Sarah Pinborough

Sarah Pinborough
Born	1972 Milton Keynes, England
Pen name	Sarah Silverwood
Occupation	Writer, teacher
Nationality	English
Genre	Horror & supernatural, fantasy, young adult
Website
www.sarahpinborough.com

Sarah Pinborough is an English-born horror writer. Her works have been compared to those of Bentley Little, Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz.^[1] She also writes fantasy novels for children under the name Sarah Silverwood. Pinborough tweets prolifically and has been described as one of Twitter's funniest female Tweeters.^[2] She is a regular guest at genre conventions in England and internationally.^[3] She was Mistress of Ceremonies at the controversial 2011 British Fantasy Society awards in Brighton in 2011.^[4]

Biography

Pinborough was born in Buckinghamshire in 1972. Because of her father's career as a diplomat, much of Pinborough's early childhood was spent travelling in the Middle East. From the ages of eight to eighteen Pinborough attended boarding school, which she claims has influenced her writing.^[5]

Pinborough trained to be a secondary school teacher after a brief marriage,^[6][7] while still writing her novels. She taught for three years at the Lord Grey School before moving onto Lea Manor High School in Luton. Pinborough also taught at Walton High, Milton Keynes afterwards.^[8]

Pinborough's initial titles were published in America by Leisure Books. She was then invited to write for Gollancz Books for whom she has written the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy, The London Chronicles (as Sarah Silverwood), three fairytale novellas (Poison, Charm and Beauty) and The Death House.^[9] She is now published by Gollancz and has a deal to write thrillers for HarperCollins.

Whilst writing for Leisure Books she was also writing a crime novel called Scream Blue Murder, but this has never been published.^[10]

Awards and Nominations

The Language of Dying: 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won the 2010 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.^[11]

"The Language of Dying is essentially a monologue – though really it is a one-sided dialogue, if such a thing exists – between the narrator, the middle child of five, and the family’s father, who is slowly dying from the lung cancer which wracks his entire body."^[12]

"Our Man in the Sudan": 2009 World Fantasy Award finalist^[13]

Bibliography

Novels

Leisure Books

Leisure Books are an American publisher. These titles titles are all from their Leisure Horror list.^[14]

• The Hidden (2004, Leisure Books) ISBN 978-0843954807
• The Reckoning (2005, Leisure Books) ISBN 978-0843955507
• Breeding Ground (2006, Leisure Books) ISBN 978-0843957419

This is an end of the world novel where most of the population is wiped out by giant spiders that human women have given birth to.

• The Taken (2007, Leisure Books) ISBN 978-0843958966

A ghostly revenge novel

• Tower Hill (2008, Leisure Books) ISBN 978-0-8439-6052-5

This is novel about a small town in America in supernatural peril of Biblical proportions.

• Feeding Ground (2009, Leisure Books) ISBN 0843962933

This is a sequel to Breeding Ground. Pinborough's original proposal for this sequel would have been called The Brethren but this was rejected by the publisher as being too Sci-Fi for their list. The book as written is intended to be like a creature feature movie.^[9]

Torchwood

Torchwood is a spin-off series from Doctor Who. These are TV tie-in novels and short stories in that shared world.

• Into the Silence (Torchwood) (2009, Random House) ISBN 978-1846077531
• The story Kaleidoscope in Consequences (Torchwood) (2009, Random House) ISBN 978-1846077845
• Torchwood: Long Time Dead (2011, Random House) ISBN 978-1849902847

Pinborough has also written short stories for the Torchwood Magazine. These are:

• Happy New Year Issue 20
• Mend Me Issue 23

The Dog-Faced Gods series

Now called the Forgotten Gods Trilogy in the Ace Books reprint. The series has been optioned for a Television series.^[15]

1. A Matter of Blood (2010, Gollancz Books) (2013 Ace Books) ISBN 978-0425258460
2. The Shadow of the Soul (2011, Gollancz Books) (2013 Ace Books) ISBN 978-0425258484
3. The Chosen Seed (2012, Gollancz Books) (2013 Ace Books) ISBN 978-0425258507^[16]

The "Dog Faced Gods" series is set in an alternative world. The Britain of this world isn't a dystopia but it is merely a little crapier and harsher than ours. Jim Steel^[17]

