Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Happy Halloween! This spooky Tuesday brings us an unconventional kind of ghost. Ghost Signs: A London Story tells history through photography. Sam Roberts, can you tell us about your fascinating project?

Sam: Ghost Signs: A London Story explores London through its ‘ghost’ signs, fading painted signs on brick walls. Imposing yet hidden in plain sight, they are London’s history written on to the contemporary cityscape. They reveal fascinating stories of everyday life in the capital and each sign has its own tale to tell – not just of the business it represents and the people behind it, but of its own improbable survival.

The book was a collaboration with Roy Reed, who took the vast majority of the photographs inside, and is a feast of history, typography and the urban environment. It showcases London’s most impressive and historically significant faded painted signs, located, photographed and presented with archival and other contextual images. It is split across the two sections: the first shares insights into topics such as production techniques, economics and preservation. This is then followed by themed chapters that take on subjects including building, clothing, entertaining, branding and, ultimately, burying the city.

Sabitha: What inspired you to create this book?

Sam: Since 2006, I have been documenting and researching the phenomenon of ‘ghost’ signs, those fading painted signs on brick walls. I always felt there was a book in me, and the pandemic gave me the necessary time and space to create something that would do justice to the topic.

Sabitha: Do you have a playlist for your book? 

Sam: While writing the book I discovered The War on Drugs from Philadelphia. Many of the songs from their albums A Deeper Understanding (2017) and Lost in the Dream (2014) made it onto a playlist, which was more or less on rotation. Their album Live Drugs (2020) then came out while working on the book, with lots of my favourites on it.

I especially like An Ocean In Between the Waves (the bass when it comes in!) and You Don’t Have to Go, which is much more mellow. Overall the music struck a chord at that particular moment in my life and work, and somehow enabled me to escape the ravages of the pandemic and focus on researching and writing the book.

Sabitha: What books do you tell all your friends to read?

Sam: I tend to read more non-fiction, and some books that have influenced me include: Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra, which helped me navigate a career change; How to Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson which made me reappraise my material consumption; and Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth which chimed with my understanding of global climate change and what we should do about it. As for fiction, I most recently read Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, and thoroughly enjoyed the intrigue and twists that fill its pages.

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Sam: Research probably made up about 75% of the work on the book. Each of the 250 featured signs has their story told, and then there were another 50 or so that were researched but not included in the final edit. Research involved many different approaches, from historical documents and picture archives, to google streetview and the wisdom of crowds on social media, especially Twitter (RIP).

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers? If so, what are they?

Sam: I think that the main thing is to write, whether that’s by hand in a journal, on your desktop, or via a blog. Getting your work in front of people is important. So is analysing writing that you enjoy, to see what you can learn from it and bring into your own work.

Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?

Sam: I am currently developing my latest initiative which is a magazine, BLAG, serving the international sign painting community. In addition to writing content myself for publication in print and online, I am also gaining experience of editing the work of others. In particular, I enjoy helping to shape the texts without losing the writer’s voice, a new stage in my own personal and professional development as a writer and editor.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Sam: You can find Ghost Signs: A London Story here. You can also read me in BLAG (Better Letters Magazine).

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: We are delighted to be joined by Dawn Vogel, a prolific author and editor who shares our love for creative timelines. Dawn, can you tell us about your latest work?  

Dawn: My background is in history, which means a lot of my fiction winds up being fantastical history, which is similar to alternate history, but instead of asking, “What if history was different?” I ask, “What if history included speculative elements?” My latest book is Unfixed Timelines 3, where I collect several fantastical-history short stories and poems, and write an accompanying essay that looks at the real history I’ve twisted. I’m also releasing the Unfixed Timelines Omnibus, which collects the first three volumes of this series for a print version.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Dawn: In all honesty, it was short story rejections. Editors rejected some of my fantastical history stories because they thought the historical setting was unrealistic or the language was too modern. As a historian, I do research when I’m writing fantastical history to make sure I’m getting the real part of the story right. There are always bits of that research that don’t make it into the story, of course, so I concocted the idea of writing essays to both explain the history and let me geek out about the facts I’d left out.

Sabitha: So, how much research do you do for your books? It sounds like a lot!

Dawn: A bunch! This volume has seven stories and one poem, which meant first I researched the various historical periods, settings, and other such details as I was writing the stories and the poem. Then, when I put together the book, I needed to write eight historical essays. For some of them, I still had an email with links I collected when I was writing the stories. For others, I had to reconstruct my research. Most of the essays are fairly brief, but they frequently were based on me reading a bunch of Wikipedia articles and tracking down the sources for those articles, plus searching my local library for relevant books. I had a stack of library books on my dining room table for several weeks and took dozens of pages of notes just for the essays.

Sabitha: You seem unstoppable—what’s your next writing project?

