Posts filed under 'Writing Chat'
Poppy Z Brite photo by J.K. Potter; Creative Commons license
As a writer Poppy Z Brite took the lost and the depraved, the vicious, the misguided, the outsider, the deviant and the freak by the hand, she lead some home, some to the sadistic salvation they would discover in the extreme ecstasy and pain to be had from “violating the sanctity of a dead boys ass”, abandoned baby vampires into violent pansexualized father/son fuckfests and even others towards the relative safety found in the “transubstantiation of culinary delights” and I loved every fucking word.
As a 16 year old boy, growing up gay in a small backwater her novels became a beacon of hope – or despair, depending on whatever disposition you favoured – breaking through the psychotic monotony of my teenage years – each of her books were connected by one fundamental thread – her characters where for the most part lithe young boys who wanted to be girls, avenging resurrected photographers, dirt poor chartreuse soaked teenagers, gentle mystics, grunge musicians, vampires and necrophiliac cannibals in love. She effortlessly, exquisitely took the mantle of the masculine – Brite identifies as a non-operative transsexual – and offered a uniquely feminine fetishism of the gay male - beautiful descriptions of hard-core gay sex, lurid descriptions of violence and prose as elegant as anything Shirley Jackson or Oliver Onions ever put on paper overlapped seamlessly.
Her wordplay was pictorial in its depravity, think B-movies or quasi-horror cum skin flicks with an intellectual bent and you’re not even halfway there. Her oeuvre connotates the absurd, the sexual, the glorious Grand Guignol in a bracingly intelligent, sometimes serious and sometimes even light-hearted fashion. She had an ear for macabre whipsmart dialogue, extraordinarily vivid characters; her fiction had me delight in the weirdness and inherent brutality of existence beneath the dark miasma that hung over most of her characters’ lives. What can I say, I’m a sadist. She worked me like an addiction I never wanted to break. Her frames of reference incorporated everything from The Church of The Subgenius to the cyber-punk/avant Goth subcultures which populated the seamy seedy French Quarter in New Orleans, Trent Reznor, AIDS terrorism, filicide and filleting boys.
Because this is Women in Horror Recognition month I’ve decided that the focal point of this piece is going to be on Brite’s earlier body of work – in her later novels Brite’s moved away from – though not completely out of – the horror genre: The Value of X, Liquor, and D.U.C.K are more akin to the writing of Faulkner, Flannery O’ Connor and Harry Crews; I’ve also chosen to omit her commercial projects (the unauthorized Courtney Love biography) and her “franchise fiction” (The Lazarus Heart – which is a tie-in of The Crow).
In her debut novel Lost Souls (Dell bought it in 1991 and a few months later she was signed to a six-figure three-book contract) I was introduced to a triumvirate of psychotic vampires called Zillah, Molochai and Twig – creatures I wasn’t sure I wanted to fuck, or flee from. After subjecting a young woman to a night of alcohol-fuelled crazed lust – they disappear. An unfortunate side-effect of humans mating with vampires is that said young woman won’t survive the pregnancy, therefore forcing another of their kind to leave the orphaned vampire baby on a doorstep in grim suburbia; the baby, who grows up to become a reclusive teenager and goes by the name of Nothing, rejects the dull normies and the stifling small-town he was forced to grow up in and leaves it all behind in search of his true heritage. The Lost Souls of the title are the heartbroken musician Steve and the fey psychic Ghost, residents of Brite’s fictitious Missing Mile (apparently inspired by Athens in Georgia, where Brite resided before making New Orleans her permanent home). Eventually Nothing hooks up with his real family and embarks on an incestuous affair with Zillah – the leader of the pack and his own father. At first Nothing is easily seduced by the lure of these creatures’ hyperreality. Nothing finds his own way into the damnation – that is the easy part - however, he soon realises that after witnessing some of his new family’s more unsavoury antics he might need to find a way back to the light. The morally conflicted little vamp finds allies when he finally encounters Steve and Ghost, but the pack isn’t prepared to give up one of their own without a ferocious fight.
Lost Souls was listed by Fangoria as one of the best vampire novels ever written and Brite was crowned as the reigning Queen of the Macabre – dethroning even Anne Rice. The contract with Dell left Brite free to write full-time – up until this, she had been making ends meet as a stripper, artist’s model, mouse-caretaker (she cleaned up after them at a cancer research lab) and short order cook.
It took only another nine months for Brite to produce her second baby, Drawing Blood. The setting may have been the same (being almost exclusively based in Missing Mile) but although this novel had supernatural overtones, it was a very different book in tone and subject-matter than her previous one. In the opening chapters a father brutally kills every member of his family, sparing only his young son Trevor. Years later - much like his predecessor Nothing - Trevor returns to the place of his birth, now a stoic young illustrator, and the house where his family perished. In New Orleans the cyber-hacking, slutty Edward Scissorhands lookalike Zach needs to get out of dodge post-haste when a shadowy government agency begin tailing him. He is aided and abetted by the sultry exotic dancer Eddy Chung (perhaps the only female I remember as a mainstay throughout the novel, though in Brite’s earlier work, gender, pretty much like everything else was debateable). Trevor returns to his home and meeting Zach offers him sanctuary. The boys fall in love but soon the malevolent force that runs through the house starts to assert itself. The ultimate solution for Trevor is to find his way through and out of a mysterious liminal dimension known as Birdland. Brite’s conjuration of Birdland took my breath away – her allusions to the insane architecture of such a place can be traced as far back as the now-defunct 1920’s fantasy/horror publication Weird Tales which had lurid, garish covers of archetypal monsters and other assorted ghouls. One sequence in a cinema had me leaving the lamp burning for three whole nights – it was as if Todd Bronwyn had cast the characters that lived there.
Drawing Blood was perhaps the most gentle and tame of her Gothic Line. It was around the same time that Brite had her first short story collection Swamp Foetus (or Wormwood in the UK) published and saw her cover similar if no less unsettling terrain and even had cameo appearances from some of the characters of her earlier novels.
This brings me to Brite’s most controversial novel to date Exquisite Corpse. A novel which took me to the shocking, acid-skin-stripping, viscera full frontiers of psychosexual obsession and corpse-revelry and I fell in love. A tour-de-force with a taunting, teasing, thrilling and tortuous narrative trajectory that undoubtedly had maniacs salivating on the frontlines of the lunatic fringe. So extreme in content was this that her publisher Dell refused to publish it – her UK publishers also declined. Eventually it was picked up by Simon and Schuster in the US and Orion in the UK. This was so much more though than just another “extreme” novel; even with Lost Souls and Drawing Blood Brite took incredible risks and happily gave the V to any of her detractors. She wrote a novel that dragged you into the darkest realms of humanity – but her characters weren’t “monsters.” Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote in the afterword of Self-Made Man:
“At the root of all the anxiety and alarm seems to be Poppy’s decision to portray the novel’s two cannibalistic serial killers as human beings instead of reducing them to one-dimensional monsters who could then easily be dismissed by readers as Not One of Us. That Andrew Compton and Jay Byrne are shown as men with passions and fears, strengths and weaknesses, that they are humanized rather than demonized, putting the reader at risk of gaining some insight into appetites so alien to their own, and so taboo to their society. And, I suspect, a fear that even the most disgusted reader may find a spark of empathy.”
This novel wiped the floor with the Brett Easton Ellis pussy-hating, chainsaw cub-scout Patrick Bateman. Delving deep into the psyche of the most damaged “monsters” and indeed, as Kiernan pointed out, giving us an insight into another world. Brite was a braver writer than another so-called-subversive enfant terrible, A.M Holmes, who took an intellectual and infuriatingly moral stance in her exploration of paedophilia in The End of Alice. The tabloid detachment of Holmes’ style sickened me while the intimacy of Brite’s full-blown love affair with the “monsters” or the “freaks” offered me a better understanding of the depth of things – however depraved and vile those acts may be I never felt the urge to scald my skin after reading. She led me to other subversive writers like Dennis Cooper (Frisk) Matthew Stokoe (High Life) Laura Albert (the writer formerly known as JT Leroy) and the divine former pro dominatrix Christa Faust (who collaborated with Brite on Triads and is the author of Money Shot) and many other writers who weren’t afraid to grab life by the dick and suck it (or in Andrew Compton’s case, bite it off).
