of 23 short horror stories, it was at large inspired by the prolific catalogue of American author Stephen King. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have a general pull towards it. I immersed myself in horror as a child, and it\u2019s just my natural drawcard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love building suspense\u2026 building a world and turning it upside down on the reader. I want to take them on a ride, and at the end of it I want to throw them out of the carriage. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want them to think \u2018what the hell just happened?\u2019, which means many of the stories in Face The Music don\u2019t have the typical happy ending that people expect.\u201d <\/p>\n
The trouble for any writer, once published, is thinking ahead. A new storyline, new characters, new twists and turns \u2013 the thought of it is overwhelming, particularly for a horror author. <\/p>\n
But Mark said he finds enjoyment in the process. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t do small talk, I like to get to know people and their little idiosyncrasies, which can inspire characters. It inspires me to come up with ideas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love getting into people\u2019s heads and playing with them, so to speak. <\/p>\n
\u201cIdeas come at strange times. Some days I sit at the laptop for three hours straight, sink 10 coffees and walk away defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Mark\u2019s favourite stories, The paperboy, came about following a paper round shift with his now 15-year-old son Adam.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it\u2019d be quite funny to turn that on its head. It\u2019s set in a creepy street, all the residents are old,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think young people often look at the old and there\u2019s this sense of alienation with older people\u2026 they don\u2019t know how to take them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it\u2019d be really funny to take that concept to another degree and make them (the old residents) incredibly creepy. The community has a secret as well which throws the reader. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really good story and I stand by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark said his aim moving forward was to remain original. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very hard to write a book that hasn\u2019t been written before. To be original is key. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big fan of Hitchcock \u2013 nothing was as it seemed, and he strove from the typical happy ending. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe horror market is saturated and very competitive. To stand out you have to do something special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Face The Music by Mark Towse is available at The Bookshop at Queenscliff and The Book Bird on Pakington Street, Geelong. <\/p>\n
The book hit #5 in the Amazon new release charts, where it is also available online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clifton Springs father Mark Towse remembers holding his first library card. Overjoyed by the simplest of pre-teen acquisitions, the young boy from Yorkshire discovered his imagination was its most audacious when activated by borrowed stories. But for reasons unknown to him at the time, his working life steered in the direction of numbers not words. […]<\/p>\n