A.S. Hatch Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

A.S. Hatch is a mystery author from a small town near Blackpool known as Thornton-Cleveleys though he currently lives in The Flyde, Lancashire. He grew up rollerblading and playing football in the streets of his hometown and asserts that he had a beautiful even if tempestuous childhood. Hatch also loved singing and playing drums and has been playing in bands since he was eighteen. After he graduated from college with a journalism degree in 2007, he decided to move to Taiwan. In Taiwan, he got a job teaching English as a foreign language and lived with his girlfriend in Taipei for a few years. He then moved to Melbourne, Australia, before moving back home to the UK in 2013. He is now a political communications specialist and lives in London.

Aside from his singing and writing A.S. Hatch also loved reading and cites Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami and David Foster Wallace as his literary heroes. However, while they are his biggest influences, he is also influenced by other authors such as Ali Smith. Hatch is also influenced by other art forms such as music, painting, film, photography, and TV and loves the poetry of Ian Curtis lyrics and the noirish stories of the songs by Lana Del Rey. He also loves brutalist architecture and is drawn to dark things and derelict buildings and often includes them in his fiction. He started writing fiction while he was in college and had “Los Gigantes” his first novel on the shortlist of the Luke Bitmead Prize in 2013. WyrdBooks Ltd chose his short story “Flies” as October 2012 short story of the month. His debut novel “This Little Dark Place” is the first novel he published, though it is the seventh manuscript he ever wrote. It was from the third manuscript that he began to think that maybe he could write something that people would read. While he is now a published author, he still loves to read and recommends Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” for its powerful and original storytelling. However, his favorite works of all time are Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights,” Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” David Foster-Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and George Orwell’s “1984.”

Since A.S. Hatch has a day job as a political communications specialist, he does most of his work in the mornings before he heads to work. He finds writing in the morning to be better since his mind is fresher than in the evenings when he is tired. In 2012, he decided to treat writing like a profession and got serious writing 500 words every day. Nonetheless, he often takes the weekends off to spend time with family. He spends much of the time plotting so that the drafts often seem to write themselves. In a recent interview, he asserted that kernels of plots will often come out when he is out and about or just going about his day. Hatch will then add any new ideas to the notes app in his iPhone and then come back to them later He also gets inspirations from his surroundings and this could be anything from an article in the news, a film he sees on TV, a painting, or a street scene while he is driving to work. He will usually debate in his head on which are the best ideas and then weed out the others in a process he loves to call Literary Darwinism. He often spends a lot of time chewing on the ideas before he decides to develop his stories. It takes him between six to nine months to write a full manuscript as he loves to be prepared by having a rough idea of his plots and characters.

“This Little Dark Place” by A.S. Hatch is the story of Daniel and Victoria. They live in a small little town and have been in a relationship for several months. Daniel is happy being a carpenter while Victoria is bored to death living in a small town and is often looking for something to keep herself busy. But Vicky gets restless and thinks that having a baby would be interesting and tells Daniel that she wants to get pregnant. They try for two years but misfortune seems to dog their efforts as she gets pregnant but miscarries every time, leaving her hopeless and angry. Their relationship soon suffers as they no longer spend much time together or even talk to each other as the sex becomes perfunctory. Dan spends a lot of time online and soon stumbles upon “Inbox Inmates,” a program that connects inmates with people on the outside, while concealing the identities of both. In the program, he meets Ruby, a female inmate that he finds intriguing and they are soon having a bizarre pen pal relationship. But the times are even harder for Daniel who is dealing with the death of his mother that had been afflicted with dementia. His mother left him an old unused cottage and he thinks that maybe moving in there would resurrect his relationship with Victoria. What happens next is something the couple never expected.