Author Archives: matthewjhampton

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About matthewjhampton

Brisbane-based author and wine drinker

Ninth post

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THANK YOU!

I couldn’t be happier with the feedback I’ve gotten in the last month since I released Feast on here, I just had to write a post expressing some of the humility and gratitude I’ve felt from what you’ve said.
With permission, I’ve stolen some quotes.

“Feast is a delicious thriller, as well as a love story that packs a lot of emotional punch.
The writing is beautifully descriptive and captures a unique and magical setting with breathtaking scenery and a charming small town. As a proudly South African coffee shop waitress, I really appreciated all the small details that the author included.
The characters feel real. They are brought to life by their vividness and, in some cases, by their flaws.
I’m a huge fan of thrillers and it’s not often that a twist takes me completely by surprise, so I love it when that does happen. In this novella, I did not see the twists coming at all and it blew my mind.

Feast will make you hunger for more Matt Hampton!”

Maja, devoted reader and fellow author

“You revealed that PERFECTLY… I think that you ended it exactly where it needed to end.”

Sam, teacher

“I did NOT see that ending coming! I knew you could write, but that was damn near perfect!”

ML, award-winning SA author

“I never before read something that so much made me feel like I was there, with such deep point of view. The ending made me think about true love, and the second chances we deserve…”

Luzanne, SA expat

“Feast was such a ride! I read it again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything … Coupled with the nostalgic feeling of a new encounter. To feel that way about a new face again… The unknown is always so perplexingly seductive. I was left unexplainably satisfied. Don’t stop writing.”

Tia, aspiring writer

“Good to read naked.”

Emma, student

“It’s good. You swear too much in it.”

My mother

“[it] was adventurous, intelligently written and feeds the minds of readers who enjoy fiction but can also relate to the piece in some way.”

F
Download Feast here

Feast

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Well, 2019 happened, but it was before midnight when I hit Publish. So here it is, for your enjoyment, 100% free of charge, my short story, Feast. 

Feast PDF downloadDownload

Feast ePub Download

Scroll to the bottom for a link to my personal playlist that I listened to while writing it, great for listening to while reading it.

Writing Feast the first time was a fantasy. 

Writing it the second time was a catharsis. 

In a bout of pre-traumatic stress, I wrote a mystery story set in South Africa, after I had booked tickets to go there. A lot of the initial place descriptions were drawn from Google street view and tourist Flickr accounts. After completion of the first draft, I saw that the Google street view at a lot of the points of interest in the story were taken in 2009, and I was due to fly out in early August 2019. Fair to say, there had been a lot of development and expansion in ten years, even in such a rural area, so parts of my narrative were laughably inaccurate. 

And after my return, I knew I had to write a full second draft of Feast, both surprised by what I had gotten right and shocked at what I had gotten wrong. 

To be clear, in this post (or in the answers to any comments or questions) I will not describe nor confirm nor deny anything that occurred during my stay in South Africa during that week in August 2019, save for two details. 

One – JD accidentally leaving a massive tip because of his lack of understanding of local currency. That was in the first draft, and was strangely prophetic. When time came for me to pay a bill in a Pringle Bay cafe, my local guide was in the restroom and was not there to help me with the alien notes in my wallet. My total came to 107ZAR, I handed over a 200ZAR note and walked away. Simple maths caught up with me later, at which point I thought back to the part in the first draft I had written with JD’s near-identical goof, and laughed aloud. 

Two – although it was the most emotionally significant week of my life, I will disclaim here to the best of my ability that my expressions of the events and people and businesses in the places described are merely a product of artistic license. The physical places (Hangklip mountain, Porter Road, Stony Point Penguin Colony, et al) ARE real, everything else is fiction. Got it? Good.

If, by pure happenstance, you read this story and at a later date find yourself in Cape Town, and then are visited by the compulsion to get in a car and take the hilariously hazardous drive to Pringle Bay / Betty’s Bay / Kleinmond, do NOT expect to see these businesses or meet these people. These characters are a work of fiction, and any real-life inspirations of these fictional characters and businesses are purely coincidental. There ARE amazing, quality, well-run businesses in these areas staffed by incredible, hardworking people, and are well worth the visit.

You SHOULD expect to see the most gorgeous mist-capped mountains and ancient beaches you’ll ever see in your life, and get an amazing bag of koeksuster from a little shop off of the main road in Kleinmond, near the Spar supermarket, which are far superior to the Woolworths ones. The pineapple konfyt is to die for as well. 

Just please, don’t go looking for satchels full of bills on any protected nature reserves.

That’s MY retirement plan. 

Seventh post

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Writing is a hard process.

It can be lonely. I spend more time with my hands at the keys, nodding along to whatever Spotify assumed I’d enjoy this week, than I do with other human beings. I’m in no hurry to tip that balance the other way, but it’s not for everyone.

It can be draining, physically and emotionally.

It can also be very time-consuming. Inbetween my day job and its associated travel time, and biological needs such as sleep, there’s only so many hours to actually pound the scissor-switches, so having exciting news every week at this stage of the process (editing and refining two WIPs) unlikely. It’s kind of a boring spectator sport, so instead of weekly I’ll just be updating this when something noteworthy happens.

Stay safe, create memories, and love one another.

Sixth post

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This week, I wanted to show off my battle station.

Because that is what it is, a cathartic alter at which to wrestle the demons onto the page, and call it work. Let’s take a look!

Here under the monitor is the skull of the first draft of my manuscript, picked clean by hindsight. Also on the monitor stand is Cedric Diggory.

Hogwarts and Star Wars posters stare down at me to remind me that, respectively, an unknown author in a cafe could find an audience for her stories, and to remember that you need people to say “no” to your bad ideas, or you end up making The Phantom Menace.

