Author Focus – Ed Crocker

Recently published UK author and freelance editor Ed Crocker is from Manchester, but we don’t let things like that get in the way of people appearing on Author Focus when their book is this good. Ed spends a lot of his time celebrating the work of other writers as a book reviewer, so it seems only right to return the favour and talk about his debut novel Lightfall. He also plays a mean game of bingo and enjoys a nice beefburger.

Tim – Hi Ed! Welcome to Author Focus and congratulations on the launch of your debut novel, Lightfall. What’s that experience been like? 

Ed – Hi Tim! Pleasure to be in the Hardieverse. Launch has been good! Launch day was nice as even though my book’s not available in the UK where I’m based, so I couldn’t do much in person, a lot of online friends posted about it so it was a nice reminder of how great the book community is that my odd self has been a part of these last few years. I won’t lie and pretend the pre-debut year wasn’t a little stressful as I’ve yet to come across a debut author who found it a relaxing experience, but you’re ticking off a life’s ambition so it’s obviously worth it. It’s been four months now since launch so it’s all calmed down, which is useful to be honest as I’ve been able to knuckle down and write more books as the life of a writer never stops. Well I suppose no one’s jobs stop, so maybe that statement was less profound than I intended.

What’s Lightfall about and which sort of readers do you think would enjoy this novel?

Lightfall, the first book in the Everlands, is an epic fantasy with vampires, werewolves and sorcerers – but no humans (stupid humans). It takes place mostly in the last vampire city, First Light, which has become a bit shit frankly due to the fact that the best blood is hoarded by the ruling elite and the working class get the rubbish blood that doesn’t stop you aging – and you can’t leave the city because there’s a mysterious race of people who kill anyone who travels from it. The story starts when Sam, a palace maid for the ruling vampire, finds the only clue to the murder of the ruler’s son, and seeks to use this to better her position but quickly finds herself in a murder investigation with some vampire spies, an assassin werewolf and two magic-less sorcerers, which uncovers a conspiracy at the heart of the city.

If you like a bit of class politics, murder mystery and conspiracy in your fantasy with attempted wit, bank heists, random magic and random secret sci-fi then you might like this. There’s a lot of talking in rooms. I like dialogue. Also periodic horrific violence. The start of a slow-burn sapphic vampire romance. The first half is way too slow and the second half is crazy fast. I guess maybe David Wragg meets M J Kuhn meets Robert Jackson Bennett? I don’t know I’m so bad at these answers and I think I’m getting worse.

I think every author struggles when it comes to summarising their own work – if we were good at summarising things we wouldn’t be writing novels in the first place. However, this seems to be what the public expects for some strange reason! When I read Lightfall I honestly couldn’t think of a similar comparable title, which is no mean feat in the fantasy genre, so it’s interesting to hear who you think your closest comparison authors are. Were there other influences that you drew upon to create this world? Can you tell us more about what inspired you to write this novel?

I’ve always wanted to combine my two loves of horror and fantasy (although Lightfall is more horror tropes than actual horror) but the direct inspiration was Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book The Fifth Elephant, in which my favourite character Sam Vimes, the head of the City Watch, travels to a nearby kingdom ruled by vampires and werewolves to solve a mystery. Reading this and seeing how vampires and werewolves can be absorbed cleverly and wittily into fantasy was a gamechanger. Needless to say, my book is not as good as Pratchett’s.

Pratchett was certainly an amazingly gifted writer, but I think you’re being too modest there. From my perspective, I really enjoyed Lightfall and I liked how it was its own thing, which isn’t easy to do.

You’re a freelance editor so I have to ask which is more fun – writing your own material or bringing out the best in someone else’s story? As an aside, what was it like having your work edited by someone else?

Writing my own material will always be more fun – if my day job was more fun than my hobby I would be in trouble I think! Maybe that shows how I think about jobs. That said, it is a real privilege to help shape an author’s book; there’s something very intimate about the process – if I’m hired to do the whole process from developmental editing to line editing to proofreading (which is rare these days sadly) then I might read their book four or five times and sort of know it better than anyone else on the planet, so it is a very special, joyful job in many ways and I do love it. I’ve never worked with a difficult author either – can lawyers or investment bankers say the same? (I mean their clients, obviously they don’t work with difficult authors).

Having my work edited by someone else is honestly not fun at all, I hate it, but that’s not a shade on my editor who made my book much better it’s just an indictment of my own hypocritical clusterfuck personality.

Following on from that comment, let’s delve further into your personality by exploring this particular scenario. You’re at a literary festival and you’re about to appear on stage to take part in a panel discussion but you still have a half-eaten burger and chips left over from your lunch. Do you:

A) Dispose of this quickly in the bin before making your appearance?

