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4Alexander Gordon Smith (born 27 February 1979) is an English horror writer, founder of Egg Box Publishing and co-owner of independent production company, Fear Driven Films. He also runs many creative writing talks and workshops around the world, encouraging everyone -particularly children- to write. He's known best for his horror series ''Literature/EscapeFromFurnace''.
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6Born in Norwich England, Smith's first published book, ''The Inventors'' was a collaborative effort by himself and his then eleven year old brother Jamie to run in competition for Wow Factor, a national writing competition run by book publishers Faber and Faber, and Waterstones. Even though it had lost to Sarah Wray's ''The Forbidden Room'', the brothers' manuscript was picked up by Faber and published in 2007. The sequel ''The Inventors and the City of Stolen Souls'' was then published in 2008.
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8In his workshops and writing guides, he believes highly in the idea of writing horror from one's own fears and that horror is a good genre for teenagers and children to read and write more of. Many of his own novels work from these ideas, notably his Furnace series coming from inspiration of a rough patch Gordon went through in his teenage years, and the claustrophobia he had felt when doing research exploring the ideas of the cells.
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10Alexander Gordon Smith's works include:
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12The Inventors
13* ''The Inventors'' (2007)
14* ''The Inventors and the City of Stolen Souls'' (2008)
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16The Furnace/Literature/EscapeFromFurnace
17* ''Lockdown'' (2009)
18* ''Solitary'' (2010)
19* ''Death Sentence'' (2011)
20* ''Fugitives'' (2012)
21* ''Execution'' (2012)
22* ''The Night Children'' (2012) - A prequel novella
23* ''Silent Night'' (2018) - A prequel novella
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25Literature/TheFury
26* ''The Fury'' (2012)
27* ''The Storm''[[note]]Due to a publishing decision, The Storm is no longer published as a separate book and is combined with The Fury as one 700 page novel[[/note]]
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29Literature/TheDevilsEngine
30* ''Hellraisers'' (2015)
31* ''Hellfighters'' (2016)
32* ''Hellwalkers'' (2017)
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34''H.C.T.I.W.: This Book Will Kill You'' (2019)
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36!!His works features the following tropes:
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38* AngstySurvivingTwin: [[spoiler: Rilke Bastion and Patrick Rebarre]]
39* AuthorAvatar: With Alex Sawyer, the protagonist of Literature/EscapeFromFurnace. Much of Alex's character came from a period of time in Gordon's teenage years when he'd been in a rough patch that could've gone very dangerous. In earlier drafts of the novel the character is originally named Alex Smith.
40* AnyoneCanDie: And how, with no shortage in variety.
41* BittersweetEnding: The case of his series so far, goodness and hopes prevails but with the cost of many losses.
42* BodyHorror: A founding theme in his series.
43* CanonWelding: [[spoiler: In Hellfighters, Meridiana shows Marlow visions of the multiple universes. In one of these visions, Marlow sees the past villains of ''Literature/EscapeFromFurnace'' and ''The Fury.'' Before this however, Gordon has teased this multiverse convergence multiple times in AMAs.]]
44* DealWithTheDevil: The premise and concept of Literature/TheDevilsEngine.
45* DeadpanSnarker: Given that most of his characters are teenagers, many of them fall under this.
46* EldritchAbomination:
47** [[spoiler: The Stranger]] from ''Literature/EscapeFromFurnace''.
48** The Storm from ''The Fury''.
49** [[spoiler: Ostheim and Mammon]] from ''Literature/TheDevilsEngine
50%%* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: And how!
51%%* FamilyUnfriendlyViolence
52%%* FromBadToWorse
53%%* HumanoidAbomination
54* IJustWantToBeNormal: All of his protagonists so far have been teenagers chosen and thrown into traumatic horrors they definitely didn't want.
55* IJustWriteTheThing: While he doesn't really stick to a rigid plan with most of his series, this is most notable in ''Lockdown'' in which due to another rough patch in his life, Gordon felt compelled to keep writing the story as it developed in the hopes that helping Alex find his escape would help himself out too.
56* MeaningfulName: Obvious in the nicknames of the Engineers (Truck, Night, Pan) but also with the actual names of Marlow, Rilke, Schiller, Zee, Daisy and Brick.
57* PleasePutSomeClothesOn: A running gag in his books.
58** Often followed up with a TeenyWeenie remark.
59* ThePowerOfFriendship: A frequent theme in Gordon's books as they contain very poignant and heartwarming friendships, often reflected by the characters themselves realising they wouldn't have made as far as they've gone without one another.

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