Exclusive interview with author F.G. Cottam and a review of his new novel about curses and how they affect people
Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!Radio) 7/28/2011 – “My sorceress Mrs. Mallory has been alive rather longer than her svelte and sultry appearance suggests,” says The Magdalena Curse author F.G.Cottam. “And she’s been about a bit. I researched Rupert Brooke’s sojourn in Berlin prior to the Great War. I did some re-reading about the Third Reich in the 1930s. I read quite a lot about Bolivia, where my protagonist is sent to join a Special Forces unit that finds itself disastrously out of its depth on a mission based on a complete misconception.”
Cottam’s novel is a modern gothic novel that adds the occult to change it up. This horror novel with its original story line is written with vivid prose that creates imagery as you read. Read this during the day, as at times the story gets very scary.
Adam Hunter is ten years old and having nightmares…or is he? When Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft first sees him she thinks it will be easy to help Adam, but as she delves deeper she finds out from his father Mark Hunter that something happened just before Adam was born that may be the cause. Mark was on a mission in the Amazon that went horribly wrong and a curse was placed on his unborn son.
Mark leaves Adam in the care of Dr. Bancroft to go back to the Amazon to try to find answers to save his son. What happens in the present brings up things from Elizabeth’s past. Can Mark save his son and can Elizabeth overcome her past to live in the future?
“I wanted to create a villainess who gets away with appalling wickedness simply because she possesses glamour,” says Cottam. “It is a very seductive quality that persuades both men and women to forgive a lot.”
“Curse is based on the supposition that witches exist and though they can pass for ordinary women, they are anything but,” says Cottam. “They are born with an occult power more comfortably used for bad than good.”
Cottan says he didn’t view documents for his research. “I did create one: the testimony of a Cromwellian witchfinder sent to Scotland to examine an accusation of witchcraft made in the 17th century. Witchfinders are a matter of documented historical fact. As is Oliver Cromwell’s energetic suppression of (alleged) witches in rural Britain and Ireland.”
“It’s interesting that this one seems to have struck a chord in America,” says Cottam. “American readers seem fascinated by the character of Mrs. Mallory. I have already had some very gratifying reader feedback.”
Cottam’s editor in America is Peter Joseph at St Martin’s Press. His editor in UK is Carolyn Caughey at Hodder and Stoughton.
Cottam says his experience as a former magazine editor makes him turn in clean manuscripts which are scrupulously self-edited. “I write fast, but also fastidiously,” says Cottam. “I never read fiction when I’m writing because some writers have contagious styles. My publisher has tended to let me get on with it, to be honest. I don’t do detailed synopses prior to writing a book because I can’t. I make the stories up as I go along.”
At this time The Magdalena Curse is not being adapted for film or TV.
Cottam just finished writing a novel with the working title of The Colony. “It centers on the mystery of a community that vanished, Marie Celeste like, from an island in the Hebrides to which their charismatic religious leader had taken them early in the 19th century.”
“I like to alternate incident-driven with character-driven plots to prevent me…and my readers…from becoming bored,” says Cottam. “I think my fiction strongly reflects my own fascination with history, particularly early 20th century. I am a huge fan of the best writers in this genre of fiction…from M.R. James and Chesterton to Stephen King and Peter Straub. In writing novels such as The Magdalena Curse, I am writing the sort of books I would like to read.”
Cottam won the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award for The House of Lost Souls, his debut novel in his series of paranormal thrillers. Cottam is based in Greater London in Kingston-upon-Thames. He was born in Southport.
Cottam doesn’t have a website, but can be found on the Goodreads.com site.
The Magdalena Curse, author F.G. Cottam. Hardcover, 336 pages, Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton; First Edition; 1st printing. edition (12 Nov 2009), Language English, ISBN: 9780340980989
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