Dawn: I’m always working on more short fiction and poetry, but my next big project is going to be a non-fiction book about novel writing. It will be extremely tongue in cheek, but I also hope it will be useful to people who want to write a novel but would prefer a humorous look at the process. It’s also ironic for me to be writing this book because I don’t like writing novels! But maybe in the process of writing this non-fiction book, I’ll figure out some novel writing tips that work for me, too!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Dawn: Unfixed Timelines 3 is on Amazon and the Unfixed Timelines Omnibus is here. My website is https://historythatneverwas.com, where you can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter. I’m on Mastodon and BlueSky as @historyneverwas, and I’m on Instagram (mostly my cats and other animals) as @scarywhitegirl12.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: If there’s one thing we love here at Night Beats, it’s a shared universe. The Metacosm Chronicles caught our fancy as soon as we heard about then! N.A. Soleil, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your stories?

N.: Hi! We’re N.A. Soleil, pronouns ‘they’ (because we’re two people, though one of us is nonbinary and does use ‘they’ pronouns). I’m N. and my partner is A.

We have spent over a decade and a half creating an in-depth science fantasy universe from its foundation upward. We write novels from that universe, which we’ve dubbed the Metacosm Chronicles, and we just released our debut chronicle, Everdark. The short blurb: a psionic teenager becomes entangled in an interplanetary war … while also battling her own mind.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

N.: A. and I both had … troubled childhoods. A. was abused, and I had undiagnosed AuDHD and was chronically ill. We had both separately created universes in our heads to escape. When we met and started dating in our 20s, we found that our universes were creepily similar. (A 100% true fact: we both had a space military called the Rangers headed by an eccentric female Commander. Hi, Chani.) Over the next fifteen years, we merged our universes and started creating an overarching storyline for them. Everdark is the first step of many, and pulls a lot from our experiences of being mentally ill/autistic: being tethered to a reality that everyone else understands and we don’t, what ‘identity’ is when nothing is real, the actual toll that having to constantly fight your own mind takes, and how people bond while in hell.

Sabitha: Do you have a “fan-cast” – do you have actors you’d cast as your main characters?

N.: Not a full cast, but Jackson Wang would make a perfect Tyyrulriathula (snarky but soulful elven Bladesinger), Gwendoline Christie would make a great Chani (the aforementioned Commander—buff mommy, mostly cybernetics, knows far more than she lets on), and only Tilda Swinton could ever be Ichiryu (a tyrannical Elysian with too many minds and not enough mental real estate.)

Ty from Metacosm

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

N.: All the research! A. has ADHD and has always hyperfocused on intellectual pursuits, so the Metacosm was very much built on real and emerging science, theology, anthropology, metaphysics and quantum theory, and good ol’ ‘what if.’

Sabitha:  What’s your next writing project?

N.: We have two other books fully written and ready to be polished up for publishing, and a fourth half-written. All a part of the overarching storyline, scheduled to be released one per year in March. ‘Codename: Book 2’ will be released March 2024. While not a sequel to Everdark, it’s the next step. We are also planning a novella as a sort of prequel to Everdark, into which a Night Beats cameo would fit rather well

Sabitha: We love Night Beats cameos—please tell us if it happens because it will be an absolute joy. Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

N.: You can find us on any of your friendly neighborhood social media as MetacosmChronicles (except for … *sigh* … X … which is MetacosmSeries) or at our website. Everdark and a snazzy bookmark are available from our shop! We’re currently most active on Facebook.

Redd from Metacosm

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: It’s time for a murder mystery! Claris Lam has just the thrills you’ve been looking for, with her novel Winner Takes All. Claris, can you tell us a bit about your book?

Claris: Winner Takes All is an amateur sleuth murder mystery and the first book in the Harlow Mystery series.

Aubri Harlow thinks she’s found her dream vacation after winning a contest to an exclusive island resort for a whole week. However, her dream quickly turns into a nightmare when her ex-boyfriend Colin, ex-girlfriend Renee, and former university classmate Bastian end up on the same island as fellow contest winners.

Even worse? Colin is found dead barely a day into the vacation. Terrible weather prevents the police from arriving on the island to investigate. To keep herself safe, as well as her other companions, Aubri must find out who the killer is…or risk becoming the next target.”

Sabitha: I love a good vacation-gone-wrong murder mystery! What inspired you to write this book?

Claris: I was inspired by reading several murder mysteries from various authors to write Winner Takes All. Each of the mysteries had such interesting plot twists and characters that I decided, well, why not try writing my own?

Winner Takes All was my first attempt at writing a murder mystery, let alone one involving an amateur sleuth. Despite the challenges of creating a whole mystery and putting together all the clues that would lead to revealing the criminal, it was fun. I’m glad that the final, published version of Winner Takes All was the result of those efforts.

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become a

better writer? If so, what are they?

Claris: If you want to write in a particular genre, make sure that you read a lot of books in that genre. If I didn’t read so many murder mysteries, I would have no idea what familiar plot points and storylines readers might expect in a murder mystery to begin with.

It’s only by learning what story beats and other points are familiar in a genre that you can create a story that meets those expectations. Also, by familiarizing yourself with the genre’s expected material, you can find ways to possibly change them a bit to make your writing more unique and surprising.

Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?

Claris: I am currently writing several novels in differing genres – one is another murder mystery, but I also have a few fantasy books in the works!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Claris: Links to all my socials, main website and newsletter can be found through my Carrd. And here’s the link to Winner Takes All.