With Exquisite Corpse she really raised the stakes - this was before Eli Roth could shave the hairs on his balls or Takashi Miike and The French New Wave got behind a camera. Before the gang-rape and violent retribution of Virgenie Despentes’ Baise Moi or the small-press deciding Charles Manson is worth publishing. Not that I’m diminishing any of these people and their endeavours, I’m just pointing out that Poppy Z. Brite was writing material at a time – the early nineties – that you probably wouldn’t get away with doing today. This is why I felt honoured when Joseph D’Lacey (who runs this site) asked me to write a piece on one of my favourite writers; his own novel Meat is one seriously fucked up, intelligent, though like Exquisite Corpse, a significant piece of work with staying power and violence and grace. And something which actually tells us, rather than dictates something very real about humanity – even if we might not yet know what that is.
I’m also going to mention a few more female writers you might want to look up which are: Caitlan R Kiernan, Laura Hird, Joyce Carol Oates, Helen Zahavi, Darcey Steinke, Val McDiermud, Joolz Denby, Sarah Langan, Sarah Pinborough, Cathi Unsworth, Rhodi Hawk, Gabrielle Faust, Christa Faust, Megan Abbott, Vicki Hendricks, Lydia Lunch, and Alexandra Sokoloff.
And if you fancy finding out more about Women in Horror Recognition Month, you can always visit these places:
February 26th, 2010
I was interviewed by Alan Kelly for the brilliant 3:AM Magazine. It was a real pleasure to talk to him.
In other news, since Borders has gone into administration, my 19th December signing in their Leicester branch has been cancelled. It’s a real shame because I’ve had some great times in that store and the staff are all lovely people. I hope someone can save Borders and keep their way of doing things alive.
I do have one more signing left before Christmas at Waterstones, Northampton on Saturday 5th December between 11AM and 3PM. I should be on BBC Radio Northampton talking about it sometime this week. There will be copies of MEAT, Garbage Man and The Kill Crew available.
See you there!
November 30th, 2009
Banquet for the Damned combines several very real elements – night terrors, shamanism, anthropology, witchcraft and heavy metal – in a very real location; St. Andrews. It’s one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. I had shivers across my skin as I discovered within its pages the histories of the covens of Europe and the studies of evil spirits and familiars in the shamanic traditions of South America and Africa.
Into this world of student revelry and stuffy intellectualism, comes a renegade writer and explorer of altered realities, Eliot Coldwell. And he’s brought something nasty with him. Something hungry. Students begin to disappear from the campus.
At the same time, following the break up of their band, guitarists Dante Shaw and his best friend Tom travel to St. Andrews. They plan to meet Eliot Coldwell, Dante’s spiritual hero and author of the notorious cult novel, Banquet for the Damned. Dante intends to make a concept album using Eliot and his work as the theme.
But instead of finding inspiration in St. Andrews, Dante discovers nightmares stalking the town’s ancient streets…
*
It’s no secret that Bloody Books and Virgin Horror were in direct competition for the same share of the genre market. When the Virgin line folded, we were kind of pleased to be left in the game.
Horror Reanimated seeks the best in the genre and, as time went by, we featured Virgin titles and talked to their authors. (See our posts on Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell and Conrad Williams). Having read plenty of Virgin Horror, it now strikes me as tragic that such high quality fiction will no longer issue forth from that elegantly twisted horn of plenty.
My most recent read was ‘Banquet for the Damned’ by Adam L G Nevill. Originally published by PS Publishing, this title gripped me as hard as any supernatural tale ever has. It is a superbly crafted, beautifully told and genuinely frightening novel. As a final tribute to a noble and prematurely buried imprint, I bring you a candid interview with Adam L G Nevill, author of Banquet and editor of the Virgin Horror line.
We honour the genre’s slain; enemy and friend alike, generals and foot soldiers equally. Why? Because when you throw the festering undead into a pit, they stick together!
But that’s not all. Adam has recently proved himself truly undead having risen again with a major two-book deal…
Joseph D’Lacey: Adam, I’m going to thank you in advance for agreeing to what I realise may be an uncomfortable interview for you following the termination of your horror list.
But I’d like to talk to you first about Banquet for the Damned. This novel came right out of leftfield and slammed me hard upside the head. I’d long believed my supernatural ‘fear’ nerve to be burned out through overuse. Apparently not. What chilled me about the story was the depth of research the characters had done on witchcraft, familiars and evil spirits. It was all too real. What can you say to reassure me that you made it all up?
Adam L G Nevill: Thanks for the really kind words JD’L, and for reading it so carefully. There is nothing more satisfying than finding an ideal reader.
As for reassurance that it’s all fiction, who can say … Night terrors are an absolutely real and universal form of sleep disturbance long associated with witchcraft. My story is inspired by the many actual histories of witchcraft and demonology that I read and researched. And the authors of those tomes were pretty convincing …
While I was based in St Andrews and matriculated at the university, I discovered the most incredible archive of old books on the occult bequeathed to the university library by a former rector. And the university also has a world class anthropology department, with some terrific sources on the occult and superstition in the developing world too. I remember having 40 books on witchcraft and the supernatural on my post-grad library card, when a curious librarian finally asked me what I was doing at the university. It was Lovecraftian – some of the books had not been borrowed since the sixties and I would scurry back to my room and pore over them. I had a year up there and had the time to read dozens of secondary texts on the subject of the unworldly. From that I took great creative license with specific histories and idioms to create the sense that my fictional scholars were authorities in order to make the supernatural element seem authentic. I blended bits and pieces from many documented stories and phenomenon to create my own history of a forgotten pagan god/witch’s familiar that had been called by many different names and moved through the ages, worshipped by one cult or another. I wanted its origins and long story to reflect the patterns of how real history is interpreted and revised, so that even the documentation and sources seemed authentic.
Making the supernatural believable in a modern setting is no easy task, so the carefully wrought history, the scholars, the academic environment, are designed to add credence to a preposterous notion I want a reader to accept. I lose interest in so much horror fiction because of its errant silliness from the beginning, but well-researched books like Matheson’s Hell House, Blatty’s Exorcist and Legion, or most recently Simmon’s The Terror and Brookes’s World War Z unsettle you far more because of that sense of authenticity and plausibility. Place the unrecognisable subtly amongst the recognisable and it’s easier for a reader to lose themselves in a story.
JD’L: Great. Like I’ll sleep a wink tonight knowing all that.
Our resident supernatural horror author, Bill Hussey, doesn’t believe in ghosts, spirits or the afterlife. Aside from the research angle, how much actual experience of the supernatural do you have? Do you think there’s a world we can’t see, a world where dark forces conspire to enter ours?
ALGN: I suffered dreadful night terrors while writing the book. I’d never had them before. Bizarrely, two readers have emailed me to declare the same while reading it. Which would suggest we all induced them subconsciously while either writing or reading a book featuring vivid night terrors. Or, I do wonder, did I make myself receptive to a phenomenon that was actually there anyway? I began the book in St Andrews, but continued writing the novel’s first draft for 18 months in Kent, when these experiences occurred. I would awake periodically to see the outline of a very tall and thin figure standing before the curtains of my room, silhouetted by both the ambient light passing through the curtains and by a thin line of red light, like fire, around its shape. I would sit up, pinch myself, blink, make certain I was fully awake, but the figure would remain there, more or less at the foot of my bed, staring. You can imagine the terror. I even called out and challenged it on a number of occasions, but received no response. It would eventually walk the length of the room, then turn and vanish through the door. I base one scene in Banquet on what I experienced. My landlord in Kent was deeply uncomfortable with such talk, and his girlfriend told me of a family tragedy involving fire which explained his reticence. I said no more about it, but she also pointed out to me how a second shadow would follow my landlord from room to room in this lovely old house we lived in. And sure enough, it did. The second shadow was a different size.
Add to that, as an undergraduate, while billeted in halls that were once part of a military hospital, I would often wake because someone was standing beside my bed and leaning over me, with their face close to mine. It used to scare me witless. Door handles would also turn, doors would open, no one would come through, though other residents at the end of the corridor featuring the affected rooms would see a woman in a white uniform entering or leaving.
