You found me!
Welcome to my little corner of the internet.My name is Colin Mulhern and I love writing. It's something I've always done and probably always will. Getting published is nice, but really I'm in it for the fun of turning out stories. When I was a kid, I wrote adventure stories, then horror in my teens and a couple of adult crime novels in my twenties.
My first published books were YA thrillers. Clash was first, followed by Arabesque, The Boy Who Buried Dead Things and Here in the Poison Garden.
I moved into younger children's fiction by chance. I've always loved horror, both in movies and fiction and had an idea for a silly story about a fairy tale cottage taking on a zombie attack. I knocked the story out in a few days and sent it direct to Maverick Publishing. The book was published as Buttercup Sunshine and the Zombies of DOOOOOM. This was followed by a second story called Buttercup Sunshine and the House on Hangman's Hill.
Writing the Buttercup stories was fun but I wanted to return to something longer. I didn't want to go back to Young Adult as that market has shifted its focus from where it was when I started out. Instead, I decided to work on an idea that sparked up a few years ago. Buttercup made me realise two things - one, it's important to write what you enjoy, and two, I still love classic horror.
With that in mind, I decided to dive in, go against all the advice out there about writing to the market and write a Victorian Horror novel. It took about four months to write and another four to edit and polish, and now, The Grotesque Illusions of Aubrey Manson is complete. While I decided what to do with it, I am using it as the basis for a YouTube series on How to Write a Novel. More details when I post.
All the best,
Colin M.
