Author Archive
I have moments when I rue the day I started writing. I know I’m not meant to say that in public.
I’m one of those people who has periods of furious activity followed by fallow times. Fallow? Who am I trying to kid? I mean times of famine. I occupy one of two states: Writing or Not Writing. I could call it manic depression or bi-polar syndrome but that would just be an excuse. When I’m Not Writing, I’m miserable. And when I’m Writing, I’m slightly less miserable.
In the famine times of Not Writing I search myself for any evidence that I ever made contact with a qwerty keyboard in a creative way. I never find any. Sure, I can look at my laptop and find evidence aplenty – novels, novellas, short stories and poetry heaped up in drifts. But do I remember writing them, how it felt, how I even did it? Do I hell.
In the old days, that was the condition of my condition. Writing or Not Writing. Miserable or slightly less miserable.
I look back and think what a lucky fucker I was back then. ‘Back then’ meaning before I had a novel published. Nowadays, the misery is far more complex and tormenting. I’m able to explore anxiety about sales figures and Amazon rankings. And no longer can I write a book just because an idea occurred to me. Now I have to ‘consider the market’ while I do it – before I even start. So the times of Not Writing are further blackened by apprehensions about my next Everest ascent of a novel ‘not quite fitting’.
This exact thing has just happened.
After Bloody Books bought MEAT but before it was published, I suddenly realised I needed more material. ‘Christ’ I thought. ‘What if people actually like it? What if it sells really well? (DUH!!!) What if they want something more?’ Around the same time my wife told me she was pregnant. In a total panic, I sat down and wrote Weed, a depraved romp about man-eating plants taking over a country estate – 145,000 words in 14 weeks. What with one thing and another, it’s taken me two years to edit and submit. Then Bloody Books said they ‘didn’t see it as the next Joseph D’Lacey novel’ (I can see their point, of course. Weed is not strictly eco-horror). So, I can now add to my list of miseries the perpetuation of the angst-ridden process of submission/rejection/acceptance.
Oh, happy day.
And let’s not forget that I picked one of the least popular genres to write in. There are horror/sf/fantasy writers who do sell big numbers, true, but they’re a rarity. Most of us have to be happy with seeing our work make it out of the starting gate. And I am happy about that. If I dropped dead before finishing this blog post, I could rest easy knowing I’d done good work. But I plan to do better. Much better.
Next time I move out of my Not Writing phase, that is.
Assuming I don’t snuff it and do continue this ‘writing career’ – is there a special word to describe an ironic oxymoron? – I can then enjoy the knowledge, as so many genre fiction writers do, that my ironic oxymoron could be terminated forever by this time next month because what I write is not marketable. That knowledge would be easier to live with if it wasn’t for the twinned knowledge that my work could be the next big thing. It happens. Yes, it does – even to horror writers. That’s the kind of crazy hope that keeps you going in the face of overwhelming odds.
And then, one day, you do make it. You are the next big thing. Huzzah! But, irony of ironies, deep in your heart you’ll always know it was the fickle nature of the market that put you there, like some kind of literary lottery win. Not your talent because you don’t have any, not your unique voice because you have nothing important to say and not your powerful language because you write like someone who failed GCSE English!
Isn’t it strange? I’ll never be comfortable doing this. But I’ll never be able to stop.
And then something small but wonderful happens. As I wrote this post, a message came in from America. A message that reminds me I’m not working in a vacuum. I wanted to share it with you:
Dear Mr. D’Lacey,
My name is Scott Axelrod from Staten Island, New York. I wrote you a while back after reading MEAT to thank you for an amazingly, eye-opening reading experience. I ordered Garbage Man from Amazon UK upon it’s release and just got around to reading it a few nights ago. It is now 5:00 am NY time, and I have finished the book. I have to say that the careful thought and imagination it took to create such a terrifying tale is overwhelming. Staten Island, NY is well known as the home of now closed Fresh Kills Landfill–the story obviously hits a little too close to home, only a few blocks away from my own home in fact.
The detail in which you describe the fecalith’s minions is so visceral, that at times, I thought I could smell the familiar sour stench that would waft over the neighborhood many a summer’s evening. Just envisioning all of the disgusting things we toss out coming back home to us is such a ridiculous idea, but, one so powerful, that I often find myself wondering what will be done with all the garbage when there is nowhere left to unload the garbage.
The powers that be plan on turning “The Dump” into a park for children to play and athletes to exercise. There will be shops and fun things for the family to do there too. What if the fecalith is lying in wait for those always-smiling politicians to ceremoniously break ground and actually build a place of amusement atop all the muck and the filth?
Thank you once again for another thought-provoking and terrific read. I hope you are able to get your work into the hands of more Americans readers, because your ideas have a worldwide resonance. You aren’t just doing cookie cutter fiction. This is horror that we live and breath, but can also get lost inside of under the guise of entertaining “fiction.” I myself remain a staunch supporter, and anxiously await any and all of your furture work.
Your humble fan,
–Scott Axelrod
Staten Island, NY, U.S.A
It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?
August 3rd, 2009
A few weeks back I did a signing at Borders, Leicester. I planned a little surprise for the shoppers.
I also managed to scare myself - the best bit of the clip!
July 31st, 2009
A competition tomorrow on Bookgeeks will give away three copies of Horror Reanimated’s first publication ‘Echoes’.
Echoes contains three stories, one by each of Horror Reanimated’s curators – Mathew F. Riley, Bill Hussey and Joseph D’Lacey. Of the original 200, only a few remain.
Good luck!
July 15th, 2009
Earlier today I escaped the confines of the Horror Reanimated dungeons – nice though the new décor is – and went topside to talk to the editors of the brand new genre imprint, Angry Robot.
I say topside; the meeting actually took place with the three of us – Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris and me – strapped top-to-tail along the nearside rail of the Central Line. Crotch first into the oncoming tube-trains, waiting to be riven from bollocks to brains if we didn’t conclude the interview within the allotted time.
I just love a thrill, don’t you?
Angry Robot is an imprint of the massive mainstream publishing house Harper Collins.
Here’s what the lads, soon to be ladies if they weren’t succinct, had to say for themselves. Amazing, really, how fast a person can speak when time is a factor…
THE REAL AR: Just to let the readers know, the evil clowns who run this debacle had filled in some answers already, way before we got to see this. The cheeky little scamps. In the interests of full transparency, kids, we have no option but to heckle them, and ourselves I guess, via an alternative tag. Beware all imitations, kids!
Joseph D’Lacey: Hi, gentlemen. I’m delighted you could join me for a quick chat about what promises to be a great leap forward for genre fiction.
Angry Robot: Just get on with the bloody questions, can’t you?
THE REAL AR: Oh no, that’s not us. We would have said something far stronger than bloody. Weaselly word, fit only for second-rate upstart horror houses if you ask us.
JD’L: As you wish. Now what was it I was going to ask you?
[…distant echo of hurtling trains…]
Oh yes, I remember now. Angry Robot launches on the 1st July. How many titles are you launching with and can you tell our readers a little about each of them?
Angry Robot: Here’s the list. Perhaps you could, like, read it later.
[I couldn’t. I was far too interested in what lies in store for genre-reading fans. I share this list with you now.]
THE REAL AR: Oh yeah, like we’d skip an opportunity to plug our books? Get real. Two books per month, all paperback originals. July is Slights by Kaaron Warren, a massively disturbing serial killer horror novel; and Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, bleeding edge day-after-tomorrow cyberthriller about losing your identity in an ID-compulsory world.
