Posts filed under 'Interviews'
I first discovered today’s featured artist when I stumbled across his blog. I’d been Googling my short story ‘The Food of Love’ to see if its ghost remained online. Instead, I found Nick’s site and his detailed explanation of an illustration titled ‘Brainburgers’. Nick had been commissioned to provide art for my story in an anthology now titled Darc Karnivale. His image of zombies queuing for ‘Brainburgers’ in a fast food joint appears in the book, as do many other fine examples of Nick’s work.
As you’ll glean from his frank responses to our questions, Nick has survived a lot to get where he is today.
Joseph D’Lacey: Welcome to Horror Reanimated, Nick. I’m glad you could make it all the way out to our quaint little corner of Hell.
Nick Rose: Joseph, I am very honoured. You know you’re Madison’s and my favourite writer, and you’re a wonderful man on top of that. Illustrating “The Food of Love” was probably my favourite assignment to date. And guess what? – This time next month everyone will be able to have a print or T-shirt with “Brainburgers” on it. And don’t worry, brother, if we sell a good many of these, we’ll send some money your way! After all, you gave me the idea…
Actually, this will be the very first time that fans and friends can buy prints of Nick Rose art. I really hope that I get the chance to work on more of your stories in the future.
JD’L: Thanks, Nick! It doesn’t matter about the money – you can buy me a beer next time I come to the USA!
Now, I see a lot of news about you on Facebook these days but I’m very curious about your past. How long have you been a professional artist and what kind of journey has it been?
NR: Well, actually I have been around for a long time.
My first published piece was for a fanzine called “Stellar Gas” way back around 1980. It was a Star Trek fan magazine. The picture I did was of Mr. Spock. From there I was published regularly in a Magazine called “Lost World”. Around 1990 my pro career started with a piece published in Dragon Magazine #203. I also had landed a few commercial accounts as well.
Publishing is great as far as building a fan base, but it pays very little considering the time you spend on it. Commercial art on the other hand is boring most of the time, but the pay-checks are awesome.
Now through all of this, I also was a carpet installer. It was the only way I could make ends meet. This went on until 1995. At the time computers were coming in strong and you could do an assignment in a 10th of the time. But two things were going on with me at the time.
One: I was against using computers to produce art. Two: I was growing sick of doing commercial work. I wanted to paint Dragons and Monsters, so out of frustration, I quit drawing and painting again. From 1995 to 2000 I gave up art. I packed up the studio and put it in storage.
Those 5 years where hell. I started drinking and smoking very heavy and I just didn’t want to live to be honest. I was killing myself.
Then in 2000, I got a computer for my then step-son, and he started showing me all the cool things like publishers websites. (Before this, you either had to mail your work into the publisher and pray that you would get it back, or you had to have an agent knocking on doors for you.) But now with the internet, all of that had changed. So I became inspired again, and unpacked my studio and got to work.
Everywhere I sent samples, I was getting work. This was mainly small press, but I was loving it. I was constantly getting magazines and books in the mail that either had a cover by me, or interiors. It was very exciting. I muddled along doing this until 2005 when a Master Artist offered to train me – Master Daniel Horne, and shortly after that fantasy legend Todd Lockwood decided to help me as well.
Sammy Unmasked - Based on the movie Trick 'r' Treat
As a young man, I could not afford to pay my way through an art school. After the Army, I went to a local community college where I took commercial art for a year. The sad thing is, everything I learned from the community college is totally useless these days. The computer has changed the world as we know it. So having Daniel and Todd train me was and is a dream come true. Daniel really opened my eyes to art and I started seeing it in a whole different light, and Todd really introduced me to contrast and perspective. He had me go down town twice a week and practice drawing buildings from all different points of views. I did that for about 5 months, and I remember mumbling every time I was sitting on a bench drawing and a wino would come up to me asking me for money. But after a while I started to get it and understood why he had me doing that. It really opened my eyes to how important it was to making a good picture. I haven’t used much of that knowledge yet but I will soon.
Through the years I installed carpet to get by, but there were some years I decided to try to go full time as an artist. Financially, those where tough times, but they were also a lot of fun. I don’t even remember how I got by, but I did. For some reason when I was young I thought I would get rich painting, but the truth is, you’re lucky just to get by. Being an artist is an act of love. Now don’t get me wrong, I know a few artists that are well off, mostly because they had a spouse with good business sense, like Elli Frazetta. She built the Frazetta empire by cutting out the middle man.
I know other artists who make $20,000 per painting, but those are few and far between. In my case, 2 of those a year and I would be living better that I ever have.
These days I paint because I love to, and last year people started noticing me on Facebook, and with in a year’s time I had 4600 friends, 2 fan clubs – one with 4800 fans, and the second one with 2000 fans, and my blog has 900 known followers. That’s about 12,000 fans in less than a year. It’s mind boggling if you think about it, me just being an artist. So I guess I’m doing pretty well these days.
JD’L: It seems that very few of those who set out to become authors are ever able to support themselves through their writing. How true is this of artists, do you think? I ask because I know several and only a couple of them make a living by their creativity.
NR: Good question Joseph, and you are right. A small percentage of artists like me can make a living doing this, but I have help. I have a health problem that I get money for, and Madison works a regular job, so all of that helps.
A couple of weeks from now we will start selling prints and other merchandise, and hopefully that will get Madison out of her job so she can write full time. But even the big names I know struggle. If their wives weren’t working, I don’t think they could make it either. Now there are a few that do, but they live modestly. For the first 50 years of my life, I installed carpet 37 of those years, and was able to retire from that at 50 years old. But the sad truth is that 80 percent of the artists you see in the field right now, will be memories in 3 years. Life pressures get to them, or raising a family, or they lack the 3 things it takes to be an artist which are Talent, Heart, and Soul, and/or they are in it for the wrong reason, like they want to be famous. If you want to be famous, you’d best learn how to play music or act.
JD’L: In your case has it always been the bizarre side of imagery that has drawn you or do you also enjoy what people might refer to as mainstream art?
NR: Now that is the first time I have ever been asked that, and I will do my best to answer it.
I didn’t take art seriously until I was in the army, but in the 4th grade, around the time “One Million Years BC” came out, I started drawing dinosaurs. I had always loved dinosaurs and had a big box of the plastic ones like army men that I used to play with. You heard it here first folks, Nick Rose used to play with toy soldiers and dinosaurs! Anyway, after I saw that movie, I started drawing dinosaurs in school. If I’d gone to a Junior high school that had an art program, I would have pursued art at a much earlier age. But we lived in Bigfoot country, so the best I could get was creative writing.
In high school I became a huge comic book fan and I loved Spiderman. So in the army, when I started to draw again, I was really into comics. After the Army, I went to a local community college to take some art classes, after that I found a book by Frank Frazetta and I knew then and there that I wanted to learn to paint like that man. So I moved into doing fantasy art.
But through the road of life, dark and evil things and people have been part of my existence. Not by choice, but imposed on me by certain step-family members. For instance my step father used to beat me and my mother senseless, and I don’t care how old you get, you never get over that. I had an asshole artist tell me the other day that he was friends with my ex Stepfather, and I remember thinking that this fool was proud to be friends with a man that would do that to a woman and a child.
