From TBM Guest Blogger, Alan Gibbons…

OK, so I must have written fifty books, yes and some of them have won prizes (eight to be exact). But what sort of writer am I? Well, my best-known book Shadow of the Minotaur won the Blue Peter Book Award ‘The Book I Couldn’t Put Down’ and that was fantasy so I must be a fantasy writer. The problem is, five of my book awards were for my realistic fiction, stuff like The Edge and Hold On dealing with domestic violence, depression and suicide. Yes, I know, I’m a real little ray of sunshine! So does that make me one of those gritty, Northern social realists. I hope not! I left my whippet on the bus and I look stupid in a cloth cap.

I’m not even a horror writer really. A couple of years ago I agreed a six book horror series with my publishers Orion, only it isn’t…horror, that is. Sure, there’s plenty of blood and gore. Book one, Scared to Death, features a serial killer who is re-enacting the Jack the Ripper murders in the modern East End. He doesn’t use a knife. He peers into your mind and uses your phobias against you, dredging up your worst nightmares so that you will drown in your own fear.

But there’s more to it than that. The root of all this mayhem, the demon master King Lud, is incarcerated deep beneath Christ Church Spitalfield, launching his demon disciples through time in a bid to break out of his centuries-long imprisonment. Paul Rector, my hero, catches the tube at the end of Scared to Death and embarks on a journey through time to uproot this terrible contagion. So that makes it a time travel adventure, doesn’t it?

Except…well, I really wanted the historical background to be as authentic as possible. Book two, The Demon Assassin, features a monstrous killer trying to bump of Winston Churchill. Book three, out this July, is called Renegade and this one takes place against the background of early Victorian London, the kind of city Oliver Twist, Fagin and Bill Sykes would have haunted. So that’s the third element of the series, historical settings that are as authentic as possible.

So if you like your horror red in tooth and claw, if you enjoy Life on Mars and Dr Who and you’re partial to a bit of historical fiction, the Hell’s Underground series might just be for you.