On holiday, in an old cottage in Dorset, we would sit in the living room and hear footsteps walk the length of the rooms upstairs. It was terrifying at first, but by the end of the week we became accustomed to the walking figure (though no one would go to the toilet alone). The owners of the cottage informed me that nearly every visitor experiences a haunting there and someone even took a photo of the ghost, looking through a window. Needless to say, we never went back, and I am relieved it was not me that saw that face at the window.
Add a whole raft of inexplicable sixth sense experiences to these brushes with the uncanny, as well as the fact that everyone has a ghost story, so I don’t rule out ‘activity’ after death. Both positive and negative activity (most of our family hauntings were positive farewells from the recently departed, and I have two relatives with psychic tendencies). I may revile religious fundamentalism, and am no fan of most organised religion either, but I do find the current atheistic lobby tedious. And believing in nothing but status and money seems to be a modern dilemma.
I think the very act of writing has an element of mysticism involved too, and I have sympathies with Machen and Blackwood’s creative visions, who were both mystical writers. A deep involvement in fiction, both reading and writing, has also given me transcendent experiences and I wouldn’t be without them.
JD’L: Banquet is set in locations that are very well known to you. Dante and Tom set off from Birmingham and spend 
most of the novel in St. Andrews. To begin with, I thought these real locations were going to kill my suspension of disbelief. In the end the effect was the opposite. Such was the power of the writing that I could see the streets of St Andrews and its old buildings and dark alleyways – even though I’ve never been there. How important do you think the setting was to the success of the novel?
ALGN: Thanks again JD’L. St Andrews is pretty much a character in the novel. I drove up there knowing I wanted to write a novel of supernatural horror, with a vague idea of the story featuring a notorious but nearly forgotten book and occult scholar. But when I received my first sighting of the town, I knew I had found my setting. The town was such a tremendous inspiration – it is one of those places that make the supernatural seem possible. The wealth of history, the architecture, the tributes to martyrs, the shadowy courts, the very age of the place, just conjured macabre fantasies. I was absurdly terrified of doing it an injustice, and was so enthusiastic about the town, I did my absolute best to recreate it in language as precisely as I was able at the time. Again, I do think a detailed sense of place and conjuring of atmosphere through specific details lays the ground for the insertion of the implausible, the impossible, and aids the suspension of disbelief. The very physical presence of the ancient town, twinned with extensive reading, allowed the story to write itself. So without St 
Andrews, there would have been no Banquet.
JD’L: There are so many passages in Banquet that are a delight to read. The story is magnetic but the way you tell it is reminiscent of the literary styles of bygone horror authors. It put me very much in mind of M. R. James. Was that a deliberate ‘one-off’ or is this the voice of Adam L G Nevill that we can expect to hear again? I’m particularly interested in your answer because I know you’ve had some good news recently…
We’ll get to that soon…
ALGN: I do wear my influences on my sleeve in Banquet. And M R James was the chief mentor that guided my hand. My dad read many of the classic supernatural writers to my brother and I when we were boys: James, Poe, Mare, Collier, and his shelves were groaning with Lovecraft and Blackwood, which I then explored on my own. Such dark matter had a deep impact on my imagination at that age – I truly experienced what one critic called “the sublime of terror” – and I was pretty much destined to try and recreate it in my own fiction at some point. So my reading of the canon of the supernatural in fiction will always be apparent, and I’m deeply in debt to the classic masters. As I also am to the modern masters in the field. Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, and Ramsey Campbell have taken the weird tale to the mountain, not only in terms of their actual bodies of work, but in a mastery of language and style that few can be consistently compared to in any genre. All three of those writers have given me wonderful examples of introducing more speculative and surreal elements to a treatment of the supernatural in fiction. I think this is evident in my second novel. I also think it’s worth mentioning that your development as a writer is in tune with your development as a reader. I was never sophisticated enough as a reader 
when I first began writing seriously, but by reading great writers patiently, pennies began to drop. So often these days I’ll pick up a book and think, this writer hasn’t read enough.
JD’L: Banquet is a brilliant example of the triumph of style over gratuity. It’s tense and claustrophobic and the exact nature of the evil remains veiled even when you describe it directly. When violence and malevolence occur, when blood is spilled, it’s done with great delicacy and poetry. How did you manage this?
ALGN: When describing the supernatural, producing risible descriptions is probably the easiest thing to do. And it is the bane of the field. Fear is also difficult to describe. Producing clarity and impact, is bloody hard. I doubt there are many books as bad as bad horror novels, nor films for that matter as bad as bad horror films, but there are few books or films as powerful as great horror novels and films. I aspired to, and looked to, the best in the genre. I pretty much took two years out from work and lived on about three grand a year, in the late nineties, to deliberately hone the craft and improve as a writer. I paid a lot of attention to cultivating subtlety through glimpses and suggestions, as opposed to full reveals. There are no better examples of this style in the field than in the fiction of M R James, who only wrote fiction with the full intention of frightening and disturbing a reader. It was my goal to combine the stylistic traits of the better late Victorian and the Edwardian authors, like James, within a thoroughly modern multi-plot structure that Stephen King and Dan Simmons made their own, and to also write in the present tense to emulate a cinematic feel. If a reader could accept that immediate-tense narration, I hoped the actual appearances of the supernatural in the novel might take on a more vivid nature within the reader’s imagination. Perhaps in a personal film. I also wanted the power of a short story to endure throughout a long novel. What was I thinking? In hindsight, I realise many seem to believe that it cannot be achieved in a horror novel. Stylistically, it was a bloody ambitious book to write, though the occult element may appear conservative and ‘old school’ to many as it deals with possession and witchcraft. So, Banquet was every bit as much of an example of a new writer trying to achieve a particular set of criteria within a novel, and also hoping that it would be a good story for an average reader who would be unaware of the scaffolding.
Did it work? It took three years of constant revision to complete the book, and I remember being profoundly disappointed when I finished it. Looking back, and reading generous praise from readers, I feel much happier with that debut.
I also read a terrific thesis by Peter Penzholdt, in which he identified and explored various treatments of the supernatural in fiction, including M R James. His study identified techniques that I was only occasionally stumbling across, on an instinctive level as a writer, and wondering afterwards how I’d achieved a certain affect. His study helped me find more consistency. My tutors at St Andrews were also poets, and poets are masters of language, which is why I chose St Andrews in the first place to study writing formally. I never doubted my ideas, but I was right to doubt my ability at expressing them. I desperately needed a mentor – someone who could look at my actual writing and tell me what was wrong with it. Get the actual writing right first, is the best advice I can give anyone. At times the criticism was crushing and I doubted whether I should even continue writing. I’d go back to my room after a tutorial, deflated. But by the end of the year, I’d experienced nothing short of a personal renaissance. I learnt how the use of simple, innocent diction, in a calculated and coercive fashion, can build and build, and prove more powerful than the use of language that on its own, in isolation from the rest of a sentence, carries an unpleasant meaning. I eschewed the latter, and used the former. M R James preferred “wet” to “slimy” and I do too. Good poets and short story writers consider the music and image of every descriptive word to create the desired effect. I’ll approach every scene in that way, then look at how these scenes are attached to the one preceding and following, and then rework to maintain fluency and pace without losing descriptive power in the set-pieces. Above all I learned that good writing is all about rewriting. Draft after draft with long breaks in between each draft. Eventually when the removal of one comma will cause a total collapse, it’s as good as it will get.
JD’L: When readers see a book on a shelf and the name on its spine they rarely understand the time and effort that put it there. I’m not just talking about the novel they’re actually looking at either. So much more has to have already happened for the miracle of publication to occur. At times, I even think other authors believe those with bigger, better deals or greater sales figures have somehow lucked into it overnight. Can you tell us a little about the crests and troughs you’ve ridden from dream to publication?
ALGN: Banquet was complete in 2000. I began it in late 1997. But by 2002 every agent who accepted fiction in the Writers and Artists Yearbook had eventually turned down my letter of introduction. I don’t think anyone ever read a word of the actual book. “No horror” being the usual refrain, or “too many authors already”. And as no publisher took unsolicited manuscripts, that was that. Game over. By then, I’d forsaken a career in television a second time. I was living on a shoe-string (again) and enduring an existence above an old pub in East London and working nights as a security guard. And going mad with sleep deprivation and a sense of despair. Only my erotica novels kept me afloat.
