Here’s a beautiful little shadow to darken your day…
The brand new Dark Arts horror anthology ‘When the Night Comes Down’ is now available for pre-order. There are five twilight tales from me and plenty more from legends of the genre Bev Vincent, Robert E. Weinberg and Nate Kenyon.
From start to finish it’s been a genuine pleasure to be involved in this collection. The Dark Arts team: Bill Breedlove, John Everson and Martel Sardina are innovative publishers, absolutely dedicated to publishing top quality horror – even if I say so myself.
We’ll be launching this officially at WHC 2010 in Brighton but for those who can’t wait here’s where to find out more or grab an early copy:
So far, I have stories appearing in four anthologies this year.
Here’s a little inside information about each book, its publisher and editor, as well as what my contribution amounts to in each case.
First off is When the Night Comes Down released by Dark Arts. This is an approach to horror collections I hadn’t come across before. The four contributors to the anthology provide four or five stories totalling 20-25,000 words each. The other writers in this volume are Nate Kenyon, Bev Vincent and Robert Weinberg. Editing the collection is Bill Breedlove, closely assisted by John Everson and Martel Sardina. I’ve come to like Bill very much just through our email communications. He is a wise and free-thinking editor and I’ve welcomed his comments on my work. Happily, I’ll be meeting Bill, some of the contributors and the rest of the DA staff at WHC 2010 in Brighton – When the Night Comes Down will launch on Friday 27th March in Bar Rogue between 10pm and midnight. I’ve contributed five stories to this collection.
Longer in the making but probably to be released well before WTNCD is Darc Karnivale published by The Evil Nerd Empire. The editors, David Byron and Corey R. Scales have put a great deal of time and effort into collecting and organising the stories for the anthology. The artwork has been provided by the talented Nick Rose. The image he’s created for my story ‘The Food of Love’ is superb. Other contributors include Paul Kane, Ralan Conley and Jeremy C. Shipp. With luck the anthology will be available at WHC 2010 in the dealer room, but failing that, it will be stocked by all the usual online suspects.
Next up is Holy Horrors. To give you an idea of how long this anthology has been in the pipeline, I submitted my tale ‘The Germ of His Ideas’ to Matt Cardin and T. M. Wright on 8th September ’06. It was accepted about ten months later. Since then, watching the ups and downs has been quite disturbing. At times, I was convinced – and so were the editors, I think – that the book would never be published. However, we’re finally on course for Holy Horrors to be released in two volumes by Ash Tree Press. Volume 1 in spring and Volume 2 before the end of the year.
I include both TOCs because they excite me so much
VOLUME 1
1) “Sanctuary.” Jim Rockhill.
2) “The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini.” Reggie Oliver. Reprint.
3) “Bavel II.” Jens Rushing.
4) “Saviour.” Gary Braunbeck.
5) “Vom-Beist.” Mike Norris.
6) “Magog and I.” Craig Holt.
7) “Darshan.” William R. Eakin.
8 ) “Ezekiel Remembers.” Kurt Dinan.
9) “And You Shall Be Adored.” Regina Mitchell.
10) “Sicarii.” Andrew Tisbert.
11) “Porta Nigra.” Darren Speegle.
12) “The Dead Must Die.” Ramsey Campbell. Reprint.
13) “At the Feet of the Forest Primeval.” Randy Chandler.
14) “The Editor.” Pamela K. Taylor.
15) “Behind the Bathroom Door.” Sara Joan Berniker.
16) “The Hands of God.” Michael McBride.
17) “Cold to the Touch.” Simon Strantzas.
18) “Anubis Has Left the Building.” Tim Waggoner. Reprint.
19) “On This Day of Reckoning.” Joseph Nassise.
20) “Rapture.” Robert Morrish and Harry Shannon.
VOLUME 2
1) “Abandon.” Adam Browne.
2) “In the Name of God.” Stuart Young.
3) “The Sect of the Idiot.” Thomas Ligotti. Reprint.
4) “The Shaft.” Brian Hodges.
5) “Waters Dark as a Raven’s Wing, Flames Bright as a Dove’s Breast.” Dru Pagliassotti.
6) “Uncaged.” Paul Finch.
7) “Intentions.” William Freedman.
8 ) “The Tattoo Artista.” Eric S. Smith.
9) “Redemption.” David Niall Wilson.
10) “The Bishop Receives a Visitor.” Marion Pitman.
11) “A Prayer for Captain La Hire.” Patrice E. Sarath.Reprint.
12) “Purifying Vows.” Kim Paffenroth.
13) “The Temple.” Quentin S. Crisp.Reprint.
14) “The Monsters We Defy.” Karen Williams.
15) “The Wound of Her Making.” Gerard Houarner. Reprint.
16) “Bad Religion.” Douglas M. Chapman.
17) “The Germ of His Ideas.” Joseph D’Lacey.
18) “Darkness.” Jude Wright.
Finally – but only for the moment, of course – Mark Deniz of Morrigan Books asked me for a story to complete a pet project of his. Scenes From the Second Storey was The God Machine’s debut album. Released in 1993, it has been hailed as one of the best albums of that decade. It’s one of Mark’s favourites of all time, so the collection bears the same name. Each of the stories in the anthology takes the title of, and is inspired by, one of the songs. Mine was track eleven: Seven. It was a pleasure to write and I’m happy to note that Mark will be giving himself the book for his 40th birthday present! Other authors include Carole Johnstone and Gary McMahon.
For those of you who’d like to see a free JD’L horror tale right now, the gruesome ‘Read my Lips’ is in Ecelcticism #9.
When MEAT first came out, Bloody Books made an unabridged recording of the text. The reader was Sorcha Cusack who has the most amazing voice – it really fits the tale. I heard she was white with shock at some of things she had to say whilst reading! Apologies to you, Sorcha!
The downloadable audio version of MEAT was released last year but was never well publicised. It has now been re-released on iTunes and at audible.com and is currently on offer for a lot less than the book.
