Samantha Lee Howe is a USA Today bestselling author and a multi-award-winning screenwriter. She’s written over 30 novels, covering horror, fantasy, SF, thrillers, and spy/espionage. She’s best known for her psychological domestic noir, The Stranger In Our Bed, which was filmed with Samantha Bond, Emily Berrington, and Ben Lloyd-Hughes. We caught up with Samantha to learn more about their latest book, The Soul Thief…
STARBURST: How would you pitch The Soul Thief to a fan of What We Do In The Shadows?
The two stories/setups are really very different. What They Do In The Shadows is a comedy series about these supernatural beings living together: it’s more of a comedic soap opera in a similar way to perhaps Being Human developed. However, if you have a fascination for the supernatural occurring right beneath your nose, intertwined with a very real-world aesthetic, then you will find much to love in The Soul Thief.
The book features an ancient malignant entity stalking the streets of Victorian Manchester, corrupting souls, taking lives, and destroying the very fabric of upper-class society at that time. Locked in a tangle between good and evil, our hero Mitchell needs to find the Soul Thief, before it takes the only woman he’s ever loved.
There are not many laughs in the novel, but that wasn’t the intent. I was exploring the relationships between the upper class and the poor through a lens of a supernatural evil that comes into the characters’ lives as a disruptor. There are scares a-plenty though!
And how would you pitch the same book to someone who’s really into true crime?
There is certainly more of a ‘true crime’ vibe to the book. I always research in detail when writing to ensure that the backdrop, time period, and characters are as realistic as I can manage – while also, of course, inventing whatever needs to be invented.
The novel is set against the backdrop of Victorian Manchester, where gentleman detective Mitchell Bishop is searching for the truth behind a series of gruesome and unexplainable murders. His investigation leads him into the seedy side of Manchester, where photography porn, extortion and prostitution are rife. But Mitchell’s quest leads him into even darker realms, and he soon learns that there are worse things on the street than the organised criminal gangs.
I do watch a lot of True Crime on television, the stories are fascinating and very useful as jumping-off points for murders and, of course, the psychology of why people kill: what motivates them… as well as the methods of despatch. This all forms a canvas for my development of characters and the twists and turns of a psychological horror novel.
Why are we so fascinated with the Victorian period?
There have been a lot of books set in Victorian London and there is a fascination for the period, in part perhaps because of the reality and legends surrounding Jack the Ripper [in 1888]. There was also, I feel, a fascination with the era due to the known corruption and perversity that simmered behind the closed doors of the aristocracy and the rich, while the poor scrabbled for anything they could get on the filthy streets.
The Victorian era also gave rise to photography, and then, of course, used it for pornography, even while people were ostracised for not conforming to recognised societal norms. I wanted to explore these values juxtaposed against the darker, subversive side. I chose to set The Soul Thief in Manchester instead of London because I’ve always felt Manchester to be a very Gothic city, and growing up there, I knew there were areas that were unsafe to be in during the late sixties and early seventies, just as there would have been in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
There’s also something vaguely romantic about the late 19th-century era – the clothing, the horses and carriages, the huge rise and growth of medicine and knowledge. There was a vast divide between the rich and poor in Victorian England: the abject poverty lends itself to this being the perfect backdrop for a supernatural thriller where good fights evil, and, of course, humans can be worse than any horror monster you could invent.
I think there have been so many influential films nominally set in this era, mainly, of course, from Hammer in the sixties and early seventies, but others too. It’s an inspirational breeding ground for ideas and stories and colourful characters to populate them. I love it!
Why the return to horror?
Horror is always in my blood and sometimes makes an appearance within my thrillers, just as every horror book I’ve written has involved some sort of a mystery or crime element. Horror and crime/thrillers very much go hand in hand to me. The only difference is that sometimes horror brings out supernatural elements that mainstream thrillers can’t have.
But my books are often a blend of elements from a variety of genres: I love the horror and darkness, but if you pair that with science fiction, or comedy, or a domestic noir situation, then the result is often far richer than if you had stuck rigidly to one genre.
Which character from this novel would you most like to sit down and have a drink with, and why?
I’d love to sit and talk with Rosie, who features a great deal in the book. She’s the kind of woman who, despite adversity, does everything she can to survive and still manages to remain true to her moral compass and have compassion for others.
How does it compare to The House of Killers?
The House of Killers trilogy is very much a spy thriller but it does, in fact, have some strong horror elements. This story is about a female assassin who was raised as a killer from an early age. It has dark themes of abuse, death, torture, mind conditioning and even a serial killer. The big bad in the trilogy is a major and mysterious conglomerate called the Network.
Juxtaposed to The House of Killers, the evil entity within The Soul Thief is supernatural, but the main protagonist is also flawed as is my female assassin. Each of these books looks at the human condition but in very different ways. In House of Killers lives are expendable, whereas in The Soul Thief, saving people is Mitchell’s goal.
What was the most challenging part of writing this book?
Writing The Soul Thief came easy to me – not all books do. It flowed because I love the era, could shape the world without too much difficulty, and had a story I really wanted to tell. There were elements that had to be researched carefully, and you have to make sure that the language used reflects the setting and of course the behaviour and attitudes are right for the period. The most important factor is writing for a modern audience in a way that throws them back in time to a world we all recognise but whose rules are different from now.
How does novel writing compare to script writing? What are the different challenges?
I used to think that writing novels was harder than writing screenplays, and I was wrong. Adapting a screenplay from your own original IP, as I did with The Stranger in Our Bed, has challenges, but you already have the road map of the story, and the kinks worked out because the book is there. But starting from scratch to write a screenplay without that road map in place is actually quite difficult, as I’ve recently discovered! Some of the major differences between the two media is the dialogue. How I’d write the way someone speaks in a book is very different from how it needs to be conveyed in a screenplay, which is often shorter, tighter and a bit more to the point.
The other main difference is that in a novel, you need to explain things. It’s hard for a character to go from A to B without any explanation – things need to be worked for so that the payoff is understood and works in the narrative. In a screenplay, you can ‘short cut’ the story so that characters can go from A to B with no explanation, and ‘fill in’ details in a visual way, rather than having to explain motivations and so on in the prose. It can be an abbreviated method of storytelling that allows for a deftness of touch when progressing the story.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on several projects. I have a new horror novel in the works, and a new mystery series. There’s a horror screenplay I’m working on, and I’m also editing a new collection of Crime Short Stories to benefit the Pink Ribbon Foundation, and that will be launched next Autumn for their anniversary.
Immediately of course I’m looking forward to readers meeting Mitchell and discovering the horrors of The Soul Thief …
What other projects would you love to be involved with?
I’d like to do some more screenwriting, adapting my own IP if I get the chance again, but mostly I just want to continue writing novels, which is my favourite form.
Dragons or Deathstars? Dragons
Doctor Who or Doctor No? Doctor No
Truth or Beauty? Truth. Always.
THE SOUL THIEF is out now and can be found at all good bookshops.