JD’L: It appears that what makes Angry Robot different from other F/SF & H publishers is their interest in cross-genre material. Is it that simple, guys, or is there more behind the imprint’s ethos?
THE REAL AR: Well, it’s not simple, but you are. B-boom. Only joshing with you. [Punches Joe’s arm. Hard.]
What my arm looked like afterwards...
In truth, there’s a whole world of difference to Angry Robot, from the obvious (the content of the books we’re publishing) to very subtle organisational and strategic differences that, if we were to explain, we’d need automated whiteboards and PowerPoint and several days.
But “crossover” is a big deal for us, that’s true. There’s a whole bunch of complicated reasoning stuff I could go into, but in my head there’s simply a little memory-impression from first playing one of the Final Fantasy games on the first Playstation. My hero is stood there in the steam train wrecking yard, eight foot sword on his back. There are helicopters and dragons in the sky, spells and guns in my backpack. And it feels OK. Better, it feels bloody great.
No-one’s got a major problem with books that mix and match genres these days. Indeed, “is it horror or fantasy” is a compliment if you ask me, and damn but you can’t move for really excellent novels that cry out to be labelled “science fantasy”. But somewhere between the bookseller’s need to shelve books here and not there, reviewers’ needs to pigeon work so they can assess it and an underlying human liking for things being straightforward, we’ve developed this habit of putting genre stuff into little boxes.
What happens when you put important things in little boxes
We were talking about this with the big SF guy at one of the UK’s biggest bookchains (no names, no fistfights). His take was that soon enough there will be a new shelf – or more likely, a table at the front of the store, cos this stuff isn’t necessarily just for the long-term enthusiasts – where the crossover stuff sits: video game-derived fantasy and horror, literary SF that’s marked for general reading, massive Facebook-boosted teen novels, and the best of the hardcore genres too. We’re just right on the tip of that wave.
There’s a second whole string to this, for Angry Robot particularly, and it’s the unwieldy but essential term “Post-YA”. If you were the same age as Harry Potter when you read his first novel, you’re too old for that pre-teenage stuff and have been for several years. If you spent the last five years loving Doctor Who, ditto. There’s a whole generation reared on fabulous new departures in SF and fantasy, whether in books, games, graphic novels.
As an aside, this generation hasn’t read every influential book published in the last fifty years. That’s going to mean that some of the books they love, and want more of, will seem like rehashes of past glories, from authors slavishly devoted to the bygone styles of earlier great authors. There’ll be moaning about derivative work. And we will encourage this with all our might. There’s plenty of resources there to help new genre readers find the greats once we, and other imprints like us, have hooked them in the first place. But we need fresh blood (leave it!) and you don’t attract that by continuing to publish the same old traditional stuff that was past its sell-by twenty-five years ago.
JD’L: Apologies in advance for the cynicism of this question but it must be asked!
Following the recent demise of the Virgin Horror line and the credit crunch destroying thousands of jobs across every sector, doesn’t it seem a little gung ho to be starting a new publishing business?
THE REAL AR: Hmm, let’s see if we can answer this without both impugning the fine intentions and dedication of the hapless Virgin crew and coming across like total arrogant cocks. Nope, probably going to fail on both counts. Let’s just say that there’s plenty of room in all the genres for good new writing, as much now as at the height of the last economic boom. Without it, genres will continue to age and become even more moribund than they sometimes seem even now. And, part two, well, we ain’t them. We’re going about it a different way, as masters of our own destiny rather than pawns of a large organisation – we’re not one editor in-house, we’re a separate division with agreed targets and strategy, but other than that full permission to go and do what we need to do.
JD’L: A personal question now to each of you. Which writers of any era have affected you most profoundly? – the genre is unimportant.
Marc Gascoigne: Aw jeez, that’s a long list; I go back a long way and I can gush for England. How about instead, a gush of authors I can think of that I’d boost to someone whose horizons I wanted to broaden? Get online and discover for yourself what the best novels to track down and read from this little lot… Mark Helprin, Keith Roberts, Matt Ruff, Daryl Gregory, Frances Sherwood, Ernest Bramah, Lucius Shepard, Nancy A Collins, Ian MacDonald, Jonathan Carroll, Marco Vassi, John Franklin Bardin, Edward Whittemore, Thomas Disch, Patrick Harpur, Marc Behm, Langdon Jones, Ben Marcus, Connie Willis, Barrington Bayley, Conrad Williams, Jonathan Littel, Barry Hughart, David Schow, Peter S Beagle, Michael Blumlein, Dan Rhodes, Christopher Priest, Edmund Cooper and about a million others… and a bit of a sneaky boost, AR author but a real talent for blowing your mind, the incredible Kaaron Warren and Slights. Fuck me, what a book.
Lee Harris: I’m not nearly as widely read as Mr G within the genre, but then I’m not nearly as old. I have some crossovers with Marco (Disch, Williams, Priest) and a few others to throw into the mix. I love the work of Mike Carey in all its formats, Richard Matheson, Tolkein (the obvious ones), much of Stephen King’s output (though I tend to prefer his psychological horror, rather than his supernatural works) and most of Orson Scott Card’s back catalogue. I’m currently working my way through a lot of Charlie Stross’ books, and enjoying discovering Graham Joyce and Michael Marshall Smith. I remember reading Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia as a child, and that was the first book I remember reading that had believable family relationships, and complex emotional themes. As for classic SF, the usual suspects: Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov. They’re considered the classics for a reason…
JD’L: Are you hoping to discover similar talent with Angry Robot? Perhaps you have already…
THE REAL AR: See previous answer, kid. Told you, that’ll teach you to send a prepared set of questions.
[At this juncture, I felt the desire for a cigar. Marc and Lee did a lot of twitching and swearing but it didn’t ruin a damned good smoke.]
JD’L: Ahh. That’s much better.
THE REAL AR: We should perhaps point out at this point that Joe actually lives on the shabbier side of Leicester, with his unsurprisingly youthful mother, and works in KFC, and wouldn’t know a good Monte Cristo if it was stubbed out in his left eye. No denying the strength of his imagination though. And we’re based in Nottingham, so why the hell he decided to pretend we were on some London underground line, well, only Joe can answer that one.
A Monte Cristo (number 5, my favourite)
JD’L: Now then, as editors of many years standing (I’m not saying you’re old or anything) and therefore based on your experience, what would you say is the function of Horror?
Marc Gascoigne: Oh, you know the answer to this one. Hell, a child of six could explain. Caves, sabre-toothed tigers, the sudden urge to piss against the wall here rather than down behind the trees next to the stream. Next question!
Lee Harris: *rolls eyes* (although, not in the usual Horror Reanimated sense of the phrase) Some of us take these questions a little more seriously, Marco.
I’ve been a fan of horror literature as far back as I can remember, and have become somewhat immune to it in recent years, and I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that horror just didn’t work for me, any more. Last summer, however, I took a copy of Ramsey Campbell’s The Grin of the Dark on holiday with me, and read it at night when my wife and children were tucked up in bed. While reading it, for the first time in many a long year I found myself curling my legs up off the floor and checking the shadows. I knew there was nothing in the room with me, nothing hiding in the shadows. I knew this. But you can never be too careful. You know – just in case. That book reminded me why I’d always loved horror: a well-crafted tale of terror should unsettle. It should make you uncomfortable. It should disturb. It should make you feel.
