The master of psycho-supernatural fiction returns with his third novel this coming spring.
March sees the launch of Sebastian Beaumont’s third publication with Myrmidon, following the successes of Thirteen and The Juggler.
Like its predecessors, The Lost Sessions is a genuine page-turner, another deliciously dark fable of the psyche that explores the twilight margins of the cerebral and the supernatural.
Thirteen told of the bizarre and sinister experiences of a Brighton taxi driver on the night shift – something of which the author had real experience. In The Juggler, a man finds a large amount of cash in a bag and leaves his wife and child for a new beginning in a remote seaside town, which turns out to be strange, disturbing and far from the escape he was hoping for.
But there is much more to Beaumont’s novels than contemporary gothic hauntings or mind-bending surrealism. In each, the protagonist needs to undertake a journey through his own self-awareness if he is to emerge unscathed from his predicament. Each story is a stand-alone tale in its own right, having satisfied a broad readership and drawn the highest praise from diverse reviewers such as Kate Saunders, Nicholas Clee, Scott Pack and the late Francis King. But Beaumont conceived the three novels as a triptych. “Thematically,” he says, “Thirteen is about an irruption of the personal past from the unconscious, The Juggler about dealing with the present situation, and The Lost Sessions looks at a ‘beyond me’ perspective (what happens when ordinary ‘me’ consciousness is at least temporarily absent).”
The Lost Sessions tells of Will, a psychotherapist whose journey into the surreal begins when he is knocked from his bike by a hit-and-run driver. As Will recovers from the resulting concussion, he finds himself in a curious vortex of shifting realities, at the centre of which is Emma, a young woman determined to secure Will as her therapist and who claims to be dead. She also seems to know a lot more about Will’s shadowed past than she should.
The Lost Sessions is published on 22nd March 2022.
Hardback: £18.00. ISBN: 978-1-910183-29-8
Ebook: (Price tbd) ISBN: 978-1-910183-30-4
