THE HORROR OF MY LIFE: JAMES COOPER

4/5/2022

This is article series allows horror creators to discuss the films and books that helped to shape their love for the horror genre. Today we welcome James Cooper to Ginger Nuts of Horror to tell us about the Horror of His Life.

If you would like to take part in this series you can download the template here

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING:

The Rats by James Herbert. I was twelve years old. I told my parents it was a book I had to read for school. They should have known better. In truth, the giant, blood-soaked rat on the cover was a bit of a giveaway. I remember being both traumatized and aroused by it, and understood neither feeling particularly well. My abiding memory of it is realising I had stumbled upon something forbidden, something with the power to change my interest in books for life. This part turned out to be true. I recall being blown away by Herbert’s uncanny ability to capture the voice of a character in no more than a page or so before said character had his face bitten off by a rat. It was bold, brutal stuff and I loved it. Herbert had tapped into a winning formula and the key to it lay in its savage simplicity. It was a formula that proved hugely successful for him over the next forty years or so. On the surface that formula seems ludicrously easy to imitate. Let me tell you, dear reader: it’s not.

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING:

Hitchcock’s The Birds. I remember watching it late at night with my mum on an old Ferguson black & white TV in the ’70s. Christ knows how old I was. Just a kid. I only recall it because I often sat with my mum on Saturday nights watching all kinds of stuff, and The Birds seemed like pretty tame stuff at the start. Then the seagulls turn up. And the damn ravens. Tippi Hedren looked just like my mum at the time—same hair and disdainful expression—and when she comes under attack in the phone booth I remember running close to tears. The Birds has haunted me for a long time. It’s the flapping of the wings; and the beaks; and the soulless eyes that understand every wretched frailty you possess . . .

THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME:

Psycho. Another obvious choice, but, again, it happens to be true. The ephemeral beauty and bird-like fragility of Anthony Perkins disguises one of horror cinema’s most ambiguous monsters. The character of Norman Bates is at once appalling and sympathetic, a man abandoned to his own trauma at a very young age. The image of Bates in Mother’s dress and wig wielding a carving knife has become as embedded in our consciousness as one of the horror genre’s most iconographic visuals, no less powerful or disturbing than Jason’s mask or Freddie’s glove . . .

THE GREATEST HORROR WRITER OF ALL TIME:

This honour probably goes to Clive Barker. He redefined the horror genre with The Books of Blood and, as a young man, wrote like a man possessed. His prose is fuelled by the kind of demented poetry and amped-up creativity that few have ever been able to match. He is the master of the horror set-piece and there is something transformative and wholly original about everything he writes. Nothing ever stays as it is. He is the kind of writer who comes along once in a generation. Every glorious sentence is dripping with blood . . .

THE BEST HORROR BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME:

A hundred different candidates for this one. I adore many of the ’80s pulp covers, but have a real soft spot for James Herbert’s UK hardback edition of Domain. Glossy black backdrop; silver by-line and gold title filling the top half of the cover; the bottom half displaying two menacing red rat eyes peering from the darkness. This was also the very first hardback I ever bought. The simplicity of it and the striking combination of colours—silver, gold, red—are incredibly eye-catching. A stroke of genius in terms of marketing. And creepy as hell . . .

THE BEST HORROR FILM POSTER OF ALL TIME:

The Exorcist is pretty hard to beat. You can all picture it, I’m sure: monochrome image of a silhouetted man in a trilby holding a valise, standing at the entrance of a large house, and gazing up at a window from which pours a flood of illumination. The beauty of the poster lies in the interplay of light and shadow, delivering an iconic image that evokes a real sense of unease in the viewer. The man seems reluctant to enter the house; he, along with the viewer, knows instantly that what awaits inside cannot be good. The poster brilliantly invites us to join him on his journey into the darkness that inhabits the light . . .

THE BEST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN:

My new novella, The Man in the Field (June 2022), from Cemetery Dance and my new collection, Scar Tissue (May 2022), from PS Publishing, are both books I’m incredibly enthusiastic about. Whether they’re my best books or not is really for others to decide, but they’re certainly books I’m immensely proud of. The Man in the Field is a folk horror tale about a woman challenging the forces that oppress her community; Scar Tissue is a collection of stories inspired by the some of the field’s greatest writers. I think it contains some of my best work. You can find out more about it here: https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/scar-tissue-signed-hardcover-by-james-cooper-5715-p.asp

THE WORST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN:

Revealing that would be a little like cutting my own throat: messy and utterly unproductive! My debut novel The Midway back in 2007 could have been better, though . . .

THE MOST UNDERRATED HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME:

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. A smart distillation of Lovecraftian horror that shows just what can be achieved with a tight script and a strong, directorial vision. The sense of reality slipping during the course of the film is deeply unnerving. Scenes linger, like the cop beating up a tramp in an alley. Insanity spreads. The forces of cosmic horror reach out to us in every single frame of the film . . .