It might make a unique Christmas gift or just scare the hell out of you during the season of goodwill…
(SORCHA CUSACK is probably best known for her long running role as nurse, Kate Wilson in Casualty. She has also appeared in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Playing the Field and Eureka Street. She has appeared in many radio plays including The First Witch, The Real Charlotte and The Day Daniel O’Donnell Got Married as well as stage productions such as The Vagina Monologues, A View From the Bridge and Feast of Snails.)
Some months ago I posted a free story here on HR titled ‘Lights out’. I wanted some art to accompany the tale and after trawling Google images I found exactly what I was looking for. The discovery made me very interested in Allison Theus, the creator of the image. I don’t believe in coincidences, so I spent some time looking at her other work, on her website and at deviant art. I knew I had to get her for an HR interview and here, after months of chasing this very busy and successful artist, is the result:
Joseph D’Lacey: Hi, Allison. And welcome to the cramped, dripping corridors of Horror Reanimated. After waiting all this time to interview you, it’s a real treat to finally have you here.
There are reasons why you’ve been otherwise occupied, though. Tell us what you’ve been doing since I first contacted you regarding ‘Face’…
Allison Theus:Hey Joseph, quite a bit has been going on.At the time you contacted me I was just finishing up grad school in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, in their Entertainment Technology program.Immediately afterward I went to work at a start-up videogame company called Divide by Zero Games located in Seattle, WA.I spent a little over a year there doing concept art, illustration, texturing, UI design and some 2D and 3D animation on several projects.About 3 months ago I decided to strike out on my own to try a little freelancing, where I picked up work doing monster miniature concepts for Rackham Games and monster miniature schematics for Fantasy Flight Games as part of their Arkham Horror project.I’m currently working on illustrations for a children’s book and involved in a gig with Warner Bros. which, though not as fantastic as some of the monster stuff, is still really cool.Add to that the usual queue of private fantasy and sci-fi commissions, and it’s been pretty hectic!
JD’L: I have a theory that artists and musicians tend to know what they were destined to do from a very early age, whereas writers often don’t find out until later. Was that true of you?
AT:It was.Art had been a big part of my life from a very early age, and as the years went by it evolved and took over everything.It’s difficult to imagine what I would do without it.
JD’L: And were the themes you find attractive always in the realms of the fantastic?
AT:I suppose so.I found there to be a great deal of freedom in the fantastic, and that freedom allowed me to explore themes that were both of the fantastic and non-fantastic variety.
JD’L: Are you self-taught in the main or have you done a lot of formal study?
AT:I’m a pretty even mix of both.I’ve taken art classes throughout school (hell, I majored in Fine Art in undergrad), and for several years very early on I studied with a local painter, but the most important things that I have learned have been outside the classroom. I would spend hours playing with concepts and materials, figuring out new techniques, and learning what worked and what didn’t.While the classes were good, I believe I owe most of my progress to my own experimentation.
JD’L: If I were a creator of visual art, it would be my instinct to reinvent the world rather than show it as it is. After all, the real world is one no one can see, isn’t it – reality a drab cover for something astonishingly beautiful? Like everyone who creates art for a living, I know you’re tied to certain contractual commitments but if it was up to you how and what you created, what would you say the driving force is behind your gift? What do you want to see and what do you want us to see?
AT:It really depends.I’ve always possessed a strong feeling that my art was for something; that it would serve some sort of higher purpose (which is not to say I believe my art is the grandest thing since sliced bread, or that this purpose will ever reveal itself during my lifetime).It simply exists and provides a continuous urge to create.Simultaneously, my art has always been intertwined with my life.Think of it as one giant ongoing dialogue with yourself, where everything you’ve ever done or felt or learned has been recorded, IS being recorded and considered and at times disputed.A constant self-assessment, if you will.
I think what I really want to see in my art is some sort of resolution – perhaps the complete evolution of the self into something greater then what I am. For my audience, it’s less about what is seen and more about what is felt. At least for personal pieces, if someone can look at a piece and glean what I felt while making it (which is often the ‘why’ I made it), then that’s good stuff.It’s an odd way to share experiences, but I find it particularly rewarding.
JD’L: The first time I talked to you about this interview, you felt there wasn’t a great deal of horror in your work. When I look at it, I see both horror and fantasy. I didn’t mean that you set out to frighten in your work, merely that what you depict is unsettling and a spark to the dark imagination. Horror is, perhaps, more a sensation than a genre and if it was up to me, I wouldn’t hesitate to commission you for some cover art for one of my novels. I guess what I want to know is: What’s more important; how you see your work or how others see it?
AT:How I see my work, definitely.You’ve got to like it, or at least semi-like what you do to really want to do it all the time.The more involved you are, the better you will be able to convey your message(s).Besides, everybody’s different; I know and expect that people will interpret my work differently.That’s part of the fun!
JD’L: Who are your artist heroes, past and present?
AT:My very first artist hero was Robert Bakker, a well-known Paleontologist (I distinctly remember watching him explain the way sound travels through a Parasaurolophus’s nasal passageways as he was sketching the head of the creature on a TV program many, many years ago); his ability to be both scientist and artist was extremely inspiring.When I hit my wildlife stage I was very fond of Carl Brenders and Robert Bateman, one for his extreme realism and the other for his dramatic portrayals of nature.From there I forayed into the realm of sci-fi clutching Wayne Barlowe’s ‘Expedition,’ and picked up some inspiration later on down the line from Terryl Whitlatch and Iain McCaig.Currently, my present, and perhaps most influential hero to date is Zdzisław Beksiński, whose work manages not only to depict most of my long-standing nightmares but to do it in such a way that is both immensely beautiful and utterly terrifying.
JD’L: If you could pick your next employer, what would be your ideal paid project?
AT:I would absolutely love to get a chance to work inside Stan Winston Studios and make monsters come to life.That would be a dream come true for me, no joke.I would also be happy working for a variety of game companies, especially Blizzard.
JD’L: What is your favourite work of art?
AT: There are too many great artists and great works of art to choose from! I don’t know that I could ever settle on just one.
JD’L: Allison, it’s been a delight to finally have this time looking into your mind. Thank you for sharing your visions with us. All of us here at Horror Reanimated wish you great success for the future.
I was interviewed by Alan Kelly for the brilliant 3:AM Magazine. It was a real pleasure to talk to him.
