Crowdfunding Spotlight: Get your teeth in Songbird, a vampire novel by A.S. Chambers

By John Freeman on June 5, 2019

This July sees a fan favourite from Lancaster-based fantasy author A.S. Chambers’ ever expanding urban fantasy universe receive her first outing in her own novel.

“Since her first appearances in The Casebook of Sam Spallucci, readers have loved the vampire known as Nightingale,” says A.S. Chambers, the author of ten novels so far, most of them based in an alternate version of the northern town, a world surely crying out for adaptation into a comic or TV series.

Songbird, tells of the Nightingale’s rise from poverty as a mortal orphan on the streets of Victorian England to leading the Children of Cain, the society of vampires that inhabit the world of paranormal investigator, Sam Spallucci.

Lancaster-based fantasy author A.S. Chambers

Along the way, she suffers at the hand of a sadistic parish priest and his wife before being rescued by her vampire father and subsequently travelling to the Wild West of the late 1800s to track down her missing brother, Justice.

The book has already mustered a great deal of excitement amongst Chambers’ loyal readers and is available for pre-order through a Kickstarter campaign. Launched on at the end of May, the campaign reached its target in just six hours.

As well as the novella, other items are available in his rewards that start from just one pound. They include his taster book from the world of Sam Spallucci, The Case of The Belligerent Bard, and his first outing for Lancaster’s beleaguered paranormal investigator from 2012, The Casebook of Sam Spallucci.

Also on offer as perks are limited A4 prints of the cover art for Songbird which was designed by North West-based illustrator Liam Shaw, a rising star in the world of digital art.

When not working as top-hatted creator of the long-suffering Sam Spallucci – investigator of the paranormal and all things weird – A.S.Chambers might be found wandering Lancaster with a camera, or at one of many events around the UK he attends, armed only with a tweed jacket and a finely sharpened HB pencil.

Some of the many fantasy novels of A.S. Chambers

The first outing for Sam was The Casebook of Sam Spallucci, published in 2012, where the poor chap suffered such unfortunate tasks as babysitting a new born vampire, tracking down an angst-ridden poltergeist in a local high school and overcoming a lycanthropic zoo-keeper as it bayed for his blood. Sam Spallucci: Ghosts From The Past, followed, and several more stories, much-enjoyed by fans. Sam Spallucci: Shadows Of Lancaster was released earlier this year.

• All details, including the link to the Kickstarter campaign (which finishes on the 25th June) can be found over at www.aschambers.co.uk – or head straight to the Kickstarter here

• A.S. Chambers is also on Facebook and you can haunt him on Twitter @ASChambersUK

• Find cover artist Liam Shaw on Facebook | instagram | Etsy |

• Find all A.S. Chambers published work on Amazon (Affiliate Links, using this helps support downthetubes, thank you

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John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.