He also allowed his younger bother to molest me. He was told about it but never did anything about it, except call me a “faggot”. This same artist told me that I was not allowed to come to my ex step fathers funeral when it happened. I would be physically removed if I did. I’ve got news for them: I am going to visit his grave often to pay my respects, if you know what I mean. So this artist is proud to be friends with him. I think that says volumes about his character.
But because I have had to live with these memories through the years, my work has become darker and darker, and I see them getting Darker as I go. There is no cure for what was done to me, talking about it just makes me angry, so in some way, painting these images has helped me slowly but surely.
In my early years I did try to do some mainstream art because family members would tell me “why don’t you paint something people will like, like barns or cowboys?” I did try, but it was like taking a pair of pliers and pulling the skin off of my face. So I went back to being the loser artist that everyone thought was weird.
JD’L: It’s very clear that you’re no kind of loser, Nick. Certainly not to survive such treatment and come out with so much positive spirit. What fascinating about what you’ve told me – apart from your honesty and candour – is that the darkness of your work has given you comfort. Horror has many functions!
Tell me, what is your preferred medium? Do you ever work outside of it?
NR: Joseph, I work in all mediums, including digital. I believe if you’re going to make a living doing this, you need to be able to do as much as possible. My favourites are pencil, oils, and Corel painter. I used to work in pen and inks a lot, but I don’t get much call 
for it anymore.
JD’L: I’m fascinated by the working practices of other ‘creatives’ – How does a typical Nick Rose work day go?
NR: Normally, I get up at 7:15 am, make a pot of coffee and head to the dungeon (studio) to go through my mail and Facebook. That takes from 1 to 3 hours, drinking coffee throughout. After that, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I head to the gym for 90 minutes, come home, shower and get to work. The other 4 days of the week, I shower after checking e-mail and start work immediately. Somewhere along the way I grab a bowl of oatmeal. I work to at least 7pm, sometimes as late as 9pm. It depends on the day. Then I pick out a good movie and enjoy that, have a snack and hit the hay ready to start all over at 7:15 the next morning.
Starting this week I am going to be redesigning the studio, buying new equipment and supplies. I am really looking forward to that. Right now a good portion of the floor is taken up by my movie collection. I am going to buy book cases to put them in and that will clear a lot of the floor. Then I will have space for a table where I can put together packages ready to be mailed or to matte my prints. I am also buying another drawing table, a medium size easel for Madison’s daughter to work on, and a light box for her. The dungeon is large and wide open, so I can do what ever I want down here.
Another thing is that I listen to music all day long, so I have about 11,000 c.d.’s most of them are on my iMac. I listen to every kind of music you could think of.
JD’L: Do you feel there’s a gap between your ideas and your ability to bring them into being? Arthur Machen once wrote: ‘One dreams in fire and works in clay.’ He also talked about ‘the horrid gulf that yawns between the conception and the execution’. Admittedly he was an author, not an artist. Nonetheless, what’s your personal view?
NR: At one time I would say that would have been true, mostly because my skills were not strong enough to paint what my mind sees. Now, it is the other way around, my hands can surpass what my mind sees, and improve upon it. I get excited now every time I do a new piece because I know that it will be so much more than what my mind sees. I have to ask myself, what is next, and that is a big part of why I love to paint.
JD’L: Is it only art that gets you out of bed in the morning – or, indeed, at any other time – or do you have other passions?
NR: Oh my, to be honest, there was a time I didn’t want to get out of bed several years ago at all. As a matter of fact I overdosed on pain pills, and somehow lived through that. After the Dark Angels disbanded and I realised my best friend had betrayed and stabbed me in the back, and my Step Father said he never wanted to have anything to do with me ever again, I was going to commit suicide, but as a last resort I went to the VA hospital and told them what I was going to do. They locked me in the Mental Health ward for 3 weeks, during Christmas, and worked with me to help me cope with what happened. When I went home, the girl I had been dating took almost everything I owned and vanished off the face of the earth.
I just existed at that point. I didn’t care anymore. I just drank and smoked all I could smoke in a day. Then a friend offered to move me up here to Michigan, where my home is now, and my life changed 100%. The first thing was I met Madison. We fell in love, and all of a sudden I wanted to live again. It has been a rough year. I quit smoking, drinking and started working out again. I found out I have COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) because of the smoking, and this last year I’ve had pneumonia 5 times. But each day I get stronger, and my will to live is amazing. Nothing gets me down anymore. I work all the time and spend time with Madison and the kids.
My career has gone through the roof and keeps going up everyday. This is the 9th interview I have done since Christmas, Joseph. I was on a world wide radio show last week and am going to be a regular on there – talking live a couple times a year – and they will be giving away prints of my work and promoting my name almost every week. You can’t beat that.
JD’L: If you had the time, money and support to do only your own work, which deeply-held, as yet unrealised idea, would you bring into the world? I suppose I’m asking, what is the piece or series Nick Rose was born to create?
NR: Actually that is coming very soon now. I am at the point where I can do what I want and turn down what I don’t want to do. I have two projects I will be starting as soon as I finish remodelling the studio this coming week. One is a series of oil paintings of my dear friend and scream queen, Ms. Suzi Lorraine. We will be selling prints, calendars, t-shits, and whatever with her image. Another is a series of books called “The book of Rose” which I am already working on. I can’t say anything about that now, because of all the thieves out there, and this is a one of a kind thing. It will have a role playing game and video game based around it, all done through my company. And on top of that, I will be painting my paintings, writing how-to book, and a book about my life including all the 
creeps and monsters I have met on my journey, names and all.
JD’L: Beyond that, what’s next for you, Nick? I have a sense there’s a lot of work in the pipeline. Is there anything you can tell us about without giving away too many secrets?
NR: Well, between now and January I have 20 covers to do, so that’s gonna keep me busy and it will get my work out there to a much larger audience. I hope by this time next year that the number will double and we will have our own market of buyers who are fans of my work.
JD’L: I hope so too, Nick. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and share some of your artwork here at Horror Reanimated. Thanks for joining us and good luck for the future!
NR: Joseph, it has been my pleasure. You know Madison and I are two of your biggest fans, and it has been a thrill for me to do this interview with you. To my fans, “May the Darkness Comfort You.”
June 17th, 2010
Oh, joy!
Tonight, after months of scheming and dirty deals, I have finally snared the slippery and elusive Jasper Bark, author of Dawn Over Doomsday and Way of the Barefoot Zombie. We tracked him down using private detectives, crooked coppers and undercover prostitutes. After a failed blackmail attempt, we kidnapped his children. He said we could keep them. In the end, we had to resort to a large transfer of funds into his numbered Swiss account. There’s nothing we won’t do for you, the horror-lover, here at Horror Reanimated.
Okay, that’s a complete lie. We should have strapped Jasper into the ‘interview chair’ several months ago but I forgot.
Still, he’s comfortable now. Ears pinned to the backboard with carpet tacks, hands nailed to the armrests with a staple-gun. We removed his foreskin and eyelids – purely for reasons of hygiene, you understand; the filth of the dungeon just doesn’t enter the bloodstream properly if we don’t take certain precautions. Septicaemia should be setting in about now…
Joseph D’Lacey: Welcome to Horror Reanimated, Jasper. We’ve done our best to make you comfortable but if there’s anything else you need, don’t hesitate to ask.
Now, sir, I’m curious about the various Abaddon Books worlds. To write a Tomes of the Dead novel for example, what are the parameters? Similarly, what rules exist for The Afterblight Chronicles – both of which you’ve written for?