In other news, since Borders has gone into administration, my 19th December signing in their Leicester branch has been cancelled. It’s a real shame because I’ve had some great times in that store and the staff are all lovely people. I hope someone can save Borders and keep their way of doing things alive.
I do have one more signing left before Christmas at Waterstones, Northampton on Saturday 5th December between 11AM and 3PM. I should be on BBC Radio Northampton talking about it sometime this week. There will be copies of MEAT, Garbage Man and The Kill Crew available.
Those of you with your fingers on the Horror Reanimated pulse – er, I mean flatline – will know I rarely review books. However, every now and again something truly unique comes along. Mendal Johnson’s Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is one of those books.
It’s difficult to attract attention to a novel without ruining its mystique but that’s my aim with this post. This is an unmissable read.
1974 was a good year for horror. Carrie was published and so was this little frightener. One of the authors went on to greater works, greater wealth and greater fame. The other was dead within two years. Interestingly, both men had trouble with alcohol. In Johnson’s case it was the death of him; he succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver. And, whereas King is wonderfully prolific, Johnson died leaving only three unfinished manuscripts. He was 48.
The plot: Bobby and Cindy’s parents go on holiday for a week, leaving a pretty babysitter named Barbara in charge. Along with their friends John, Dianne and Paul, the kids call themselves Freedom Five. They’ve been playing games together for years. The day after the parents leave, Freedom Five ‘capture’ Barbara and a new game begins.
I don’t want to say too much about the story. If you have a genuine interest in dark fiction, you should read the book. Here, in glorious black on white, is torture porn from thirty-five years ago. I expected it to be badly handled and poorly written. Neither was the case. Mendal Johnson wrote in tight, measured prose which is, on occasion, beautiful to read. This wasn’t just a book of vicarious thrills either – though, believe me, they are there if you want them – it was an examination of the psychology of children, and therefore, of our own. Each character is fully and tragically realised; their logic and the logic of the novel itself, though twisted, is always rightly fulfilled. The pace and plotting is near to flawless, tension rising all the time. The moment you put the book down, you want to pick it up again and, if you have the time, it’s one of those you could read in a sitting – if you can handle it.
I’m not saying LGPATA is an accurate appraisal of your average child’s mind. Freedom Five are a little isolated. They are a little odd. A situation arises in which their earlier games together can be explored further. One thing leads to another and group ‘morality’ overcomes the morality of the individual. But what I’m also not saying is that these things never happen. They do and it’s well documented. Cases occurred before the book was written and many more have occurred since. And that, perhaps, is what makes the book so utterly chilling. Whether victim or perpetrator, it could be your child. It could have been you. Maybe it was. Who is really prepared to speak of the questionable things we did in our ‘innocent’ youth?
This author, for one, is.
For a truly in depth look at the life of Mendal Johnson and more background about the novel – read it first, if you don’t want it spoiled – there’s a brilliant 3-part blog covering it all right here.
“I Sell the Dead” is the latest film from Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix and Scareflix production companies and, like most films from Larry, “I Sell the Dead” REALLY delivers!!Starring Dominic “Lost” Monaghan, Ron “Hellboy” Perlman, Angus “Phantasm” Scrimm and Fessenden himself, the film revolves around a pair of 18th-century graverobbers, Arthur Blake (Monaghan) and Willie Grimes (Fessenden), as they TRY to make a (dis) honest living but are constantly running a-foul of sinister doctors, murderous competitors and, of course, the law.
The film has a wonderful vintage look to it, lots of fog and leafless trees, and I was really impressed when I realized that “I Sell the Dead” was shot entirely in New York State.The production design really captured 18th-century Ireland and the actors had their Irish/Cockney/British accents down.There were also some great humorous set pieces, mostly between Monaghan and Fessenden – with their chemistry, they could well be the 21st-century’s answer to Abbott and Costello – and even Perlman and Scrimm had their moments.And not always necessarily on-screen.
The story unfolds as young Arthur Blake is recounting his years of graverobbing to a priest, Father Duffy (Perlman), before he goes to the guillotine as Grimes has just (hilariously) done.Starting young, Blake (Daniel Manche plays the young Blake) is introduced to the dead in all their gruesomeness and beauty.But when the sinister Dr. Vernon Quint (Scrimm) starts applying some serious pressure on our protagonists to bring him “FRESHER!!” bodies so that he might “work”on them, the two graverobbers start digging up…things…even they can’t quite explain.When they come across a female vampire, one of my favorite “corpses”,hilarity ensues as well as revenge.
Besides Dr. Quint and the law, our boys must also deal with a sinister rival grave robbing clan, the House of Murphy, run by the menacing Cornelius Murphy (John Speredakos), the masked-because-her-face-is-so-disfigured-that-she-kills-with-it Valentine Murphy (Heather Bullock), Bulger (Alisdair Stewart) who has a mouth of razor sharp teeth and the never-seen-except-in-silhouette head of the clan, Murphy Senior.
This movie is just SO much FUN!!Zombies, vampires, body parts, Blake and Grimes themselves and their peculiar adventures as well as the Hammer Film look to the movie all add up to another great movie for Halloween (add “Trick ‘r Treat” to this for a great double feature on All Hallow’s Eve).
The DVD, which comes out in the UK on November 2 from Anchor Bay on both DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray (£24.99) has extras which include two commentaries: one with producer/actor Larry Fessenden and actor Dominic Monaghan and the other with writer/director Glenn McQuaid.There is also an hour-long “Making of” featuretteand a 10-minute visual effects Behind the Scenes.The DVD should also come with a full-color comic book (we think!!!).
FantasyCon 2009 was one of the best weekends of my life.
I rubbed shoulders with many creators and purveyors of fantastic fiction and art. Some of them have appeared on Horror Reanimated already, others I hope to see here soon. Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror are arteries in the body of the world’s imagination and you can be assured these arteries are healthy and well supplied, pulsing with magical blood.
