Interview with dark fiction author Mark L’Estrange

Dark fiction author Mark L’Estrange chats with me about his new horror novel, The Banshee Bride.

Welcome, Mark. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was born in Balham (London), the gateway to the south in 1964. The hospital was pulled down the year I was born… that should have been a clue right there. I lived most of my life in London, before moving to Surrey and then to Kent (The garden of England, according to Henry V111). I gained a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Westminster and now I work in the Civil Service in their legal department. To date I have had 13 books published (9 novels and 2 collections of short stories) and I am always in the middle of my next bestseller (don’t laugh). I love writing and sincerely hope that the magic never ends for me. My one regret is that I have not been able to write a children’s novel so that my nieces, nephews and children of my friends may actually be able to read something of mine before they are 18…Perhaps one day.

Please tell us about your current release.
This is what some might call a ‘folklore’ horror novel. It is set in Ireland and concerns the story of a young girl who, on the eve of her wedding, was forced to watch her fiancé being executed for a crime he did not commit. The execution was ordered by a local magistrate who was himself in love with the girl and wanted her for himself. Mad with grief, the girl (still in her wedding gown) threw herself from a cliff into the sea. Since then, her ghost in the form of a Banshee, appears to anyone who is about to die. Once summoned, the banshee must take a soul back to hell.

What inspired you to write this book?
My manager (Georgia) was telling me that she had relatives on a remote island off the coast of Ireland and some of the strange customs and beliefs they shared. It just made me think of the way some small communities have their own ways and the things they are willing to accept (such as ghosts/legends, etc.) which to the outside world may seem a bit odd.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I call it ‘Uncanny’. It is a portmanteau story where five strangers are invited to their psychiatrist’s house for the evening for a group session. They have all recently suffered a near-death experience and are invited to relay the facts to the group. But only the psychiatrist knows that one of them did not survive their ordeal and that it is their ghost who appears on the night, unaware that they are already dead. The psychiatrist hopes that by retelling their tale, the person will realise that they are already dead and pass over to the other side.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Ha ha, still don’t. Maybe I never will (sigh). Writing for me is a hobby at present, I still hold down a full-time job to pay the bills, but I would love to be able to do it as a profession…Maybe one day 😊

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Due to my 9-5, I tend to write mostly at weekends and occasionally in the evenings if I’m not too bushed after work. I always carry a pad and pen with me so that I can jot down ideas and characters on the go, otherwise I tend to forget them before I return home. Other than housework and being run ragged by my gorgeous fur-babies writing is my only pastime. I came to it relatively late in life but hopefully I will be able to continue for a while yet.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I save everything three times-just in case! I once lost the best part of a novel due to my lack of understanding concerning how computers work…Really do not want to repeat that incident.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Professional Wrestler. I was brought up by my maternal grandmother and she loved wrestling, watching it every Saturday afternoon. No one was allowed to phone or call round between 4-5pm. I did eventually make it to the ring, but my poor body gave out eventually and it became way too painful to enjoy anymore…hence why I now have a bad back and arthritis in both knees.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I tend to write the kind of books I enjoyed reading when I first discovered horror fiction. Today, there seems to be so many sub-genres of horror, or what passes as horror, that for me the sub-texts become too convoluted to write about. I love sending in short stories for future anthologies, but sometimes the publishers are overly specific in what they want, to the extent that I cannot maneuver my story to fit exactly with their conditions. I have had stories rejected just because the publisher did not like the final line…It’s true. I hark back to the days of the old Pan Books of Horror, where every story was different, without any perquisite other than it had to be a horror story. Horror stories to me should be about ordinary people leading ordinary lives when something ‘horrific’ is added: Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, sea monsters, bigfoot, etc. My novels then concern how those individuals deal with their new circumstances. Above all, I hope my readers have fun along the way.