Jasper Bark: Okay, I’ll spill the beans on the Abaddon worlds as long as you promise to omit the sordid confessions of the last hour and sew my thumbs back on.
The parameters and the rules are slightly different for both series. The Afterblight Chronicles is a shared world series. The world was created by Si Spurrier who also wrote the first novel in the series The Culled. He was supposed to write the next instalment but around the same time he sold a novel called Contract to another publisher and decided to work on that instead, so Rebecca Levene got the job.
You’ve got a pretty free reign as a writer so long as you uphold the basic ‘post plague’ premise of the world and make certain you don’t contradict any of the events and timelines of the other novels in the series. My novel picked up on some of the events in Si’s novel and I stayed in touch with Scott Andrews and Paul Kane while I was writing it, as they were both working on their Afterblight trilogies at around the same time and we were all trying not to step on each other’s toes.
Tomes of the Dead is just an umbrella title for a series of contemporary and somewhat edgy zombie novels. The only thing that connects them is the defiant attitude of many of the authors and their general interest in subverting and experimenting with the sub-genre of the Zombie novel. When the series was first launched Matthew Sprange did write a shared world bible based around the back drop to his novel Death Hulk, which was the first in the series. Editor in Chief Jonathan Oliver soon fell out of love with the idea of the series having a shared world though and decided Tomes of the Dead would simply be a line of zombie novels.
JD’L: What attracts you to writing Zombie/Apocalyptic fiction?
JB: Although both those genres have become conflated thanks to Romero’s excellent Dead movies, none of the Zombie fiction I’ve worked on has been post apocalyptic. The appeal of each genre is quite different for me.
What I like about zombies is how malleable they are as a representative icon. As society trades old nightmares for new with each advancing decade the zombie keeps adapting and changing the things it stands for in our collective unconscious. In the 30s when the zombie was first introduced to western culture it stood for the western colonial fear of the nations it was exploiting. Over the years the zombie has come to represent mainstreams fears of everything from communism and terrorism to sixties radicalism and growing economic unrest. This makes it very appealing to writers like myself who have an interest in writing social commentary and satire.
The thing that appeals to me about post apocalyptic fiction, on the other hand, is that it allows you to study society as a whole in microcosm. As we view the shattered bands of survivors trying to rebuild their life in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation there’s a huge opportunity to examine the everyday tensions and conflicts of our current society. The backdrop of a lost and ruined world allows us to view these opposing forces in a more naked and honest light, outside of the contexts and allegiances of our contemporary culture. This throws them into sharper relief and allows us a fresh perspective of the problems they’re causing us and the long term consequences of certain courses of action.
Plus err … zombies are totally awesome. They eat brains, they never wash and they always, always win. Vampires and Werewolves might be in an eternal conflict but Zombies can kick both their butts. A vampire or a werewolf can bite a Zombie as many times as they like and it’ll still be a zombie. A zombie’s only has to bite them once and you’ve got a zompire or a werebie. (Is it just me or does a ‘werebie’ sound like a creepy undead furby fetishist?)
JD’L: When a novel has a strong theme, it can be a tightrope act walking between what the story’s about and what it’s really about. Way of the Barefoot Zombie uses the walking dead sub-genre as satire. At times I found the message blazing as brightly as the story itself. Was that intentional? Once you knew where you were going, did you find it hard to keep a lid on all that social comment?
JB: You’re right it can be a tightrope act but I’m glad you said ‘blazing as brightly as the story itself’ and not ‘strangling the fecking story to death’. I think the writer’s ultimate responsibility is to the story itself but I think the story is strengthened no end if it is about more than just the characters themselves and what happens to them. As a writer you get incredibly close to your story and subject matter when you’re spending eight, nine and even ten hours a day working on it. You can’t help but ruminate a lot on your themes, so when the greater significance of certain parts of your story occurs to you, you want to point them out.
I was a lot more subtle about this in Dawn Over Doomsday and as a consequence a lot less people noticed. So I think this time around I was over compensating a little and trying to point out the subtext to the reader, possibly a little too much at times. But I’m only on my fourth novel and I’m still learning how to get the balance right.
I do aspire to write genre fiction that is fast paced, completely gripping but just as intelligent and significant as more weighty writing. This is a tall order though and sometimes you can fall between two stools. The sort of people who just want quick entertainment can get really annoyed when you start asking them to think a bit and the sort of people who might appreciate the more complex ideas you’re considering can be put off by the schlocky nature of some of the content.
Still, it’s not worth doing if it’s too easy is it.
JD’L: Course, WOTBZ was a lot of fun too. How important is humour in your work?
JB: I would say it’s extremely important where it’s applicable. It’s often highly applicable when you’re writing horror. In fact horror and humour are the two genres that are specifically geared towards getting a particular physical reaction from the audience, you either want them to laugh or hurl. Because of this it’s easy to get it wrong and get a laugh when you’re looking to horrify so, in a way, getting the laugh in first - where you want it - is a way of keeping the reader on side and not losing them.
For me it’s also a way of puncturing any possible pomposity. If you’re writing work that aims at some type of profundity and insight it’s very easy to get a bit full of yourself and to come across as sanctimonious or preachy. Humour is a great way of undercutting that and maintaining a balance in the tone of your work. It’s a way of showing that I take what I do very seriously, but not myself.
For many years I led a hand to mouth existence as a stand up performer and I wrote and performed comedy sketches for BBC radio and live theatre. So along the way I learned how to be funny. It’s another tool in my armoury I guess.
JD’L: The novel has a strong grip on the traditions and practices of voodoo. Is this something you’ve had personal experience with or did it all come from research?
JB: Initially it came from research. I knew from the get go that voodoo would be central to the plot and my conception of the zombie. I wanted to go right back to the root of the myth. However Voodoo is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented religions in the world. Horror fiction has contributed a huge amount towards the misconceptions surrounding this belief system, so I decided I was going to treat it with due reverence and present as authentic a view as I could.
So I did a lot of reading and sought out practitioners. A lot of people were very generous with their time and shared their experiences with me and they also lent me lots of books. Research is key to my work. I also did a lot of reading about economics for this novel.
I didn’t have any practical experience of economics but I did sort of get quite up close and personal with Voodoo. Followers of the faith are known as ‘Servant of the Loa’. The Loa are the spiritual beings who act as intermediaries between us and God. The Loa commune with us by taking possession, or ‘riding’ one of their followers during ritual ceremonies where the followers go into trances and the Loa choose a ‘horse’ to take possession of, so they can talk to their servants.
Writing can be quite a ritual activity and it certainly sends you into a type of trance after a while. I write a lot about different religious beliefs and tend to steep myself in them to such a degree that I tend to convert myself as I’m writing. This means there are times when the lines between the world you’re writing about and the world you live in can blur.
When you’re writing scenes of authentic rituals that conjure up the Loa it does feel like they come and have a look over your shoulder. They also demand a co-writing credit. I didn’t really write any of their dialogue whenever they appeared in the novel I just sat and took dictation and wouldn’t have dared edit it either. So in that sense you could say I had a bit of a practical experience.
JD’L: There’s a growing trend for novelists to accompany their new releases with online video teasers but I have to say the teasers for WOTBZ are among the best I’ve seen. Who wrote them? And how and where were they made? Also, they looked expensive – did you get lottery funding???