Among the heroes of the world’s imagination whose hands I shook, and in no particular order, were the following:
Graham Joyce, Simon Bestwick, Conrad Williams, Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris, Carole Johnstone, Gary McMahon, Tim Lebbon, Mark Morris, Ramsey Campbell, Sarah Pinborough, Mark Deniz, Guy Adams, Chaz Brenchley, Adam Nevill, Allyson Bird, Andrew Hook, Peter Crowther, Mathew F. Riley, John Lenahan, Lee Thompson, Rio Youers, Andy Remic, Raymond Russell, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Andy Barker, David Flint, Geoff Nelder, Raven Dane, Vincent Chong, Peter May, Alex Davis and several others I can’t remember on account of being variously over-stimulated.
I was nervous about attending the convention even though I wasn’t taking part in any panels or readings. I shouldn’t have been. The warmth of the atmosphere and the obvious camaraderie that goes back generations was a welcome embrace. Like an orphan reunited with its family, I relished every second of it.
There were so many stories about young or inexperienced authors (now renowned) receiving invaluable help and support from those who have gone before them. Similar expressions of gratitude came from established authors who still need the encouragement of their peers to stay on course. It’s so easy to go around thinking about yourself, worrying about your own work and career or the lack thereof. But at Fantasycon, you meet publishers whose sole passion and mission is to bring small voices like your own to the fore, even though it means they will never be wealthy. You meet authors who will write until they die – published or not – because there’s a fire inside them which cannot be extinguished.
All this both humbled and inspired me. The most humbling thing of all, however, was the beautiful shock of winning The Sydney J Bounds Best Newcomer Award. When you consider that my BFS membership had lapsed and that, having had a superb curry instead of attending the deadly banquet, I was half intending to nip to the cinema to see District 9, it’s a wonder I was even there to accept it! But friends in the know steered me to the double doors of the banqueting hall and there we stood, watching the awards ceremony from afar, sometimes barely able to hear the nominations. I remember little of what happened after I heard my own name announced, merely the heart thumping overload as I walked to the stage and made a few stumbling remarks of gratitude. You can see the moment for yourself right here.
And here’s Tim Lebbon winning the award for Best Novella (The Reach of Children)
Not to mention Allyson Bird scooping the award for Best Collection (Bull Running for Girls)
And William Heaney/Graham Joyce accepting the award for Best Novel (Memoirs of a Master Forger)
Whether I’d won an award or not wouldn’t have changed the impact FantasyCon had on me. I discovered something far greater than myself (no mean feat when your ego’s the size of Jupiter), something worth giving to not just for my own sake but for that of others. In our rush to be discovered, get deals, be on the shelf – something writers enjoy – to get bigger deals and to advance, it’s easy to forget what writing is for.
Writing is for magic. Writing is magic. I can’t pretend to understand how or why but I know that much about it.
Whether we’re just starting out, languishing in a slump or at the top of our game writing will always be our attempt to reach out to something greater than ourselves. And there are few pleasures in this world as lasting or as true as knowing you’ve grasped a tiny thread of the beyond and brought it back for others to touch.
This suits me because, in essence, I function on a mystical level. When writing, I am certain of nothing from one day to the next. What was true yesterday may no longer be true today. Mostly, I take my cues from the mythic voice of nature. No path, artistic or otherwise, leads anywhere worth visiting save that path which appears from direct contact with the mystical, with the unknown and the unseen. Writing is a way of stretching into the abyss. Somehow, The British Fantasy Society works in exactly the same way.
I hope therefore, having found my spiritual kin within the ranks of the BFS, that I will be able to give something back to the society, something that will bring value and richness to its many members.
Or perhaps I can just buy everyone a drink. Like this one…
Joseph D'Lacey celebrating with a very nice cocktail
I had to watch this Danish film twice to make sure I was correct in my initial reaction to it.This film, about a substitute teacher (actually a chicken farmer’s wife who is infected, almost “SLiTHER”-style, by an alien spore) and her wary class of 6th graders is freakin’ hilarious!!
When Ulla Harms (the delightful and delightfully named Paprika Steen) shows up to sub for a teacher who has come down with salmonella poisoning, the students are horrified at how she insults the kids: one boy has buck teeth – she tells him to correct something on the blackboard but be careful not to trip over his teeth on the way.And when she finds something funny, there is no holding back her mirth – she guffaws almost to the point where someone REALLY needs to slap her or she will piddle on herself.
One of her students, the withdrawn and picked-upon Carl (Jonas Wandschneider) who lost his mother recently in a car accident, starts to notice things about Ulla that just don’t add up.How she read his mind in class, how she knew every student’s name without consulting any sort of seating chart, how she just…knew everything (the students started quizzing her with complex math equations which she promptly answered, adding “Everyone knows that.”).During recess, Carl sees Ulla standing in front of a window, completely “switched-off”.Oooeeeeoooo!!
Other strange things occur when things aren’t going Ulla’s way – her first day in class, the students are fighting when every single one of their cell phones go off plus she has the ability to change what comes out of a student’s mouth, if it’s an insult to Ulla.My favorite was when poor Albert of the teeth (Jakob Fals Nygaard) tries to call Ulla a “cruel monster” and it kept coming out as “cool hamster”.
At a hastily called parent-teacher meeting, when Ulla is running late, Carl observes her with her satchel and a strange large silver ball.And what he sees that ball do…Well, you will just have to check this movie out.
The children gather the courage to break into Ulla’s home which is deserted, unlived-in, with huge piles of broken furniture in every room.While there, Ulla returns home and the students manage to avoid her until she decides to have some “lunch”.The kids run screaming from her house.Of course, later that evening when the students are tyring to get their parents to understand what they saw, the parents decide to pay Ulla a visit and, naturally, the house is immaculate and beautifully decorated.Carl’s friend, Philip (Nikolaj Falkenberg-Klok) even whispers to Carl that he knew this would happen.
Slowly, the parents of the students come to adore Ulla and in a particularly hilarious scene, after the 6th graders have earned a trip to Paris with their crazy teacher, it is every 6th grader for themself, fighting getting on the bus, fighting their parents – you just have to see it.Everyone calms down, though, when Carl’s father, Jesper (Ulrich Thomsen) announces that since the original bus driver was sick from salmonella poisoning (detecting a pattern here?) and Jesper knows how to drive a bus, the students reluctantly board the bus but the shots of them with their faces pressed to the windows, saying “goodbye” to their parents is also funny – they act as though they are “walking the Green Mile”.
