William Meikle: ON WRITING FASTER THAN THE HOUND

Some musings on the writing of Faster Than The Hound

MEET JOHN SETON

John is a grifter, an ex-pat Scots kid working penny-ante magic tricks on the streets of L.A.

But John has a secret. In his family, sometimes, the magic is real.

And sometimes, it gets him noticed.

The short novel, FASTER THAN THE HOUND was originally written as part of a series that a group of us… including myself, Steve Savile, Steve Lockley, Jon Merz and Joe Nassise among others were all writing one book each for. It sold pretty well in its day, then the rights reverted to me and we all went our own way.

It’s a wee departure for me, being Urban Fantasy, mostly, set in Los Angeles, and featuring a protagonist who is younger than my usual fare.

But he’s a Scotsman, and a Seton, so there’s a direct link to many of my other works. Plus he gets embroiled with the old book, The Concordances of the Red Serpent, he meets one of the Openers of the Way, and he frequents a Scottish pub that has been transported to L.A that readers of my Midnight Eye books will recognise as fellow travellers.

So it’s got a lot of my enthusiasms in it.

And it’s got a fair bit of folklore in it too, mainly concerning the 3 old women, the Fates, the Norns, whatever you want to call them, who turn up in a lot of different cultures’ myths and legends.

Its also got some portal fantasy stuff, something I’d always wanted a go at and never got round to. I had fun creating the wee pocket world beyond the veil and playing around with some of the rules of portal travel.

Auld Agnes, who sings her nonsense songs on the other side, is still with me in spirit and I’m pretty sure she’ll be back in a later tale. I think Derek Adams might be meeting her pretty soon.

So all in all, this one had me playing in several different sandboxes, and writing along with a bunch of pro fantasy writers was a fun experience all in itself.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, so here it is with a new lease of life, and only 99c for your Kindle in its full form, some 15,000 words more than was there before.

It stands alone without needing to know the series bible.