JB: I wrote all three. They were made over a two day period across three locations here in the West country where I live.
We had next to no funding so although they should have cost in the region of £12,000 to £15,000 to shoot we managed to do all of them for under two grand. That’s mainly because I was able to talk the incredibly talented individuals at Level Films into working for nothing. In fact everybody who worked on the three short videos gave their time and talents for free. The make up and special effects artists, the actors, the sound and camera guys they were all fantastic.
I was very up front with everyone about the fact that I had absolutely no money but they all agreed to get involved because I can be very persuasive when I want to be and the project looked like a lot of fun. In fact we all had a blast. I hope that comes across when you watch them. If you’re reading this please do go watch all three. I promise you’ll laugh and you won’t have seen anything quite like them before.
JD’L: Are there more Abaddon titles to look forward to from your good – or should I say damnably evil – self?
JB: I am at work on something new for Abaddon at the moment, it’s for a new line of titles that hasn’t been launched yet. Nothing has been finalised at the moment, so I’m going to have sound all enigmatic and leave it at that.
JD’L: Now, I’ve heard Jasper Bark also writes books for children and is well known in the world of graphic novels. When did all this start and how do you fit it in around writing horror novels?
JB: Well the comics and graphic novels probably came first. While I was working as a music and film journalist I got in touch with The Losers creator Andy Diggle, who was then editor of 2000AD and offered to get him in to see any band or up coming film he liked for free. After a screening of the film Snatch I mentioned I was interviewing the cast and director the next day. Andy told me if I could get a quote from director Guy Ritchie he’d buy a script off me no matter how ropey it was. So in the middle of the interview I asked this drawn out question about 2000AD and got Guy Ritchie to endorse it. I let Andy out of the deal though and eventually sold a script to his successor, current editor Matt Smith.
After writing grown up comics for a while I began to notice there weren’t any really good comics for kids anymore and as I was a parent myself I felt impelled to try and write some so I moved into the kids comics market. From this I moved into writing kids books. Some of my kid’s books have been translated into nine different languages while others are used in schools all over the country to help improve literacy in senior school children. I’m even published in all sorts of new media now, with a series of books for young children being sold exclusively on the i-pad and the i-phone called The Recyclies and an audiobook about to be launched on i-tunes called Mr Woznotiz. I’ve also just finished a 30 part graphic novel series for Channel 4 Education for young adults too. It’s called Alien Ink and it’s available initially on line.
JD’L: Do you think horror has a purpose, above giving people a comfortable, entertaining scare?
JB: I really do believe it has. In my opinion the best horror stories use the weird and other-worldly as a metaphor for a deeper or more personal truth. I also think that the world is quite a scary place at the moment and because of this the tropes and motifs of horror are some of the best ways of addressing the contemporary world. A lot of the horror writers coming up at the moment seem to be interested in social commentary in the same way that the New Wave and the early Cyberpunk writers previously used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment. It’s one of the (many) things I like about your work actually.
JD’L: Regardless of whether you could sell it or not, what is the book you were born to write?
JB: The Scratch and Sniff Karma Sutra - don’t know why it hasn’t been done before.
Seriously, I have so many books and graphic novels that I still want to write that I haven’t the time or space to list them all here.
JD’L: As you may know, every Horror Reanimated interviewee is imbued with a temporary but godlike power.
You, Jasper Bark, may now bestow The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness upon the work of horror in any medium which you consider the pinnacle of ghastly achievement.
JB: Well I think the EC Horror comics work of Johnny Craig deserves an honourable mention, as do the short stories of Ramsey Campbell and many episodes of the original Twilight Zone.
But perhaps my favourite horror work in any medium is the 1945 portmanteau horror film Dead of Night, which has never been bettered.
JD’L: When you’ve done that you must cast forever into The Plague Pits, the worst work of horror in any medium.
Please exercise your power now…
JB: I had to think a long time about this having seen and read a lot of terrible horror. I did consider the movie Troll 2 but that’s now kind of famous for being unbelievably bad.
So I’m going to go with Guy N Smith’s second novel The Sucking Pit. And no, that’s not cockney rhyming slang but it ought to be as it would perfectly describe this novel. Published in 1975 it manages to be racist, sexist and atrociously written with moronic dialogue, almost no characterisation and a pitiful plot.
This said I have a grudging affection for it. In his excellent book On Writing Stephen King talks about the joy you feel the first time you read a book that’s so bad you realise you could easily do better. I was about 12/13 when I first read The Sucking Pit and I was so encouraged by the thought that if something this awful could get into print then I stood more than a chance myself, that I began work on my first novel the very next day.
Now here I am, (ahem) years later, talking to you writer to writer. So I guess when I’m done here I should really head up the apples and pears get on the dog and bone and thank Mr Smith for writing something so Sucking Pit.
JD’L: Thank you for joining us, Jasper, and from all the Horror Reanimated team good luck for a dark and dreadful future!
JB: Thanks for having me Joseph, I’ve had a brilliant time … now can you loosen that tourniquet round my nuts like you promised?
June 4th, 2010
The twelfth entry in the Bury Me With… series focuses on the London-based mystical urban miserablist Mark Samuels.
“Being buried with a book can lead to later unrest. I think of Dante Gabriel Rossetti having interred, as a tribute, the sole copy of a handwritten volume of his love poems with the corpse of Elizabeth Siddal - only to have her coffin dug up years later when his poetical flood had almost ceased, so that he could retrieve it.
But to answer the question: I should like to be buried with a copy of the Folio Society’s The Quest for Corvo [by A. J. A. Symons]. Biography I often find as compelling than fiction, and the two forms are closely aligned. Attempting to encompass a person’s life (even the dullest) in a few hundred pages is a conceit of outrageous proportions, but a great entertainment. Baron Corvo - Catholic, Arch-Paranoid, author of the magnificent Hadrian VII - affords perfect subject-matter and until such time as we are fortunate enough to have a full-scale biography of Count Stenbock, The Quest for Corvo will be sufficient to keep me company beyond death.”
More information about A.J.A. Symons can be found at Wikipedia.
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About Mark Samuels:
Mark Samuels was born in 1967 in Clapham, south London and grew up in Crystal Palace. His novels and story collections include The White Hands (2003), Black Altars (2003), The Face of Twilight (2006), and Glyphotech (2008). His work has also appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Dementia, Tales from Tartarus, Terror Tales and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Thomas Ligotti called The White Hands “a treasure and a genuine contribution to the real history of weird fiction” and T.E.D. Klein called it “genuinely chilling.”
- Download a PDF of Mark’ short story Vrolyck, (from The White Hands), courtesy of Tartarus Press
- Read an interview with Mark at The Teeming Brain
May 31st, 2010
It’s the tenth instalment of Bury Me With… and the book dark cosmic speculist Laird Barron wants to be buried with is…
“T.E.D. Klein’s Dark Gods, a quartet of novellas that hit the stands in 1985 as a follow-up to his famous novel The Ceremonies. Klein, a respected former editor of The Twilight Zone Magazine, gave us a tour de force with his novella collection and demonstrated his standing as a master craftsman possessed of a sophisticated and cerebral style matched by perhaps a handful of modern fantasists.
