A veteran Scottish Labour councillor in Fife has quit the contest to be his party’s local candidate in next year’s general election after concerns were raised about his “sexy and satanic” novel writing.
Altany Craik told the Guardian that he had withdrawn from the selection process to represent Scottish Labour in the Glenrothes constituency “for family reasons”.
But sources close to Craik, who was first elected as a councillor in 2012 and is now the second most senior councillor in Fife’s Labour-led administration, suggested he had stepped aside because the party had raised issues about the content and themes of the occult horror books that he writes as a hobby.
His novels, which he publishes independently, include a series set in Scotland featuring a psychic priest named Father Andrew Steel who investigates occult-related crimes.
One angry colleague told the Courier, which first reported on the row: “It’s absolutely disgusting. They’re saying he’s not a suitable candidate because his books are too sexy and satanic.
“He’s having to put a statement out saying he’s pulling out for family reasons without giving the full picture. He’s been allowed to stand in the past but he’s now suddenly being told he’s not suitable because of books he’s been writing for years.”
The books, which regularly garner four- and five-star ratings on Good Reads, follow Steel as he investigates grisly murders, experiencing jolts of psychic connection from dead bodies or other objects.
Reflecting familiar tropes of the horror genre, the series also follows a more traditional detective fiction format. In Innocence Lost, Steel is summoned by the Home Office to investigate the suspicious death of another priest. “The body, I don’t want the name, is face down in a pool of blood. The pool seems to emanate from the head area like a big treacle circle,” Craik writes.
Another novel, Lost to Darkness, based in a fantasy universe called Avamar, opens with a graphic child sacrifice perpetrated by a mysterious fanged figure. “Baring his fangs he gently bit the neck of the weakening sacrifice. As it began to drip its soul into the well, he dropped the child, rewarded with a splash and a scream,” it reads.
A source close to Craik told the Guardian that the councillor, who has previously stood as a Labour candidate in UK and Holyrood elections with no concerns raised about his writing, was “disappointed at the outcome”.
A spokesperson for Scottish Labour said: “Selection processes for Scottish Labour parliamentary candidates are properly administered in full accordance with procedures set by the Scottish executive committee.”
