The Crystal Queen has a little chat with Stephen Laws about Chasm...

Stephen Laws takes the research aspects of his work very seriously, believing that to produce a really effective supernatural horror-thriller, the down-to-earth everyday aspects of a novel should be rock solid to give the supernatural "intrusion" greater effect. In the past, this research has led him into some interesting situations; climbing an elevator shaft on a maintenance inspection for Darkfall, scuba-diving (and nearly drowning) in a Stockport canal for Macabre, behind the wheel of a runaway bulldozer for Daemonic. For Chasm, in which an English town is devastated by an earthquake, Steve was actually allowed to participate in the destruction of a town centre! The demolition experts Bradley Hall and Scotdem were only too pleased to give Steve as much information as he needed, even bringing him in for the actual demolition work itself.

"Chasm is my tenth novel," says Steve. "As such, I wanted it to be my 'block-buster'. It's actually been about two years in creation, and has given me a chance to pull all the stops out, with guest appearances by The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse; The Cherubim (nasty little naked angels with sharp teeth who hunt in packs and can tear you to pieces in seconds); an army of the living dead; a feral tribe of homicidal, cannibalistic survivors bent on the destruction of anyone over the age of sixteen, and The Vorla: a living, crawling black sea composed of everything evil that mankind has ever experienced. And to add to the fun, I even got to blow up a shopping centre in person!... all for research purposes and all in the name of art!"