From 1997 onwards, I was lucky enough to be published as an author of erotica. I wrote nine novels in total, for Virgin Books’s Nexus imprint (which I was asked to edit in late 2004). Approximately one each year, so I carried on cutting my teeth in another genre that was box-office back in the nineties, while horror seemed all but dead as a mainstream publishing concern. My Nexus books kept me going. Built morale. It was pulp fiction under a pseudonym, but it was the ultimate confirmation of publication and a great education in novel-writing. I even wrote one erotica novel in the second person, several from first person female POVs – with each novel I attempted a different approach to narration.
Then my editor at Virgin, James Marriott, showed one of my horror stories to John Couthard, who recommended me to Ramsey Campbell. Ramsey was putting together a collection called Gathering The Bones and took my story, Mother’s Milk. I was amazed. My first publication under my actual name and the rite-of-passage horror story that I wrote at the end of my masters in St Andrews. Being a cheeky blighter I then asked Ramsey in 2003 for advice with the novel Banquet for the Damned, which I had revisited and rewritten again in 2002, and Ramsey recommended me to Peter Crowther at PS. I was unaware of small presses at the time, but Peter read and accepted Banquet within a week. Without Ramsey and Peter, Banquet would have remained an uneaten meal, mouldering in the pantry of my hard drive. Peter then championed the book for years and it started to develop a modest reputation among other writers and critics who said some very kind things. Had it been the eighties, the story may have been different, but I’d written a big supernatural horror novel in a publishing climate that had no interest in horror. I was bloody lucky to find a sympathetic writer of considerable reputation, and a sympathetic publisher in Peter Crowther. They brought me into print as a writer of supernatural horror.
JD’L: Having been through all this yourself, it must have been tough notifying your Virgin Horror authors that the imprint had reached the end of the road. Was the imprint doomed from the word go or do you think, if certain things had been different, the line might still be going?
ALGN: We’d been taken over by a big international corporate publisher in 2007, but were still working under the existing Virgin management and I was asked to create new fiction lines. I immediately put horror forward as one idea. Everyone was excited, we had big plans, the critical path was set, so it certainly wasn’t doomed from the get go. On the contrary. But during the first year in 2008, despite how promising the line was, the company’s strategy began moving in a non-fiction direction. New management, new staff, more changes, new focuses, and I was kind of left alone in fiction on the sidelines, but without any real resources to publish the 2009 list. Then cutbacks and title-count reductions hit with the recession, people started losing their jobs etc. Fiction was wound right back to the erotica I had been editing since 2005, plus the cult fiction reprints I was producing for Bukowski. The editorial strategy had moved almost exclusively to non-fiction, leaving horror, erotica and me, high and dry. But the list was acclaimed, it was successful at the level it was published, and may well have continued at a better level had the company’s publishing strategy not changed. So it was deeply disappointing having to tell the authors of the end after such an exciting start. Nine months later I was delivering the same message to a hundred erotica authors too. Again, not something I chose to do nor enjoyed doing. Considering the re-emergence of horror – one of the only good pieces of news in fiction publishing these days – it now looks horribly premature to have buried us thus and so quickly. Ironically, The Birthing House was the first book I tried to buy for the list and that went on to sell 150K copies for Sphere, who published it so well. I’d even say, we were ahead of our time. As I said to the authors too, we may not have swung wide the gates of hell, but we certainly took the catch of the porch door. Having Bloody Books up and dancing at the same time as the Virgin horror line, it was an exciting time to see the underground – the punks – looking to the mainstream again. We raised consciousness and published some fine books. Can’t believe I got Thomas Ligotti into Smiths Travel too – I mark that as an editorial achievement. And if you look at the breadth and quality on those two horror lists, in an age of mediocre thrillers, predictable post-colonial literary fiction, ghost-written celeb fiction, and Vatican conspiracy nonsense, I think we can hold our grizzled, lipless and mottled heads up high.
JD’L: It’s been my experience of publishing that you never know what’s round the next corner. Your personal story seems to fit with this. After all you’ve put up with, suddenly there’s some real sunshine brightening the next part of your writing journey. A two book deal, no less! How did it come about and what was your reaction?
ALGN: To quote Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, “Cinderella Story, boy from nowhere.” When my agent John Jarrold called me to tell me the results of the auction, as I held the phone, my hand shook. Pretty much waited my entire life as a writer for an opportunity like this. I started writing seriously, with it being the major focus of my every day, and as a purpose for life, in 1995. So after fifteen years, I do feel like I have spent a long time in an apprenticeship.
I finished my second novel of supernatural horror at Xmas – another ambitious three year epic, this time written around a very busy fulltime job in publishing. One publisher expressed firm interest in late May of this year, then another and another … And John set an auction date. The very word “auction” in relation to me is hard to even say, and the enthusiasm from the editors was overwhelming. And that’s not false modesty. I vividly remember 40 plus rejections to my introductory letter for Banquet in 2000. They took two years to come in, and by the time the final one had landed on the mat, my head was down. Having worked in publishing I also know how hard it is for editors to pitch and get enough positive feedback from sales, publicity, export, rights, marketing, and management about a proposal. But my second book seemed to generate that at the appropriate levels, and as I’m 50K words into the first draft of a third novel, we submitted a partial of that too. So it became a two-book deal.
JD’L: Any chance of a whisper of what your next novels are about?
ALGN: The second novel is haunted building story spanning generations, my London novel; the third a ‘great outdoors’ novel of psychic terror.
JD’L: Time for the awards ceremony, Adam…
You have honour of making two nominations. First is the Sword of the Ultimate Darkness which goes to the work of horror in any medium which, in your opinion, is a timeless classic.
Second, you may banish to the Plague Pits the worst example of our beloved genre in any medium.
Please make your nominations.
ALGN: I consider this a real honour. For the Sword of Ultimate Darkness, I’d like to mention a book that may have slipped under the radar for many, but it’s a magnificent second horror novel by an American writer called David Searcy, whom I know almost nothing about, but the book needs its profile raised and I treasure it. I found it in a bookshop in New York in 2004. The cover caught my eye. I read the back, checked the first few pages and bought it. It’s one of those books that both made me want to write and also to give up writing because it is so good. It’s a terrific amalgam of M R James and William Faulkner, of Daniel Woodrell and Algernon Blackwood. American noir, scarecrow horror. I read it in one sitting in Hyde Park under a tree, and found myself glancing over my shoulder as the end drew near. It’s called Last Things by David Searcy.
The Plague Pits are overflowing, but I’d like to cast the remake of The Haunting, starring Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones, into the pit, along with the entire cast and crew for taking part in such a sham, plus the studio that probably ruined what was originally an honest endeavour. If anyone else was unlucky enough to pay to see this film, they’ll know why it belongs at the bottom of the pit.
JD’L: Lovely choices!
It only remains for me to say a heartfelt thanks on behalf of all at Horror Reanimated for joining us here in the rotting colon of purgatory. And to apologise for the smell, of course. We wish you the very best of luck for all your future projects.
It was a pleasure, thanks very much for the kind words and for having me. And also for giving me an opportunity to leave the indistinct bone-thing, that has been following me, with you. The runes are cast…
August 17th, 2009
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
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
Joseph D’Lacey - I want to talk about two kinds of structure today, Bill. The structure of the novel and the structure of a horror writer’s (or any writer’s) working day. Let’s start with the bones holding up the novel first. How do you prepare an outline? Or perhaps I should ask: DO you prepare and outline?
Bill Hussey - I do prepare an outline. The outline helps me in the same way research lends a hand: it gives me the confidence to start writing. I think there comes a point when you’ve had the idea, you’ve done some research, you’ve accumulated other bits and pieces and all that stuff reaches a critical mass. You know instinctively when that happens and I find that only then is it the point at which I should start the story. The outline is part of that. I usually prepare what I call a skeleton outline before I start - maybe 6 typed pages. It’s all pure STORY. Story in the form that kids tell stories: this happens, then this, then this. Makes a tedious read! But I must stress this is a pretty bare outline - lots of gaps - and I never treat it as a sacred text.