In the dock is my (t)rusty MacBook Pro 13″, on constant life support since its charging chip gasped its last. I pounded out 117,000 words into the first draft on that keyboard, now I’m on a wired magic keyboard (pictured) or a trusty MacBook Air 11″ when I’m out and about and soaking up free air conditioning.

The beer (next to Mr Grins there) is Great Northern, from a brewery first established in Cairns (much like myself), and is also a great assistant in my writing. I find that I write best at exactly 2.5 drinks, no more and no less. Staying at that exact blood alcohol level can be tricky, and sometimes I wake up having pounded out 1500 words, and then settle down with a Sunday Morning coffee to decide how many of the last 500 words have to go in the bin.
It was actually a note I found one seedy Sunday morning that I discovered I thought of – and started – Feast with zero recollection. Just put down a page about a mysterious stranger blowing into town, googled extensively to make sure I hadn’t stolen it from anywhere, then dove right on in. I’ll have more about that next week.

I promise I’ll have more real progress updates then as well.

Have fun, y’all. Stay safe.

Fifth post

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Second draft of Feast is finished at 23,525! 

Nearly 8,000 words done in the one evening, still not close to hitting my personal best of 12,000 in one 12-hour sitting. The featured image above is a mockup of the cover I’ll be doing for it – not bad for a photo I snapped on an iPhone SE.

It’s been spit-polished and sent to my lovely editor, who will pick it apart and help me not to look like a repetitive idiot. Once she’s done, it’ll be on here for free. I’ve also sent it to my own mother, which I’ve not done with a manuscript before.

In the meantime, I’m getting to work on the next draft of Dirty Eyes, putting her hundreds of comments and notes and suggestions into practise. While that hill is climbed, I’m plagued with ideas for a sequel to it, which I never thought I’d attempt.

Will also be working on another short to go on this blog for free, with the working title of The House Always Wins. It’s a tight little psychological horror thriller, set on the same streets as Dirty Eyes. In it, a hacker gets a virtual reality interface installed behind his eyeballs, and begins to see terrifying hidden messages meant only for him. Should be a good bedtime story.

Off to have a cold beer and hit the keys like they owe me money (because, in a way, they do) while pizzas are in the oven. Have a good week.

Fourth post

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Not much to update. 

I’ve added another two scenes to Feast that had been knocking on the back of my skull for attention, both of which actually improve the pacing and suspense. Stephen King said that each subsequent draft should be 90% the length of the draft before it, but sometimes you just realise something important was missing. 

I won’t give a date that it’ll be ready, because my editor is incredibly thorough, and you can’t rush that kind of quality. 

Instead I will be uploading the first two chapter of my long-suffering novel, Dirty Eyes. I’ve put a link to that page at the bottom of this post, but fair warning: it refused to format the dialogue properly, and I blame WordPress. 

Have a good week.

Dirty Eyes preview

Third post

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Wow, what a year this month has been.

As an ardent stickler for quality, I’m putting off the release of Feast by another week. It deserves another coat of polish, and you don’t deserve to read something unpolished.

I thought about that line that every artist has to draw for themselves: where do you stop? Do you redraft and tweak and spackle and perfect until it’s flawless? No, because it never will be. Do you ship it as soon as X-number of drafts are done? No, because that’s not good enough. I’ve drawn the line at where I could put it out for people to read and I don’t feel the need to stand over their shoulders and point out Bits That Need Fixing.

Before even starting this second draft, I knew there was a full-sized novel in this. I will probably end up at 20-or-so-thousand words for the short story, but I know there’s a story four times as long as that, with much more to say and explore in that location, in that situation, and between those characters. I might do that one day, but in the meantime, this is what it has to say. A 90 minute read for those with a long train commute, or in need of something to read after dinner but before bed.

It’ll be on here, 100% free, once my talented editor has helped me put a spit-shine on it.

Have a good week. Eyes up.

Second post

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I’ve decided I’m going to start doing weekly updates on here, at the very least.

Feast is enjoying its second draft at a healthy 2200 words, a bouncing baby clone. I want to have it done by next week’s update, if just to have it out the door and out of my head. My final self-imposed deadline is the 15th.

Ideas have been flowing thick and fast for Dirty Eyes, can’t wait to get started on that next. Weekends might be for a tipsy face-first dive into something new, like Rapunzel or some horror short. I feel better when I’m spraying my creative juices all over the place.

Day job is okay. Effy is good, I told her that I’m booked in to get her “pawtrait” inked on my forearm this month, and she described the news as as “mlau.”

First post

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Something has to come first.

Currently working on:

Feast – 16,372 words.
Short story, first draft finished and notes.
A mysterious stranger drives into town with a secret in the trunk of his car, and finds himself falling in love with the sleepy little town. Set in South Africa, mystery + romance + travel.

Dirty Eyes – 116,579 words.
Novel, second draft finished and waiting last 1% of notes from proofreader / editor.
A loser moonlighting as a career criminal discovers the unconscious body of his dead brother, and goes on the run from a shadowy corporation to keep him safe. Set in the year 2089, action + thriller + mystery + cyberpunk.

Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead – 29,275 words.
Two-part novella, first draft of part 1 finished.
Down-on-his-luck hacker Mark takes a safe job reuniting a young lady with her estranged mother, and is plunged into a game of deceit, punks, murder, gangland warfare, and birds with neon eyes. Spin-off to Dirty Eyes. Set in the year 2086, action + thriller + cyberpunk.

Also playing with designs for “covers”. I intend on putting Feast and the Part 1 of Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead on this blog for free, and perhaps the first chapter of Dirty Eyes, then shopping around for more traditional publication.

Really not sure why it’s taken me this long to start a writing blog.