Saturday 12 March 2011

Dark Dawns Bring Blood

Guest Blogger - Alya Bessex

During the early part of 2009 I had the idea to do a dark poetry book. I'd read quite a bit of poetry, including that of Terry Lander, and I liked the idea of including myself in the 'poet' category. I'd already written 'The Unaired Views Of A Twenty Four Year Old Nobody' and felt that a darker direction was needed.

I got in touch with Terry at Lyvit to see if he would be happy to publish it and, after a couple of days of debating, he agreed. I set to work putting it all together, deciding on a shorter book of just 100 pages as I wanted to make the content as powerful as possible without diluting it too much. This also meant readers shouldn't get bored while reading.

The problem I had was the title. I wanted something that screamed about the poems, ripping the reader away from other books and into mine. I knew that I wanted a demonic car on the front too, choosing Terry's Mini as they have such a cheeky charm that suggests an air of evil lurking in the background. Meep meep, I'm coming to kill you.

As I was finishing the last few poems a film was released with the title 'Drag Me To Hell' by Sam Raimi. It hit me immediately - the imagery of being dragged across a concrete floor until you're bleeding and screaming before plunging to the depths of a fiery afterlife really conjured up the image I was going for. I'm not a sadist, I just wanted a book that brings home the reality of the worst people roaming the planet. Finally, 'Dark Dawns Bring Blood' came to me. While everyone is still asleep, the scum of the earth roam to bring the red tides flowing. It was perfect.

I'm only writing about this now because I finally saw the film last night and have to say I really enjoyed it. The premise of a gypsy curse had been done before in Stephen King's 'Thinner', but the film didn't suffer any more for the repetition. The ending really caught my attention as the promise of the title came to life on screen. Drag me to hell. Done.