JD’L - This is interesting, Bill - you’re still using the analogy of a skeleton, a bone structure upon which to lay flesh. Aside from the obvious and corny horror angle on this, it says to me that regardless of the need for structure, novel writing is still an organic process - a process of GROWTH. It seems that you’re saying you would never start a novel without this template existing first and that, for the template to exist, ideas and research have to come first. Is this your strict policy or do you sometimes deviate (I’m not talking about wearing pantyhose, here, Bill)?
Another thing that strikes me about your approach is that it resembles the ‘treatment’ screen writers use when working up a script – a pure story document, as you say. A map that lets you know exactly where you’re going and how to get there. For a lot of writers this kind of certainty, this kind of confidence would be a prerequisite before setting off on the novel’s journey. Is that right? (‘scuse, my pre-satnav metaphors!)
BH - I do deviate in the pantyhose sense, thanks for pointing that out, Joseph. So far, I haven’t deviated from the idea, research, structure format. I don’t say I would never deviate from that, it’s just that I find these things help me out on what is the difficult and labour-intensive exercise of writing a full-length work of fiction. I attribute these things to the fact that I’ve never had writer’s block (yet!) or got stuck mid-story. That said, my fleshless skeleton is not a treatment as such. I ALWAYS deviate from it. If a better idea comes along I’ll just tear up that part of the outline. Most importantly - and I must stress this - if my CHARACTERS decide they won’t do what the outline tells them, I will always go with what they say.
Characters are the gods of story, so even in a ‘plotted’ novel their voice must come first. A lot of ‘literary’ writers (those who think ‘plot’ is a dirty word) balk at the idea of any form of planning when it comes to novels, but I think that if you just use the outline as a trellis frame and let your story grow around it however it wants then that’s fine. How’s that 
for a metaphor! Anyway, in summary, an outline helps to get you started but only refer to it now and then - the bones of the story should be in your head anyway - and always be prepared to ditch bits of it - or the whole damn thing if your characters say so. But I know you have a different approach, Joseph.
JD’L - I’m an intensely haphazard and unfocussed individual - if such a thing is possible. I write on steam-power, somehow. If the boiler is stoked with the fuel of ideas, worlds, characters, questions and passion then the engine runs. And, seeing as we’re slipping into the use of metaphors as well as ladies’ underwear, I suspect I sometimes use this power to steamroll my way through obstacles in plot and story. It’s brutish. It’s unrefined and here’s the important thing; it DOESN’T always work.
For every two novels I’ve completed, I have one unfinished. This is untidy and I hate it. Maybe if I did more
preparation, I’d have fewer blocks in the way of my progress. Interestingly, I’ve been unable to have any kind of writing day for the last six or seven months and so ideas that I might have just set off on have been held on the back burner. Information and material for those ideas has begun to pile up. This may mean that, by default, I’ll be writing my next novel in much the same way you do, Bill. If it works I’ll buy you a half in the pub of your choice.
BH - The thing is, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to go about writing a novel. Those writers that tell you that their formula is the only one (usually arty types who finish a book every decade) are talking bollocks. For me, I like to have a flimsy structure but I would equally hate to over-plot - i.e. index cards on a peg board with bits of coloured string pinned between them. That kind of prep would take all the joy out of writing. But I know it works for some people who still write wonderfully inventive books in that way. I know we’re trying to pass on a bit of advice here but, like so much of writing, whatever works for you is how to do it. If you finish a book with no plotting at all - great! If you still get a thrill out of following an in-depth structure and finish - great again! But here’s the crucial thing: outline or no outline, research or no research - FINISH the book. If you’ve written 20 books but never finished one, you’re not 
a writer I’m afraid.
JD’L - Yes, I couldn’t agree with you more. You must finish (even me!). And also, for everyone reading this, Bill and I are very aware that we don’t have any special secrets to share with you about how we write. All we can do is tell you what we DO and how we THINK we achieve it.
I’ll tell you how I wrote MEAT. I went to work six or seven days a week. When I got there I wrote about the character/characters I felt in tune with that day. This meant I wrote at least six story strands in separate documents. When I’d finished each of those stories to the fullest, when I was happy with each outcome, I then began a new document and pasted the stories in so they were woven together. When this document was complete, I found natural breaks in the resulting narrative and put my chapter ends in. For once, I did not add ‘parts’ or anything extra. Is that a good way to write a novel? God knows. But it worked for me. (I promise to try really hard and finish all my unfinished novels, by the way, Bill. Honest.)
BH - Good man! It’s interesting, hearing how you put MEAT together. I think, in fact, all writers DO use an outline because that’s essentially what the FIRST draft of a novel is. We’ll get onto redrafting/editing later, but the first draft is really little more than a big messy outline of what your novel is going to be. You’ve hammered it out (my advice is not to go back and edit/check too much while you’re writing the first draft) and now you can actually begin writing the novel properly.
JD’L - That’s right. My first draft is a ‘brain dump’ session that goes on for between three and five months. No going back to fix things in mid flow. Bury the ugly creature for another two or three months and then the crafting begins at the time of disinterment. So what about the second structure, Bill? A writer’s working day. How do you go about it?
BH - It entirely depends on the time I have. Those blessed days when I can devote all my time to writing generally pan out like this: I get up reasonably early, chow down some cereal flakes then go for a brisk trot along the beach. We’ve got a great nature reserve up here and the sea air clears the old grey matter. I always take a pen and notebook as that’s when I get an idea that almost always breaks down bits of that skeleton outline. That generally takes half an hour. Then I get back - cup of tea - answer some emails/letters - then I start to write. I hope to finish about 1000 words before lunch, then another 500/1000 after lunch. If I haven’t finished at least 1500 I stay at the desk until it’s done. For me, I need that kind of discipline to get a book finished. I might do a lot more than 1500 but never less. If I can’t devote a whole day, I’ll work in the evening and have been known to write in the early hours. Great time to write, 2am, no distractions. What about you, Joseph?
JD’L - Rules are: Always write 1000 words before quitting. Write either six or seven days a week until the first draft is complete. Write in the morning if at all possible - that’s my best time. I write in an office away from home so that my body and mind recognise I’ve ‘gone to work’. If I have longer time available and finish my 1000 words swiftly, I continue to do more ’stints’ until I’m too tired to continue. So, bad day = 1003 words which took two or three hours to write. Good day = 2500-6000 words in somewhere between 2-7 hours (days like this are rare, however). I try not to drink too much the night before a writing day because I can’t concentrate worth a shit when I’m hungover - although I often have great ideas the morning after. I try very hard to not be ‘online’ when I’m meant to be writing. That’s it. Most of my life is characterised by an utter lack of rules, enthusiasm, structure and energy but writing is sacred - there have to be rules. That’s it.
BH - I think a word target per day is crucial. Try to make it achievable but be ambitious. Honestly, 250 words a day - the target of a guy I was on the MA in Writing with - is not enough. You can’t get into a scene or into a character’s head at that level. You need an investment of TIME (I’ve always thought time is the greatest gift for a writer) and I think everyone can manage at least two hours. Sarah Pinborough told me she’d get up two hours before work and write, then, after a full day’s work, she’d write in the evenings. More or less every day. You want to write and earn money - you need to set aside that kind of time. Exhausting, but worth it.
JD’L - Absolutely, Bill. It’s all about commitment. 250 words is a poem, for God’s sake. Time and effort and regularity and stickability write books. Nothing else.
Well, I think that covers the two kinds of structure which underpin novel writing. In part 4 we’re going to take a look at a more esoteric topic: Theme.
January 22nd, 2009
Bill Hussey: Well, Joseph, we’ve discussed The Idea. The germ is in place. After a bit of story development next comes research. How do you approach research?
Joseph D’Lacey: I usually approach it with a very long, sharp object and give it a quick poke to make sure it’s safe to proceed. It usually isn’t – I’m not very keen on research, I’m afraid. Reminds me too much of being at school. That said, there are some subjects you have to look into if you want to avoid producing badly informed fiction. I usually do most of my research online. How about you?
BH: I start from the basis of my outline – this is really the next subject in our discussion I think – but once I’ve developed a skeleton outline of the story I can extrapolate from that what kind of research is needed. For example, in Through a Glass, Darkly I knew I’d have to research a few areas: metempsychosis so that I could put together a convincing ritual, police work and the life of a Roman Catholic priest. The voodoo stuff I could do online. The police stuff – I went into my local police station and just made a nuisance of myself. Eventually, they decided not to arrest me and were very nice about giving me the info I needed. I think when you’re writing stuff like police procedure in an otherwise fantastical story it pays to be accurate – the realism of the cop stuff will add credibility to the story as a whole – so try to get it right.
