With the latest volume of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Volume II just around the corner, how about we talk to some of the people behind it, first up, Terry Farricker:
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Vol II Questionnaire:
Author Terry Farricker
Tell us a bit about yourself:
I was born on the outskirts of Manchester in the UK in 1965.
I was educated in an ordinary secondary school and I was a spectacularly average student. My only real ability seemed to lie in a propensity towards writing. So I began to write.
I remember thinking from an early age, what a wonderful thing it would be to compose a story using nothing more than a pen, a sheet of paper and my imagination and then have someone read it and actually be affected by it.
That maxim still holds true for me today and is the single most motivating factor in my life. And it was reinforced by reading a quote from Alan Alda, Be brave enough to live creatively. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can only get there by hard work, by risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: Yourself
So, ludicrously, I began work in the financial sector.
The greatest achievement in my life is being a father to my son. He is my inspiration; my consolation through disenchantment, the antidote to disillusionment and the reason I can still smile at disappointment.
What bought you to the world of writing?
At a point in my forties, I looked at a store’s book shelf and I saw a lot of formula and a lot of writing within parameters. Not many publications seemed to deal with concepts that challenged the reader to examine his or her belief systems and maybe ask themselves questions they haven’t considered since their formative years.
Then I woke on my forty fifth birthday with the idea for a book. The premise was given to me during a dream, by one of the protagonists in the story and almost related to me page by page.
I sat at my pc the next morning and thought, I’m not a writer! I can’t write a book! But I started writing regardless. And the strange thing is, each time I finished a segment I simply closed my eyes and found myself sat in that cinema, watching the next section of my book being played out there before me.
Six years and four books later and I am still sat in that cinema watching my stories unfold.
Curiously, beyond commercial success, the point appears to be, as Mr Alda said, being brave enough to live creatively, leaving that city of your comfort, going into the wilderness of your intuition, risking not quite knowing what you are doing and, ultimately, discovering that something wonderful, yourself.
What story have you entered into the Anthology and why?
My contribution to the Anthology is entitled The Patient in Room 622.
I think when the milestone age of 50 appeared on my horizon, I entertained thoughts of my own mortality for the first time in my life; not in a fixated or morbid manner, more the questions that inevitably form in our minds as the years tally-up. And this lead my writing in a different direction; certainly darker, yet coloured ultimately, I think, with hope.
The Patient in Room 622 combines those two ingredients.
What type of books do you write and do they fulfil your reader’s needs?
I write Dark Fantasy/Horror. I feel my work asks what if we were forced to confront on a daily basis, the concepts we usually only consider for half an hour in Church on a Sunday morning, or during a cursory glance through an article in waiting-room magazine?
I believe a book should not just be a collection of pages that you work through methodically in order to arrive at a closure. I believe you should enter into a relationship with the story. That connection should endure long after the story ends. Turning the last page need not be the death of a story; it can be the spark that flames an unrealised desire.
Even though I would never be so bold as to presume my work inspires or moves a reader, I do feel the content has the potential to do both.
If the reader leaves my book with a yearning to pursue the theme further, I would feel my efforts had been rewarded.
Tell us about your short story?
The Patient in Room 622 concerns an ordinary, mundane man, Sebastian; a doctor who loses his wife and child in a senseless car crash.
Sebastian receives a telephone call from his deceased wife that tells him no more souls will be permitted to enter the Afterlife, and that he should go outside and watch the sun rise one last time.
The next morning, Sebastian stands and watches the world end.
First, comes the simultaneous death of each person living on the planet, followed by their soul’s inability to depart the physical body, leaving a global population of un-dead.
Then comes an unintentional nuclear holocaust, triggered by the great death.
What now remains is a mutilated, abandoned and reanimated civilisation; bereft of intelligence and emotion.
Sebastian fights to regain a semblance of cohesion and still goes to the hospital each day to try and find some order in all the chaos.
Then the patient in room 622 arrives to offer a gleam of hope amidst the horror.
What books have you written and where can we get them?
I have written four books in a Dark Fantasy/Horror series entitled, Spawn of Man. The first book – Rebirth – is now available in both Kindle and paperback, through Amazon. I am hoping the three sequels – Afterlife, Fallen and Regeneration – will follow suit.
Who are your favourite authors?
Richard Matheson
Clive Barker
Stephen King
Oscar Wilde
Aldous Huxley
Bram stoker
Sheridan Le Fanu
HP Lovecraft
George Orwell
Charles L. Grant[
Edgar Allan Poe’s
Clark Ashton Smith
Oscar Wilde
Charles Dickens
Social Media Links:
Face book – Terry Farricker, Author
Twitter – @terryfarricker
Email – farrickerterry@yahoo.co.uk
Do you have any more information you’d like to share with us?
I have also written two other short stories which I hope will be included in forth-coming Solstice Publication Anthologies – the horror story, A Little Piece of Death and the Sci-Fi story, All the Time in the World.
You can catch Author of The Patient in Room 622 and many other tales in:
NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
The Life of Rochford 