Sleeping Beauty by Gustave Dore

The Fairy Tale Series

• Poison (April 2013 Gollancz Books) ISBN 978-0575092976

Poison is a modern retelling of the Snow White story

• Charm (July 2013 Gollancz Books) ISBN 978-0575093010

Charm is a modern retelling of the Cinderella story

• Beauty (October 2013 Gollancz Books) ISBN 978-0575093058

Beauty is a modern retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story

Other Novels

• The Language of Dying (2009, PS Publishing) (2013, Jo Fletcher Books)^[18] ISBN 978-1782067542
• Mayhem (2013, Jo Fletcher Books) ISBN 978-1780871288

Mayhem is a supernatural murder mystery set in Victorian London and based around the actual events of the Thames Torso Murders.

• Murder (2013, Jo Fletcher Books) ISBN 978-1780872346

Murder is the sequel to Mayhem

• The Death House (2015, Gollancz)^[19] ISBN 978-0575096875

The London Stone

As Sarah Silverwood

As Sarah Silverwood, Sarah Pinborough writes fantasy fiction for the Young-adult fiction market

The Nowhere Chronicles

1. The Double-edged Sword (2010, Gollancz) ISBN 978-1780620596
2. The Traitor's Gate (2011, Gollancz) ISBN 978-1780620657
3. The London Stone (2012, Gollancz) ISBN 978-1780620671

Short Stories

• Waiting For October (2007, Dark Arts Books) - a book of the combined short stories of Sarah Pinborough, Adam Pepper, Jeff Strand and Jeffrey Thomas (writer) ISBN 978-0977968619
• Hellbound Hearts (2009, Pocket Books) edited by Paul Kane (writer) and Marie O'Regan - Pinborough contributed "The Confessor's Tale" ISBN 978-1439140901
• Zombie Apocalypse! edited by Stephen Jones (author) (2010, Running Press) - Pinborough contributed "Diary Entry #1", "Diary Entry #2" and "Diary Entry #3" ISBN 978-0762440016
• The Compartments of Hell written with Paul Meloy in Black Static 20 A post apocalypse story where the only survivors are those who are high on opiates.^[20][21]
• The Room Upstairs in House of Fear An anthology of Haunted House stories edited by Jonathan Oliver (publishing), (2011 Solaris Books) ISBN 978-1-907992-06-3

Screenwriting

• In 2012, Pinborough wrote Old School Ties the second episode of the ninth series of the BBC TV police drama New Tricks.^[22]
• M (2013) World Productions/ITV Global Returnable Drama Series.
• Fallow Ground (2012) World Productions Original 3-part drama.
• Red Summer (2012) Blind Monkey Pictures Feature screenplay. Under option.

Adaptations

On 1 August 2012, it was announced that director Peter Medak had been attached to direct Cracked, a screenplay based on Pinborough's first novel The Hidden.^[23]

Critical reception

• Wisely, Pinborough opts to build suspense subtly, rather than bludgeon readers with horrific imagery or buckets of gore, giving this nicely executed, surprisingly moving ghost story an old-fashioned feel in the best possible sense. - Review of The Taken in Publishers Weekly^[24]
• There are a lot of familiar elements here - small town in danger, ancient artefacts of power, with scripture and biblical beings co-opted into the mix...Pinborough deftly stage manages all of these favourite things, putting her own spin on the material and weaving a convincing back story that knits together scripture and mythology. - Review in Black Static of Tower Hill by Peter Tennant.^[25]
• There is plenty going on at street level. Troubled policeman, Cass, the core of the novel, is trying to solve a series of linked student suicides in what is a very good police procedural. What we have is a violent and dark novel that packs a wild set of ingredients between its covers. It wobbles occasionally (an omniscient violin playing tramp?) but it never falls. A remarkable achievement. - Review in the British Fantasy Society Journal of The Shadow of the Soul by Jim Steel^[26]
• It might have been subtitled "Fifty Shades of White". Or perhaps it could bear Mae West's classic line as a cover quote: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." It's a slim, undemanding read, but loads of fun and very saucy with it. - Review in the The Independent of Poison: 4 April 2013 by David Barnett^[27]
• "Charm" was a light and frothy concoction, entertaining and true to the source material but with a subtext dealing with how fairy stories distort our expectations of reality. - Review in Black Static of Charm by Peter Tennant.^[28]
• In this chilling exploration of madness and evil, Pinborough excels at summoning up the bleak spirit of Victorian London’s mean streets and those forced to fight for survival there. - Review of Mayhem in Publishers Weekly.^[29]
• But anyone who comes to this book with their expectations wide open will find a beautiful novel, short, sharp and told with painful honesty, which I would say is the product of a writer at the very top of her game, were it not evident from the quality of her prodigious output that Sarah Pinborough still has a way to go before she comes anywhere close to peaking. - Review in the The Independent of The Language of Dying: 18 December 2013 by David Barnett^[12]
• British author Pinborough manages to make this deeply disturbing sequel to 2013’s Mayhem even bleaker and more unsettling than its predecessor...The author’s ingenuity in weaving her macabre plot becomes fully evident by the powerful, jaw-dropping end, and she skilfully instils fear in the reader even with innocuous phrases. - Review of Murder in Publishers Weekly.^[30]