JD’L: It’s fascinating to me that you managed to get some time in your local police station without actually committing a crime first. Well done! Apparently, Stephen King did the same when he was researching his novel ‘From a Buick 8′. The only stipulation the police gave him was that he didn’t paint them in a bad light. For MEAT I wanted to get into a slaughterhouse and see what was really going on. But that would have meant lying about why I was there – no meat packer is going to let you in just so you can bad-mouth their business. MEAT, therefore, and everything slaughter-related within it was researched online. Thankfully, plenty of other people have already recorded enough undercover footage for me to have hours of material to work from.
For Garbage Man it was much the same deal. If I’d told a landfill site operator I was writing a novel about the dangers of burying waste, they’d never have let me in. Once again, much of the information came from online research. However, I was lucky enough to meet a few people who worked in the industry and were willing to let slip the realities for me. But what you say about accuracy is very important. I’ve just read ‘Every Dead Thing’. In one scene, two characters go scuba diving in a bayou looking for bodies. The author talks about ’sucking oxygen’. Divers don’t breathe oxygen - they breathe air. Whilst it was a riveting novel, that inaccuracy pulled me right out of the story. Can’t afford to let that happen knowingly, can we?
BH: Absolutely not. Although I think, in some cases, small slips can be forgiven. I read a great book a few years ago – forgotten the title – about a guy circumnavigating the South Pole. Great research throughout – really convincing. Then I heard that the author had received a letter saying the sailor’s fob watch wouldn’t have been made until 3 years after the story was set. That kind of anally retentive nit picking is unnecessary I think.
JD’L: True, nit picking sucks – and is probably a sign your reader, by firm choice, isn’t invested in the story. But you never know who’s going to read your book. The fact is, we have to draw the line somewhere in terms of the extent of our research efforts. How much time do you think authors should spend on research, Bill?
BH: It’s a crucial question I think. It’s also something that doesn’t seem to be taught that much on writing courses but is, in my opinion, as important to a working writer as style, pace, dialogue etc. I really enjoy research and consequently, in the early days of TAGD, I made some big mistakes. I spent 3 weeks researching the witch trials of the 17th Century for example. Totally unnecessary for the story – but I just got caught up in it.
I think a writer needs to set strict parameters as to how much time he will set by to research his subject. For a working writer time is money.
JD’L: Yes, and there’s always the danger you’ll do research instead of writing. To my mind, that’s a bad thing. After all, for many writers, getting to their desk in the morning and staying there until they hit quota is hard enough. It’s all too simple to say you’re doing research and then spend a few months messing around and stuffing your head with trivia you’ll probably never use. I like to feel I have enough information not only to lend credence to the story but also to fully immerse me in an idea. Then a bit of atmosphere begins to leak from the fact into the fiction. Beyond that, I’m probably just wasting time.
BH: Spot on – writers generally will do anything to avoid actually writing. Doing research is the most legitimate excuse you can come up with. Having said that, I think research is very important, and not just sitting in a library browsing dusty old tomes and stuff. If your story is set in a specific place, do your best to visit it. The Absence has a millhouse as its setting and I spent 2 days just walking around Lincolnshire watermills, breathing in the atmosphere. This is a kind of tactile research – touching the brickwork, smelling the damp air. It all ends up on the page somewhere and adds something to the reality of the story.
JD’L: I love it that you took time to become part of that landscape, Bill. I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally done that for the sake of fiction. Not yet. Many a time, a place I’m familiar with will crop up but that doesn’t count. I think this must be how you pack so much mood into your fiction and I think it’s something all your reviewers and readers have been struck by. On the subject of ‘how much research?’ I’m far more likely to do too little. A lot of the time, I really feel the urgency to just write the story.
Smaller aspects of accuracy can always be ironed out as part of the editing process. If you’re burning up with a story, use the energy to get the bones on the page. Let’s face it, you can do research any time up to your deadline, right?
Let me ask you this, have you ever picked a subject that you know will require zero research purely so that you can devote all your time to writing? If not, is it something you’d consider?
BH: I’ve never written something that has required no research at all. In fact, in this regard, I’m a bit of a masochist. Example – I could have made Richard Nightingale – one of the central characters in The Absence – a solicitor. I thought about it. I used to be a solicitor and I know that world. But I’m bored rigid by that environment (probably why I left it!) and I’m interested in other people and their lives. So I made him an art dealer and set about researching that. It’s time consuming – it slows me down – but I get a kinda kick out of research and always feel a bit richer when a book is finished and I’ve caught a glimpse of another life.
I’m also very paranoid about getting things wrong – another reason I probably still spend too much time on research!
JD’L: Again, it’s different for me. I’m tempted to write without the need for research and I often do in short fiction. I love the feeling of a story coming entirely from the imagination – perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love to write. And, when I read a good story that is very obviously pure fantasy, well-communicated but directly from the mind of the writer, I adore it. I also adore it when I manage the feat myself. To be honest, Bill, I think research frightens me a little. I think it somehow makes me feel I need to be academic when there isn’t an academic bone in my body. I also feel sometimes that it isn’t truly a part of the writing process. What am I saying here? I suppose that, for a fiction writer dealing with real-life subjects, research is a necessary evil.
BH: I agree somewhat. Research isn’t writing but I feel that, certainly in the longer form, research is important. I think you’ve got to treat it as a practical thing – as vital in its way as buying paper and ink cartridges. Without it I don’t think I could write. Maybe I treat research as a safety blanket to wrap around myself before I start writing. I’ve said in interviews that I don’t believe in writer’s block – never had it – nor do I believe in the tyranny of the blank page. I think I’ve never had these problems because, before I start, I have my outline and my research. It gives me the confidence to get on with the job of writing.
That aside, can I suggest one very practical research tip?
JD’L: Please do.
BH: Be nice to people.
JD’L: That’s imperative. No one’s going to share with you otherwise, right?
BH: Absolutely – it sounds obvious but it’s something I’ve seen writers and researchers in general get sooo wrong. They go into police stations or wherever and start demanding to be seen or dropping off questionnaires without putting together a polite note first. If you need some piece of info, 9 times out of 10 you’ll get it if you ask politely. I’ve got a great relationship with the librarians at my local library. I’ve nurtured it for 10 years. I’ll go in and chat to them – genuinely because they’re lovely people. But they go beyond the call of duty for me because we get on. I can even call them up and ask them to check a fact for me and they call back.
I had a similar experience recently with a company that builds wind turbines. I needed info for book 3 so I met up with them at a local event and gave them some free books and chatted nicely – hey presto – I got a contact with the managing director. So be nice, folks!
JD’L: This is excellent advice, mate. You know what? You’ve enthused me. You’ve turned me around. I may pick a subject that requires loads of interaction with loads of people in pursuit of the facts for my next work. I know that’s coming off flippant, but I really mean it. I can see an idea forming already…Ah, research! Why was I ever so worried about it?
BH: Don’t, Joseph, this way madness lies!
JD’L: Too late! It’s a book about voluntary euthanasia. There’ll be no online research for me. This time, I’m going to roll my sleeves up and get involved!
December 1st, 2008
Over the course of the next few months these sorry scribblers will be talking about the construction of the novel, from the blueprints to laying the foundations, from shoring up that load-bearing wall to the final decorative flourishes upon the architrave.
They begin with The Idea…
BILL: So, Joseph, what’s the Big Idea…? Sorry, that came off needlessly aggressive. My question is that dreaded by all writers - where do you get your ideas from?
JOSEPH: I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. However… the simple fact is I have no shortage of ideas. They come to me all the time, like flies to poop, and I write them in a notebook. Boring, I know, but true.