JD’L: We usually give interviewees the opportunity to make Sword of the Ultimate Darkness and Plague Pit awards, however, I felt it would be unfair to put two editors on the spot in that way. Besides, I’m sure these tracks are vibrating…
THE REAL AR: What are you talking about? Jesus, geeks. Here’s a suggestion: get out of the house, learn to talk to real human beings.
How I learned about Monte Cristo Cigars
JD’L: One last question, though. Apart from interviews like this one, what frightens you to your very core?
Marc Gascoigne: While typing some of these answers, I was listening to a bootleg of exotic Beatles cover versions. Forget Shatner (if you can) for I must report that Arthur Mullard’s three-falls-and-a-submission assault on “Yesterday” nearly caused unexpected leakage. In book terms, though, nothing yet. My normal reaction is more a lick of the lips at a truly deliciously nasty reveal than a shudder of terror. An admirer of the technique rather than a blubbering wreck.
Lee Harris: My wife. Alone. With a credit card.
JD’L: Well, gentlemen, this has been an absolute pleasure but I believe I can feel the approaching breath of the next train to Ealing Broadway. Must dash!
It only remains for me to add that all of us at Horror Reanimated wish you the greatest success with Angry Robot Books. I hope we’ll soon have reason to showcase some of your titles right here!
Thanks for joining us and being such good sports.
THE REAL AR: Yeah, whatever. Jesus. He does go on. Shakes head sadly.
June 30th, 2009
I know nothing about Conrad Williams and I knew nothing about his latest novel ONE until I started reading it – coming to a book cold is the best way, I find. At its core, ONE is a story about the nature of hope and it got right under my skin. It moved me. It also scared me. That doesn’t happen very often and ONE has become my favourite book of the year.
So, it was with a good deal of pleasurable excitement that I wrote my questions for Conrad…
Joseph D’Lacey: When I was halfway through ONE, I knew we had to have you on Horror Reanimated so I’m delighted to be talking to you. What aspect of you was it that brought forth this novel – if that isn’t too odd a question? Was it something you’d planned over some time or did the story simply demand to be told? Perhaps all your tales come in the same way – could you tell us a little about what happens to you when you’re working?
Conrad Williams: Thanks for inviting me, Joseph. ONE came about principally because I’d always wanted to write an ‘end-of-the-world’ novel. I think every horror writer has one simmering away on the back burner. I have notes from years ago for a novel that was meant to be called DARK MATTER (a title snaffled by Peter Straub now, curse him) in which the surface of the Earth is fried by a massive solar flare. In ONE, a gamma ray burst from the death of a nearby star is to blame, although this is never mentioned explicitly. Once I had the event, and the explanation for my protagonist’s avoidance of it, the rest of the story was pretty much nailed on. I had to write about a father and son. I have three of my own; the book could not have been written without them.
JD’L: ONE’s themes have been explored in other post-apocalyptic tales. I’m thinking of Stephen King’s The Stand, for one. However, the closest and most obvious parallel is with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; another of my favourite books from the last couple of years.
Were you touched by these or other eschatological tales or did ONE feel like something new for you, something without a particular precursor?
CW: THE ROAD changed my life. I’ve never read another novel like it. I read it every year and it takes me a day and it always makes me cry. It is at once the most perfect horror story and the most perfect love story I know. I wanted to write a UK version. The States seems to have a monopoly on this kind of thing. I wanted to claim a bit of misery for Blighty.
It’s always going to be hard to write a post-apocalyptic novel without these huge shadows at your shoulder. THE STAND and I AM LEGEND are also very precious to me. But you can’t really avoid writing an extinction level event story, if you’re a horror writer.
JD’L: I love post-apocalyptic stories – both the reading and the writing of. It seems like there’s a lot of them about right now. Is all this Armageddon fiction arising from a common psychic weather pattern, a kind of morphic resonance that writers everywhere are picking up on? Are we feeling our planetary mortality more acutely than ever before?
Hey, maybe the world really is about to end…
CW: I think there’s probably something in this theory about horror becoming more popular when there’s something laying waste to the population, be it economic meltdown, terrorism, disease or war. And apocalyptic fiction, or survival horror, has a special impact because it is an everyman story. You survive the warheads raining down, you prove to be immune to the aggressive strain of flu, you happen to be working on the seabed when the ozone layer is roasted off the face of the Earth, then this will be you. This is your story. It’s a constant, worming fear that this will happen to us all one day. All apocalypse fiction is prophetic, in a way.
JD’L: In terms of genre, ONE could be survival horror. Some people will call it science fiction. Certainly, both elements are present. The theme, however, struck me as being about hope and how it sustains people – how it can even twist them.
Do you think horror writers have a greater thematic scope than writers of mainstream fiction? I suspect the genre allows us to go much deeper into the core of what it means to be human.
Do you agree or am I full of it?
CW: I do agree. I think that it’s only in extremis that we discover who we really are, what we’re really like. Every day we wear masks. We spend so much time projecting the image of ourselves that we wish to be acknowledged that we end up strangers to ourselves. If you crash in a jet about to take off from a runway, and survive impact only to see a wall of fire rising up the aisles behind you, will you be one of those people who politely queues up for the exits and waits for instructions, or will you be clambering over the seats, mashing old people and children back into their chairs in a bid to be out of the fuselage first. I’d like to think I’d be a hero. Last off the plane. But I just don’t know myself well enough – nobody does – until you’re in the moment. Stripping those false identities away and presenting our crude, fundamental structure is what interests me about horror fiction. Ordinary people trying to cope with extraordinary events, sometimes succeeding, often failing.
JD’L: I don’t want to say too much about the novel because almost any information will spoil the freshness of the story. However, I do want to discuss the protagonist, if that’s alright.
Richard Jane, the ‘one’ of the novel’s title, begins the tale as a chance survivor and then becomes a traveller as he searches for his son. There’s an ‘averageness’ about Jane, as evidenced, for example, by his choice of weapon – he’s not some military demi-god, just an ordinary man. What makes him extraordinary is his love for his boy, a love which becomes more idealistic as the novel unfolds. And yet this love and the hope that he’ll see his son again become Jane’s own high-octane fuel, allowing him to search ever-onward.
I’m not sure I’ve ever come across a character who is so physically and psychically dismantled by the end of a tale.
How did it feel to be the master of Jane’s destiny, of his dissolution?
CW: It was hard, because of course, he is, to some extent, me. I consciously wanted to write a third person novel, but from one point of view. He’s in every scene. He’s the filter for what is experienced throughout the book. So I got very close to him and there was much hand-wringing about what would happen to him and his son.
Initially he was the ‘one’ of the title. I intended to write a novel with one character. One story. But it’s impossible. You need someone else to bounce off. My old creative writing tutor at Lancaster University, Alan Burns, said that it was impossible to write an OMOHO (one man on his own). At the time I thought, bollocks. But he was right. There’s no story if there’s only one person. So the ONE of the title is him, but it’s also about something else: the title is explained in the novel.
Jane’s choice of weapon is interesting, and it caused some debate between me and my editor. I didn’t want him to become some tooled-up Rambo swaggering down the A1 with an arsenal hanging off his greased muscles. It wasn’t about weaponry. He really didn’t care about defence. So he clung to the first weapon he came across, an air rifle. A powerful one, mind. Not one of these pump-up pellet puffers we had when we were kids.