I could tell you a LOT more about this little gem of a movie: the mysterious map Carl finds, the ooga-booga moment Carl has when Ulla comes to have dinner with him and his father (who Ulla seems to have designs on), Ulla’s family’s past and the REAL reason Ulla is there, as well as the final scene between Ulla and Carl and a “pressing machine” at the chicken farm, but you should really enjoy it without too many spoilers.Very funny with some unexpected scares, very original and Ulla can be downright creepy.And then there are the chickens…
One word of advice:I have read several viewer complaints about how badly dubbed this movie is.Well, a simple solution to THAT “problem” is, when setting up the film, click on Danish Dolby instead of English Dolby and you will get an undubbed film with English subtitles.Problem solved,
Banquet for the Damned combines several very real elements – night terrors, shamanism, anthropology, witchcraft and heavy metal – in a very real location; St. Andrews. It’s one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. I had shivers across my skin as I discovered within its pages the histories of the covens of Europe and the studies of evil spirits and familiars in the shamanic traditions of South America and Africa.
Into this world of student revelry and stuffy intellectualism, comes a renegade writer and explorer of altered realities, Eliot Coldwell. And he’s brought something nasty with him. Something hungry. Students begin to disappear from the campus.
At the same time, following the break up of their band, guitarists Dante Shaw and his best friend Tom travel to St. Andrews. They plan to meet Eliot Coldwell, Dante’s spiritual hero and author of the notorious cult novel, Banquet for the Damned. Dante intends to make a concept album using Eliot and his work as the theme.
But instead of finding inspiration in St. Andrews, Dante discovers nightmares stalking the town’s ancient streets…
*
It’s no secret that Bloody Books and Virgin Horror were in direct competition for the same share of the genre market. When the Virgin line folded, we were kind of pleased to be left in the game.
Horror Reanimated seeks the best in the genre and, as time went by, we featured Virgin titles and talked to their authors. (See our posts on Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell and Conrad Williams). Having read plenty of Virgin Horror, it now strikes me as tragic that such high quality fiction will no longer issue forth from that elegantly twisted horn of plenty.
My most recent read was ‘Banquet for the Damned’ by Adam L G Nevill. Originally published by PS Publishing, this title gripped me as hard as any supernatural tale ever has. It is a superbly crafted, beautifully told and genuinely frightening novel. As a final tribute to a noble and prematurely buried imprint, I bring you a candid interview with Adam L G Nevill, author of Banquet and editor of the Virgin Horror line.
We honour the genre’s slain; enemy and friend alike, generals and foot soldiers equally. Why? Because when you throw the festering undead into a pit, they stick together!
But that’s not all. Adam has recently proved himself truly undead having risen again with a major two-book deal…
Joseph D’Lacey: Adam, I’m going to thank you in advance for agreeing to what I realise may be an uncomfortable interview for you following the termination of your horror list.
But I’d like to talk to you first about Banquet for the Damned. This novel came right out of leftfield and slammed me hard upside the head. I’d long believed my supernatural ‘fear’ nerve to be burned out through overuse. Apparently not. What chilled me about the story was the depth of research the characters had done on witchcraft, familiars and evil spirits. It was all too real. What can you say to reassure me that you made it all up?
Adam L G Nevill: Thanks for the really kind words JD’L, and for reading it so carefully. There is nothing more satisfying than finding an ideal reader.
As for reassurance that it’s all fiction, who can say … Night terrors are an absolutely real and universal form of sleep disturbance long associated with witchcraft. My story is inspired by the many actual histories of witchcraft and demonology that I read and researched. And the authors of those tomes were pretty convincing …
While I was based in St Andrews and matriculated at the university, I discovered the most incredible archive of old books on the occult bequeathed to the university library by a former rector. And the university also has a world class anthropology department, with some terrific sources on the occult and superstition in the developing world too. I remember having 40 books on witchcraft and the supernatural on my post-grad library card, when a curious librarian finally asked me what I was doing at the university. It was Lovecraftian – some of the books had not been borrowed since the sixties and I would scurry back to my room and pore over them. I had a year up there and had the time to read dozens of secondary texts on the subject of the unworldly. From that I took great creative license with specific histories and idioms to create the sense that my fictional scholars were authorities in order to make the supernatural element seem authentic. I blended bits and pieces from many documented stories and phenomenon to create my own history of a forgotten pagan god/witch’s familiar that had been called by many different names and moved through the ages, worshipped by one cult or another. I wanted its origins and long story to reflect the patterns of how real history is interpreted and revised, so that even the documentation and sources seemed authentic.
Making the supernatural believable in a modern setting is no easy task, so the carefully wrought history, the scholars, the academic environment, are designed to add credence to a preposterous notion I want a reader to accept. I lose interest in so much horror fiction because of its errant silliness from the beginning, but well-researched books like Matheson’s Hell House, Blatty’s Exorcist and Legion, or most recently Simmon’s The Terror and Brookes’s World War Z unsettle you far more because of that sense of authenticity and plausibility. Place the unrecognisable subtly amongst the recognisable and it’s easier for a reader to lose themselves in a story.
JD’L: Great. Like I’ll sleep a wink tonight knowing all that.
Our resident supernatural horror author, Bill Hussey, doesn’t believe in ghosts, spirits or the afterlife. Aside from the research angle, how much actual experience of the supernatural do you have? Do you think there’s a world we can’t see, a world where dark forces conspire to enter ours?
ALGN: I suffered dreadful night terrors while writing the book. I’d never had them before. Bizarrely, two readers have emailed me to declare the same while reading it. Which would suggest we all induced them subconsciously while either writing or reading a book featuring vivid night terrors. Or, I do wonder, did I make myself receptive to a phenomenon that was actually there anyway? I began the book in St Andrews, but continued writing the novel’s first draft for 18 months in Kent, when these experiences occurred. I would awake periodically to see the outline of a very tall and thin figure standing before the curtains of my room, silhouetted by both the ambient light passing through the curtains and by a thin line of red light, like fire, around its shape. I would sit up, pinch myself, blink, make certain I was fully awake, but the figure would remain there, more or less at the foot of my bed, staring. You can imagine the terror. I even called out and challenged it on a number of occasions, but received no response. It would eventually walk the length of the room, then turn and vanish through the door. I base one scene in Banquet on what I experienced. My landlord in Kent was deeply uncomfortable with such talk, and his girlfriend told me of a family tragedy involving fire which explained his reticence. I said no more about it, but she also pointed out to me how a second shadow would follow my landlord from room to room in this lovely old house we lived in. And sure enough, it did. The second shadow was a different size.
