No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)
I’m a slow, messy writer. Ideas get jammed into the narrative, then hacked bloodily out. But Mortal does at least deal with the most important question left hanging over by the previous books: how, at the tender age of five, Frank came to kill his father…
Like Frankenstein’s monster, it will shamble to its feet and start to move in a sinister fashion… until it falls over a chair
The novel was originally called Spellbinder. Actually, since it was about a teenage forensic sorcerer, my first idea had been Spellbound; but Alfred Hitchcock had kind of got there first…
Donald Hounam 