References

1. "Fiction Book Review: The Reckoning by Sarah Pinborough, Author . Leisure $6.99 (338p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5550-7". PublishersWeekly.com.
2. "You’re ‘avin’ a laugh! – Twitter's Funniest Females". GoHen Blog.
3. http://festival.sugarpulp.it/sarah-pinborough/?utm_content=buffer69983&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer http://festival.sugarpulp.it/sarah-pinborough/
4. David Barnett. "British Fantasy Award winner returns prize". the Guardian.
5. Biography on Sarah's Homepage
6. Biography on Sarah Pinborough's Homepage
7. I've just realised that if I hadn't seen sense/got divorced today would have been my 14th wedding anniversary. Tweet 13.10.14
8. I rarely base characters on people I know, but I had worked at a school on quite a tough estate for a few years so that probably fed into it a bit. Interview in Project:Torchwood
9. "Q & A with Sarah Pinbourough," Black Static 16 April - May 2010, page 52
10. "Sarah Pinborough signs-up".
11. "The Winners of the British Fantasy Awards 2010". The British Fantasy Society.
12. David Barnett (8 December 2013). "The Language of dying, by Sarah Pinborough - Paperbacks review". The Independent.
13. World Fantasy Convention (2010). "Award Winners and Nominees". Retrieved 4 Feb 2011.
14. When I was writing for Leisure that was more restrictive because they have a clear vision of their list.They are horror with a capital H and that is what their readers expect. Interview in 2010 in Black Static 16, page 54
15. http://www.davidhigham.co.uk/clients/Sarah-Pinborough.htm
16. "An Independent on Sunday Book of the Year 2012". independent.co.uk.
17. British Fantasy Society Journal Autumn 2011 page 29
18. Upcoming4.me (2013). "Sarah Pinborough - The Language of Dying cover art and synopsis reveal". Retrieved 29 May 2013.
19. Upcoming4.me (2014). "Stay With Me by Sarah Pinborough cover art and synopsis". Retrieved 27 July 2014.
20. Black Static 20 Dec2010/Jan2011 page 10
21. See question 6 in Musings of the Monster Librarian
22. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2128045/fullcredits#writers
23. "Director Peter Medak Has Finally Cracked Up". Dread Central.
24. "Fiction Book Review: The Taken by Sarah Pinborough, Author . Leisure $6.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5896-6". PublishersWeekly.com.
25. Black Static 7 Oct/Nov 2008 page 29
26. BFS Journal Autumn 2011, page 29
27. David Barnett (13 April 2013). "Review: Poison, By Sarah Pinborough". The Independent.
28. Black Static 37 Nov/Dec 2013 page 92
29. "Fiction Book Review: Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough. Quercus/Jo Fletcher, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-62365-086-5". PublishersWeekly.com.
30. "Fiction Book Review: Murder by Sarah Pinborough. Quercus/Jo Fletcher, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-62365-866-3". PublishersWeekly.com.

External links

• Official website
• Story Behind The Language of Dying - Essay by Sarah Pinborough
• Story Behind Murder - Essay by Sarah Pinborough
• Interview at Gothic Imagination