Add to that, as an undergraduate, while billeted in halls that were once part of a military hospital, I would often wake because someone was standing beside my bed and leaning over me, with their face close to mine. It used to scare me witless. Door handles would also turn, doors would open, no one would come through, though other residents at the end of the corridor featuring the affected rooms would see a woman in a white uniform entering or leaving.
On holiday, in an old cottage in Dorset, we would sit in the living room and hear footsteps walk the length of the rooms upstairs. It was terrifying at first, but by the end of the week we became accustomed to the walking figure (though no one would go to the toilet alone). The owners of the cottage informed me that nearly every visitor experiences a haunting there and someone even took a photo of the ghost, looking through a window. Needless to say, we never went back, and I am relieved it was not me that saw that face at the window.
Add a whole raft of inexplicable sixth sense experiences to these brushes with the uncanny, as well as the fact that everyone has a ghost story, so I don’t rule out ‘activity’ after death. Both positive and negative activity (most of our family hauntings were positive farewells from the recently departed, and I have two relatives with psychic tendencies). I may revile religious fundamentalism, and am no fan of most organised religion either, but I do find the current atheistic lobby tedious. And believing in nothing but status and money seems to be a modern dilemma.
I think the very act of writing has an element of mysticism involved too, and I have sympathies with Machen and Blackwood’s creative visions, who were both mystical writers. A deep involvement in fiction, both reading and writing, has also given me transcendent experiences and I wouldn’t be without them.
JD’L: Banquet is set in locations that are very well known to you. Dante and Tom set off from Birmingham and spend most of the novel in St. Andrews. To begin with, I thought these real locations were going to kill my suspension of disbelief. In the end the effect was the opposite. Such was the power of the writing that I could see the streets of St Andrews and its old buildings and dark alleyways – even though I’ve never been there. How important do you think the setting was to the success of the novel?
ALGN: Thanks again JD’L. St Andrews is pretty much a character in the novel. I drove up there knowing I wanted to write a novel of supernatural horror, with a vague idea of the story featuring a notorious but nearly forgotten book and occult scholar. But when I received my first sighting of the town, I knew I had found my setting. The town was such a tremendous inspiration – it is one of those places that make the supernatural seem possible. The wealth of history, the architecture, the tributes to martyrs, the shadowy courts, the very age of the place, just conjured macabre fantasies. I was absurdly terrified of doing it an injustice, and was so enthusiastic about the town, I did my absolute best to recreate it in language as precisely as I was able at the time. Again, I do think a detailed sense of place and conjuring of atmosphere through specific details lays the ground for the insertion of the implausible, the impossible, and aids the suspension of disbelief. The very physical presence of the ancient town, twinned with extensive reading, allowed the story to write itself. So without St Andrews, there would have been no Banquet.
JD’L: There are so many passages in Banquet that are a delight to read. The story is magnetic but the way you tell it is reminiscent of the literary styles of bygone horror authors. It put me very much in mind of M. R. James. Was that a deliberate ‘one-off’ or is this the voice of Adam L G Nevill that we can expect to hear again? I’m particularly interested in your answer because I know you’ve had some good news recently…
We’ll get to that soon…
ALGN: I do wear my influences on my sleeve in Banquet. And M R James was the chief mentor that guided my hand. My dad read many of the classic supernatural writers to my brother and I when we were boys: James, Poe, Mare, Collier, and his shelves were groaning with Lovecraft and Blackwood, which I then explored on my own. Such dark matter had a deep impact on my imagination at that age – I truly experienced what one critic called “the sublime of terror” – and I was pretty much destined to try and recreate it in my own fiction at some point. So my reading of the canon of the supernatural in fiction will always be apparent, and I’m deeply in debt to the classic masters. As I also am to the modern masters in the field. Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, and Ramsey Campbell have taken the weird tale to the mountain, not only in terms of their actual bodies of work, but in a mastery of language and style that few can be consistently compared to in any genre. All three of those writers have given me wonderful examples of introducing more speculative and surreal elements to a treatment of the supernatural in fiction. I think this is evident in my second novel. I also think it’s worth mentioning that your development as a writer is in tune with your development as a reader. I was never sophisticated enough as a reader when I first began writing seriously, but by reading great writers patiently, pennies began to drop. So often these days I’ll pick up a book and think, this writer hasn’t read enough.
JD’L: Banquet is a brilliant example of the triumph of style over gratuity. It’s tense and claustrophobic and the exact nature of the evil remains veiled even when you describe it directly. When violence and malevolence occur, when blood is spilled, it’s done with great delicacy and poetry. How did you manage this?
ALGN: When describing the supernatural, producing risible descriptions is probably the easiest thing to do. And it is the bane of the field. Fear is also difficult to describe. Producing clarity and impact, is bloody hard. I doubt there are many books as bad as bad horror novels, nor films for that matter as bad as bad horror films, but there are few books or films as powerful as great horror novels and films. I aspired to, and looked to, the best in the genre. I pretty much took two years out from work and lived on about three grand a year, in the late nineties, to deliberately hone the craft and improve as a writer. I paid a lot of attention to cultivating subtlety through glimpses and suggestions, as opposed to full reveals. There are no better examples of this style in the field than in the fiction of M R James, who only wrote fiction with the full intention of frightening and disturbing a reader. It was my goal to combine the stylistic traits of the better late Victorian and the Edwardian authors, like James, within a thoroughly modern multi-plot structure that Stephen King and Dan Simmons made their own, and to also write in the present tense to emulate a cinematic feel. If a reader could accept that immediate-tense narration, I hoped the actual appearances of the supernatural in the novel might take on a more vivid nature within the reader’s imagination. Perhaps in a personal film. I also wanted the power of a short story to endure throughout a long novel. What was I thinking? In hindsight, I realise many seem to believe that it cannot be achieved in a horror novel. Stylistically, it was a bloody ambitious book to write, though the occult element may appear conservative and ‘old school’ to many as it deals with possession and witchcraft. So, Banquet was every bit as much of an example of a new writer trying to achieve a particular set of criteria within a novel, and also hoping that it would be a good story for an average reader who would be unaware of the scaffolding.
