Tom Williams: My Guest Author can Tango Something Wicked on his Book Tour

45 Comments
Tom Williams

Please welcome to my blog

the fleet of foot

TOM WILLIAMS

who is my guest author

on his

Book launch tour for his latest novel

SOMETHING WICKED

I’ve asked Tom to tell us about his new book and about his background.

Jane does an impressive amount of research for her books, but I do still envy her and anybody else who writes contemporary fiction. Most of the books I write are historical fiction and seem to involve ridiculous amounts of reading for every page of actual writing that I eventually achieve.

Where Tom creates his stories

In an attempt to break away from the Napoleonic wars I have been experimenting with writing some stories set in the here and now. (Well, not quite now because I find covid restrictions a bit limiting for my characters, but near enough.) And because I wanted to escape the restrictions put on an author who writes a lot about real historical events I decided to move into the world of fantasy. Hence my Halloween 2019 novella, Dark Magic, a story of supernatural intervention in the world of stage conjuring. People seemed to like it, with its rather tongue-in-cheek take on the horror genre, so I’ve produced my first full-length contemporary novel, Something Wicked.

In keeping with my objective of minimising the amount of research I’d need to do, I set it in the world of tango dancing; a world I know quite well after years of dancing in London, Paris, Lisbon, Cluj (Romania), Reykjavik, Istanbul and, of course, Buenos Aires. I couldn’t help noticing that wherever I went the best dancing happened after dark (except, strictly speaking, Iceland as we were there in June and dark never really happened). So the idea of setting a vampire story in the world of tango seemed perfectly reasonable. After all, part of the pleasure of dancing tango is that you meet a lot of people in the dance hall whose lives outside will remain a mystery. How do you know they aren’t vampires?

I did break my ‘no research’ rule enough to visit Brompton Cemetery which provided a satisfying number of potential homes for my Undead protagonists and then I was ready to start writing.

Brompton Cemetery

I loved tweaking the vampire myths to provide a nice mix of the traditional (hang around graveyards, drink blood, not fond of sunlight) and some new ideas. Vampires, it seems, live alongside us, penetrating to the heart of the Establishment. (“I have met Her Majesty only once and no refreshment was offered. We try to keep our relations with the Crown discreet.”) Keeping a low profile is central to their continued co-existence with what they think of as “Mortals” and when some vampires get careless and leave bodies around rather too noticeably, they have their own ways of tidying up the mess. But when a peer of the realm is killed, the police can’t be kept out of things entirely. The public must be reassured. But how reassuring will it be to discover that we are living alongside a substantial vampire sub-culture? Is this a crime that is better left unsolved?

The world of my London vampires is about as different as can be from the world of my Napoleonic era spy, James Burke, but I’ve found it a refreshing change. It was huge fun to write and I hope you have fun reading it. Yes, there is blood (sorry about that – it’s sort of inevitable) but mainly there is an urbane 500-year-old policeman, a great deal of dark humour, and the most unusual police procedural you will read all year.

Something Wicked: not your usual stakeout.

BIO

Tom Williams used to write books for business. Now he writes novels set in the 19th century and books about vampires that are generally described as fiction but which are often more realistic than the business books. The stories have given him the excuse to travel to Argentina, Egypt and Borneo and call it research.

Tango Tom

Tom lives in London. His main interest is avoiding doing any honest work and this leaves him with time to ski, skate, and dance tango, all of which he does quite well. In between, he reads old books and spends far too much time looking at ancient weaponry.

Thanks so much for being my guest author, Tom. I wish you much success with your new direction and future books.

If you’d like to know more about Tom and his books please dance your way down the page to his links.

LINKS

You can find links to Tom on his social media and blog below:

Tom’s blogs appear regularly on his website, https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk where you can also find details of all his books. You can follow him on Twitter as @TomCW99 or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTomWilliams).

BOOK LINKS

Dark Magic: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZDGR23K

Something Wicked: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08W2CYS68

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45 Comments »

  1. Thank you to all who commented/reblogged. I’ve reposted the links above.

    I didn’t realise I had to keep going so far down to get to the comments, so I’ve only just found them. I’m sorry if you thought I was ignoring you.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Hello everyone. First, Jane and Thom, great post and I’ll be buying the book. Next, to reblog for those having trouble, simply refresh the page, let it reload and then press the reblog button again. Should work. It worked for me. However, the book links do not work so if someone could shoot me a message with that info I’d be ever pleased. Jane has my email so she can give it to you Thom if you wish to have it. OK. off for now.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Jon, I think you are the only one, lots of others can share and reblog etc. I wonder, are you following my blog? That might be it. If you follow then perhaps that might work, not just liking posts. You are WordPress so it should be compatible with mine – also WP.

      Like

      Reply

Please leave a reply and comment - your input is really appreciated. Thanks, Jane

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