BILL: Ah, the ideas notebook. I always have good intentions when it comes to the ideas notebook. I try to carry mine around with me but generally leave it lying about at home. At the end of most days, I find my pockets full of receipts, restaurant bills and sweet wrappers covered in incomprehensible babble with things like ‘What if there was an X in the middle of X and the whole X had no idea it was buried there.’ Then it’s just a matter of deciphering what the hell I was talking about… But the germ, Joseph. The germ of a novel or short story. Where does it come from? Meat, for example…
JOSEPH: It’s a good question. And the answer is lots of different places. The opening of Meat is an exercise I did in a creative writing class several years ago. Pared down, reshaped, edited all to hell, of course. And I’ve always thought about the ethics of taking life in order to survive. To make the idea striking I took the rather obvious step of putting the occasional human through the process of slaughter. How about you, Bill? Where did Through a Glass, Darkly surface from?
BILL: It’s interesting you talk about that ethical dilemma that inspired Meat. Through A Glass… came from a similar place. It originated in a moral debate I had with a staunchly Christian friend. The conversation ranged across mercy killing, embryo research, holy war. At one point my friend asked the age-old question – ‘What would you do to survive? If it meant breaking every taboo, every moral code you hold dear. To save your skin, what would you do?’. It’s a fairly standard moral maze question but it gave me a scenario: a man with an insatiable lust for life is dying of a morbid illness. He is offered a chance to live but at a terrible cost…
But like you, Joseph, I think ideas can come from anywhere. For my next book, The Absence, it was simply a matter of place inspiring story. I had visited Cogglesford Water Mill – one of many very old Lincolnshire mills. The atmosphere of the place just caught hold of me and I fashioned a story around that setting. But here’s a question – instead of waiting for the muses to descend, have you ever sat down and thought ‘I’m going to come up with an idea today’?
JOSEPH: Yes, indeed, I have. When I spent a year overseas and unemployed, I wrote like the devil was after my soul (caught me now, hasn’t he? Damn that Master Petherick…). I did all kinds of ‘exercises’ made up very randomly. Some of them became publishable stories – e.g. ‘What they want, (what aliens really, really want)’ sold to Far Sector but was nothing more than a forcing of the alien theme in any direction I came up with on the spot. But for novels, Bill, doesn’t an idea have to be stronger than that? This is a loaded question by the way, so point it away from yourself…
BILL: The novel idea needs to be strong, sure. But are we talking about the finished, lovingly polished idea here rather than the germ? I think the germ can be a fairly small thing – full of potential, exciting enough to make you skip about the room a bit, but I don’t think it has to be fully formed at the initial stages.
At the risk of this coming off like an advertising blurb for future projects, I’ve recently started 2 new books. The first was inspired by watching wind turbines being built off the coast of Skegness. The second was a line from Dracula in which Mina Harker imagines the Count among ‘the teeming millions of London’. Fairly bland beginnings but they have inspired stories. Both were at a time when I was consciously casting around for ideas rather than waiting for those overrated muses!
I suppose my question is this: does an idea have more legitimacy as a ‘novel idea’ if it comes from those muses rather than being deliberately sought?
JOSEPH: Not in the least. Bollocks to the muses, I say, Bill. We have to rely on ourselves. Any idea is a worthy idea if you do a good job with it. Even a fairly drab, one-dimensional idea can become a feast for the reader. The simple ‘Good vs. Evil within a single character’ became the legendary Jekyll and Hyde.
Here’s something everyone can try. I give it freely so don’t say we at HR are stingy. (Besides, a Bloody Books car battery attached to your tongue makes you want to wag it…) On a piece of paper write fifteen types of employment, fifteen themes and fifteen locations. Cut them into single pieces of paper and put them in three envelopes (could be three hollowed out skulls, of course). Pick one location, one theme and one occupation. Write the obvious story that emerges from mixing these three things. Magic! I’ve written novels like this…
BILL: I think one of the most important things when it comes to ideas is to read as much and as widely as possible. Reading voraciously is important for writing in general – it improves your skills in regard to characterization, pacing, descriptive passages, mood-building etc, but it’s also important as far as coming up with ideas is concerned. You might pick up a suggestion in a novel, for example, that you can tease out into a full idea of your own. And not just novels – read newspapers, magazines, tour guides, even pamphlets while you’re waiting in the doctor’s surgery! And don’t be snobby in your reading – bad books and red tops are just as good a source for ideas as literary novels and broadsheets.
JOSEPH: I agree. Read as much as you can of whatever you can whenever there’s a spare moment. Although, I have to say that it’s particularly in reading fiction that I really feel I learn about how not to do things and what I ought to aspire to.
But ideas are just out there for the taking, aren’t they? Like mosquitoes over a southern swamp. Why people ask where ideas come from I will never understand.
If I can add one last point it’s that when you have an idea you MUST write it to its conclusion – even if you think it’s utter dross. Otherwise you’ll never discover the nuggets of gold in the grimy ore of your mind. If the idea turns out to be worthless at least you’ll have had some valuable practice in stickability. Best case scenario is you turn out a piece you can be proud of.
BILL: Absolutely. There are ideas within ideas, and the writing up of a bad idea can produce those golden nuggets. Well, I think we’ve said all we can on The Idea. Next time: the joys and frustrations of RESEARCH.
JOSEPH: Research? What the hell’s Res– YAAAAARRGGGHHH!!! (Holy butt cheeks, that is one looooong trident the master wields…) Of course. Silly me. Now, I remember what research is. Boy, am I looking forward to that topic.
BILL: Blimey, that’s a nasty looking puncture wound you have there, Joseph. Well, three puncture wounds. I think you’ve severed your femoral artery – you’re losing a lot of blood. I’ve got some Savlon and a couple of bandaids around here somewhere.
JOSEPH: Thanks, Bill. You’re a pal.
November 3rd, 2008
I’m glad Bill brought this subject up. He’s absolutely right in what he says about how people buy books. It’s an attraction thing, just like choosing a lover. Psychologists understand the generalities which men and women find attractive. These generalities appear on the covers of magazines and sell them in their millions per day. We call these generalities models. We call them celebrities.
Of course, selling books can’t work in exactly the same way but similar psychological principles apply. Discovering the secret of what is attractive in the right way to as many people as possible is the name of the game. If not, all books would have plain covers; titles alone would be enough to send people digging for their wallets.
Seeing the cover of your debut novel is a special moment, as you’ll have picked up from Bill’s response to first seeing the cover for Through a Glass, Darkly. MEAT’s first draft UK cover had a matt finish. Only the hook shone metallically. The colours were darker and rustier. The original strap line was ‘What’s the worst thing you can imagine?’. The unedited review copies went out with that strap line. As we neared publication, the line became ‘You are what you eat’.
The overall cover design was simple, stark and pertinent, fitting the title exactly. I loved it. Something Bloody Books set out to do was ‘de-ghettoise’ their horror titles: get them front of house in the major chain stores. And this they achieved right out of the gate with MEAT - despite a cover that screamed ‘horror!’. I was delighted to see my novel on the 3 for 2 tables in Waterstones and Borders. However, I suspect Meat’s cover polarised browsers. To the horror fan, it was a definite maybe, especially with a Stephen King quote blazoned above the book’s title. But, to more mainstream readers, I think it became a definite no-no. So, while sales were good, we only attracted the hardcore horror fans willing to take a punt on an unknown author. It’s only now, as word spreads about the research behind the novel that other less horror-centric readers are jumping on the band wagon. I suspect a much wider range of readers found the cover of Through a Glass, Darkly a more tempting prospect.
Comments from some reviewers suggested the UK cover of MEAT was practically a spoiler. Others hinted the jacket was at odds with its contents.
The Hungarian and German translations of MEAT are very similar to Bloody Books’ original. However, the French cover is a shot of a wooden chopping block and a meat cleaver. Barely a trace of blood. And they’ve called it ‘Les Bouchers de Dieu’ (The Butcher’s of God or God’s Butchers depending on your take…) Personally speaking, it’s a far less striking cover but perhaps this is a good thing. As with all things in publishing, time will tell.
Contrary to all I’ve said so far, I also believe that really good books will not lie down and be ignored, even if they have unappealing covers. Books which are able to satisfy a wide audience and which move readers in a lingering way, these books will be talked about and word will spread. There will be foreign sales and there will be reprints.