The contents of Dark Gods include Children of the Kingdom, in which the author is enthralled by the tales of an old priest regarding lost tribes, subterranean kingdoms, and an ancient evil that occasionally rises to plague the surface world; the events of Petey transpire during a housewarming party in a remote Connecticut mansion as guests slowly uncover a macabre puzzle left behind by the former, utterly mad occupant; Black Man with a Horn may well be the crown jewel of the set — certainly a classic homage to Lovecraft’s Mythos in which an elderly author shares a plane ride with a missionary who’s convinced agents of a diabolical tribe are stalking him; Nadelman’s God is the tale of a man whose melodramatic college-era poetry has been co-opted by a lunatic who believes it possesses the power to summon a monstrous supernatural entity. Hilarity ensues.
Dark Gods has exerted some influence on my writing career. It reinforced my long held notion that novella-length horror is the genre at its most sublime. Klein’s masterpiece, alongside Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, is always close at hand. I often open it at random to instruct myself in the fine art of building atmosphere that gradually, and inexorably, draws in the reader and delivers unto him or her an exquisite thrill; a glimpse of the numinous in the yellowed and curling pages of an ‘80s paperback.”
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About Laird Barron:
Laird Barron is the author of two collections: The Imago Sequence & Other Stories, and Occultation; both from Night Shade Books. His work has appeared in places such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Lovecraft Unbound, Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, Clockwork Phoenix, and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It has also been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies. Mr. Barron is an expatriate Alaskan currently at large in Washington State.
May 17th, 2010
The fifth Bury Me With…, and we’re thankful to Michael Marshall Smith for providing an insight into the book that has influenced him more than any, the book he’d like to take with him to his grave…
“It’s tempting to say the book I’d like to be buried with is an iPad, of course – as that way I could not only take a ton of books but be able to chase deadlines beyond the grave, too. But assuming that’s not within the spirit of the thing, then I’d have to say Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis. I first read it when I was about thirteen, and it made a huge impression on me. I read it and re-read it, countless times, and it probably informed my sense of humour more than anything else I’ve ever read. Amis’ ability to find comedy in life’s slings and arrows, to use words as precise little hammers to attack the countless impotent little furies and frustrations of existence, has been an inspiration ever since. It was also the very first book that gave me an inkling that I might like to try writing for a career. Though if I’m allowed to entertain the idea that I might still be able to read in the grave, I might substitute a really big entymological dictionary instead. I love words, and especially enjoy reading about their journeys through time, shifts in their meanings reflecting changes in society an attitude, and how each of them - as Butler said - tries to enclose the wilderness of an idea. In effect every word is a little story in itself. With an eternity to get through, a couple of hundred thousand of those might help pass the time…”
More information on Kingsley Amis can be found at Wikipedia.
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About Michael Marshall Smith:
Michael Marshall (Smith) is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, Only Forward, won the August Derleth and Philip K. Dick awards. Spares and One of Us were optioned for film by DreamWorks and Warner Brothers, and the Straw Men trilogy - The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels - were international bestsellers. He is a three-time winner of the BFS Award for short fiction, and his stories are collected in two volumes - What You Make It and More Tomorrow and Other Stories (which won the International Horror Guild Award). His Steel Dagger-nominated previous novel - The Intruders - is currently in series development with the BBC.
His new novel Bad Things is now in paperback in the UK, and will appear from William Morrow in the US in 2010.
February 2009 also saw the UK paperback publication of The Servants, a short novel under the new name M. M. Smith.
He lives in North London with his wife Paula, a son and two cats.
April 12th, 2010
In the fourth in the series of Bury Me With…, we asked zombie-rage-master David Moody about the book that has influenced him more than any, the book he’d like to take with him to his grave…
“The book I’d like to be buried with is The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.
When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.
I was 10 when I read ‘Triffids’ for the first time. Probably far too young, but I’d just watched the opening episode of the classic 1981 BBC TV adaptation (infinitely superior to the dreadful 1962 movie and the awful 2009 BBC TV adaption) and I was captivated. I can still clearly remember the horror and unease I felt at the time. I guess the story was my first real introduction to post-apocalyptic fiction, and it had a profound effect on me.
I’d finished reading the whole book by the time the second episode of the series was broadcast – I was so overwhelmed by the story that I couldn’t wait for the BBC to catch up! It affected me on many different levels… the terror and helplessness of a suddenly blinded population of millions; the encroaching danger of thousands of virtually silent, emotionless predators; the horror witnessed by the few sighted people struggling to survive; a world falling apart without power, sanitation and other basic necessities… I’d never come across such a terrifying, all-consuming, nightmare scenario before – the entire world rendered helpless, literally in the blinking of an eye.
Looking back now, Wyndham’s story seems to have been the blueprint for many of the countless other ‘End of the World’ tales which have followed. In fact, the Triffids themselves seem to be the vegetarian alternative to my apocalyptic scenario of choice: zombies. Mute, devoid of all emotion, driven and relentless, preying on the last few remaining survivors in massive numbers… sound familiar?
Although it’s had its fair share of detractors, The Day of the Triffids remains an exceptional story which had a huge impact on me and which set me on the path to writing the kind of books I love – books in which the ordinary world becomes extraordinary in an instant, and there’s nothing you can do about it but try your damnedest to survive. Okay, elements of the novel seem twee and dated now, many of the characters are paper-thin and the horror has muted somewhat over time, but it’s intelligent and bleak and it still makes you think.
It certainly made me think. And that’s why I’d like to be buried with it.”
More information on John Wyndham can be found at Wikipedia.
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About David Moody:
David Moody used to give his books away for free. This unconventional marketing approach resulted in the film rights to Hater being sold to Guillermo del Toro (director, Hellboy 1 & 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, the upcoming Hobbit series) and Mark Johnson (producer, The Chronicles of Narnia series). Another of his novels, Autumn, was also adapted for screen as a movie starring the late David Carradine and Dexter Fletcher.
With the official publication of Hater and its highly anticipated first sequel, Dog Blood, David is rapidly becoming a leading voice in modern dystopian fiction.
He lives in Halesowen, UK with his wife and a houseful of daughters and step-daughters. This may explain his pre-occupation with Armageddon.
April 5th, 2010
In a special third ‘episode’ of Bury Me With…, we asked many-fingers-in-many-pies Chris Golden about the book he’d like to take with him to his grave…
He said: True Tales of Resurrection
True Tales of Resurrection was published in a special edition of Christopher Golden’s imagination only.
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About Christopher Golden:
Christopher Golden is the award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink, Soulless, and the thriller series Body of Evidence, honored by the New York Public Library and chosen as one of YALSA’s Best Books for Young Readers. Upcoming teen novels include a new series of hardcover YA fantasy novels co-authored with Tim Lebbon and entitled The Secret Journeys of Jack London.
A lifelong fan of the “team-up,” Golden frequently collaborates with other writers on books, comics, and scripts. In addition to his recent work with Tim Lebbon, he co-wrote the lavishly illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the co-author of multiple novels, as well as comic book miniseries such as Talent and The Sisterhood, both currently in development as feature films. With Amber Benson, Golden co-created the online animated series Ghosts of Albion and co-wrote the book series of the same name
As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead and British Invasion, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, the online animated series Ghosts of Albion (with Amber Benson) and a network television pilot.
The author is also known for his many media tie-in works, including novels, comics, and video games, in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy, Angel, and X-Men, among others.
Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in fourteen languages in countries around the world.
