Clifton Springs’ Mark Towse will soon release his debut tongue-in-cheek novel about the long-term effects of trauma.
Chasing The Dragon will be released on March 23 and combine horror, thriller, romance, crime, fantasy and mystery in a story about a wannabe superhero.
Mr Towse said the novel was “a fun one to write” and a “hybrid of everything” he had written before.
“It’s essentially about a kid called Simon Dooley who had quite a strict upbringing with his mother enforcing a lot of rules and she’s always going on about ending the chaos in the world,” he said.
“He’s been exposed to this his entire life, and the only way that he can end his mother’s voice in his head, even though she’s dead, is to try and end the chaos of the world.
“It goes from nought to 100 pretty quickly, and it’s really about a boy trying to escape trauma, but the more he tries to escape, the worse things become for him.”
Mr Towse said he enjoyed writing horror stories with his constant thread of “Towsey” humour and that the novel meant a lot to him.
“You can lull them (readers) into a false sense of security and then immediately pull the floor away,” he said.
“They don’t really know how to react because they were laughing one minute, and the next minute, something horrific happens.
“It’s all threaded with a twisted humour that runs through most of my work, which is what I enjoy, and I love having a guilty giggle behind the keyboard.”
Mr Towse’s debut novel, Chasing The Dragon, is currently available for preorder online at eerieriverpublishing.com