B) Take it with you up onto the stage? After all, you might get hungry.

C) Ask an author who is trying to sell their books on a tiny display table if they’d mind looking after it for you, before forgetting all about your half-eaten meal for the rest of the day?

Obviously A, you would have to be a complete moron or sociopath, possibly both, to do C. I can’t imagine ever meeting someone who would do C. God I hope I never have to. They must be an epoch-defining idiot, the worst imaginable. Imagine what their life must be like.

Indeed… Moving on, you’ve been a regular book reviewer for the wonderful people at www.fanfiaddict.com for some time and now review for Grimdark Magazine as well. Do you have any recommendations you’d like to share?

Ha ha where to start! My whole life seems to be recommending books, how do I narrow this down? Okay come on I can do this. I’ll give you a couple each, in both horror and SFF, my two genre children. These are all indie.

In SFF, I always recommend NC Scrimgeour’s Sea of Souls Saga; Book Two, Mists of Memory, came out a couple of months ago and is just as great as Book One, Sea of Souls. Flintlock folklore fantasy in a Scottish-style maritime land of selkies versus the admiralty; great prose, atmosphere, superb characterisation. If you like grimdark fantasy, H L Tinsley’s gaslamp grimdark series The Vanguard Chronicles (two books so far) is superb: witty, gritty, and tense. This last year I’ve been a little obsessed by R A Sandpiper’s Amefyre trilogy, all three books have been released within a year (Book Three came out earlier this month). It’s on that line between dark fantasy and subtle romance which I like to dip into sometimes; witty, snappy dialogue, a realistic slow burn romance (the opposite of instant, refreshing), a grimdark world of Machiavellian politics and brilliant worldbuilding. It’s so much fun.

Horror wise, I fell head over heels in love with Scott J Moses’ Our Own Unique Affliction from Shortwave Press at the start of the year, an existential angsty vampire story which was written for me, although it’s an acquired taste. The more like me you are the more you’ll like it, but then you’ll have to be like me, which is a bad fate. For the last year I’ve been shouting out about Emma E Murray and her brilliant, uncomfortable, transgressive horror; Crushing Snails is the best place to start and an astonishing ride from the perspective of a burgeoning 16 year old girl serial killer. My god, that book… And finally a shout out to Brian McAuley, whose new slasher whodunnit Breathe in, Bleed Out is out in September from Poisoned Pen Press. I’ve literally just finished the ARC and it’s slasher perfection, so get that bad boy pre-ordered faster than a cheetah high on rocket fuel.

I honestly hate leaving it at six recs but the readers have places to be I boldly assume, so I will cheekily suggest checking my review archive on my linktree to destroy your TBR should you so wish.

Turning back to your own work, Lightfall is the first book in the Everlands Trilogy, so what are the plans for the rest of the series? How far have you got in writing the follow-up books and do you have a release schedule in mind?

Book Two is being edited now, currently slotted for coming out next May/June. Hopefully Book Three the year after! I’m not sure I’ve said that anywhere else so that might be a (terrible) scoop! I’m excited to see what fans of Book One make of it; Book One is painfully slow compared to this. It combines a vampire revolution with a murder mystery, so it’ll either be amazing or terrible, no in-between. Book Three should hopefully be the year after. I’m also going on submission to publishers with a book not in the fantasy genre soon (and perhaps another fantasy one not so long after that) so I’m excited to be moving onto new projects too. The Everlands has been in my head for ten years now, so even though in the real world it will be part of my life for another two years, creatively I’ll be done with it by the end of the year mostly, and so I’m ready for new stuff (this will make sense to authors only, I fear).

As an author myself that does indeed make sense. It’s one of the big differences between the indie and trad scenes, in that indie authors tend to publish much more in the moment once the book is finished.

Is there anything else you want people to know about before we wrap this up?

Outrageous plug duly follows: I do a very silly newsletter called Get Crocked that’s like a mammoth newsletter: you get a short story every month, a big round-up of SFF and horror news and releases, and news about my moron self before anyone else. Link is on my website ed-crocker.com or in my linktree on socials.

Oh and go read Tim’s books! People I trust say they’re great. I will do this myself. I promise, Tim.

That’s very kind of you, especially since I didn’t tell you to say that! I will hold you to your promise, although I have no idea what I’ll do if you don’t read my books, so that’s pretty much an empty threat. Best if we just pretend this bit of the interview never happened…

Moving on, thanks so much for appearing on Author Focus. If you want to find out more about Ed then you can find him on social media at @edcrockerbooks pretty much everywhere except Twitter/X. 

You can also pick up a copy of Lightfall here!