April 1st, 2010
In the second in the series of Bury Me With…, we asked scary Gary McMahon about the book that has influenced him more than any, the book he’d like to take with him to his grave…
“I had to think about this one for a long time, and two or three books immediately demanded my attention - books that had a profound effect on my entire life when I first read them. Alan Garner’s Elidor, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But in the end, I went back to the first book I thought of when I saw the question:
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson.
Johnson’s book consists of a bunch of episodic short stories, all narrated by the same character - a nameless junkie in 1970s America. The stories chart his drug addiction and his ennui, but they also show us so much more about the character and the people around him. The narrator’s voice has a fragile poetic quality, but there’s also a grinding realism to the descriptions of the world he moves through.
There’s beauty here, and pain, and even transcendence. The spirituality of the book has little to do with God or religion, but provides striking insights regarding humanity in all its shattered glory. Everyone the narrator meets is as broken as him, and rather than wallow in self-pity he is overcome with the melancholy beauty of the human condition. His observations and insights are tender and life-affirming, yet he is a true lost soul. When he tells us “I knew every raindrop by its name”, we believe him, and we feel his sense of awe as he says it.
If you’ve never read this book before, do yourself a favour and track it down. My own copy is never far from hand. I’ve only ever read it all the way through once, but I dip into it often, licking the frost off the dream (to steal and abuse a line from Charles Bukowski).
Jesus’ Son is a masterpiece: it’s a book that reminds me what it is to be human.”
More information on Denis Johnson can be found at Wikipedia.
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About Gary McMahon:
Gary McMahon’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S and has been reprinted in both The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight, Hungry Hearts, and has edited an anthology of original novelettes titled We Fade to Grey.
Angry Robot/HarperCollins will publish the novels Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things in 2010 and 2011. The Concrete Grove trilogy will be published by Solaris Books from 2011 onwards.
March 29th, 2010
Today our interview takes place in the attic of a derelict house far out across the moors. A long way from where anyone could hear if something happens to me. Who am I kidding? Something always happens to me, doesn’t it? The attic is strewn with dust and bones – I can’t tell whether their owners died up here or were brought along later.
Not to worry, though, it’s cosy as can be. And the shadows move as though something in the darkness is still alive. Home from home.
Joining me in the attic is Simon Bestwick, author of the inspiring short story collection ‘Pictures of the Dark’. It’s the best book of short fiction I’ve read in a long time. Simon sits opposite me, wrapped in a grey blanket edged with red, for all the world like some street-weary derelict.
What struck me about this collection was the fortitude of Simon Bestwick’s writing voice. Flawlessly genuine throughout the entire work, much of his strength seems to come from using the first person.
Joseph D’Lacey: Simon, thanks for suggesting this snug attic in the middle of nowhere. The air’s a lot…drier…than I’m used to in the basement of Horror Reanimated. Not so many uncategorisable things crawling the walls.
Anyway, welcome to the interview.
I wanted to know first of all why so much of the work in PotD is written in the first person. Is this your M.O. in longer fiction too?
Simon Bestwick: It’s just the easiest voice to slip into as a writer. I know some people say you should always switch it to third person unless you’ve got a really good reason, but I’ve never done that, although I have sometimes deliberately chosen beforehand to write a particular piece third person, just to break the monotony. First person’s particularly attractive in horror because of the nature of the field- it puts you right inside the character’s head and implicates you in their thought processes. That makes it harder to dissociate yourself if the character does something terrible- anybody is capable of just about anything, but we like to pretend otherwise and turn away, cop out by dismissing people who do certain things as ‘evil’. Plus which, of course, a first-person voice usually implies the character has lived to tell the tale, but that doesn’t have to be the case. And even if the character has survived, that’s not necessarily reassuring- just read Lovecraft’s ‘The Rats In The Walls’, or nearly any first-person narrative by Poe.
All my novellas have been first person- not deliberately, it’s just worked out that way. My first novel consisted of three different first-person narratives; my second one’s third person, although all from one character’s viewpoint, and the third’s going to be third person, and told from a lot of different viewpoints. Not planned beyond that yet…
JD’L: You’re very comfortable in the horror genre. I can’t help thinking you belong there. But you also write crime fiction – Never Say Goodbye, Starky’s Town and Vecqueray’s Blanket spring to mind straight away. If you had to write in only one genre for the rest of your existence (including eternity in hell, where we all belong) which would it be and why?
SB: Horror, because it encompasses all the other genres as well. The overlap between horror and the crime genre’s an obvious one, but it can just as readily go into science fiction or fantasy’s territory, and because it shares a lot of elements with magic realism as well, there are plenty of writers- Graham Joyce, in particular, springs to mind- who are just published as ‘mainstream’ authors.
I’d be lying if I said I’d never consciously sat down to write a horror story or ghost story, but I’d also be lying if I said I’d never just sat down to tell a story I really needed to tell and thought fuck genre labels. Genre categories are handy if you’re trying to sell fiction or analyse it, but if you’re trying to write it you need to treat them with extreme caution. Write the stories you want to write and worry later about who you’re going to sell it to or where.
There’s good genre writing and there’s good writing that happens to be in a particular genre. M.R. James’ ghost stories use language wonderfully and they’re great at giving you a pleasant shiver, but beyond that, there’s not really that much to them. Compare a few of James’ stories to any collection by, say, Raymond Carver and you’ll see what I mean. On the other hand, if you take a collection of Dennis Etchison’s short stories and compare them to Carver’s you’ll that they measure up, in terms of the quality of the writing and in terms of content. The best writing deals with whatever subjects, themes, issues are closest to the writer’s hearts and it does so with good prose, careful structure and sound characterisation; it combines all the tools of narrative art with actually having something to say.
JD’L: Can you cite any precursors to your writing style or have you worked hard to create an original voice?
SB: Both- there’s been a lot of writers whose work I’ve admired in different areas, and I’ve tried to learn from each of them. At the same time there’s a fairly definite goal in mind, and I think my style’s been shaped by aiming for that. Poe and Lovecraft both taught me how dark fiction can be and how to construct a story so it builds to maximum effect; Richard Matheson showed how clear, simple prose that tells a story smoothly and effectively could have poetry in it too; later Stephen King did much the same. Also, I came back to writing fiction from an acting background, and so there were playwrights as well, Edward Bond, Howard Barker and David Rudkin; they all dealt in very unsparing, often harrowing imagery and again, they were all trying to create a poetic language that was also very everyday, earthy, raw. I think that’s always been one of the main things I’ve striven for, and to use that to try and get as much as I can into everything I do- psychological depth, social comment, existential musings- but never forgetting a) to still tell a good, involving story and b) that horror fiction is supposed to unsettle, frighten or disturb.
Also, I’ve never bought into the idea that good writers have to starve in garrets and that only crap sells in large quantities. There are some people in the genre who get very sniffy about anyone actually wanting to make some kind of living as a writer, but I think the ugly truth is that commercial success and literary quality just aren’t related. There’s crap that sells by the barrowload (Dan Brown) while there’s good writing that gets overlooked (Joel Lane and Mark Samuels both deserve to be far more widely read and better known), but equally there’s crap that doesn’t sell and good work that does. I’d like, personally, to fit into the second category, but at the same time I’m not interested in fiction that doesn’t connect on an emotional level- anything I do has to become personal on some level or it’s a waste of time. The horror genre just happens to give me the best set of tools to do that.