JD’L: Not only did you reduce Richard Jane as the story progressed, you also did a good job of mutating our country and capital city. You made the familiar unrecognisable and that’s probably what scared me the most – the idea that the future might somehow alter the very fabric of our world. Possibly to a point beyond which we cannot, as a species, adapt.
I have chills just thinking about it. Did you, or was it just a bit of fun?
CW: We’re a pretty hardy species, but there’s fragility there too. We’re having any rough edges sanded off us by a fondness – not a need – for convenience. We’re not hunter-gatherers any more. We’re docile animals grazing on a constant drip-feed of vacuum-packed meals from Tesco. We drive to the corner shop for the newspapers. We have umpteen remote controls to tune in to channels none of us want to watch. We have satnav and wifi and Twitter. People are getting older and people are getting more sedentary. Come the apocalypse I can see an awful lot of folk shambling outside to watch it kick off, desperate to check out immediately, because surviving will be no picnic. It will be just too much like hard work.
JD’L: Are you widely knowledgeable, Conrad? There were many occasions in the novel where I was thinking, how does he know all this stuff?! Did you have to do much research and, if so, is that a process you enjoy?
CW: My dad always said to me that it’s better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little. I actually think it’s better to know a little about a lot as well as a lot about a little – especially if you’re an airline pilot or a surgeon. I’m curious, which is a good thing in a novelist. And there was a lot of research, especially for the opening couple of chapters. I did enjoy it, yes. I like to learn new things. I used to spend a lot of time at the British Library when I was living in London and miss the place terribly. I’m glad if all that stuff about diving and oil platforms came over without looking as if it was researched. I think it’s best to ration that kind of information rather than clout readers over the head with pages of look at all the work I did!
JD’L: As I mentioned in the intro, I know nothing about you. Could you tell me a little about your writing history – where has your fiction appeared in the past, when was your first novel published, that kind of thing?
CW: I’ve been around for a while, but I’m no longer the enfant terrible of British horror. Graham Joyce no longer refers to me as ‘Young Conrad’. I published my first short story, ‘Dirty Water’, in a small press publication called Dark Dreams when I was 18. Since then I’ve had around 80 stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. My first novel, HEAD INJURIES, came out in 1998. It was optioned by Michael Winterbottom’s production company, Revolution Films. Four novels since then (DECAY INEVITABLE is published by Solaris Books this summer) and hopefully many more to come.
JD’L: Your writing style, use of language and descriptive power made ONE a very rich experience. It’s a lot more than just a great story; it’s exceptionally well-executed. The blend of beauty and pace makes the tale magnetic.
You appear to love language itself – I’m guessing you’ll have written poetry at some point. How much notice do you think publishers take of writing style when considering submissions?
CW: I do love language, and I have written poetry, but only the kind of juvenilia that ought to be shredded and used as hamster mattresses. A love of lyrical writing remains, however. Trying to describe the most horrifying things with beautiful imagery is a real challenge, but I think it can add impact. Clive Barker knows about the beauty of an opened body, for example. In such circumstances, the writing, as well as what’s being written about, can add to the power of a scene. I want people to recoil, but be unable to look away. I love that paradox.
I don’t know if publishers pay much attention to writing style. Maybe they do. But I suspect, for many of them, it gets in the way. They want stories. You only have to look at the way Jeffrey Archer or Dan Brown write to see that the quality of the writing is secondary. I’m as interested in the craft as I am in the story, possibly to the detriment of story in some cases, certainly when I was younger. Which is bad too. There’s only so much pretty writing you can get away with before someone says, ‘well, that was beautifully written, but what happened?’ Graham Greene, Jim Crace, Rupert Thomson, these are the writers I turn to for great writing. Writers who care as much about the how as well as the what.
JD’L: The genre fiction marketplace, especially for horror, is a tough one right now – the ‘hiatus’ at your own publisher, Virgin Horror, is an example of how things can go wrong. Would you consider writing in other genres if the money was right or do you write dark, bizarre tales for their own sake?
CW: It’s extremely disappointing. Adam Nevill, who launched that list at Virgin, had assembled a superb stable of writers. I was stunned to discover that I’d be sharing a publisher with Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Gregory and Thomas Ligotti, among others. The problem is that publishing is an industry, not a crucible for experiments, and the bean counters want to see wide profit margins. You can’t build a reputation any more. There is no midlist. There has to be a big spike on the sales graph, right now. What’s encouraging is the rise of the small presses, although I’d hesitate to refer to PS Publishing, for example, as a small press any more.
I have written, pseudonymously, a crime thriller with an intended series character, and that has found favour with a New York editor who is working with me on the novel in the hope that he can convince his bosses that it’s a goer. But even that has a supremely dark spine to it. It’s still, recognisably, my stuff. I don’t think I could turn my hand to lad-lit, or romantic fiction, nor would I want to. I’m not interested in trying to surf the wave of the next big thing, like the writers who spewed out novels with ‘code’ or ‘cypher’ in the title once Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE found its way on to every beach in the world. You have to have faith in what you’re doing, try to bend everyone’s way of thinking your way. There’s nothing I’d like more than to be a full-time writer, but I’m not going to become a hack to do that.
JD’L: Whilst some imprints are shutting down or not buying new horror, others are stepping in to fill their shoes – HarperCollins’s Angry Robot line, for example. We’ve all got this feeling here at Horror Reanimated that the genre is on the rise, both in quality and popularity. What are your thoughts?
CW: I’d like to think so, despite my unhappy experience with Virgin. There’s definitely an appetite for horror, especially on screen. I hope that this gradual opening of arms we’re currently seeing among a number of publishers is indicative of a new age of horror fiction. There are a bunch of hot, hungry young authors out there. All it needs is a hot, hungry young editor to tap into it.
JD’L: Traditionally (it’s still a rather short tradition as traditions go…) our interviewees are given the power to make two awards.
The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness goes to the work in any medium that will remain a horror classic forever. Well, until the end of the world at least.
The Plague Pits are where the worst examples of horror in any medium end up.
Please make your nominations…
CW: Sword of Ultimate Darkness – I’ll go for T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies. Absorbing, beautifully paced and written, and very, very creepy.
As for the Plague Pits… any of the Hollywood remakes of what ought to be untouchable classics. I’m thinking of Psycho and The Haunting, but there are and will be many more. Leave them alone, FFS…
JD’L: It’s been my great pleasure to chat to you.
I usually write a creepy intro for these interviews but ONE was so disturbing, I didn’t feel you required it. From all of us here at Horror Reanimated, I’d just like to say, Mr. Conrad Williams, you are one scary motherfucker and we love you!
Keep up the great work and let us know how you’re doing from time to time.
CW: It’s been a pleasure and a privilege. Best of luck with your own work too.
June 17th, 2009
I doubt there’s anything a writer enjoys more than talking about himself and his work at great length…
That’s exactly what I did on the Dread Media Podcast when asked about my early influences, eco-horror, what’s next for me and a plethora of other subjects. Desmond Reddick and I spoke in-depth about Garbage Man and MEAT too.
Last weekend I also talked to John S. Drew for a spotlight episode of The Chronic Rift podcast. Last Year on The Chronic Rift we discussed the development of the Horror Genre but this time it was all about yours truly…
Altogether almost an hour and a half of me contradicting myself!