THE MOST UNDERRATED HORROR NOVEL OF ALL TIME:

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. An epic ’80s horror novel that doesn’t often get a mention when we consider the complex evolution of genre fiction. Simmons has a blast telling a story about psychic vampires, drawing on his knowledge of Hollywood, Nazi Germany and American history to create a narrative that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. If you haven’t read it yet, consider yourself a failed horror aficionado and go out and correct the error immediately.

THE MOST UNDERRATED HORROR AUTHOR OF ALL TIME:

Let me throw a name at you from left-field: Jack Ketchum. Deceased now, God bless him, but Ketchum was a writer who had been ploughing a dark furrow in the field of genre fiction for years, often without getting the credit he was due. The guy knew horror, no doubt about it, but more importantly, he knew people, understood the dark forces that moved them, took great delight in the psychology of fear. His writing is visceral, the language throbbing with violent potential, and his sense of style is almost intuitive. His characters operate within a strong moral framework, the boundaries of which are often breached, resulting in profound trauma and bloodshed. Ketchum was—and still is—a force of nature in the horror field. Read The Girl Next Door; I defy you to look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong . . .

THE BOOK I AM WORKING ON NEXT:

I’m about 160 pages into the first draft of my own epic ’80s-style horror novel, provisionally entitled The Chase. I don’t anticipate finishing it any time soon. I’ve also written half a dozen or more original stories for a new collection I’m developing that I’m thinking of calling Glass Shatters Fist. There’s also a very special project I’ve completed that I’m currently waiting to hear back on. That one could be a real humdinger. I’m praying to the moonlit horror gods that it gets picked up . . .

JAMES COOPER

James Cooper is the author of the short story collections You Are The Fly and The Beautiful Red. His novella Terra Damnata was published by PS Publishing in 2011 and was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award. His novella Strange Fruit and his novel Dark Father were both published in 2014 to critical acclaim.

More recently, PS Publishing released his third short story collection, Human Pieces, while the collection Head Space & Other Uncomfortable Surroundings was published in a beautiful leather-bound edition by Cemetery Dance in 2019.

Forthcoming is the novel Little Boy and the novella The Man in the Field, both from Cemetery Dance, as well as a major new project from PS Publishing entitled Scar Tissue , due in May 2022.

He is currently working on an epic 80s-style horror novel and a new short story collection, tentatively entitled Glass Shatters Fist.

WEBSITE LINKS:

www.jamescooperfiction.co.uk

https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/scar-tissue-trade-paperback-by-james-cooper-5716-p.asp

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fade-James-Cooper/dp/1587677989/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3N9R9EKV7X3G9&keywords=the+fade+james+cooper&qid=1648791354&sprefix=the+fade+james+cooper%2Caps%2C50&sr=8-1

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21850377-dark-father

Scar Tissue by James Cooper

Original Stories Inspired by Dark Fiction’s Contemporary Trailblazers:

Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, Daphne du Maurier, Robert McCammon & Peter Straub.

James Cooper, one of Britain’s finest exponents of contemporary dark fiction, invites you to reflect upon the work of some of the world’s most distinguished authors.

In this masterful new collection, you will discover a range of extraordinary stories, each of which will hack into your heart and make you bleed, leaving its mark—a scar, if you will—a smooth reminder of how deeply we are all drawn to horror’s edge . . . Prefaced with insightful introductory essays, this fascinating new collection resonates with familiar narratives, blurring the lines and triggering an exquisite synthesis of the imagination.

So immerse yourself in the art of superior storytelling with a book that shines a light on the mechanics of genre fiction, exploring in the process how the very best in the business produce tales that are memorable, always inventive and utterly original.

Purchase a copy direct from PS Publishing by clicking here

The Fade
by James Cooper

Meet Philip: a young boy with a desire to self-destruct. His family thinks he’s a monster, but that’s okay. Monsters are usually destroyed in the final act, and Philip knows that’s exactly how he’ll end up. A pale corpse, rotting in the wind… Hilary Bunce feels like a monster, too. His dysfunctional family is unbearable, turning him into a shadow of the man he really is, lost and afraid, with little awareness of the emerging horror he is about to confront. The world isn’t designed for people like Philip and Hilary. That’s why they each like to visit the Fade, an empty landscape of desert and rolling hills that seems to float beyond existence itself, accessible to only a privileged few, where all the world’s misery and loneliness dissolves. But the Fade is not as empty or as isolated as it appears. A tall, thin man named Pappy stalks the desert carrying a large burlap sack. His job is to clean up the Fade. He lives in a grey house on top of a hill, eternally watchful, forever alert. And he will do whatever it takes to rid his kingdom of disease… The Fade...An unforgettable novel of visionary horror by one of Britain’s most accomplished writers of contemporary dark fiction.