Shakespeare wrote some of the finest dramatic literature and poetry in the English language, and he did so as a commercial dramatist; and he did that because writers had to cater for everyone- so his tragedies have these beautiful poetic passages after the style of the Latin dramatist Seneca for all the university-educated types in the ‘gods’, but also plenty of gore, poisonings and the sword-fights. And out of that, he synthesised something truly great, something that had both profundity and popular appeal. I don’t think that’s too shabby an ambition, and I think focusing on that has helped develop the style I’ve got.
It’s not just me, though; I think what we’re seeing more recently are different strands in weird fiction being drawn together, different traditions being integrated and synthesised. Conrad Williams is doing that, I think; Gary McMahon is another one.
JD’L: One thing I adored about PotD was your use of language. Partly because of this, the stories had depth and colour rarely found in any genre. Were you born a clever bastard or did you take lessons?
SB: You have a knack of asking questions I can’t answer without sounding like a vain git! I agree with the line about genius being the capacity for taking infinite pains- I’m not claiming to be a genius there, just that if I have reached any standard of quality it’s through a) reading widely in and out of the genre and b) being very tough with my own work. More and more now the first draft of anything is the raw material- the ‘brain barf’ as an American friend put it!- and the rest of the process as shaping and refining it. The first draft can be frustrating at times, but once the work’s completed it’s a hell of a lot easier to work out what to do next.
I’m about to start rewrites on the novel I’ve just finished, and there’s basically a long list of notes of all the things that need to be put right are improved, scribbled down at random and then sorted into some semblance of order to make the long process of setting things to rights a bit easier. Both parts of the process are a lot of fun, however knackering they can sometimes be.
I can’t stand writers who try to get away with second best when writing genre fiction- whether in prose, characterisation, plotting or whatever. I want to write the best fiction, the best work I possibly can. You’re a short time here and a long time dead, and when I’m gone, if I’m very lucky, the work might live on. In the meantime, I’ll be happy if it pays the bills.
JD’L: For your basic horror fan, PotD has got everything: Ghosts, Zombies, Vampires, Psychos, Demons and more Zombies. However, the themes in the collection make it far more than just a bunch of monster sketches. In PotD, story is everything and yet the resonance of each tale lingers. What comes to you first; story or theme? And if your theme comes first, do you worry that trying to explore it too fully will spoil the tale?
SB: Form dictates content, but content also dictates form. Most often the story comes first. Sometimes I can see the themes in there waiting to be pulled out; other times I’ve no clue what it’ll be ‘about’ until I actually start writing. When there is a theme in mind, the job is then to dramatise it, so the theme basically disappears into the characters and the action without needing any big Kevin Costner speeches, please god. And if you’ve done your job properly, form and content become the same thing, so exploring the theme fully will be the same thing as taking the story as far as it can go.
JD’L: What was the last piece of short fiction that blew your mind and why?
SB: ‘This Creeping Thing’ from Robert Shearman’s collection Love Songs For The Shy And Cynical. It’s a great collection; the nearest I can come to describing it is Raymond Carver writing magic realism for Jackanory. The stories start out light, almost whimsical. It’s only as you go on that you realise what he’s doing, and just how dark it is. ‘This Creeping Thing’ blew my away because it surprised me, not in a plot twist kind of way, but by going into territory I’d never have guessed it would, or could, go into. I can’t really talk about the story without spoiling it for people, but really, I can’t recommend it, or the collection as a whole, enough.
JD’L: I’ve always considered short fiction essential practice for novels. Yet some short fiction writers never touch the longer form and some novelists never write short stories. Sometimes, that middle territory occupied by the novella is where the most astounding things occur. Do you have a favourite form?
SB: I love them all! In the past year or so, I’ve been concentrating on novel-writing and haven’t written many short stories except when an editor’s requested one. Mainly it’s the time factor- not just the writing time, but also you have to mull over story ideas and let them brew up to a certain point before you can start writing them. Once the ball’s rolling, you can just come back to the desk each morning and jump back in where you left off. With a novel, that makes daily production an easy task. With short stories, on the other hand, they usually get done in one sitting, maybe two. And then you have to go off again and wait for the next one to rise to the surface.
The last couple of short stories were actually quite tough to write, because I kept thinking ‘this is for a professional anthology, you’ll get some real cash for it so it’s got to be good.’ And you can’t work like that. You can’t think of the money or the exposure at the time you’re writing it, just the work itself. It took a while to get my focus back on where it needed to be, which is writing something I wanted to write. Whether it’s a mass-market novel or a short story maybe a hundred people (if you’re lucky) will read, for god’s sake don’t write it unless you actually want to.
When I started out I wrote a story a week, which actually took a lot of pressure off; no-one was offering professional payment for it, the reward was the buzz of having written something you were proud of and seeing your work in print. Now there’s less time for them, so it tends to be about specific projects. And in the beginning it was easier to take chance and just discard the ones that hadn’t paid off. Now the emphasis is more on thinking through and reworking, so there are fewer individual pieces of work but hopefully the quality’s higher each time. So the old difficulties and challenges have gone and now instead there are new ones, but I can live with that- it’s part of growing up and developing as a writer.
It’d be nice to do some new short stories, though, just for fun. There are always those ideas that won’t leave you alone and have to be written. Maybe after the next novel I’ll have a blitz on them, start laying the keel for a new collection. I agree with you about novellas; they give you the focus and brevity of shorter fiction together with the additional depth, colour and range of a longer story. Some of the work I’m proudest of is novella-length, such as ‘The Narrows’ and in particular ‘The School House.’
JD’L: Have there been any supernatural or unexplainable events in your life that have shaped your creativity?
SB: No. Plenty of unpleasant non-supernatural ones though. Go to a private all-boys’ school for seven years if you really want a reservoir of painful memories to draw on. See ‘The School House’ for details; writing that fucker hurt.
JD’L: The sheer variety of ideas in PotD was a delight but I can’t help wondering about the things that you return to again and again, those rocks you can’t help but keep looking under. Are there any core themes that won’t leave Simon Bestwick alone? If so, what are they and why?
SB: Apocalypses, because there’s such a massive list of ways in which we’re fucked right now, or at least imperilled. Economic crisis, climate change, resource wars, peak oil, pandemics… They all basically serve to remind us just how fragile everything we take for granted, day to day, is, and how easy it is for everything to slip out of our control.
Sex and love keep cropping up too, probably because I’m male and single. Mind you, that happens even when I’m not. Not single, that is; my gender hasn’t altered (appreciably) in the last thirty-odd years, although… hm, there’s another potential story idea.
Also, I fear and loathe authoritarianism- fascism, fundamentalism of any kind, and I’m terrified of them having any power.
I think there’s a real danger of this country becoming an honest-to-god police state in my lifetime, and I just don’t know if there’s the will to fight against it. All you have to do to get a law passed is to say it’s a necessary measure to fight terrorism- six weeks’ detention without trial, bans on legitimate protest- and afterwards no-one notices when those laws are used to clamp down on people who disagree with their government. We’re living in increasingly interesting times, so that’s something that should scare everybody.