One final thing to mention about covers:
Bill talks about being involved with the choosing of the design. This is a rare thing indeed, believe me. If you’re not selling books in the tens of thousands per week, it’s very unlikely you’ll be consulted on cover art. Sure, it’ll be in your contract that you’ll be ‘consulted’ but the reality will be that your publisher is likely to consult you when it’s too late to make changes. Bill and I are incredibly fortunate to have a found a publisher like Bloody Books. They talk to us every step of the way. Of course, their say is final when it comes to covers – they’re the ones taking the financial risk of publishing our books, after all – but I can honestly say BB is a rarity among publishing houses.
I’m damned glad I can say that.
(And Master Petherick sipping a little of my blood of a Friday evening seems a small price to pay.)
Knowing Bill has received his cover for The Absence, the proposed cover of The Garbage Man can’t be far behind. I can barely contain myself…
October 28th, 2008
Okay, maybe I’m getting slightly ahead of myself here. Joseph and I are about to launch into a series of discussions on the business of writing a novel, from ‘the Idea’ straight through to the final edit. In the journey of the novel the decision about cover design is, if not the last consideration, pretty near the end. However, in the world of modern publishing a book’s cover is almost as important a factor in the finished product as the merit of the book itself. Many highfalutin’, so-called literary writers would balk at what I’ve just told you. They would stand by the age-old adage that one should never judge a book by its cover. They’re the very same folk who are dismissive about the importance of plot and pacing. My answer to that sort of thinking is quite simply: get real! You want to write? Well then you’ve got to write books that people want to buy. Publishing is not (and never should be, in my opinion) a charitable cause in which people with a few bob throw their money at scribblers who simply want to ‘express themselves’ on paper. Publishers are not modern day patrons of the arts: they are businessmen. Sure, the best of them are invested in the quality and integrity of the books they produce, but those books need to make a profit. With this in mind, the decision on a book’s cover is a vital one. Because, and let me make this very clear,
VIRTUALLY EVERYONE JUDGES A BOOK BY ITS COVER!
That may not be fair - I’ve read many excellent books that have appalling artwork slapped on the front. It may not even be very wise on the part of the reading public. But it is the truth. In this helter-skelter, fast-food gobbling, coffee-on-the-run world most people just don’t have the time to hang around in bookshops for hours perusing the shelves. Incidentally, that’s why you see so many blurbs saying ‘the next Dan Brown’ or ‘in the style of John Le Carré’. People know what they like and need a pointer as to what else they might fancy. They just don’t have the time to investigate. The same principle applies when it comes to covers. Remember after The Da Vinci Code came out how many sinister, vaguely monastic covers you saw springing up all over the place? Again, I’m not saying this is right, but it is the commercial reality of publishing today.
Covers are immensely important. They have to grab the reader without being garish - they have to pull you in without assaulting your senses - in their own right, they have to tell at least part of a story. I didn’t realise the importance of covers myself until the artwork came in for Through A Glass, Darkly. Luckily, the design was perfect from the outset - just a little yellowing of the image was required. The email from Bloody Books that contained the artwork had been copied in to a dozen or so other people, asking for advice and opinions. This was a committee decision, as I believe most cover decisions are. Why? Well, without a good cover your book just ain’t gonna sell, baby. With that in mind a publisher will solicit as much advice as possible before he commits.
So what makes a perfect cover? Don’t ask me. It’s like my agent said during the early stages of publication of TAGD - ‘You don’t have any cover ideas? No problem, you’re a writer, not a bloody graphic designer.’ That said, I think I have gained a bit of insight into the art of the process over the past year. I would say that the cover of a modern novel - be it horror or any other genre - needs a simple, bold image. Covers that are too busy tend to confuse rather than engage. Obviously that image needs to have some relevance to the book and yet not be too obvious. For example, you’re writing a story about zombies taking over New York. You’ve called it Undead in the Big Apple (hey, I’m not here to give away cracking title ideas, okay?). If this was my novel, I wouldn’t go for an image of lumbering corpses surrounding the Statue of Liberty. Take another less obvious image from the book - a broken wristwatch with the hint of a reflection in the cracked face, for example (don’t like that? I refer you to my agent’s observation cited earlier!). A strong image that does not bear an obvious relation to the book’s title will engage the reader’s curiosity - start them asking questions about how it fits into the story. With TAGD the cover was deceptively simple - birds in panicked flight, soaring away from the dark fingers of a tree, a shaft of sunlight breaking down upon them. Only when you reach the end of the book do you come to a scene that… ah, well, no spoilers. I loved the idea that, once the reader had finished the book, he or she could flip back to the front and see the significance of the cover image.
Horror covers are becoming less obviously ‘of the genre’. Very rarely do you see fanged spectres and hairy lycanthropes cluttering up the fronts of new horror books. Take, for example, the cover for Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box reproduced here. It is a simple, arty cover, sinister without being grotesque. There are images here from the book - images to intrigue. This kind of cover may have been used because the genre is trying to reinvent itself - to get readers who wouldn’t normally pick up a fright fest to dip their toe. The same thinking is used when publishers employ the term ‘dark fiction’ rather than ‘horror’ - it’s a ‘don’t scare off the punters’ mindset. Some may argue that this is a dishonest tactic but I would suggest that, if the novel has any subtlety to it, then why not employ a defter touch? While our core fanbase is strong, horror deserves (and needs) new readers. A good cover can draw them in. I know this from my own experience of talking to Waterstones book buyers and reading groups. Many people who would never have considered reading horror confessed that they were intrigued by TAGD’s less in-your-face artwork.
The main reason I’m blogging about the cover is because I’ve just received the design for my new book, The Absence. As with TAGD, it is gloriously beautiful: a bold, dark, creepy image, sepia-tinted and full of lurking menace. I think it should pull in the punters. I hope so anyway! This time it takes a central location from the book and conjures up just the right atmosphere.
Finally, if you don’t believe what I’m saying about the importance of the cover, then next time you’re in a bookshop just watch the people browsing. They will pick up the book and glance over the cover. If the artwork sparks their interest they’ll flip to the back cover blurb. Even if the blurb grabs them they will rarely, in my experience, then head straight to the check out. They’ll go back to the cover and take another look. The cover is the hook and a good cover sells.
October 27th, 2008
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In her debut novel Lost Souls (Dell bought it in 1991 and a few months later she was signed to a six-figure three-book contract) I was introduced to a triumvirate of psychotic vampires called Zillah, Molochai and Twig – creatures I wasn’t sure I wanted to fuck, or flee from. After subjecting a young woman to a night of alcohol-fuelled crazed lust – they disappear. An unfortunate side-effect of humans mating with vampires is that said young woman won’t survive the pregnancy, therefore forcing another of their kind to leave the orphaned vampire baby on a doorstep in grim suburbia; the baby, who grows up to become a reclusive teenager and goes by the name of Nothing, rejects the dull normies and the stifling small-town he was forced to grow up in and leaves it all behind in search of his true heritage. The Lost Souls of the title are the heartbroken musician Steve and the fey psychic Ghost, residents of Brite’s fictitious Missing Mile (apparently inspired by Athens in Georgia, where Brite resided before making New Orleans her permanent home). Eventually Nothing hooks up with his real family and embarks on an incestuous affair with Zillah – the leader of the pack and his own father. At first Nothing is easily seduced by the lure of these creatures’ hyperreality. Nothing finds his own way into the damnation – that is the easy part - however, he soon realises that after witnessing some of his new family’s more unsavoury antics he might need to find a way back to the light. The morally conflicted little vamp finds allies when he finally encounters Steve and Ghost, but the pack isn’t prepared to give up one of their own without a ferocious fight.
This brings me to Brite’s most controversial novel to date Exquisite Corpse. A novel which took me to the shocking, acid-skin-stripping, viscera full frontiers of psychosexual obsession and corpse-revelry and I fell in love. A tour-de-force with a taunting, teasing, thrilling and tortuous narrative trajectory that undoubtedly had maniacs salivating on the frontlines of the lunatic fringe. So extreme in content was this that her publisher Dell refused to publish it – her UK publishers also declined. Eventually it was picked up by Simon and Schuster in the US and Orion in the UK. This was so much more though than just another “extreme” novel; even with Lost Souls and Drawing Blood Brite took incredible risks and happily gave the V to any of her detractors. She wrote a novel that dragged you into the darkest realms of humanity – but her characters weren’t “monsters.” Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote in the afterword of Self-Made Man:
