#GuestPost #Guestpostseries by Alan Camrose, author of Lost In Plain Sight (Part I) @AlanCamrose / Books Teacup and Reviews

Hello readers! I’ve something different this time. I’m posting a 5 part guest post series from Alan Camrose, author of Lost In Plain Sight. It’s a contemporary fantasy-thriller. Author has written series of five short articles concerning aspects of his debut novel which are derived from incidents in or aspects of his life, serving as inspiration for some of the events portrayed in the book. I hope you guys enjiy this series. Today I’m posting first of the five part rest will be up on 17 , 21, 24 and 28. Over to Alan…

Part 1 of 5

The magic of make-up: Lights… camera…Joker!

Firstly, thanks to Yesha for agreeing to me guest-posting on the site. Much appreciated, and I hope that you all enjoy my Blog posts which are a sideways look at my writing and my book.

The Gallery on my website (www.alancamrose.com), and my Blog generally, is intended to be a place that shows a bit about me as well as stuff about my work.

I have just published my first novel, “Lost In Plain Sight”, a fantasy-thriller set in Brighton, full of action, magic and humour, where Sam, Pagoda and Meyra are on the case to track a demonic killer and find more than they bargained for. (Since Pagoda is a cat, she’d like to be in the case.) They encounter among other things a goblin fatale, a werewolf with exquisite dentistry and a sat-nav with personality issues. I’d love you to join me by the seaside for some ice cream and mayhem…

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This is me working in my office in Hong Kong. I will explain later how this has anything to do with my being a writer.

I absolutely love the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie. He made me feel sorry for the Joker. Crazy!

Worth his Oscar every day of the week.

It’s been an epic journey for the Joker leading up to this point:

Cesar Romero was fantastic cavorting opposite without question the best Batman ever – Adam West. Cesar was the chortling Clown-Prince of Crime…Among others, the reckless and deranged Jack Nicholson, guilty of chewing up the furniture in Batman. And the sadly missed nightmare of Heath Ledger’s take. Genuinely unsettling, and brings nightmares even now of his magic trick with a disappearing pencil…But I think the Phoenix version had the extra dimensions of his aching need for acceptance and terrible mental health issues. All of that seeped into the character so much that even with the horrific crimes that he commits during the course of the movie and his thirst for chaos and destruction, we are still invited not so much to side with him as to at least understand him as a complete character rather than a caricature – an amazing feat when you think about him strutting around in lurid clothes and troubling make-up, the scent of coulrophobia burning your nostrils as you watch.

My stint as a villain (apart from the heinous crime of being a lawyer, that is) amounted to several hours at an office party a while back, heisting beer. You can see the office below…

I recall having taken a conference call that day in my get-up, asking the – very understanding, and amused – client to allow me to conduct the call on speaker, explaining that I didn’t want to smudge my make-up.

Becoming someone else for a brief time is amazingly liberating, as you can perhaps see below – a visit to the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong for tea illustrates that… https://www.mandarinoriental.com/hong-kong/victoria-harbour/luxury-hotel?kw=mandarin-hotel-hong-kong_e&htl=MOHKG&eng=Google_EN&src=PPC&ds_rl=1033295&ds_rl=1035742&gclid=CjwKCAiAp5nyBRABEiwApTwjXp-HcLko76GBZx7ppRl_e5g0mJJ5ivlsm5bvMXNB2vu-q4PDkKQwQBoCT98QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I asked for a table for four in the Clipper Lounge for my wife and the kids. The staff are magnificent there, not even raising an eyebrow – they could have borrowed one of mine – as they showed us directly to our table. I suppose it made it OK because I was wearing a tie?

This feeds through into my writing – the liberation not the need to dress up in odd costumes.

Each character unleashed in a book contains – worryingly sometimes – a little bit of me, my family, friends, acquaintances, history. Inevitably. Everything comes from somewhere. All part of my way of understanding the world and me, and me in the world, as part of my writing.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEE

Cheers,

Alan

Alan Camrose

About Book:

This novel is a contemporary fantasy-thriller set in the UK around Brighton. There’s action, suspense and humour. And useful insights on cats. And magic. And magical cats.
Sam Franklin is a wizard from the real Magic Circle. Pagoda – is his cat familiar (or is it the other way round?). Meyra is a stroppy elf with teenage angst issues even after forty years in her teens. They are drawn into tracking a demonic killer on England’s south coast. The demon is not just at the seaside for the greasy doughnuts: its masters prey on the poor and vulnerable in society with the terrifying prospect of ancient dark magic (or rather Ma gic, the dangerous word with six letters, one invisible and silent) running wild once more.
Sam and Pagoda find themselves dragged into the plight of the local homeless community, Meyra into the vast dangers of drug-fuelled excess, all reach the same place with the clock ticking and cultists chanting, waiting for a terrible conspiracy to come of age.
But all this pales into insignificance before such questions as: can the three oddballs work together to save the day and get home in time for a good grooming? And why does Sam keep having a worrying urge to shred sofas, chase rodents and cough up hairballs? Why is Meyra worried about whether her Moncler Calypsos look good on her during a spot of burglary. And last but absolutely not least, why does Pagoda fret about the handball rule while she curls up in tiny places and tries to get some hard-earned (by cat standards) sleep?