Author Spotlight: British Horror/Crime Thriller author WM Parslow

WM Parslow (he/him) is a horror writer based in Oxford, UK. He is inspired by his own experiences, folklore, and ghost stories. His dependents include two cats and a Venus fly trap called Steve. He can often be found walking Oxford’s streets, looking for a nice pub to sit in and write.

AUTHOR LINKS:

IG & Threads: @wmparslow

GoodReads: The Standing Dead
Amazon: The Standing Dead
Kobo: The Standing Dead

Book Sample:
Amazon Look Inside Feature

Book Pitch for Book Clubs/Readers:
If you were sent to prison, how would you cope? What if the prison you had been sent to was also chosen for the return of an otherworldly presence bent on chaos and violence? What would you do?

Your novel The Standing Dead is a hard-boiled British crime thriller/folk horror: can you tell us where your inspiration for this book came from and what led you to merge these genres?

I never set out to write a book that had elements of a crime thriller in it – this just developed from the setting of the novel really. In fact, I didn’t really see this myself until the first reviews started coming in.

The starting point for The Standing Dead was my finally deciding to sit down and write the book I felt was in me.

As I’ve always been a fan of supernatural and psychological fiction (I’m of the generation that were formed by reading Stephen King at too young an age!), it made perfect sense to write something dark and creepy. Like the cliche says, write what you know! The use of a prison as a setting also seemed ideal and I could draw on my own knowledge there to build a realistic and immersive world.

Did any of your real life experiences go into the book, or did you keep everything fictionalised? Were there things that didn’t make it into the book that you might save up for other books, or that you were sorry to leave out, and can you tell us what they were?

I started working for the UK Prison Service at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and wore the uniform for around three and a half years. As regards how much of my own experience has made it into the book versus fictionalising it all, it’s something of a hybrid. I have used some examples of incidents I witnessed or were told about and there are aspects of people I met mixed into the characters.

What I have not done though is base any one character on a particular person as that felt unfair to the people I worked with, both staff and prisoners.

One thing I was keen to do was to portray life inside a typical UK prison in a realistic fashion, which I knew would include use of the appropriate terminology. I wanted to make sure I was not revealing any information that was not already readily available, so every single piece of prison terminology, slang etc was run through Google first to see if it was already out in the world.

Thankfully, everything I wanted to include was, and it was immensely gratifying to see reviews from readers who had also worked in prisons saying how realistic the final book felt.

Introduce us to your protagonist, William Lees. How did you develop his character, and what made you decide he should be a prisoner, rather than a prison guard or police officer? 

I did initially consider making Lees an officer or a member of staff, but I quickly realised I could make him a more relatable and grounded character by putting him in prison, or rather by the way he ends up inside.

Lees is not a bad man, he’s someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up taking a life. Creating a character who starts out in a very low and dark place as a result of a situation he didn’t look for helped me build him into the man he is.

His status as a first-time prisoner means that he’s looking at this world through inexperienced eyes, and that allows the readers to learn about the world with him.

Finally, making Lees a prisoner meant I could maintain a tight and claustrophobic setting for the main story threads, which I think helped enhance the horror elements of The Standing Dead.

There are a lot of heavy themes, particularly around men’s mental health and trauma; can you talk a bit about why these themes were important to you to include, and what you wanted to express in The Standing Dead?

I have depression, and I’ve experienced some nasty crises in the past. In the last five or six years I’ve made a conscious effort to talk about my own issues more openly as this is how mental health issues need to be treated, with open, honest and constructive dialogue. It’s the only way that people who need help can be signposted to the sort of support that they need, whether that be talking therapies like CBT or counselling, medical support like antidepressants or a combination.

Sadly, this is still atypical in society, particularly amongst men. Between the ages of 18 and 50 (I think) the thing that is most likely to kill a man is himself and we have to change that. The rise of the ‘manosphere’ with mouthpieces like Andrew Tate is something I despise and I wanted to present a man who is struggling with his guilt, trauma and depression, but who is ultimately helped through it.

I should also say that these themes are not going away in the books: William Lees’ journey will run over three books and mental health will always be part of the story.

The setting for this novel is HMP Page [HMP = Her/His Majesty’s Prison], an old men’s prison in south-east England with buried secrets in its grounds, which is a really interesting twist on the folk horror/Gothic horror manor house setting. Was this a conscious take on the Gothic/folk horror Big House trope, and did you design this prison with floor plans or diagrams when you were planning the book, or did it stay in your imagination and get transferred to the page that way? 

If you want to see HMP Page on a map, you can’t as it’s fictional. However, I have located it in a similar place to the real HMP Bullingdon.

The interior layout of Page is made up – I used aspects of the prisons I spent time working in to build a map of the wings and other buildings within the walls of HMP Page.

As regards it being a twist on the haunted house trope, that wasn’t something at the forefront of my planning when it came to building the story. But, it absolutely became a new take on the setting and one I’m very proud of.

What’s next for William and his story – can you tell us anything about Book 2, The Black Dog?

I can’t say too much, but The Black Dog will reunite us with Lees after his release. He is now living in Oxford and building himself a new life. In The Standing Dead, Lees finds a friend and mentor in his cellmate Harris. In The Black Dog, Lees ends up taking on the mentor role, but he also finds himself drawn once again into a supernatural battle and quest for vengeance. Oh, and he gets a love interest!

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