Authors: T.J. Lebbon

The Hunt (29 page)

BOOK: The Hunt

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The Hunt – Author Q&A

The Hunt
is such a gripping read and the characters really come to life on the page. How did you go about researching the book?

I’ll talk a little about the endurance sport aspect elsewhere. But there were other areas of the book I needed to research and was keen to get right. Firstly the landscape, which I wanted to make as much a character in this book as the people upon it. I know my local hills and mountains in Monmouthshire pretty well as I love walking, running and biking in them. But the only way to know the real Welsh mountains of Snowdonia, both the geography and the feel, smell, and touch of the landscape itself, is to go there. I paid a couple of visits whilst writing and revising
The Hunt
, climbed Snowdon, hiked in the mountains, really tried to get a feel for the atmosphere of that place. It’s a popular holiday venue, and climbing Snowdon especially is difficult to do without having crowds of tourists around you. But it’s also a wild place, and with the aid of a good map it’s pretty easy to get off the beaten track. The ruggedness of the land, and the dangers, aren’t easy to imagine without seeing and experiencing them first-hand. Also the weather, which can change so quickly from inviting to inimical. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but to survive there for any period of time you have to respect it. And even an expert like Chris (in
The Hunt
) can make mistakes.

I was also interested in the psychology of someone who might want to take part in a human trophy hunt. I researched trophy hunts in Africa, read a lot about who takes part in them, and why. It was strange reading. I find it hard enough to understand why someone would take any pleasure from shooting a wild lion in the head with a high-powered rifle, even less so when the animal is wounded to stop it escaping, corralled, and essentially defenceless. It’s hardly a ‘me against the wild’ scenario. Going one big step further – to hunt humans instead of animals – was difficult, but it’s something I can see happening sometime, somewhere. Who knows, maybe it’s already happened.

There were also smaller areas I had to research – weaponry, computer and web technology, helicopters. All of my previous novels have been horror or fantasy novels, where a lot of the time I’m making up my own worlds, or my own pockets of existence in the world we know around us. This made
The Hunt
probably the most heavily researched book I’ve ever written.

You’re a regular participant in athletic endurance events. How much of your own experience did you draw upon when writing about the physical struggles Chris faces in the book?

This was a classic case of write about what you know (at least, I know a
little
bit about it). The inspiration to write
The Hunt
came from my love of endurance sport, something I’ve been passionate about since I turned 40 overweight, unfit, and wondering where the future would take me. I discovered running, then cycling and swimming, started entering races, ran my first marathons, competed in my first triathlons, and then completed my first Ironman race. It was a huge change to my life – one that continues now – and because I’m a writer, I was often looking for ways to incorporate my new-found love into my fiction. I’d been considering writing a thriller for some time, and the idea of combining endurance sport with a fast-paced chase thriller seemed perfect.

The Hunt
is the result. There’s a lot more to the story, of course, but at its core it deals with a man able to keep ahead of those intending to kill him. He knows the mountains and trails, knows how to pace himself, understands the nutritional aspects of such a long pursuit. And for that, I dipped very heavily into my own experiences. I love triathlon, although I doubt I’ll ever trouble a podium, so I have first-hand experience of how much it can hurt pushing yourself to those limits, as well as what it feels like to
enjoy
pushing yourself. There’s a lot of me in Chris, actually, including his new-found fear of heights, and his moments of doubt and restrained panic swimming in open water. Everything seemed to gel really well in this novel. Writing was my hobby and has now become my living, and with
The Hunt
my new hobby of triathlon and endurance sports became my research!

What was the first book that really made an impression on you?

When I was maybe 6 or 7 I read
Shadow the Sheepdog
by Enid Blyton. There’s not too much I remember about it, other than being enthralled, and fascinated at seeing the world from a dog’s point of view (our family always had dogs). There were some sad bits in there, too, which I don’t think I’d been used to in what I’d read up til then. It was the first time I read a book again and again, and funnily enough my sister still has that copy. The second book is
The Rats
, by James Herbert. My mother gave me this to read when I was 10 or 11, and I never looked back. Herbert was a favourite through my teens, and many copies of
The Fog
,
Domain
, and
The Dark
were passed back and forth among me and my friends. I met him a couple of years before he died and thanked him for
The Rats
. The book introduced me fully to the horror genre, and is partly responsible for me doing what I do now.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently writing my second thriller for Avon, tentatively titled Every Man (although I suspect that title might change). I don’t want to say too much about it, other than it’s just as fast and furious as
The Hunt
. Anyone who enjoys The Hunt should love my new novel, and they might recognise a character or two from that book. The book’s coming together very nicely, I think, and I’m already having ideas for future novels of the same ilk.

About the Author

Tim J. Lebbon is a New York Times-bestselling writer with over thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and been shortlisted for World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards. A movie of his story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage, will be released soon, and several other projects are in development. He lives in the Monmouthshire countryside with his wife Tracey, children Ellie and Dan, and his dog Blu. He enjoys running and biking in the hills, and sometimes he imagines he’s being chased. The Hunt is Tim J. Lebbon’s first thriller.

Find out more at
www.timlebbon.net
and
@timlebbon

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

http://www.harpercollins.ca