Tim Lebbon

Meet the dark fantasy writer who’s a marathon man too

 

 

- Jonathan Wright

The seed for Tim Lebbon’s new novel, Relics, came from a short story he wrote for an American anthology, “in which someone was trying to sell an alleged relic from a dragon”. And so things might have rested, except “the real ‘that’s it!’ moment” hit and Lebbon realised he could expand the story by making the book as much thriller as horror story.

“It wasn’t only the idea of the relics of mythological creatures being traded that interested me, but who would indulge in such a trade, similar to the criminal gangs behind ivory poaching and the like,” he says.

The answer, of course, is people you wouldn’t especially want to meet down a dark alley, as the novel’s lead character, Angela, learns when she goes in search of her missing boyfriend, Vince. “She discovers that Vince works for a crime boss whose passion is dealing in the relics of mythological creatures – mummified cyclops head, angel’s wing feather, gryphon’s claw,” says Lebbon, “and he’s gone missing because he discovered some of these relics are fresh.”

It’s a brilliantly simple idea brilliantly executed, and one that should make Lebbon far better known outside the dark fantasy scene where he got his start. “My first story sales were to small press magazines in the early ’90s and it was known as something of an ‘underground’ scene, separate from the commercial horror publishing markets,” he says.

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