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By day Tim Lebbon is a QS for Monmouthshire County Council, working mostly on new school developments. By night he is a multi award-winning horror/fantasy writer. He has published 18 books to date, selling a total of 150,000 copies in the process.

In spite of healthy sales, it’s not enough to make a full-time living. “People assume that as soon as you’ve published a book, you can afford a swimming pool.”

Lebbon’s father was a stonemason and his grandfather a bricklayer, so quantity surveying was a natural choice for him. In fact, he has been a QS ever since leaving school.

Lebbon says he mainly does education work because of a massive education review the council is currently undertaking. But he also works for social services, police and sometimes magistrates courts.

He recently finished work on the £7m Deri View School, Monmouthshire and as part of the ongoing education review several more school projects are expected. Lebbon will work on these alongside E Turner & Sons, which is part of Willmott Dixon.

But what do his peers think of his other career? “There’s a lot of interest from people I work with. They’re always asking how the latest book is going, and whether I’ve made my million yet. My bosses are also really supportive – they know where my heart is.”

It was this support that allowed him to go part-time 18 months ago, a move that has boosted his popularity. “It definitely helped. I’ve got a family as well, so obviously I can’t spend all of my extra time writing. I’d say that I spend 18 hours a week as a QS, but 50 hours writing.”

People assume that as soon as you’ve published a book, you can afford a swimming pool

Lebbon has more recently been immersing himself in a new world, ‘Noreela’, that he has created for forthcoming novels Dusk and Dawn, and it is a world which he is “still discovering”. ‘Noreela’ is Lebbon’s attempt to turn the classic fantasy genre on its head. “This is a world where magic used to exist, but has now disappeared. It’s like trying to imagine how we would react if we no longer had electricity.”

Although the majority of his covers have a classic horror look to them, and the novels themselves contain elements of this, Lebbon says he tends to write more at the psychological end of the spectrum. “People usually judge horror literature by horror movies and there have been films like Scream which doesn’t really help matters,” he says. “It’s difficult not to get typecast, as when people see the word horror they automatically think blood, guts and monsters being kept in the basement.” He says it is this perception that is behind the current slump in UK horror/fantasy genre publishing.

He has been writing for 15 years, but only in the last ten years has he actually been publishing. He says the UK book market is difficult. “Shops like Waterstones are going to order, say, ten thousand copies of Harry Potter, but just a few of mine. But don’t get me wrong. What JK Rowling has done is amazing. People tend to knock success, but she’s got hundreds of thousands of kids reading books. That’s fantastic.”

The US, however, is a different story. Last December was a major break for him as he signed a deal with Random House Publishing’s subsidiary Bantam. All this means more trips overseas. “I was in New York in April for the World Horror Convention and later this year there’s a conference in Wisconsin. Next year I’ll have to go to Baltimore and San Fransisco. So the market is definitely more in America.”

Influences

Working for a local authority, he says, has not massively influenced his writing, but at his desk the imagination does not appear to stop whirring away. “Everyday I’d come home with my pockets full of notes, on characters mostly. Something said by someone can spark an idea, or the way someone acts. Friends will also tell me their dreams or even dreams that their friends have had.”

Everyday I’d come home with my pockets full of notes, on characters mostly

Reading novels from the age of six also might have had something to do with his decision to write. “In my teens I was very much into Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker. At that age you tend to think that’s all there is, but as you grow older you broaden your horizons.”

Now he says he is influenced by almost everyone he reads, and namechecks British writers China Mieville and Neil Gaiman.

Currently, Lebbon says, there are some exciting opportunities on the horizon, including the adaptation of some of his novels into films. “I’ve got three novels and three novellas currently being considered for films. There’s no golden handshake yet, but there are things going on in Hollywood right now with screenwriters, as well as in London.”

One of these is Face, for which Lebbon says the screenplay has already been written. The novels White, Until She Sleeps and In Perpetuity are also being considered. January sees the release of new ‘Noreela’ novels Dusk and Dawn.

He’s also written an original Hellboy novel, called Unnatural Selection, which is due to be published in April next year.

So how long does he plan to carry on with working as a QS? “For the time being, working for the council actually helps a lot,” he says. “I enjoy the social side of QSing and it’s definitely something that I’m sticking with. But Dusk and Dawn are the answers to your question. If these sell well there could be more deals in the future. And that means more time spent writing.”