Did it work? It took three years of constant revision to complete the book, and I remember being profoundly disappointed when I finished it. Looking back, and reading generous praise from readers, I feel much happier with that debut.
I also read a terrific thesis by Peter Penzholdt, in which he identified and explored various treatments of the supernatural in fiction, including M R James. His study identified techniques that I was only occasionally stumbling across, on an instinctive level as a writer, and wondering afterwards how I’d achieved a certain affect. His study helped me find more consistency. My tutors at St Andrews were also poets, and poets are masters of language, which is why I chose St Andrews in the first place to study writing formally. I never doubted my ideas, but I was right to doubt my ability at expressing them. I desperately needed a mentor – someone who could look at my actual writing and tell me what was wrong with it. Get the actual writing right first, is the best advice I can give anyone. At times the criticism was crushing and I doubted whether I should even continue writing. I’d go back to my room after a tutorial, deflated. But by the end of the year, I’d experienced nothing short of a personal renaissance. I learnt how the use of simple, innocent diction, in a calculated and coercive fashion, can build and build, and prove more powerful than the use of language that on its own, in isolation from the rest of a sentence, carries an unpleasant meaning. I eschewed the latter, and used the former. M R James preferred “wet” to “slimy” and I do too. Good poets and short story writers consider the music and image of every descriptive word to create the desired effect. I’ll approach every scene in that way, then look at how these scenes are attached to the one preceding and following, and then rework to maintain fluency and pace without losing descriptive power in the set-pieces. Above all I learned that good writing is all about rewriting. Draft after draft with long breaks in between each draft. Eventually when the removal of one comma will cause a total collapse, it’s as good as it will get.
JD’L: When readers see a book on a shelf and the name on its spine they rarely understand the time and effort that put it there. I’m not just talking about the novel they’re actually looking at either. So much more has to have already happened for the miracle of publication to occur. At times, I even think other authors believe those with bigger, better deals or greater sales figures have somehow lucked into it overnight. Can you tell us a little about the crests and troughs you’ve ridden from dream to publication?
ALGN: Banquet was complete in 2000. I began it in late 1997. But by 2002 every agent who accepted fiction in the Writers and Artists Yearbook had eventually turned down my letter of introduction. I don’t think anyone ever read a word of the actual book. “No horror” being the usual refrain, or “too many authors already”. And as no publisher took unsolicited manuscripts, that was that. Game over. By then, I’d forsaken a career in television a second time. I was living on a shoe-string (again) and enduring an existence above an old pub in East London and working nights as a security guard. And going mad with sleep deprivation and a sense of despair. Only my erotica novels kept me afloat.
From 1997 onwards, I was lucky enough to be published as an author of erotica. I wrote nine novels in total, for Virgin Books’s Nexus imprint (which I was asked to edit in late 2004). Approximately one each year, so I carried on cutting my teeth in another genre that was box-office back in the nineties, while horror seemed all but dead as a mainstream publishing concern. My Nexus books kept me going. Built morale. It was pulp fiction under a pseudonym, but it was the ultimate confirmation of publication and a great education in novel-writing. I even wrote one erotica novel in the second person, several from first person female POVs – with each novel I attempted a different approach to narration.
Then my editor at Virgin, James Marriott, showed one of my horror stories to John Couthard, who recommended me to Ramsey Campbell. Ramsey was putting together a collection called Gathering The Bonesand took my story, Mother’s Milk. I was amazed. My first publication under my actual name and the rite-of-passage horror story that I wrote at the end of my masters in St Andrews. Being a cheeky blighter I then asked Ramsey in 2003 for advice with the novel Banquet for the Damned, which I had revisited and rewritten again in 2002, and Ramsey recommended me to Peter Crowther at PS. I was unaware of small presses at the time, but Peter read and accepted Banquet within a week. Without Ramsey and Peter, Banquet would have remained an uneaten meal, mouldering in the pantry of my hard drive. Peter then championed the book for years and it started to develop a modest reputation among other writers and critics who said some very kind things. Had it been the eighties, the story may have been different, but I’d written a big supernatural horror novel in a publishing climate that had no interest in horror. I was bloody lucky to find a sympathetic writer of considerable reputation, and a sympathetic publisher in Peter Crowther. They brought me into print as a writer of supernatural horror.
JD’L: Having been through all this yourself, it must have been tough notifying your Virgin Horror authors that the imprint had reached the end of the road. Was the imprint doomed from the word go or do you think, if certain things had been different, the line might still be going?
ALGN: We’d been taken over by a big international corporate publisher in 2007, but were still working under the existing Virgin management and I was asked to create new fiction lines. I immediately put horror forward as one idea. Everyone was excited, we had big plans, the critical path was set, so it certainly wasn’t doomed from the get go. On the contrary. But during the first year in 2008, despite how promising the line was, the company’s strategy began moving in a non-fiction direction. New management, new staff, more changes, new focuses, and I was kind of left alone in fiction on the sidelines, but without any real resources to publish the 2009 list. Then cutbacks and title-count reductions hit with the recession, people started losing their jobs etc. Fiction was wound right back to the erotica I had been editing since 2005, plus the cult fiction reprints I was producing for Bukowski. The editorial strategy had moved almost exclusively to non-fiction, leaving horror, erotica and me, high and dry. But the list was acclaimed, it was successful at the level it was published, and may well have continued at a better level had the company’s publishing strategy not changed. So it was deeply disappointing having to tell the authors of the end after such an exciting start. Nine months later I was delivering the same message to a hundred erotica authors too. Again, not something I chose to do nor enjoyed doing. Considering the re-emergence of horror – one of the only good pieces of news in fiction publishing these days – it now looks horribly premature to have buried us thus and so quickly. Ironically, The Birthing House was the first book I tried to buy for the list and that went on to sell 150K copies for Sphere, who published it so well. I’d even say, we were ahead of our time. As I said to the authors too, we may not have swung wide the gates of hell, but we certainly took the catch of the porch door. Having Bloody Books up and dancing at the same time as the Virgin horror line, it was an exciting time to see the underground – the punks – looking to the mainstream again. We raised consciousness and published some fine books. Can’t believe I got Thomas Ligotti into Smiths Travel too – I mark that as an editorial achievement. And if you look at the breadth and quality on those two horror lists, in an age of mediocre thrillers, predictable post-colonial literary fiction, ghost-written celeb fiction, and Vatican conspiracy nonsense, I think we can hold our grizzled, lipless and mottled heads up high.