June 12th, 2009
Following our enforced ‘holiday’ on the shores of Lake Hades, Bill, Mathew and I returned to Horror Reanimated to discover the refurbishments unfinished. In an attempt to save money, Bloody Books had hired a firm of zombie builders to do the work. One might say they aren’t the sharpest tools in the box…
So, for our chat with the classic British horror author Ramsey Campbell, we once again found ourselves off the premises. Mr. Campbell suggested we meet in an old Liverpool theatre. On arrival we discovered the venue to be not only deserted but also in a state of decay. The lights didn’t work and by the time we’d found the entrance to the stalls, our torches had grown dim. Snow fell through the holes in the ceiling high above. Many of the seats appeared to be occupied by silent, unmoving figures whose bodies were lumpy and white under the failing torch beams.
We found Mr. Campbell in a front row seat looking quite at home and sipping Chardonnay…
Bill Hussey: Many horror writers are able to pinpoint some traumatic episode or event in their childhood that influences their work – anything you’d like to share?
Ramsey Campbell: Rupert Bear, for a start – specifically “Rupert’s Christmas Tree”, in which Rupert acquires a magical tree that decamps after the festivities and returns to its home in the woods. Perhaps this is meant as a charming fantasy for children, but the details – the small high voice from the tree, the creaking that Rupert hears in the night, the trail of earth he follows from the tub in his house, above all the prancing silhouette that inclines towards him the star it has in place of a head – are surely the stuff of adult supernatural fiction. I read it when I was getting on for two years old and lay awake for nights in utter dread. I think I got my start in the field right there, and many of my preoccupations must derive from my early childhood. Our son’s partner Sharika recently reprinted the story in Rupert: A Collection of Favourite Stories (Egmont, 2007), and so you can see for yourselves how unnerving it is.
Then there was my everyday life. My parents were estranged when I was very young but continued to live in the same cramped house (just two rooms downstairs). My mother was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believed (for instance) that radio programmes contained coded messages about her. She led me to believe that my father was in many ways a monster, and I almost never saw him face to face throughout my childhood and adolescence. I used to hear his footsteps on the stairs as I lay in bed, terrified that he might come into my room. Sometimes I heard arguments downstairs as my mother waylaid him when he came home, her voice shrill and clear, his blurred and incomprehensible, hardly a voice, which filled me with a terror I couldn’t define. (Being a spectator to arguments made me deeply nervous for decades, though since becoming a parent I’m much more likely to intervene or take sides.) If he was still in the kitchen when it was time for her to make my breakfast she would drive him out of the house; presumably it was unthinkable that I should share the table with him. Once I found I’d broken a lens of my glasses as I’d put them down by the bed the previous night, and was convinced by my mother that he had sneaked into the room to break it. Worst of all was Christmas, when my mother would send me to knock on his bedroom door and invite him down, as a mark of seasonal goodwill, for Christmas dinner. I would go upstairs in a panic, but there was never any response beyond a mutter of refusal. I don’t believe any of this necessarily led me to write horror – I did that because I’d fallen in love with the terror the genre conveyed – but I’m sure my early years influenced the psychological preoccupations of my stuff.
Joseph D’Lacey: Your influences appear to be from a time when the genre had a more literary feel to it. I’m thinking of writers like Le Fanu, of course, but also Blackwood and M.R. James. Are there storytellers outside the genre who you’ve found inspirational too? Would you say you’re ever influenced in new ways by newer writers or is your MO quite crystallised these days?
Ramsey Campbell: Outside it – lord, yes. I hadn’t even finished writing my first published book when I began to read a great deal outside the field. Graham Greene, early Iris Murdoch, Joyce’s Ulysses, Lawrence Darrell’s Alexandria Quartet, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs (whose books had to be smuggled into the country from Paris)… Greene was certainly an influence, but above all Nabokov. Lolita was an absolute revelation to me when I read it at seventeen – the lyricism, the joy in language and all that you can do with it, the black comedy brought to bear on a theme you wouldn’t expect to support it. I read everything else I could find by him – Bend Sinister, Pale Fire and Laughter in the Dark were particular favourites.
I’m not conscious of being influenced by other writers these days, but who’s to say I just don’t notice? One way I try to keep developing as a writer is to identify some technique or element I depend on and then see what happens if I do without it. I actually began that in my first book – there’s a tale in there (“The Will of Stanley Brooke”) told largely in dialogue, with only neutral adjectives, no Lovecraftian language at all. It isn’t very good – I didn’t have the grasp of character it needed – but it was a start.
Bill Hussey: Your career as a horror writer has spanned decades. In that time what are the biggest changes that have taken place in the form?
Ramsey Campbell: I’d say the growth of the horror novel. The old wisdom persists that the short story or the novella is the ideal form for horror fiction, but I do think the novel has developed considerably since Steve King and others started to work at it. That’s not to say there weren’t great earlier examples – Matheson, Bradbury, Shirley Jackson come to mind, not to mention Frankenstein and Dracula. But as a vehicle for expression the horror novel can incorporate satire, comedy of various shades, social comment, psychological enquiry and much else, and since the seventies there have been quite a few impressive explorations of its possibilities.
I don’t find other developments as significant. The face-off between subtlety and splatter has been going on at least since M. R. James and Montague Summers condemned American gruesomeness as represented by the Not at Night anthologies, and I suspect it’ll continue for as long as we have horror fiction. I’ve nothing against either – just against lack of imagination. Clive Barker and David Schow and others have all written highly explicit fiction that enriches the imagination rather than trying to take its place. That’s my criterion.
Mathew F. Riley: You follow your own path when creating stories of unease, but do you take an interest in current trends in the horror genre? What are you thoughts on the popularity of the zombie as a horror sub-genre; and your thoughts on the increasingly-seen doom-laden scenarios of the apocalypse and the post-apocalypse?
Ramsey Campbell: To be honest, I’m not very interested in the conventional monsters. That isn’t to say nothing new can be done with them, but probably not by me. I’m interested in getting inside their minds, but you can’t have much from a zombie’s viewpoint, it seems to me. As for the explosion of apocalypses – well, I imagine it expresses many people’s sense of the precariousness of their existence. Better an apocalypse in fiction than in religious fanaticism, anyway. Mind you, Ballard was creating superb examples decades ago.
Joseph D’Lacey: We recently posted a review of Thomas Ligotti’s ‘My Work is not yet Done’. I was delighted by his use of language and the subtlety of his exposition. What’s your impression of this man’s work?
Ramsey Campbell: I think he’s a remarkable writer – not just one of the best in the field today but in the field ever. He has a unique vision and has crafted a style that expresses it perfectly. I’d place him alongside Machen and Lovecraft and a very few others who have managed to create something profoundly personal (not to say disturbing) in the tale of supernatural terror.
Mathew F. Riley: As a postscript to your entry in The Book of Horror Lists, and your editorial in the latest Prism, please can you list 5 UK horror writers that you consider to be ‘expanding the genre’; and in what ways are they doing so?
Ramsey Campbell: M. John Harrison has been doing it for decades and still is – treating occult themes with a remarkably bleak contemporary vision that’s inextricable from his observation of life. Joel Lane is equally keen-eyed and uses the fantastic to illuminate social and political issues that beset us. Mark Samuels is Britain’s master of urban weirdness (difficult to differentiate from urban horror, and there’s some of that in his work, but he often uses mundane life as the seed of a decidedly personal, though by no means unpersuasive, view of the world). Gary Fry uses his considerable knowledge of psychology and philosophy to produce horror fiction that’s intellectually very stimulating. And if I may claim her as British – she’s certainly graced these isles for quite a time – Lisa Tuttle may be too original and intelligent and literate to have any obvious imitators, but besides having all those qualities and a highly individual vision she does what all good horror should do, however you define it: disturb.