We’ve also got people trying to smuggle insane bullshit like creationism onto school syllabuses. We’ve got pharmacists who refuse to supply contraceptive pills and registrars who won’t conduct civil partnership ceremonies, all claiming religion as a defence. The head of the Catholic Church, who’s told his African congregation that condoms make the spread of AIDS worse and has worked to shield paedophiles from justice, attacks anti-discrimination laws for ‘restricting religious freedom’- presumably meaning the right to act like bigoted scum without consequence. People like this hold power. And this is in a world where we also have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The scary thought is not that those people might get access to those toys- under George W. Bush, they did. And it could- probably will- happen again, and we might not be so lucky. How that can’t appal and frighten somebody is beyond me.
JD’L: A fog of depression overtakes me…What projects can we look forward to from you next, Simon?
SB: I’ve just finished the first draft of a new novel,The Song Of The Sibyl, which I’ll be rewriting into its (hopefully) final form over the next couple of months. After that I’ll be writing the first of a planned quartet of novels set in Britain twenty years after a nuclear attack and incorporating Lovecraftian horror. There’s a couple of short stories in the offing- I have a tale called ‘The Sons Of The City’ in End Of The Line, a horror anthology coming out from Solaris Books and edited by Jon Oliver, as well as another that I can’t talk about as it’s still under wraps. I’ve also been invited to contribute something to Never Again, an anti-fascist anthology edited by Joel Lane and Allyson Bird, and another novella, Angels Of The Silences, should be due out from Pendragon Press at Fantasycon this year. I do my best to keep busy and have a lot of irons in the fire!
JD’L: No Horror Reanimated interview is complete without its incredibly bogus award ceremony. You have been given the power to make two nominations:
First, The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness goes to the work of horror in any media which you consider a timeless classic.
Conversely, you may banish to The Plague Pits the very worst example of the genre in any media.
Please make your nominations.
SB: The Sword Of Ultimate Darkness: Fuck. Never, never, never ask me to nominate a ‘best of’ anything. I should’ve told you before we started doing this. I’m hopeless at it. So hopeless, in fact, that I’m going to cheat. I’ll nominate Best Film, Best Novel and Best Short Story.
Film: Threads. You won’t find it in the horror section of your local HMV, but it still remains one of the most authentically frightening, haunting and distressing films I’ve ever seen. An ‘80s film about a nuclear attack on Britain, incredibly realistic, harrowing and bleak. (Similarly, I’d also recommend Peter Watkins’s 1965 film The War Game.) Threads terrifies while engaging the brain and the emotions, and it goes, again and again, way beyond what you hoped would be the cut-off point.
Novel: The Grin Of The Dark by Ramsey Campbell. There’s some bloody stiff competition, not least among Ramsey’s own work (The House On Nazareth Hill and Incarnate both came close too.) A friend told me a couple of years ago that while he still thought Campbell the finest living horror writer, he didn’t think he’d write anything again that’d blow him away like Incarnate had. I took great pleasure in giving him Grin as a Christmas present and he took great pleasure in eating his words.
Short Story: ‘The Masque Of The Red Death’ by Poe. Do I really need to say anything else? Not really. Other than, imagine reading that for the first time aged about nine (if that) and getting to that final line… Yes. Exactly.
The Plague Pits: this one’s even tougher, actually, because I’ve got less and less time for shit writing or films. I’d rather leave it and watch something else! Of course, sometimes you can find and extract a good idea from the awful mess…
Even though it hasn’t been released yet, I’m strongly tempted to nominate Michael Bay’s remake of The Birds because a) it’s (another) pointless remake of a classic and b) it’s Michael fucking Bay. Remakes in general- with certain honourable exceptions- are usually an appallingly bad idea and proof of the movie industry’s intellectual bankruptcy and contempt for both its audience and its own history.
But if I’ve got to pick one existing example… OK. Let me draw your attention to a film called Necropolis (1987, dir. by Bruce Hickey), which I saw back in the ‘90s. Time has mercifully blurred the memories, but not enough. Back then, my best mate and I would watch his enviable collection of shlocky ‘80s horror videos into the small hours. (And without seeing all those naff zombie movies, I’d never have had the idea for ‘Starky’s Town’ among others.) We’d usually be a wee bit intoxicated as well, so we weren’t exactly hard to impress.
The main character of Necropolis is a punky, black-leather-jacketed witch with spiky blonde hair. And six breasts. Which she gets out. More than once, as I recall. And still, we switched the film off after twenty minutes, which gives you some idea of what a steaming pile of half-digested llama guts it had to be. The main actress (I use the term advisedly) appeared to be a dance student on her summer break; every few minutes came footage of her doing a completely pointless dance routine to godawful ‘80s synth-pop. There were no good reasons to put that in the film and plenty not to, so I can only assume she was blowing the director between takes. Occasionally I wonder if I should watch it again just to check we didn’t switch off just before it turned into one of the great lost masterpieces of Western cinema, but so far I haven’t. I’m going those twenty minutes of my life back on my deathbed as it is without adding on Necropolis’ full running time of 77mins.
JD’L: It only remains for me to say a big thank you for talking to Horror Reanimated – albeit on your own rather unusual terms. There’s certainly been a lot of weird activity up here in this attic, much of it XXX rated!
On behalf of all of us, may I also wish you very much success with all your future work. There’s absolutely no question it deserves a much wider audience.
SB: Thank you.
Simon’s other fiction includes:
March 24th, 2010
In the first of what hopefully become a regular series, Horror Reanimated asks genre authors about the book that has influenced them more than any, the book they’d like to take with them to their grave… first up is Canadian author Simon Strantzas:
“The book I would like to be buried with is such an obvious selection for me that it hardly seems worth the effort to explain. Anyone familiar with my writing might guess the answer, but for those in the dark I suspect I’d most like to be buried with The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman. Aickman didn’t write a lot of fiction over his lifetime, but what he did write continues to fascinate and befuddle those of us who enjoy his work. He dealt with dreamscapes, with symbols and metaphors, and while many of his tales lack a clear explanation for what exactly has occurred in them, they are often like the best of our dreams - at times illogical, yet always adhering to their own internal logic.
Reading Aickman one can’t help but feel that it’s the reader, not the author, who is at fault if things aren’t clear - the tales make sense, 
one can feel that they do, even if how remains frustratingly elusive. To study these ciphers, to tease out their true meanings, would take eternity, and I suspect, trapped in that coffin beneath the ground, I’d have nothing more to do than put my mind to it once and for all. Imagine: to be the only corpse in the yard who understood Aickman… I wager I’d be the belle of the undead ball that year.”
The first two volume edition of The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman was published by Tartarus Press and Durtro Press in 1999 and is now out of print, but available through several specialist dealers.
More informaton about Robert Aickman can be found at Wikipedia.
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About Simon Strantzas:
Simon Strantzas is the author of the critically-acclaimed Cold To The Touch (Tartarus Press, 2009), a collection of thirteen tales of the strange and supernatural. His first collection, Beneath The Surface (Humdrumming, 2008) was called “possibly the most important debut short story collection in the genre [in years]. . .” by multiple award-winning editor Stephen Jones. Strantzas’s stories have appeared or are due soon in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Cemetery Dance, Postscripts, and elsewhere. In 2009, his work was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Current projects include a third collection of short fiction, a novella, and a short novel. He also hopes to one day catch up on a voluminous amount of reading.
He has lived in Toronto, Canada, for his entire life and has no plans on leaving for sunnier climes.
- Visit Simon’s website
- Read a recent interview with Simon at Savvy Reader’s Bookshelf
March 22nd, 2010
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