JD’L: It’s been my experience of publishing that you never know what’s round the next corner. Your personal story seems to fit with this. After all you’ve put up with, suddenly there’s some real sunshine brightening the next part of your writing journey. A two book deal, no less! How did it come about and what was your reaction?
ALGN: To quote Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, “Cinderella Story, boy from nowhere.” When my agent John Jarrold called me to tell me the results of the auction, as I held the phone, my hand shook. Pretty much waited my entire life as a writer for an opportunity like this. I started writing seriously, with it being the major focus of my every day, and as a purpose for life, in 1995. So after fifteen years, I do feel like I have spent a long time in an apprenticeship.
I finished my second novel of supernatural horror at Xmas – another ambitious three year epic, this time written around a very busy fulltime job in publishing. One publisher expressed firm interest in late May of this year, then another and another … And John set an auction date. The very word “auction” in relation to me is hard to even say, and the enthusiasm from the editors was overwhelming. And that’s not false modesty. I vividly remember 40 plus rejections to my introductory letter for Banquet in 2000. They took two years to come in, and by the time the final one had landed on the mat, my head was down. Having worked in publishing I also know how hard it is for editors to pitch and get enough positive feedback from sales, publicity, export, rights, marketing, and management about a proposal. But my second book seemed to generate that at the appropriate levels, and as I’m 50K words into the first draft of a third novel, we submitted a partial of that too. So it became a two-book deal.
JD’L: Any chance of a whisper of what your next novels are about?
ALGN: The second novel is haunted building story spanning generations, my London novel; the third a ‘great outdoors’ novel of psychic terror.
JD’L: Time for the awards ceremony, Adam…
You have honour of making two nominations. First is the Sword of the Ultimate Darkness which goes to the work of horror in any medium which, in your opinion, is a timeless classic.
Second, you may banish to the Plague Pits the worst example of our beloved genre in any medium.
Please make your nominations.
ALGN: I consider this a real honour. For the Sword of Ultimate Darkness, I’d like to mention a book that may have slipped under the radar for many, but it’s a magnificent second horror novel by an American writer called David Searcy, whom I know almost nothing about, but the book needs its profile raised and I treasure it. I found it in a bookshop in New York in 2004. The cover caught my eye. I read the back, checked the first few pages and bought it. It’s one of those books that both made me want to write and also to give up writing because it is so good. It’s a terrific amalgam of M R James and William Faulkner, of Daniel Woodrell and Algernon Blackwood. American noir, scarecrow horror. I read it in one sitting in Hyde Park under a tree, and found myself glancing over my shoulder as the end drew near. It’s called Last Thingsby David Searcy.
The Plague Pits are overflowing, but I’d like to cast the remake of The Haunting, starring Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones, into the pit, along with the entire cast and crew for taking part in such a sham, plus the studio that probably ruined what was originally an honest endeavour. If anyone else was unlucky enough to pay to see this film, they’ll know why it belongs at the bottom of the pit.
JD’L: Lovely choices!
It only remains for me to say a heartfelt thanks on behalf of all at Horror Reanimated for joining us here in the rotting colon of purgatory. And to apologise for the smell, of course. We wish you the very best of luck for all your future projects.
It was a pleasure, thanks very much for the kind words and for having me. And also for giving me an opportunity to leave the indistinct bone-thing, that has been following me, with you. The runes are cast…
This is an approach to horror collections I hadn’t come across before. The four contributors to the anthology provide four or five stories totalling 20-25,000 words each. The other writers in this volume are 
Longer in the making but probably to be released well before WTNCD is 
When MEAT first came out, Bloody Books made an unabridged recording of the text. The reader was Sorcha Cusack who has the most amazing voice – it really fits the tale. I heard she was white with shock at some of things she had to say whilst reading! Apologies to you, Sorcha!
Some months ago I posted a free story here on HR titled ‘
AT:
JD’L: If you could pick your next employer, what would be your ideal paid project?
Those of you with your fingers on the Horror Reanimated pulse – er, I mean flatline – will know I rarely review books. However, every now and again something truly unique comes along. Mendal Johnson’s Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is one of those books.
This author, for one, is.
I SELL THE DEAD (2008)
THE SUBSTITUTE
Slowly, the parents of the students come to adore Ulla and in a particularly hilarious scene, after the 6th graders have earned a trip to Paris with their crazy teacher, it is every 6th grader for themself, fighting getting on the bus, fighting their parents – you just have to see it.
One word of advice:
Add to that, as an undergraduate, while billeted in halls that were once part of a military hospital, I would often wake because someone was standing beside my bed and leaning over me, with their face close to mine. It used to scare me witless. Door handles would also turn, doors would open, no one would come through, though other residents at the end of the corridor featuring the affected rooms would see a woman in a white uniform entering or leaving.
most of the novel in St. Andrews. To begin with, I thought these real locations were going to kill my suspension of disbelief. In the end the effect was the opposite. Such was the power of the writing that I could see the streets of St Andrews and its old buildings and dark alleyways – even though I’ve never been there. How important do you think the setting was to the success of the novel?
Andrews, there would have been no Banquet.
when I first began writing seriously, but by reading great writers patiently, pennies began to drop. So often these days I’ll pick up a book and think, this writer hasn’t read enough.