Joseph D’Lacey: What are your feelings about the current Horror renaissance taking place in the UK? Perhaps you feel that Horror never died in the first place…
Ramsey Campbell: That’s right, Joseph, I don’t! But I’m delighted to see that it’s creeping back into the public consciousness. I think the genre goes through various phases that keep coming back. When I started reading in it in the fifties very little new horror was being published as horror. Small presses (in particular Arkham House, as significant back then as PS Publishing is now) were keeping it alive. There was the odd short-lived magazine, the occasional anthology, the infrequent popular success. Sound familiar? Eventually we had the boom of the seventies, followed by the inevitable eventual implosion. (The same thing befell science fiction in the fifties.) At my great age I tend to take the long view. Write the best you can and, if it doesn’t achieve much immediate success, hope that it lasts.
Bill Hussey: Being a writer now extends far beyond the word processor. It seems that, to be successful writer, you now have to engage more directly with your readership – setting up an online presence, attending conventions etc. Is this a healthy development and what is your general attitude to the ‘business’ side of writing?
Ramsey Campbell: I’m a bit wary of blogging, though I do it now and then. I think it can too easily become a substitute for real writing – an excuse not to write, something writers are prone to try and find. Convention-going isn’t new by any means – me, I was attending them before I’d written anything worth reading. If you regard them as a way of having a good time with your friends as well as meeting your readership or doing business, they should be fun – they certainly are for me. I actually love reading my stuff to audiences – I can’t ordinarily judge how people will react to what I write, and I enjoy seeing or hearing it for a change. If they laugh that’s best of all.
Mathew F. Riley: Your novel ‘Pact of the Fathers’ was filmed as ‘El Segundo Nombre (2002)‘; and ‘The Nameless’ as ‘Los Sin Nombre (1999)’ – the films appear to have gathered a cult following over the years, justifiably so. Looking back, how involved were you in the process if at all, and what did you think of the finished articles? Did these adaptations provide beneficial for your writing career? And have you other stories under option?
Ramsey Campbell: I wasn’t involved in the process, but the folk at Filmax flew me over to Spain to help promote both films. I liked them, especially Los Sin Nombre, which I think has a real sense of dread – I particularly liked the use of actual derelict locations, Spanish equivalents of the kind I used in the book and elsewhere in my stuff. To be honest, I don’t think they had any particular effect on my career, except that Pact of the Fathers saw a Spanish edition. I hope the films helped the two directors to get to the decidedly frightening Rec, which they co-directed. Nothing is optioned right now – “The Seductress” was done years ago as a rather faithful episode of The Hunger, though.
Joseph D’Lacey: My publisher once asked my wife if she worried about what was going on in my mind. Before that, I don’t think she’d ever thought about it…How does your wife cope with your dark side?
Ramsey Campbell: It’s one of many reasons we got together in the first place (in the late sixties, at Eastercon in Oxford). She has always shared my tastes – she’s a great fan of Val Lewton and David Lynch, for instance. She’s also my first editor, and reads my novels in first draft as the chapters are finished – she often makes useful comments. She and our daughter and son are the best things that have ever happened to me.
Joseph D’Lacey: Having discussed this with many writers, it seems the majority of us – whether consciously or not – revisit certain themes and ideas. Ideas that won’t leave us in peace. Which terrors do you find yourself unearthing like this, in some kind of subconscious cycle?
Ramsey Campbell: You know, I try not to be aware of them in case I start consciously repeating them. But the vulnerability of children often turns up, and also the notion that deep down we’re still the vulnerable children we were. Other recurring themes: the human tendency to find scapegoats, fundamentalism in various forms (political as well as religious), the ghost or monster as something we deny about ourselves (that is, a character in the story does), the willingness to embrace belief systems that will answer all your questions so long as you give up the right to question, the banality of evil (my killers tend to be pretty pathetic, as real ones surely are)…
Joseph D’Lacey: What interests do you have beyond creating within this noble genre? Do you ever wonder what you might have done if you hadn’t achieved success as an author?
Ramsey Campbell: I’d have liked to be a stand-up comedian.
Joseph D’Lacey: What’s the most unsettling work of fiction you’ve ever read and why?
Ramsey Campbell: Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is certainly a recent candidate – in all sorts of ways, including how it’s set out on the page, it both puts you through the experiences of the characters and undermines your certainty in what exactly you’re reading. I also loved Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, which is gentler but more like experiencing someone else’s prolonged dream than any other novel I can think of. Paul Ableman’s I Hear Voices is a brilliant immersion in the experience of a schizophrenic. But I think I’d finally go for Beckett’s The Unnameable, though his How It Is would be another strong candidate. Both immerse you (me, anyway) in an experience of intense spiritual disorientation that’s especially disconcerting for its boundlessness.
Mathew F. Riley: Your thoughts on Virgin Books’ decision to put its horror line on hiatus after only 8 releases?
Ramsey Campbell: Alas! A pity. Still, it’s one of the ways the field often works or doesn’t work.
Joseph D’Lacey: All our guests are given the power to make two nominations. The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness goes to the outstanding, all time work of horror in any medium. You may also banish to the Plague Pits forever, the worst example of horror in any medium. Please make your nominations…
Ramsey Campbell: I’ll give the Sword to the first horror film I fell in love with, Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon. I saw it at the cinema when I was fourteen and looked old enough to bluff my way into X (that’s to say, for people of 16 or over) films. It was playing second feature to The Tingler, which I quite liked. The Tourneur came on second – in those days the supporting film played once in the middle of the show while the main feature was shown twice. Before the opening credits of Night of the Demon were over I was enthralled by the introductory voice-over accompanied by Clifton Parker’s great score over shots of Stonehenge. I still think Maurice Denham’s drive through the spectral night is one of the greatest first scenes in all horror film, and by the time he encountered the demon I knew it was a classic (even if the first appearance of the demon is a bit too explicit so early on). I must have watched the film perhaps a dozen times by now, and I’ll watch it again. There’s a very useful book about it by Tony Earnshaw.
As for the worst, lord knows there’s plenty of competition. There has always been a good deal of semi-literate trash in the field, and there’s certainly no shortage of it now. I think I’ll go for someone with a certain reputation rather than lesser lights. I nominate Dennis Wheatley and in particular The Devil Rides Out. It isn’t just reactionary – it seems as if Wheatley regarded everything that threatened his way of life as the work of the devil. It’s nakedly racist – told “He reminded me in a most unpleasant way of the Bogey Man” someone immediately responds “Why, is he a black?” Most of the characters are caricatures if even that, some of them equipped with pantomime accents. At times the book reads like a synopsis of itself – one bizarre chapter precedes most of its telegrammatic paragraphs with the time in hours and minutes in a woeful attempt to generate suspense. Throughout the book characters lecture each other (hence the reader) rather than talk like any kind of human being I’ve ever met – maybe people spoke like that in Wheatley’s day or in his circle. It’s also often bathetic: watching a Black Mass, one of our heroes cries “Phew! This is a ghastly business. I can’t stand much more of it.” That’s what really sinks the book: the clumping prose. It was adapted as a musical – http://www.thedevilridesoutmusical.com/index.htm , and it obviously influenced the inadvertently comic writing of Sean Manchester (the Highgate Vampire man). However, it was the basis of a good film, skilfully written by the great Richard Matheson.
Mathew F. Riley: Are you a book geek?
Ramsey Campbell: Put it this way. One room in our house is a library. And the guest room is more of it. And so is the front room, and my workroom, and the room next to that… I used to collect editions – I had almost the entire Arkham House list up to the early seventies – but when I had to sell most of those to pay for work on our first house I settled for just owning the text instead. I still want books, though – not the text online.
Joseph D’Lacey: Never have I found a cold, dark abandoned theatre so entertaining. I must say I am slightly concerned about all the ghostly white figures who have gathered round to listen while we’ve talked. I think perhaps it’s time we left. Bill? Mathew?
Er, Mr. Campbell?
My God! Something spongy but very strong just grabbed hold of my ankle. Can’t seem to wrench it free. Hold on, some sort of powdery white fungus is growing across my lap and arms. I can’t move.
Hey! Guys? Anyone?
I do hate this job sometimes…
[A note to the uninitiated and some publishing news:
Ramsey Campbell is the author of dozens of horror novels and countless short stories. Among his accolades are British Fantasy, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards as well as The Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He is considered Britain's most respected living horror writer.
His most recent novels are The Grin of The Dark and Thieving Fear. Forthcoming in September is Creatures of the Pool - set in the cellars and tunnels under Liverpool - and a collection titled Just Behind You, both from PS Publishing. The first draft of a brand new novel - The Seven Days of Cain - has just been completed and available right now is a new edition of The Influence.]
May 20th, 2009
Reviews of Garbage Man are arriving from around the world.
Before you spend your hard earned lucre on a copy – especially if you’re obliged to pay postage from the UK – you might want to check some of these opinions out. I present them in roughly the order they arrived, the most recent at the end.
They don’t all agree…
Andy Remic, author of Biohell – “Leads the reader by the hand then breaks his arm with a grin. Masterful.”
Geoff Nelder, editor of Escape Velocity – “D’Lacey has imagination to the nth power.”
Total Quality Reading made a lot of criticisms but asked me to respond!
B Through Z – “One of the best horror writers to come out of Britain in recent memory.”
The Bone Breaker – “[not] as powerful as MEAT.”
The Novel Blog – “Exciting…Genre busting…[Joseph D’Lacey] writes stories like no other.”
My Favourite Books – “Its touch lingers long after you’ve turned the lights off…” MFB interviewed me too.
Bookgeeks – “Fast becoming the master of contemporary eco-horror.”
Horrorscope – “A lot more flaws than D’Lacey’s debut…”
Killer Works – “The perfect cautionary tale for Earth Day!”
Fatally Yours – “Eco-horror is poised to be the next big thing…D’Lacey is at the forefront.”
Monster Librarian – “A master of story telling.”
Dark Fiction Review – “Brutally exposes a darker side to our natures.”
Bill and I read from The Absence and Garbage Man at Eastercon a couple of weeks ago – alongside giant of the genre Ramsey Campbell! Paul Maclean from Yog Radio recorded it for his Podcast.
Reviews of my first American publication The Kill Crew (Stone Garden Publishing) have also begun to appear. The novella comes out on 10th August and will be available from The Book Depository who won’t charge you postage from the States!
Here are some early impressions…
British Fantasy Society – “…Exceptionally thrilling…Anyone who enjoys survival horror will find this very satisfying.”
Monster Librarian – “Brimming with emotion, adventure and horror.”
The Goats of Baal – “Compulsive and confrontational.”
The Bone Breaker – “An awesome read!”
Horror Reviewer – “A Kicker.”
More reviews, interviews and podcasts are coming very soon as well as a finalised Horror Reanimated tour itinerary.
Meanwhile, my sincere thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read and review my fiction and even take the risky step of interviewing me!
April 26th, 2009
Crack HR correspondant Elaine Lamkin follows up her interview with Fabrice Du Welz, the director of Vinyan, by talking to the film’s star, Rufus Sewell. Sewell is one of those actors film fans have seen but just cannot remember where. He is a chameleon and enjoys being one.
Born in London and trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, Sewell has been in everything from the delightfully quirky Cold Comfort Farm in 1995, A Knight’s Tale in 2001 with the late Heath Ledger, The Illusionist in 2006 with Edward Norton and Jessica Biel, and most recently, he can be seen in director Fabrice du Welz’s followup to his disturbing Calvaire, the equally disturbing Vinyan, which will be out on DVD from Sony April 7th. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Rufus while he was shooting an episode of his highly-rated new CBS TV series, Eleventh Hour and found him to be both extremely funny as well as very serious about his craft.
HR: Thank you so much for taking time to speak with HorrorReanimated about your new film, Vinyan. How did you come to be involved in the project?
RS: I had met Fabrice while I was doing Tom Stoppard’s RocknRoll in the West End and the two of us, along with a casting agent, had lunch where Fabrice gave me the script for Vinyan. I loved the script but didn’t think I would get the role so I told Fabrice how much I DID enjoy Vinyan, which I just knew would jinx me. Months went by and then I got a call that I had the part of Paul Bellmer.
HR: Were you familiar with Fabrice’s first film, Calvaire, when you met Fabrice?
RS: No, but I saw Calvaire after I knew I had the role in Vinyan. I love the film, the cinematography.
HR: Vinyan was shot in Thailand. I have had many actors say they would never participate in another movie that was to be shot in Southeast Asia. What was your experience shooting Vinyan?
RS: Well, I never discount work based on geography. Bangkok was extraordinary and the places Fabrice chose to shoot were the real thing – the strip club. Those were real hookers. And that was, for the most part, real rain we were shooting in. I think there is a perverse pleasure one gets when working in rain, mud, heat. All of the elements we had to deal with. Fabrice just took advantage of whatever Mother Nature threw at him.
HR: Vinyan deals with the loss of a child. As the father of a young son, was the film ever difficult for you?
RS: It was a frame of reference I didn’t want to apply. It just hit me in the gut when I read the script but it was just a given to the the story. It would have been too ghoulish to dwell on.
HR: How would you describe your character, Paul Bellmer?
RS: Paul and his wife Jeanne have suffered the worst tragedy any parent could suffer and while Paul believes his son is dead and he is dealing with that, his wife is becoming more unhinged and he is trying to keep her together.
HR: The part of Jeanne was cast before the part of Paul. How was it working with French actress Emanuelle Beart?
RS: I loved working with Emmanuelle and Fabrice. There was total trust and respect. And I would definitely work with Fabrice again. He is so passionate about his work. Also, finding out your director’s hero is Werner Hertzog, just as you’re entering the jungle…(laughs)
HR: It doesn’t appear that you have done a full-blown horror film yet. Does that genre interest you and if so, what are some of your favourite horror films?
RS: I am interested in all genres of film and would love to do full-blown horror. When I first read the Vinyan script, I was reminded of two films, Don’t Look Now and Jacob’s Ladder both of which just happen to also be among my favourite horror films. I also love The Innocents and the Hammer films which I used to watch at my dad’s.
HR: You are currently starring in the CBS series, Eleventh Hour, which is doing very well in the ratings. What was the attraction of doing a weekly American drama?
RS: I love the character of Dr. Jacob Hood and his relationship with his FBI minder, Agent Rachel Young, played by Marley Shelton. The humour, the humanity of the character. Also, when Eleventh Hour came about, it was an opportunity to not be “evil”. It’s difficult. I want to be a much more useful actor than people think and playing Jacob Hood was that opportunity. As with Vinyan, I was also so happy to be playing a part where I didn’t have to ride a horse.
HR: Marley Shelton is a horror fan favourite from her role in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. What is Marley like to work with?
RS: Marley and I have the same naughty sense of humour and we’re both enjoying how the show is developing – the banter between Jacob and Rachel.
HR: Just for curiosity’s sake, why doesn’t Hood ever drive?
RS: (laughs) That’s part of his personality, him not driving. Plus, he would probably be a menace on the road if he were ever to get behind the wheel of a car. That is one of several aspects of Hood that I hope will be explored in future episodes: why he needs an FBI handler, why he doesn’t drive, etc.
HR: Another question, just for curiosity’s sake: I have noticed that there are quite a few British/Aussie/Irish actors playing Americans in primetime TV shows (Simon Baker in The Mentalist, Kevin McKidd in Grey’s Anatomy, Jason O’Mara in Life on Mars and yourself). Any theories as to why this is going on?
RS: I think it might be that we are “new” faces to American audiences but at the same time, experienced actors which the producers want.
HR: You have worked with amazingly talented actors over the years: Sir Ian McKellan, Eileen Atkins, Paul Giamatti, Kate Winslet, Dame Judi Dench, Jude Law and on and on. What was your career hope when you left the Central School of Speech and Drama?
RS: I just wanted to be a proper actor. Not necessarily a leading man, not a “type”. I have always admired the careers of Sir Anthony Hopkins and Marlon Brando.
HR: Forgive me but I just have to ask this: I first saw you in Cold Comfort Farm where you played Seth Starkadder. What do YOU think Great-aunt Ada Doom saw in the wood shed that was so nasty?
RS: (laughs) I think I will just leave that up to your imagination.
HR: Thank you so much for your time, Rufus. And great good luck with Eleventh Hour.
RS: It has been a pleasure speaking with you.
Interview by Elaine Lamkin, January 2009
April 5th, 2009
Following the success of his first film, the disturbing “Christmas fairy tale” entitled Calvaire horror fans were prepared for just about anything from Belgian director Fabrice du Welz.
What they will get (the film will be available 7th April in the US from Sony DVD) is the equally disturbing English-language film, Vinyan, starring Eleventh Hour‘s Rufus Sewell and Mission: Impossible actress Emmanuelle Beart. Where Calvaire was all cold, loneliness and desolation, both literally and figuratively, Vinyan, shot on location in Thailand, is heat and madness and despair.
HorrorReanimated’s new contributor Elaine Lamkin recently had the opportunity to speak with Fabrice about his latest polarising film, what he and the cast and crew went through to shoot it and what might be next for this rising star of horror.HR: Bon nuit, Fabrice and thanks for taking time to speak with me. First question for you: after the success of Calvaire why did you decide to do an English-language film AND one set in Thailand?
FDW: I had been to Thailand and was fascinated by the culture and the people. As for the language barrier, it was not intimidating. There was a lot of love and trust on this film.
HR: I read you wanted to remake Quien Puede Matar a un Nino? but things did not work out. How did the story/script come into being and how did Donkeypunch writer/director Olly Blackburn as well as David Greig get involved?
FDW: The script was a long process. I took the basics from Quien Puede Matar and worked that into the story of the couple who have lost their son in the 2004 tsunami. Olly and David actually came in at the end to polish up a few things, at the request of Film4, one of the producers, who requested “script doctors”. The bit about Jeanne seeing Joshua in the video was actually Olly’s idea. They only worked a few days each.
HR: How did you go about casting the film? I have read that you wanted to cast the female lead first.
FDW: I had actually met Rufus (Sewell) first and originally was going to have Emily Mortimer play the wife but that didn’t work out. The producers wanted a French actress and when Emmanuelle (Beart) and Rufus met for the first time in Paris, I knew I had my Paul and Jeanne Bellmer. And my son, Borhan, got his first taste for acting by playing Joshua Bellmer.
HR: The legend of the Vinyan that Thaksin Gao relates to Jeanne: “When someone dies a bad death, the spirit becomes confused. Does not know where to go. The spirit becomes angry. Becomes ‘vinyan’” – is that a real Thai legend?
FDW: Yes. It is a real legend.
HR: Benoit Debie is once again your DP and once again, the look of the film is amazing. I have to ask about one specific shot as I could not figure out how Benoit did it – the shot of Paul and Jeanne arriving at the temple. It’s absolutely mindboggling!
FDW: We discovered the film Soy Cuba (1964) after shooting Calvaire and that is where we got the idea for that shot. Benoit is literally sitting or standing on a small…plate?…hanging from a wire which is pulled by many in the Thai crew. We could only shoot a few scenes that way due to our budget – the scene where Jeanne runs through the jungle to the river was shot that way as well. In The Making of ‘Vinyan extra on the DVD, what Benoit did is much clearer.
HR: You shot Calvaire in 2004 on a 30-day schedule with a budget of 1.2 million Euros. This time you had a 3.5 million Euro budget and you shot for 7 weeks. Was this film any easier?
FDW: Vinyan almost didn’t happen! Everyone was sick. Emmanuelle had a terrible ear infection. The weather was the worst! Heat, humidity, raining when it wasn’t needed and not raining when we did need it! We had to deal with boats, kids, languages…it was a nightmare! There were only 6 Belgian/French and over 200 Thai working on this film.
HR: What was it like working with Rufus Sewell?
FDW: Rufus really challenged me as a director. I would love to work with him again. He is a very meticulous actor, he’s had a lot of experience and had a lot of ideas.
HR: Do you have any anecdotes you would care to share about filming Vinyan?
FDW: One of the early scenes in the film – the one in the red light district – we had one night only in Bangkok to shoot that and in order to shoot, we had to pay the Bangkok “mob” for protection. That was a real street and real prostitutes! I wanted to avoid any sort of “postcard” look and show just how out of their element the Bellmers are.
Also, the opening credit – Benoit and I found a dark wig and we put it into an aquarium with bubbles and colour to get the effect you see.
HR: I read that your next project might be a feature film, L’ile aux trentes cerceuils (Coffin Island), which was a mini-series in France in 1979 and is based on the novel by Maurice Leblanc. Is that still your plan?
FDW: When I saw that on TV, that was when I decided I wanted to be a director. Unfortunately, things are not working out right now for L’ile. It is a period piece, very Lovecraftian, and would be too expensive. Perhaps a film noir cop story?
HR: So, no Calvaire 2?
FDW: (laughs) No, no Calvaire 2.
HR: When I interviewed you before, for Calvaire, you spoke about the difficulty of getting financing for a horror film in France and Belgium. Do you still feel that way, given the explosion of French horror films recently – A l’interieur, Frontier(s), Ils and so on?
FDW: I still feel it is the same problem. Audiences here do not like the horror genre. The movies today are so childish. But French and Belgian horror films ARE very popular overseas so with the extremely helpful assistance of Canal + and Wild Bunch as well as several other companies, we are able to create our horrific visions and the rest of the world enjoys them.
HR: Merci beaucoup for all of your time, Fabrice, and I am quite sure I speak for many when I say I am looking forward to your next film.
FDW: Thank you as well. It has been a pleasure.
Interview by Elaine Lamkin, January 2009
April 3rd, 2009
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